SkyOS now has hardware accelerated Nvidia support, supporting all known models. Additionally, the first round of the “SkyOS GUI Design Contest” is now over. Round two has started, and you may vote for the design you would like to see. The winner will be the design implemented and released in SkyOS 5.
SkyOS: Nvidia Support, GUI Contest Round Two Open
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It’s not bad just too blue.
Seriously I think WindUI and Skybox are too similar aer splitting the vote.
I think Skybox needs to drop out of the race to give WindUI a better shot.
…is really amazing.
Did they write the Nvidia drivers themselves?
I like the two grey ones, the blue one is a bit hard on my eyes.
Too blue indeed. Skybox is pretty, but WindUI looks more functional. If either of them win, I’ll be installing SkyOS 5 for sure (New toys, yay!). If not, looks like I’ll have to hold out for OBOS or Zeta.
>Did they write the Nvidia drivers themselves?
*Probably* is a port of XFree86. Easier this way.
Skybox looks very nice. Smooth with good contrast, and a unique look about it. The problem…. the screenshot doens’t have enough gadget widget crap everywhere to satisfy the glitz desires of most people I guess.
The other two look like bad versions of Windows with some Linux UI concept enhancements. The Wind one looks like Luna with the “Slicker” concept enhancement for KDE, and the ObjectBlue one looks like a horrible Longhorn mockup.
Yuck, at least Skybox is original in look and style.
Wind UI looks awesome! Very simple, minimal and intuitive. Object-Blue is nice, but it’s too busy and confusing.
Now… the next question, how long will this take to implement?
Wind UI is the bestlooking (nice little touch with the plugged-in Ipod icon!). The blue one reminds me of the aero Longhorn screens… *GRERRGHH*
And the SkyBOx one isn’t nice at all.
So I installed a copy of SkyOS on my system and sent an e-mail to the list asking for a copy of the modified vlc and grub source code since it’s obvious that both apps were modified specifically for SkyOS. I never got a response.
Now, I may not be a huge fan of the GPL (I prefer using code under a BSD license whenever possible), but if the SkyOS developers are going to use GPLed code, they can at least adhere to the rules laid out by the license.
Adam
They all look good enough that I won’t be dissappointed no matter which one wins.
I’m wondering, did they sign an NDA with Nvidia, or did they use the less powerful, XFree86 drivers as references. Then, is there any 3d support, or is this just a better 2d driver?
Hello everyone,
I’m not sure how Robert ended up doing these. I’ll leave him a message and tell him that you had questions about it. I’m sure he’ll post an answer in here for you.
Thanks for voting in the contest everyone! Tell your friends, we want to get as many opinions (in vote form) as possible. This will ensure that the new GUI will be accepted by as wide a user base as is possible.
Artistic screenshots contribute more style than substance. If I understand correctly that SkyOS is really open to GUI suggestions how about providing a mega multiple choice on specific widget features then everyone could contribute easily. All the major GUIs have good & not so good ideas.
e.g.
1) Sky menu popup position:- Anywhere / From a panel
2) Panel(s):- Single / multiple
3) Collapse start menu with panel (ie BeOS):- Yes / No
4) Pinable menus:- Yes / No / Later
5) Skinable:- Yes / No
6) Widget dimension:- Fixed / sizable
7) Snake menu file system browsing: Yes / No
and so on
Brian N
WindUI for me. Loved it! Keep up the good (nice!) work!
To Adam:
Don’t start this discussion again.
I got your mail, checked it today. Nevertheless, I have more then 300 mails/day, so please be patient. I will answer asap and send the files asap.
Robert,
No need to get all snippy 🙂 I was just posting what I experienced.
Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Adam
to robert:
why not just post them in the downloads section just to make it easier to get to?
WindUI is my favorite, the colors flowed a little better than in the others imo. The object blue is what others say too blue, not too much of a variety with it. Skybox looks good as well, just a little too plain for my tastes, but they all will work for different people, just that they won’t all work for me
If these are actual screenshots instead of ideas made with gimp or photoshop, I cannot wait to get the latest release to try it out. Great job guys !
Because bandwidth is expensive, and that is also just another thing for us to have to maintain, taking away from time that could be spent working on the OS. Also, there have been almost zero requests for this type of thing.
Robert is fulfilling the GPL requirements (aside from the crappy wording in the license). You don’t have to post your modified source for the world to see. You need only provide users of your program a way to get the source. The e-mail thing qualifies.
As hexydes said, we are limited with bandwidth. We need about 60-80GB transfer volume each month. (Binaries only).
And I don’t really like additional download or mirror servers because they are down most time 🙂 . (And it’s really a lot of work to maintain all the downloads).
SkyBox looks so great, and the good thing is, that it looks a little different.
Because WindUI looks like MacOS X and Object blue like WinXP Luna.
Moreover it’s so clean
@Brian N: I think this is a very good idea to do a poll not only about design but also about major UI features!
Will the SkyOS GUI be “themeable?” If so, we should disregard the color schemes of the entries.
SkyOS will be themeable (it currently is), but after we put the new interface in, there will probably only be one theme for a little while. This is due to the amount of work involved in designing the GUI. I believe that we simply won’t have time to make additional themes.
Certainly look for more themes in future updates though (post v5.5).
yes emailing does fulfil the requirements of the gpl, however i was not aware that skyos used grub (ive only booted up the live cd, and when i did i left it unattended whilst i did so). is there a listing of gpl software used within skyos?
I think WindUI is the best looking user interface to choose from; very nice and clean.
>> Wind UI: 320 votes
*Votes
>> Wind UI: 321 votes
😎
So there is no clause in the GPL saying anything about the timely provision of the source code only that there has to be way of obtaining it?
So for example Adam sends me an email asking for source code but oops….
It gets lost in my Byzantine email system and won’t pop up for say…. oh another year…..
Oh dear, oh dear 😉
This poll is flawed. How can anyone possibly vote on 3 shortlisted finalists when there’s no description on the actual functionality of the GUI’s? Skybox, is a pretty bare looking screenshot, how does the GUI work? What features does it sport? Get what I mean? The poll should be pulled until full descriptions of what the authors mean by these GUI are put up for all to decide. If the SkyOS GUI is supposed to be themeable, why are we voting on pure screenshots which can be changed instantly?
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booooooooooohoohoo
I am the author of SkyBox and I’m frankly confused about how this voting is being handled. I was under the impression that three would be picked,those three would be developed further, and THEN a vote would take place on those three further-developed concepts. I’m nowhere near complete on the look of SkyBox, much less the functionality and HIG.
>The Web site cannot be found
they probably went out of bandwidth.
Sorry guys, server is temporarily down. We’ll have it up in a bit.
Androo, I made a post on the forums asking the three round one winners to please submit new designs and descriptions. The contest has been open for almost a month now, and anyone could have submitted designs and descriptions (and many people did). I would be glad to post either if you send them or post them in the forums.
The XFree drivers are not less powerful then nVidia drivers for any other platform, the have the same features as the Windows driver except without DirectX.
The XFree drivers for XFree are different from the NVIDIA drivers for XFree. Indeed, the NVIDIA drivers are every bit as good as their Windows counterparts, excepting DirectX, of course. However, the open-source XFree drivers aren’t as good in some ways (no Render acceleration, no 3D support, etc) as the proprietory NVIDIA drivers.
PS> As for the GPL, its pretty low-tech in areas. There are 2 ways you can satisfy the GPL requirements:
1) If you offer download of a binary program, you can provide a source archive in the same place as the binary.
2) You can accompany each copy of the binary with a written offer to *mail* the user a copy of the source code on a physical medium. You can charge the user for the cost of the medium and the postage.
Site is back up for now. Sorry about the down time. Continue voting.
1)Skybox
Even though the author didn’t include to many objects I can see he has a clean style and good creative imagination.
2)Wind UI
It is good looking gui but I’m afraid it is another OS X guy and I can see he won’t be following through with his own ideas. Looks like a lawsuit to me.
3)Object Blue
Good looking gui but to difficult on the eyes.
My vote goes for Skybox. Good Job Andrew.
I’m sorry Androo… I really did love your design…. if I had to pick a favorite it would have been yours, but I had to go ahead and vote for Wind UI.
For starters, for me, Wind UI is just too OSXish — other’s have labeled it too Luna, but for me it’s just too OSXish, your’s actually reminded me of a beautiful blend of OS X and QNX — QNX mainly due to some of the simple gradients used on one of the windows.
The reason I voted for Wind UI and not yours is because I jsut can’t stand to see Object Blue win. And with yours already so far behind every vote for Wind UI counts. Even without the fact that Object Blue is saturated with Blue it’s just too repulsive of a GUI. For everyone else paying attention here’s some flaws with Object Blue (and whether they can be changed in the final draft or not doesn’t even come into the question… because these things question the sanity of the designer)
1) Why would I want my desktop to have a box that tells me every little useless thing I do? “You’ve chosen to configure your hardware” — Yeah… no kidding, that’s why I clicked configure hardware.
2) What’s with the stiff icon box that’s about 10 pixels from the edge of the bottom right? Why waste those 5-10 pixels on the right or left… move it to the corner, and start saving our desktop space.
3) What the hell are those buttons at the top of the toolbar supposed to mean again? They all look like the same button with a different sized blue rectangle coming off of them.
4) Why is the time on the titlebar for the application? And why is it so small that I can’t read it with a 10x magnifying glass?
5) What the hell is with linking everything back to that image of the cobalt cube?
6) I’ve got 4 words for you, “lng this typ of” … and furthermore… what’s with the curved lines that look like hyperbola’s gone wrong? If that’s how I “navigate” my system… as the image at
http://www.nathanpalmer.com/skyos/album17/1SkyOS_GUI_Background_NG_… implies… just kill me now.
BeOS. I like SkyBox, but to me it looks very BeOS-ish. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if I had to choose between an OS design that slightly reminds me of XP, OS X, or BeOS, I’d just the OS X-ish design. Which is Wind UI.
The one UI I *hate* is Object Blue. All that blue makes me sick.
Sorry…
Best regards,
Jared
I just want to point out to everyone that every GUI that is ever going to be made is going to have elements of GUIs that came before it. Why? Because people learn what they like and dislike about other GUIs by USING other GUIs. So when you say “this looks like OS X kind of” or “that reminds me of Windows XP”, you have to expect that that will happen to some degree.
I also wanted to vote for SkyBox, but it was behind in the vote and was close to WindUI, and also did not show enough.
Anyway your comments about Object Blue are probably accurate but a bit brutal. I particularly like your comment on Configuring hardware.
Skybox is my favorite, WindUI coming second. Skybox would probably be doing better if people who liked it weren’t afraid to vote for it..
If Skybox doesn’t win I hope the author can at least do some linux themes for it, like a GTK theme of those tabs and widgets. If I had to recommend a window manager to theme those borders for.. xfce4 anyone?
How closely do you intend to follow the mockups when doing the actual implementation? If you disagree with a particular aspect, would you be inclined to change it?
Actually, it will be the design team that is going to flesh out the GUI. We will try our best to keep it like the original schematic, only changing or adding what is needed. We will then take it to Robert, make sure that it all works, and he will put it in.
Androo, I was under the same impression… that three finalists would be picked from the first round, THEN the finalists would further develop their schemes, THEN the finished schemes would be posted, THEN the second round voting would start. I seem recall reading this in one of the forum announcements. It makes perfect sense.
Hexydes, round ONE has been open for a month. The finalists didn’t know they were finalists until the END of round one. So, the finalists should have had a chance to tweak their designs/descriptions, before the round two voting started.
Round one hasn’t been open for a month, the contest has been open for a month. Round one has been open for a week, and now its over. Designers were not only allowed, but ENCOURAGED to send designs and descriptions of their design. Many people took advantage of this, some did not. I only posted what people gave me. I don’t remember ever saying that the winners would have time to redesign their submissions, I remember saying that round one would be open for a week, and round two would start immediately after, on September 15th.
We don’t need a finished design. We need a rough layout. We have a design team to finish the GUI and polish it up. Our intentions are to take the winner of round two and add them to the GUI team and IMMEDIATELY start on the GUI design and implementation. If it was practical, I would have had submissions take one day, round one take one day, and round two take one day. But I’ve let it go on for a month.
Robert works at an EXTREMELY fast pace in developing the OS, and I don’t plan to change that a bit. I want the GUI done. There’s no reason for it to take a long time, and there is no reason to sit around and let the designers take another two weeks to redo their interface. They’ve had a month, they were welcome to submit designs the entire time. Round two is going now, and it will be done shortly. Then, work will begin for the GUI team.
That’s how I took it, but supposedly I failed to read the forums. Why vote once then immediately after vote again for the same images? Makes no sense to me.
In the forums there’s a thread dated TODAY that asks for a new image and documentation. Why are we voting today when no finalist has submitted such info? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give the winners time to update their work and provide detailed descriptions of the operation of their GUI? My life doesn’t revolve around this contest, you know; I need a couple weeks to get work out the door.
If this is the way it has to be, I formally withdraw. If possible please remove my entry and allow the people who voted for my submission to vote again for Wind UI or Object Blue.
I have a 700 mhz machine still running using Red Hat Linux 9 as well as a 366mhz running Red Hat 9 and still humming along and they both work very well.
Wrong story LOL
Androo, do you have anything? If you have images, I would be glad to put them up. I have had that post up for almost 24 hours now. Each of you had a fair shot at sending me new information and images. So far, only one of you has done that, and I have witheld adding it because I want you all to have a fair shot. I was hoping that you three would submit something within a day and I could add it. You might argue that you wanted a few weeks to work on your design, but I make the argument that you’ve had a few weeks to keep working on your design while round one and submissions were being made. I posted and hoped the three of you had been watching the contest and anticipating your win, and that I would soon hear from the three of you.
You say that your life doesn’t revolve around this contest, and I completely, 100% respect that. However, we need to get going on this design. We don’t want to wait around for 6 months while designs are submitted, contests are held, and ideas are finalized. This was supposed to be a fast contest where maybe 10 people would enter. 30 people entered, and that is great. But our hope is still the same, that we can get this whole thing done in one month so that we can start right away on the design.
I would be glad to take any design you have done right now and post it for the contest. I have paused the contest for now, and I will wait a little while until starting it up again.
Too many of those designs look like a bunch of other operating systems have vomited over a desktop.
People are just cutting and pasting bits they like from other OS’s resulting in something with little or no consistency or usability.
You were never clear on how this second phase would work, so I made the most logical assumption that the top three in phase one would be asked to submit further developed versions of their work. Considering “phase one” took around a month, I (mistakenly) assumed “phase two” would take the around the same. Really, what sense does it make to hold a second vote immediately following the first?
Don’t pause the voting, please keep it going. This is the way you wanted to run the contest and I do not wish to step in the way of it.
Aren’t this the kind of issues that shouldn’t be solved on public forums?
Anyways, it’s just a general layout as Hexydes said, and although I do think the rules should probably been made more clear, the whole contest was resolved on a very short timeframe, and when you vote, I guess you take that into account too.
A complete GUI proposal would take months/years to complete, and I don’t think you (Androo) were trying to achieve that. Afterall, you started by posting screenshots mockups
Sorry for my bad english.
Gein
I can’t vote, is the poll similar to the one used by OSNEWS? If it is then if someone from my ISP votes, then I can’t vote which skews the results.
I finally still voted for SkyBox because it looks by far the best. But I considered voting for WindUI for a short time just for that Object Blue does not win, because you could see the results before voting.
Well, it’s too late now, but I think that the poll would finish a lot different if the results were only shown AFTER you have voted (or even better, after the whole contest).
However, I must say thank you to ALL people who sent some mockup of new design – it really shows that people are careing about what happens to the (hopefully) OS of the future
look at this:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/pictures56/christmas.png
And the owner (in a USENET) called it “sublime”. Yes, unfortunately there are a large number of people who have no colour co-ordination, that is why design is left up to a small number of people who have a clue.
As for Luna, yuck. The whole point of a desktop look ‘n feel is so that it is neither offensive or exciting. The default is meant to be the middle ground, no matter HOW boring one or two people may think it is.
Microsoft did a good job keeping to the tradition window colouring, they should have stayed with that in Windows XP and simply improved the speed, tweaked font rendering a few other bits.
Regarding this topic, well, it WOULD be nice if I could actually vote! I went to the site and there is nothing there apart from 3 pictures. No voting box, no nothing.
how is object blue winning in the polls?
(((
I would have become more interested in SkyOS if WindUI or Skybox was chosen…
I’m so superficial eheh
Is it concievable to give turn the two losing designs into alternative window managers. In this way if the development of the main gui goes down in flames, it wont pull the whole SkyOS developement down with it.
SkyOs is a good basis for an operating system and i would hate to see it fade into history because it was locked into one gui.
(Too bad my own gui designs werent completed in time. Majoring in comp sci is a major drag on my time)
It’s official… people in this world are retarded, and Object Blue is winning. I’ve already set up the car in the garage and the carbon monoxide has been gathering for a couple hours now. I’ll see you all in the afterlife.
It’s official… people in this world are retarded, and Object Blue is winning. I’ve already set up the car in the garage and the carbon monoxide has been gathering for a couple hours now. I’ll see you all in the afterlife.
Has it truely taken you this long to work that out? I found that out when I was 8 years of age, that was the same age I lost my optimism about the world. Hmm, it was a bit of a two for one special.
Conduct a daily search, look the number of people who simply walk out on the road without looking, the number who don’t use an indicator, the number of people who have to be told by a TV that drunk driving is bad mmmkay, the number of people who suddenly find out that they can get cancer smoking (WOW! what a miracle considering that the negative effects have been known since King James I when he noticed that his soldiers became unfit after taking up smoking – James I referred to it as the “effernal weed!” and wanted to ban it).
I dont think the one-vote system for round 2 is fair to Skybox or WindUI. WBoth of the entrieds that I mentioned seem to appeal to the same type of people.
I think a more appropriate system would have been to have a seperate vote for each of the 3 finalists with the choices: Approve, Neutral, Disapprove or +1, 0, -1 respectfully.
Just take a look at the comments in this thread and it’s pretty plain to see that no-one’s too keen on Object Blue, yet it’s leading by a fair margin. Wind UI for me but SkyBox would be my second choice. Object Blue – please…no more blue interfaces. Enough already…
Bold was the only design I really liked for SkyOS – I guess Wind UI (Hi Nick) or SkyBox will have to do..
Object Blue is just ugly, confusing and…. blue… please don’t consider it an option, it’s just fugly !
You all seem to miss one point: The author of Object Blue put a lot MORE time into posting and commenting his work, thus his work is looked at by “…people in this world…” who “…are retarded…” as more serious/worked out/appealing/…[add more adjectives].
I, for one, likes the blue theme, and I find the others too GREY and GNOME-like. I can see that both the others have nice minimalistic design bases, but if you would all stop thinking like geeks for a second, people don’t want minimalism and “of course I know I clicked Hardware Configuration”, ’cause most people aren’t power users or programmers.
So, if you want this OS to appeal to anyone but the fore-mentioned minorities, Object Blue, with its SAFETY feeling is the way to go.
Also, from a purely artistic point of view – a POST-MODERN view (do I hate that term!) – the meta-textual reference to the sky above is most immediately appearant, and thus easier to grasp for the common man, in the Object Blue and Wind UI themes (the SkyBox theme suggests Athens or Tokyo in mid-summer – dusty). And to finish this untimely lecture on aesthetics, which colour does one most frequently associate with “the sky above”? Well, to quote Pink Floyd on what might happen, should the SkyBox or WindUI theme win:
“Goodbye, blue sky, goodbye, blue sky, goodbye…”
Wow, the poll is OFFICIALLY closed BUT as I kept refreshing the poll numbers CHANGED!!! How about that? Can anybody chaek what’s going on?, I’ve saved the screenshots, so if anybody wants, I can ftp the shots to them.
Hmm, that’s really strange.
Can you send the screenshots per ICQ or Email?
30309090 or robertATskyos.org.
Will check this asap.
Hmm, the GUI that is the most cluttered and messy is winning… suggesting that the poll is pointless (which, being an open poll, it is anyway…) or the people voting haven’t a clue about UI.
Implementing something as significant as the look and feel of a GUI on this basis is just plain dumb. I’d suggest you instead ask people to email their vote via a web form… still not perfect, but at least you could filter out obvious duplicates.
Or better still, just get a good discussion going on a few forums such as this…
I’ve sent you the shots via email.
ewww that blue shit one is so ugly how the hell is it winning
Hey,
Sorry if this is redundant as I haven’t ever looked at SkyOS before. I was looking around on the site trying to find what license it’s released under, and I couldnt find any information on it. Is it BSD? Proprietary? GPL? Does the ISO contain source code?
I’d only use a proprietary OS if I absolute had to (eg windows), otherwise it’s BSD or GPL based OS’s for me.
I really hope they don’t include that blueish thing into the OS. Aren’t we all tired of blue?
You should at least require everyone to who votes to provide a valid email-address, to have better control over the results.
Contact me, if you need me to code a better voting system, it won’t take long, but at least be fair.
Has anyone else noticed that the Object Blue votes are increasing by about 1 every couple of minutes?
In other news, it’s not confirmed that with the clever use of Linux or other Unix-like systems, users can create scripts using things like pppd to automatically dial, vote on online polls, and disconnect. These scripts can even use a program called “sed” in order to acquire their external IP address and add it to a file, which can then be checked when they reconnect using a utility called “grep” in order to see if the IP they’ve just been given from their ISP is the same IP they’ve had before. This stunning revelation changes the outlook for a number of significant online polls which used IP based one-vote-one-user methods.
What a waste of money! That’s like 20 cents a call (in Australia).
I now, pleasy say this is a nightmare!
The blueish is not the winning. I’ll think someone is trying to cheat to voting system.
Personaly I go for Wind UI for lot og reason, though Skybox also are fine, but no. I dosen’t appeal to me.
When think of SkyOS, I think as it being the worlds next operationsystem like Windows, Mac OS. Really big OS, and theres will Wind UI be best represented.
Object BLue, oh my god! It so blue! Even if the coulours where right, still but ugly! And extemely confusing!
Think big guy’s. Object BLue is not a choice. At least not for me. I will never think of SkyOS as a choice if Object Blue will be the one, never! It will not have a chance. Look at KDE og Gnome on Linux, and then think og Object Blue on SkyOS…. ehh, no dosen’t fit in.
Well, just my point of view.
The poll is over. Vote casting of the design team and Robert is happening in the forums.
The poll is over. Vote casting of the design team and Robert is happening in the forums.
According to the SkyOS GUI Discussion Forum ObjectBlue may have won.
http://www.nathanpalmer.com/skyos/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=167
My favourite was WindUI.
The winner is Wind UI. Object Blue received the most votes in the poll, but that was always going to be only one-third of the votes. The Design Team voted for Wind UI, and Robert voted for Wind UI. Therefore, Wind UI received 2 votes, and Object Blue received 1 vote.
Thanks so much to EVERYONE that contributed! We really appreciate it. Thanks again also to Eugenia for helping us out.
I’m happy!
Hexydes, your not making fun?
Wind UI is the winner??
Yes yes yes, it’s amazing, Lovely!!!
Well… now there stil a lot of work for you to do. Great work so far! Good luck!
I’m not kidding.