The entire GUI of SkyOS has been redesigned and re-implemented (although the result is not yet close to the much more refined mockup). To read more about some background information on SkyOS 5.0/SkyGI and take a look at new screenshots showing the new boot process and the new themeing concept, you may visit the SkyOS 5.0 preview preview page. Additionally, a new SDK is available.
SkyGI Update and new SDK for SkyOS
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Is SKYOS from the *nix family?
No.
Robert, you’re amazing…
The progress shown by SkyOS is absolutley remarkable. When I first came into contact with SkyOS, it was the ugliest
but the most stable hobbyOS out there. Now, the beauty is comming in also.
I think SkyOS is moving out of the ‘hobbyos’ sector.
Can’t wait until 5 is released
)
Although SkyOS is almost POSIX compatible and most POSIX software compiles without any modifications, SkyOS is definitly not from the unix family.
Man, take a look at the stats of the project: been going 5 years, and they already have 200,000 lines of code between the kernel and the libraries. That’s from 1 guy doing 99% of the work. Very impressive.
PS> Looks like they took the license down (presumably for rework). We can stop flaming Robert now
I know SkyOS (Great job, by the way, it’s going to be so great to have such a cool alternate OS) supports FAT32 and ext2, but are there any plans to implement a filesystem like (Or better than!) BeFS? Because really, the database-like features of BeFS were the thing I loved (And still love) most about BeOS. Live queries kick major booty. Other than that, I have to say, SkyOS is *really* beginning to impress me, even more than normal. And that’s saying something.
Oh, and Robert, don’t listen to the folks who flame you about the license. Ignore them, get it straigtened out, and all will be well. I know you’re not trying to “Steal” other people’s work.
I have to agree with Thom. The progress for this OS has been incredible. Originally I looked at it as a simple Hobby OS but it has become much more and look forward to future release.
Great Job.
To be fair, I think most people who flamed Robert wanted nothing more than to just “get it straightened out.” Now that he’s doing that, there is no point in discussing it any further.
Okay. I can agree to that. Consider the license issue closed.
Would the fact that this is not an open source project hinder his chances of getting free (?) hosting for CD iso images of the LiveCD? $12 seems like a fair price (with shipping already included) but it’s a matter of convienence for people who have high speed Internet and want to try out SkyOS _today_ !!
Hmm, you can download the LiveCD ISO image on http://www.skyos.org.
Just follow the download link.
CD-order:
My inital plan was to make this CD’s available for $5. This was before I noticed that sending a CD in a cover costs €10. (From austria to US). Didn’t think that this is so expensive.
Yeah, I’m smacking my forehead right now
Thanks for not laughing at me. Here I go now.
Bottom of the page, you have a typo (in bold, no less) that states:
“no performance loos.”
Drats. I was really hoping for a performance loo.
😛
Fixed it. Thanks!
🙂
I take it that this will work with Athlon processors. The “Hardware” link shows several folks saying it worked on their Athlon systems, while the the “About” link suggests that it requires a Pentium processor. Should the “minimum requirements” say “Pentium or AMD K6-2” or whatever?
<P>
Perhaps I’m paranoid as a result of the BeOS Pentium vs Athlon issues I’ve had.
I think you can take it to mean “Pentium-Class Processor” (meaning AMD works just fine, I have run SkyOS on my Duron processor a number of times, as well as my K6-2).
Some days ago there was a news about a project Y-Windows. How is SkyOS windows system? Is it like Beos, Atheos …. I remember that Atheos also uses a client-server model using kernel messages and the author said that it would be easy make it network transparent.
Anybody have any mirrors to the screenshots on the sdk preview page? Looks like all the picture files are missing.
SDK page, or the SkyGI/SkyOS 5 preview page? The SDK page doesn’t have any screenshots. The SkyGI page does, but they all show up for me.
That system menu in the WindUI screenshot (http://66.227.104.161/skyos.org/wind_ui.jpg) looks so sweet… wish Gnome had a menu like that.
Victor.
>”That system menu in the WindUI screenshot (http://66.227.104.161/skyos.org/wind_ui.jpg) looks so sweet… wish Gnome had a menu like that.”
You should take a look at slicker [http://slicker.sourceforge.net], it’s for KDE though (and thank god for that
.
mmm, sorry about that, i mean the preview page.
The new WindUI GUI will be up in a little while. We’re still formulating all the design ideas and getting them to Robert, so that is why they aren’t there yet. We’re also finishing up on the new OS installation layout.
There’s a few “smart quotes” problems too (where quotes/apostrophes appear as “?”). Probably an encoding problem.
PS – SkyOS looks really cool and I’d be trying it if I had an Intel box around (Mac only). The GUI is great looking – if it ends up looking like the mock-up, I’d even put it in Aqua’s league.
From what I’ve seen, this OS seems to be progressing very well and so far I like what I see.
However, there’s still the nagging question if this will be able to become a real alternative to Windows.
As in, will there be any efforts made to get game companies to make SkyOS ports of their games?
That’s really the only thing left Windows has over any other x86 OS and the only thing keeping me (and probably alot of other people) from switching to something else..
-Plague
Well, there are other things that are keeping Windows as the dominant OS. But games is certainly one of the things.
The way we’re looking at it, we’re not really concerned about Windows, or any other OS for that matter. Would it be good to become a real competitor in the OS scene? Certainly, and we would like to think that this could happen in the coming years. But what we really want to focus on is having a good product. If that puts us ahead, then all the better. But we just want to put something out that people like to use, and that works well.
We also want a good community. Something very detrimental to new communities that are trying to establish a good base is elitism. We don’t want people turning new users away, we want to welcome everyone! At some point, everyone was a newbie, and everyone asked stupid questions. So what, its a learning experience. =) Ask away!
I was looking through the “Hardware” section and was rather dismayed to find that it doesn’t have a listing of supported Mobo chipsets (OK, it does show 3 chips)… Can anyone remedy this situation? Robert being the coder must know which chipsets he’s put support in for, even if it’s “untested” it would be nice to know WHICH chips have atleast supporting code such as my nForce2 Ultra 400.
Mobo Chipsets arent generally something you code support for, cause in a perfect word, they’d all be perfectly compatible. What happens is that you code support for whatever, and then if someone notices that whatever you coded doesnt work when run on a specific component (in this case mobo chipset), you code a workaround.
Supporting a chipset is really just a matter of running it, and then seeing if anything breaks, if nothing breaks, it supports it. So why dont you test it for them, it wont kill your box or anything (ok, i retract that, I dont know what kind of code they have in there
)
Just a quickie 😉 have you thought about porting the *BSD API accross to your kernel, ala MacOS X? it would allow you to free your time to work on the sexy, hard core aspects of the kernel and graphics layer.
Stating the obvious, but I think that SkyOS plus an Office suite with MS*Word and PDF support would be an attractive proposition for many small business users [myself included].
How likely is it that we will see a port of OpenOffice to SkyOS? How much work would be involved in this? Is this something that Robert or an OpenOffice developer(s) would need to undertake?
Stating the obvious, but I think that SkyOS plus an Office suite with MS*Word and PDF support would be an attractive proposition for many small business users [myself included].
How likely is it that we will see a port of OpenOffice to SkyOS? How much work would be involved in this? Is this something that Robert or an OpenOffice developer(s) would need to undertake?
The port would be made alot easier if SkyOS had a rootless X server plus the API was UNIX95 or UNIX98 compliant. A simple recompile then would be all that is needed.
Rest assured, this is something we’ve discussed at length. We have it on our “to do” list to port one of the many Office Suites available, amongst other software packages.
Has OSNEWS or anyone else ever interviewed Robert about SkyOS and his computing history.
He seems to be doing such a good job on SkyOS, I was just curious.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=185
Search and ye shall find
Wow– already in that interview (+/- 2 years ago) people said that SkyOS was gonna die ’cause it wasn’t open-source. Man, were they wrong!
A software doesn’t have to be Open Source to succeed. If the Author likes his projects and hear the users comments then it will succeed.
Open Source may be good but since it’s his project then we have to respect his decision.
What are you talking about? Of course it is good that Robert kept it closed…
Didn’t you get my post? I said I found it funny that back then people already SAID that SkyOS was gonna die because it wasn’t oss. Today, people still say that, and I find that quite funny.
My English isn’t that bad, now is it?
Sorry for the confusion, I wanted to complete your comment. Btw, I agree with you
I have played with skyos before and I am really likeing the new gui. Now if only it had support for python. Keep up the great work.
Ow okay, in that case, I should apologize
Hello,
why .stl and not .theme?
regards, Ludwig
what I really want to know about SkyOS is what it is like under the hood. What kind of special features are in the kernel? What is the Filesystem design like? What about the API? that kind of stuff.
Wing – the first question in the interview link posted above looks like a good place to start
Woah, if SkyOS 5 comes with that wind gui, I’m gonna download it for sure. I mean, it’s so nice and roundish, it looks as good as or better then Aqua! And I love aqua!
Optionally OpenGL rendered GUI (already implemented)
Freeform windows and Window transparency (already implemented)
Alpha blended windows (already implemented)
Window shadows (already implemented)
Full theming/skinning support (already implemented)
A new animated Boot Screen (already implemented)
One man with a vision (already implemented)
😛