ZetaNews carries a review of YellowTAB’s Zeta 1.0-RC1 (earlier story). It discusses installation, networking, hardware support, media, office apps and development. Screenshots included.
YellowTAB Zeta RC1 Review at ZetaNews
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Besides the much improved icon rendering and changeable window themes, another important rendering engine is very much improved over BeOS R5: fonts. The quality of the font rendering in Zeta really astonished us.
That’s nice. As far as I have heard until now, Zeta’s font rendering was worse than in R5. Not that you can tell from the screenshots though, low jpeg quality to blame?
the article said it comes with Mozilla, Phoenix, and Net+… what happened to that browser with the KHTML/WebCore renderer? Is it still in progress? Makes sense, even though I seem to recall their press release about it stating that the “had ported” it, implying past tense.
>what happened to that browser with the KHTML/WebCore renderer?
After Zeta 1.0. It will be ready for the next version of Zeta, I was told.
>Zeta’s font rendering was worse than in R5
Be’s fonts were never great. Zeta’s font rendering is not great either, that’s true. Still, it is better than the version I saw: beta1, a few months ago.
Zeta looks really impressive. Its hardware support sounds good, and it seems to come w/ all the desktop apps you’d need.
I will definitly be buying Zeta when it goes final.
Question:
How would it do on a 350Mhz k6-2 w/ 256MB of RAM?
some of those pictures look pretty good. others do not. I understand the gui is completely adjustable but they might want to produce a single and attractive default gui that they can use as their hallmark in addition to the variety.
Less can be more. choice is good but sometimes fewer choices that offer greater visual pleasure are better.
>How would it do on a 350Mhz k6-2 w/ 256MB of RAM?
Just fine.
I’m really looking forward to installing Zeta.
Do they have a list of BeOS programs that work and the ones that dont?. I would like to use personal studio or digital tracker on a modern system.
Alt OS’es are really making great progress:
Zeta, MorphOS, SkyOS, the new AmigaOS 4.0 etc…..
Will computers actually be fun again in the near future?
Time will tell
Check the date of the kernel build: Sep 27 2002
http://zetanews.com/review/zetarc1-3.jpg
This means three things:
1. YellowTAB does not have access to all sources, which is bad news for the proper evolution and support of the OS.
2. YellowTAB engineers have no clue about kernel development, which is also bad news for the proper evolution and support of the OS.
3. There is a bug with the dates in the OS, and so might be 2003 instead of the displayed 2002.
I can’t think of any other reason why this kernel has not being recompiled for over a year now. The kernel was one of the most actively developed modules in Be, they had almost daily builds (and trust me, the Be kernel needs a lot of fixes and engineering still)! IMO, YellowTAB should come forward and explain this, because this is SERIOUS.
I ordered the RC1 Deluxe edition and it is going to feel like Christmas when I get it. Linux is making great strides, Gnome and KDE, especially KDE has some awesome technology, but there are so many inconsisencies and unnecessary hurdles to overcome. Freedesktop.org may just solve the problem but BeOS and now Zeta are better on the desktop because they are not unnecessarily complex.
I love the idea of just dragging a track from the CD into a folder and have it ripped. I believe you can do the same with DVD’s.
Now SkyOS is making some seemingly serious headway and becoming a realistic alternative. There just may be choice on the Desktop in the next 5 years. Choice that runs on hardware platform that anyone can make unlike Mac. The problem with Mac is that you have to choose the configuration they give you. I am sure many people would like an WSXGA LCD screen for their Powerbook. Does apple sell you one. Answer -> No.
Bad things first: the default theme still looks weird with the tabs looking like they were cut with scissors.
Some of the software developed by yellowtab is very inconsistent. They go from good looking (Zedit) to terrible (the other office apps they provide).
Also, if that is the wallpaper they set up by default, I recommend leaving the screen blue like R5 did.
Good stuff: they actually managed to deliver a lot of things most people didn’t believe they would. The most evident is Zeta itself
.
Still, although this review was rather simple and overlooked a lot of stuff, it didn’t dissapointed me but neither did it excite me. I’ll buy it anyways, but for the support, not the product itself. For that, I’ll wait untill R2
Gein
I was amazed that there is a site called ZetaNews. I am sure the article was completely unbiased in its praise of Zeta, I mean a site called ‘ZetaNews’ reviewing an OS called ‘Zeta’. I think I would be less surprised if the mag ‘.Net Developer’ recommended Java over C# than ZetaNews doing a negative review of ZetaOS.
Be went under in 2001. I assume development stoped a bit earlier. So it the kerlnel got built in 2002, it wasn’t built be Be, Inc. right?
Gein
>it wasn’t built be Be, Inc. right?
Wrong, it could very well be. For more than one year after PalmSource acquired the Be IP, Be engineers kept working on their FREE time on BeOS/Dano codebase (as they did work on their FREE time during the BeIA days even before Palm acquired them). I am even aware that there is a later build than Sep 27 2002, from ex-Be engineers in their FREE time.
Have they implemented any multiuser POSIX’y stuff? It was always one of the big things that Be wanted to have in there but was never completed.
The Bone network supports lots of services. Default Zeta comes with a Telnet server, FTP server and even a web server installed.
Telnet is nice, but a full blown sshd would be nice. Although that would probably rely on mutliuser. What is the web server? Apache 2 is my guess. There was some work on it with BeOS 5 and I remember some BONE stuff in the Apache source.
The only question i want answered is this:
How well does zeta work? It works well then i really could care less when the last kernel build was. If it does not work well…then that is a another matter.
> Although that would probably rely on mutliuser.
Zeta is not multiuser
> What is the web server? Apache 2 is my guess.
It is called ‘Robin Hood’. Apache 2 is not there by default.
>If it works well then i really could care less when the last kernel build was.
There are issues with the kernel. See: sucky VM algorithms, no support for more than 1 GB of RAM etc. It will work well for a medium-loaded desktop machine, but if you want real server/backend performance, or better posix support, or for *good* support hardware OpenGL/Firewire/bluetooth/etc (which will require some kernel support in order to run stable and fast), then you are out of luck.
Will there we any problems with 1 or 2 GB or RAM?
If yes will this be fixed? In final relase? Next release?
What is the limit of RAM that Zeta can see?
If I got more ram that Zeta supports will it still run? Did someone tested it with out crashing/problems?
Thanx
To understand the kernel/other problems better, read all comments by “JBQ” here: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3792&limit=no#110865
>Will there we any problems with 1 or 2 GB or RAM?
Yes.
>If yes will this be fixed? In final relase? Next release?
Next release, not in the 1.0:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4502
>What is the limit of RAM that Zeta can see?
You will have to read and understand both the story *and* the comments here: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1478
It is not an arbitary number, it is a sum of your system memory and the virtual memory of your graphics card.
For example, I had BeOS running with 768 MB of RAM, but I made sure my graphics card didn’t have more than 128 MB of PCI memory (real # of memory in that gfx card is only 32 MB). You really have to read that story and its comments in order to understand how it works and how to calculate the amount of memory BeOS _really_ sees.
>If I got more ram that Zeta supports will it still run?
No, it will crash.
It works well then i really could care less when the last kernel build was.
Well, I do care…. If they have the no access to the kernel, then it’s a dead OS peroid. They will have to wait until OpenBeOS to arrive to the stable stage or whatever.
Maybe they were only able to purchase some of the rights to BeOS and have an arrangement with Palm to purchase more as the funds come in.
Who exactly is the intended audience for this OS, and does it have any clear advantage(s) over the competition besides speed?
Looks like they’ve got web browsing, burning/ripping CDs, office stuff all covered, but nothing (AFAIK) that can’t be accomplished elsewhere. In other words, what sort of unique features does Zeta have that’ll make Windows/Linux users interested?
> In other words, what sort of unique features does Zeta have that’ll make Windows/Linux users interested?
Speed, but not in the conventional way. Speed as in “UI responsiveness” mostly, which is something that it has to be used to be believed. The OS and apps are so multithreaded that there are no “blocked” UIs etc.
Other than that, another good point is the _extreme_ ease of use, and the ability to learn the OS’ “tricks” in less than a day. It is just as simple as it can be for a “real” OS.
For other reasons, read here: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3809
“Well, I do care…. If they have the no access to the kernel, then it’s a dead OS peroid. They will have to wait until OpenBeOS to arrive to the stable stage or whatever.”
I suspect the intention was to migrate to Openbeos regardless.
I don’t know about anyone else but my expectation from yellowtab has always been a for a BeOS 5 with updated drivers, a few fixes, and some applications. thats it. I think that is enough. It serves a function (mainly to update beos to today’s hardware and to remedy some nagging liabilities).
I don’t think it is realistic to expect the world from yellowtab in one release. I’ll be happy with improvements with each new release.
I also don’t buy into this beos is outdated stuff lets jump ship. It can still do something that others can not and that is why there is interest. Stop throwing out buzzwords and features that 99.9999999% of users won’t even notice. Function is the important thing here not buzzword implementation. Be was never perfect and its architecture, if not all of its features is still modern. Bolted on buzzwords to a 30 years OS (like unix) don’t impress me.
If anything what unix should be telling everyone here is that the mass market adoption of OS ideas can be a rather long process. If we follow the Unix example then OBOS has another 25 years or so to gain desktop implementation.
Can someone verify the comment in the review about hardware OpenGL acceleration? Is this present?
Does anyknone know if they have access to the kernel source? If they don’t. They just lost my purchase. I was seriously considering buying it until I someone mentioned that.
I’m impressed by the scope of the work done by YT. I can’t wait to buy it.
Does anyone know if GoBe Productive 2 is the trial or fully functional version ?, and do YT and GoBe have plans for porting V3 back to Zeta as and when YT get funds ?
Brian N
>Can someone verify the comment in the review about hardware OpenGL acceleration?
AFAIK it is not, not the new OpenGL stack. I am not sure what Frans is talking about in his review regarding this. I think he just assumes that it has OpenGL for Voodoo2/3 only as it was on BeOS 4.5 and 5, but not for the “new” GL stack that was never released and supported Voodoo3/4/5, i810 and 3-4 models of Radeon.
>Does anyknone know if they have access to the kernel source?
Nobody quite knows.
Here I’m hoping that Apple gets BeOS kind of responsiveness into Mac OS X. Right now there’s a lot of evident lags in Jaguar. Not ugly ones but they somehow break the feeling. That is specially evident with scrollbar dragging. I can see it even with a 1 GHz G4!
Right now I am seeing Mac OS X as the true heir of the Media OS title, though. QuickTime is a really really nice media platform. Although seeing some advancement in other fronts doesn’t hurt at all, no sir.
I used Beos 2 years ago. It was smooth and fast and I really liked it at the time.
****
Here I’m hoping that Apple gets BeOS kind of responsiveness into Mac OS X. Right now there’s a lot of evident lags in Jaguar. Not ugly ones but they somehow break the feeling. That is specially evident with scrollbar dragging. I can see it even with a 1 GHz G4!
****
David: Have you read about Panther? Things are speading up!
After a fresh install of Jaguar my system is quick and smooth. Maybe not as fast as Beos but Beos doesn’t load as many drivers, services etc..
****
Linux is making great strides, Gnome and KDE, especially KDE has some awesome technology, but there are so many inconsisencies and unnecessary hurdles to overcome.
****
Andrew G.
The last screenshots from Suse looked pretty impressive and I don’t think it is any more inconsistent than Zeta. Linux without 3rd party applications would look pretty nice. Wait until 3rd party developers banging away and releasing apps for Zeta you’ll have the same inconsistency unless they have some kinf of GUI specifications a la Apple.
Right now you can’t do anything with Zeta except emailing, watching 10 movie clips at the same time and do some word processing. I can’t use Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash. I don’t want to use Gimp or anything else.
So …enough flaming.
I welcome the new OS. It has a long way to go, but I am going to buy a copy to try it out. YellowTAB, viel glueck.
————–
http://www.sideliners.ca
It was noted that Zeta will be ‘dano’ based, i wonder however if that will include the new Kits (ie: Storage2, Support2, Interface2, Media2, etc) .. The list of kewl stuff in v2 Kits is nice. However its quite hard to get your hands on all of it these days.
would be nice to see that included.
I That Be Inc. Gets SMTHG out of this too… [like money =] ]
Who knows maybe Be is developing the kernel [c the kernel bug 2002 etc… ]
And they said that they ll use Obos’ sources.
Where’s the Open BFS ?
I thought I would let people know that The BeOSJournal also has Zeta RC1, and is working on a review. That is not my main point however, to advertise.
My main point is that I completely agree with the things Eugenia has pointed out here, namely the kernel build date, and the openGL issues.
It’s rare that Eugenia and I agree so completely on something, so I thought it was worth noting here.
Eugenia: Do you have RC1 yet? If not, I will gladly let you download my iso, since Bernd promised us both privately that we would get it for our reviews. Note to others… I do not, and will not share the iso for anyone other than Eugenia.
My quick take: The Zeta RC1 they released is -faaaar- from what many were led to believe would be accomplished by now. The ZetaNews site review is definately biased in my opinion, as of course it happens to make the OS that their software will be bundled with sound greater than it really is. (sorry Frans & co., but that’s how it comes out to me.)
My review will be waaay more in depth, should be out by Tuesday, and will make available the entire installed OS directory listing, various screenshots of system components internal dates, etc etc.
I gotta run. I’ll check in here later.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
>—
The ZetaNews site review is definately biased in my opinion, as of course it happens to make the OS that their software will be bundled with sound greater than it really is. (sorry Frans & co., but that’s how it comes out to me.)
>—
Please keep your personal vendetta against Zeta out of this. We all know you believe more in OpenBeOS, but for your information: Zeta does NOT bundle our software !!!! And we do NOT need Zeta to run it, as is, it is still all BeOS R5 complient.
>—-
has pointed out here, namely the kernel build date, and the openGL issues
>—-
Zeta has all the new kits available: Support2, Media2,…..
It also does have hardware accellerated OpenGL, though it might not be for all cards, but this is a driver issue.
To inform you all: The build date of the BeOS R5.0.3 kernel, which is the latest kernel officially available from Be Inc. is May 26 2000 ! This simply means that the Zeta kernel in RC1 is 2.5 years newer !
Eugenia, why are you making such wild allegations where you don’t have to..?! — I understand that you can chit-chat away about pretty much everything with Bernd or others if you wanted to or get a direct reply. Instead, you chose to make unsubstantiated guesses about what their acces/abilities in relation to the kernel sources are merely due to some date you dug up — so why is that..?
It also does have hardware accellerated OpenGL, though it might not be for all cards, but this is a driver issue.
I would have loved to read more about that in your review, Frans. What cards are supported, did you test it with some OpenGL applications (blender?) and how is the preformance? What is different from the OpenGL as we saw it in R4.5?
One question about Java. BeOS has a 192 thread limit per app, right? Since Java for BeOS is using native threads, how well will it run haevy duty apps? I am aware that Zeta will ship with pjava. I am refering ti the BeUnited Java port. I am asking this because I am writing a very heavy Java app that sometimes chokes even the 4092 thead limit in linux.
Thanks!!
meh. It was too simple to be called a review. Waiting for Osnews and BeosJournal to show me truth
heh
I just bought the RC version with the free T-shirt, especially after reading the highly positive review.
The comments from Eugenia and Technix do worry me, since not having kernel sources would make all this effort put into it only improvements to the existing version of BeOS.
This is from their FAQ:
Q: “I heard that Zeta is using some leaked (illegal) DANO code. Is this true?”
A: “No. YellowTAB does not use illegal or leaked software.”
Mmkay, how about this one?
Q: “What is Zeta based on?”
A: “Giving an answer to that question is really difficult. Zeta is not R5, Zeta is definitely not Dano, Zeta is not Open BeOS. Zeta is much more of that all. But more important is the fact that Zeta is a legal update of BeOS to “R6″ so developers get the oppertunity developing software for a legal Operating System and can get support from a company behind it.”
They never really say that they have access to the source and are actively modifying it. I really really hope that they do!
It would be very nice to have some public statement from YT on this, it is causing too much confusion.
I would like to end this post on a positive note though:
YellowTab has put in a tremendoes effort, and if all goes well they will be the successor of Be, inc, creating R6, R7 and beyond.
I will just have to wait until I get the CD and try it out for myself
Pieter
Gobe Productive is available as FULL Version in Zeta. Check http://217.160.164.133/products/deluxe_edition.php
greez, choulth
Your joking right?
Where the hell did you come up with that crap?
Chris has been pimping Zeta for ages.
Home you guys do a good review, The ZetaNews “review” lacked substance.
YellowTab and Bernd (Berd
) have stated in the past that they plan to change to OpenBeos and become an OpenBeos distro.
I thought this was clear from day 1.
The fact if they can provide a better BeOS than R5 as we wait for OpenBeos then it’s a bonus right?
So having kernel source is important, but not that much if we take into account their plan. Why would you invest a lot of money on developing the kernel if you’re gonna ditch it for the one on OBOS? Makes more sense to me to spend the resources on making BeOS (Zeta) usable today.
Gein
No he is not. You’re out of the loop, but I think that story is dying slowly.
Gein
Really?
If that’s so, then i take it back.
Wow, wonder what would have turned Chris, as he was very pro Zeta/yT for ages.
Believe us as we say he definately has something against yT at the moment!
Don’t ask why.. but he is
Hi folks, I would like to clear some things here.
The review I did was not intended to compair Zeta agains BeOS. We know from various site statistics that the current BeOS scene is rather small, and therefore we tried to focus our review on ‘What is Zeta’, ‘How does it look’ and ‘What do we get’ to inform new users who do not have a clue on the date BeOS R5 was compiled, that BeOS has a 192 thread limit and a 1Gb memory limit.
As most of the current BeOS user, we are also very currious to some of the deeper insights. But as long as we don not have any facts on this, we can not print them.
We do not know wether yT has the sources of the kernel. We do know, as mentioned in the review, that most of the core system is based on Dano. And I did mention I based that info on the file names and dates. So Chris stating he will give us the dates and stuff like that is obsolete info.
As soon as I have collected more technical insight information, I will post about this too. Of course, I cannot blame Chris for wanting to compair Zeta to BeOS. He does run the BeOS Journal after all.
Don’t be to harsh to the yT people. I know there are many kernel problems which need fixing, but what can you expect from such a small team? The only thing we can hope for is that they sell enough Zeta copies to hire some good kernel programmers.
OpenBeOS is nothing with a dead or non-existing community. Zeta can build and revive the community, because it is a existing, supported product. I think that is what matters most at the moment.
Let’s hope for the best.
Why can’t some people just take the review for what it is. A basic introduction to Zeta RC1. I plan to buy the OS even though I know it may not run on my new Shuttle XP but it should run on my old PIII. I just wish Zeta the best.
To Frans… nice website !
I never used BeOS – well I installed the BeOS MAX thing once, but I had so many problems with it just learning to love my RTL8139 based NIC that it lasted only a few days on my HD.
But Zeta looks like it might be worth both my time and money – I can’t wait for the release to drop, although it bothers me that I can can’t try it before I buy it.. well I could possible download a pirated ISO or something but that would be immoral.
But Zeta from the Cebit demostration video looks like a nice little OS – and if what people say about it’s felt speed is true (BeOS MAX certainly popped up windows extremely fast, but felt kinda sluggish once the program actually ran) then I think I’m not the only one who will be running it as a secondary OS alongside Linux (or Windows if that’s your cup of tea).
I’m wondering, if anyboudy could find any information in this review which wasn’t in Eugenia’s and/or DaaT’s review.
But here is my personal question.
Ok, pJava is here (as it was since earliest BeIAs). But Frans mentioned it nearly to browsers list.
Has it any real integration with Mozilla/Firebird?
Shortly – do pJava really work in their Firebird/Mozilla?
Also – Flash, ok. But supported flash format version number?
Same for all mentions of Real Player – maybe not in this review but in all?
Also – if there is Opera – which version?
Install into BeOS MAX “IDE Replacement Driver” from bebits.com and all “sluggishness” will disappear. E.g it speeds up Mozilla built time about 10 times on modern systems.
Is the article down?
500 Server Error
Server Error
The following error occurred:
Could not connect to the server
Please contact the administrator.
Has anyone got a mirror? Or will we have to wait until they’ve fixed the problem?
Eugenia, did you mean “This means one of these three things” ? Because your three options seem awfully mutually exclusive.
[quote]
This means three things:
1. YellowTAB does not have access to all sources, which is bad news for the proper evolution and support of the OS.
2. YellowTAB engineers have no clue about kernel development, which is also bad news for the proper evolution and support of the OS.
3. There is a bug with the dates in the OS, and so might be 2003 instead of the displayed 2002.
[/quote]
Or the system time of the build machine was plain wrong. In that case the date would be bogus.
(btw, sorry guys, I forgot to type my name, in the “Your name” field, previously)
I disagree with any criticism of the looks, I think it’s simply perfect. And finally we have also choice when it comes to themes. And I don’t think there are too many choices, neither that they look ugly. They are just enough and they are just different, but not ugly.
If it supports Sequitur, I will buy it. I’m using Sequitur more and more, lately, for me, it’s the kiler app BeOS has.
If they only ported Fruityloops to BeOS….. ahhh… bliss…. daydreaming…
Okay, I’ll just sacfrice my secondary 40gb HD to BeOS MAX 3 to try that out. I guess I could put /home somewhere else while I mess around with BeOS.
I doubt MAX is as good as Zeta, but it should serve as a worthy base for testing if BeOS is worth my time.
thanks for the IDE tip.
Ok, so we can see a few more screenshots, but I could have written the same thing without ever seeing the product. Copy some stuff from the yellowtab site, and now and they say it’s amazing, and call it a review.
To be honest the font rendering doesn’t look different in those shots than it did when Eugenia looked at an earlier beta.
I’m going to get zeta R1 when it comes out, but I’m not really all that impressed so far with YellowTab. Perhaps when they start selling products and get some cash in, they will be able to do some real development.
People make it seem as if Yellowtab is a few guys with hex editors. Surely that can’t be the case?
I think I can sell hundreds of thousands to millions of copies of Zeta (as an OS for a hardware project I’m developing), if the new OpenGL is working or can be fixed. I’d rather deal with Yellowtab than Palm, to be sure.
Oh, and download the Zeta video, it’s rather impressive. I have that and BeOS Max 3 shared on Kazaa. ([email protected])
No News is No News
http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper
>If it supports Sequitur, I will buy it. I’m using Sequitur
>more and more, lately, for me, it’s the kiler app BeOS has.
It does run Sequitur as you can see in the screenshots on ZetaNews.
Hey everyone…
The problems that Technix has with yellowTAB are similar to the problems that I have with yellowTAB, though he has firsthand experience with them that I do not have. What are my problems with yellowTAB? I feel they have a bad attitude, lack of professionalism, lack of attention to detail, vague and inconsistent information, refusal to listen to wise council, poor organization, poor project management, etc. Does that mean I hate them? Not yet.
Technix has reason to be irritable. But keep in mind that he DOES want Zeta to succeed and so do I. Why? It has to do with what Eugenia said in her Beta 1 preview: this is the REAL BeOS, folks. The last chance to see the Be Inc BeOS get updated and improved. If this fails, then we have nothing but the cloning projects, which will take time to become usable (my money’s on OpenBeOS, personally).
So… yellowTAB should get at least a chance from us. Even with all of my criticisms, I still intend to buy a copy of Zeta (just haven’t decided if I will buy RC1 or not). Let’s give yellowTAB a chance, but let’s not walk blindly and blissfully into things without thinking about them or being objective. yellowTAB has a lot of issues that they REFUSE to address or fix so far and that’s not a good professional attitude to take (claiming to listen to your users/customers/potential customers but then not actually doing so is more the territory of MS, folks). Be responsible customers and think for your selves. Be cautious. Etc!
Does anyone know if Zeta is using GCC to compile their system? I know Be did.
Yes they are, specifically: gcc 2.9-20000224
Same toolchain as found in Dano.
Even if the kernel is a year old, as indicated by the build date, it’s a heck of a lot newer than what I’m using now, 5.03. A newer kernel and original software are worth the $40 price of the Home Edition.
I’m very glad the Zeta was able to work out a license deal with Gobe to include a non-demo version of Productive. Zeta would be useless without it…
However, I’m still waiting on a complete list of included software, names and version numbers. Hopefully the upcoming reviews will have more info on software such as, How Many Original Software Titles are Included? I wouldn’t pay too much for a collection of Freeware that I could download myself from BeBits…
And I’m waiting to learn more about hardware support. Particularly support for GeForce4 MX 440. Could be the hardware list is more complete now; I haven’t checked in a while.
Also, the Home Edition isn’t even for sale yet, and I’d want to buy from a distributer in the US, instead of having something shipped all the way from Germany.
Best Luck to the Zeta team,
-Bob
I don’t really know how this started but if you look at zeta’s site I find no mention that they actually have access to the source code. Who started saying this? Is it just plain rumor?
If I look at zeta I have the feeling they are just adding apps and adding modules where the system is modular. Maybe they just have the right to sell Dano and they don’t have any source code from Be. I guess it would not be necessary to achieve all they did by just taking Dano and replacing modular components. Look nice however, but in the end it may just be BeOS Max with some additional work.
On the other hand, if they plan some day to swith to openbeos base it is a bit useless to work on the current kernel. So we’ll never know.
Thank you, Frans. I don’t know how the hell did I manage to not see it. But yes, here it is, indeed:
http://zetanews.com/review/zetarc1-8.jpg?PHPSESSID=f31e40c75e010773…
There are a couple of games and apps I have never seen, at least not on BeOS. Are all the apss that can be seen on those pictures, included with Zeta?
OK, I know that T-Racks probably isn’t, but what about Ongaku? I would LOVE to get Ongaku together with Zeta….
How would paying Zeta improve the situation for OBOS future??? That’s just stupid to think. During the past years that Zeta has been developing stuff, how much have they actually contributed to OBOS???
To increase the visibility of BeOS, that helps OBOS. To show people what BeOS can do, that helps OBOS. By showing that there’s still life in this amazing OS, that’s helping OBOS.
Zeta can be a stepping stone for us. Also, it could be a dark stain. It all depends on how yellowTAB carries themselves once they are fully in the light.
Good to see you Mario. How’s the music going?
-Jace
For one thing, Zeta does have access to source code through an agreement with Palm (Dano source code).
I think Zeta will help OBOS. Also, OBOS is vaporware. Zeta is here. I’m not going to wait who knows how many years until OBOS comes out, if it ever comes out. Anonynous, I simply don’t understand your way of thinking on this. From what I can see, Zeta looks pretty good for R1. And, I did order the Deluxe Edition.
> Instead, you chose to make unsubstantiated guesses about what their acces/abilities in relation to the kernel sources are merely due to some date you dug up — so why is that..?
I don’t see any “unsubstantiated guesses” anywhere. I see a screenshot, as you can see too. And the build date is more than one year old. NO MATTER why this is, it is important, because it means how YTAB can drive this OS and its evolution. And bare in mind: The date on the kernel is added at a compile time, it not just the file date. How do I know this? My husband created the build system at Be.
Now, go eslewhere and troll. You don’t even have the decency to leave a name.
I have a great deal of interest in OpenBeos and I intend to support it. BeUnited cannot accept donations until they get their name and non-profit status locked down. Soon I hope.
Zeta is a strange operation but they have delivered what seems like the product I was begging Be Computing to deliver when they dropped the desktop OS concept. The 1 G limit means little to me so I am glad they did not waste any time on it. Others may feel differently. It seems like a difficult fix. There are benefits to a stable platform that application developers can feel comfortable approaching.
The bombshell to me was the statement that PalmSource engineers are still working on BeOS in any manner at all. I thought the source was locked away. This could mean that Palm very likely has designs on BeOS and this could have many reverberations. This fits in with the recent statement from PalmSource about interest in a notebook platform.
What BeOS needs most right now is a new release that installs well on current hardware. BeOSMax is not quite there (close, I am trying it) and Zeta seems like it may deliver. It also needs a platform that is stable enough that developers can develop to it and it needs to support current development tools pretty well.
I hope that with the release of Zeta we will see some new developers surfacing. This can be helpful to OpenBeOS as well. I would love to see YT become an application developer as OpenBeOS matures. For the time being both YT and OpenBeOS need our strong support. In the future things could change but I view Zeta as a very positive move at this time.
I am not a programmer, just a user. I used BeOS 5 but it has long sence vanished from my hard drive. I always loved using BeOS and will buy Zeta, maybe not RC1 but R1 for sure. The way I see the source code issues is this. Yellow Tab is a company that wants to stay in business, right? If they do not have have the source to the kernal then they need to support OBOS so they have a future. So I would expect them to contibute significantly to OBOS, if this is the case. If, on the other hand, they do have access to the source code then they can devlop it themselves. Either way they will need money to do either. Supporting YT is supporting the continuation of BeOS one way or the other. So it doesn’t really matter to me if they have the source or not at this time. I am willing to give them the bennifit of the doubt at least once and see what they do with it.
I’m sure BeOS was great, 4-5 years ago, but when I run it I can’t help but feel that it’s ancient.
fonts look ugly, Window rendering is slow (lack of a driver for my GeForce4 I guess).. sure apps pop up like possesed. but it all just feels so cumbersome and blocky. The apps are very crashy, it’s so annoying – but the main thing that bothered me was the default layout, whatever this tracker app is suppose to do (filemanager something or another I guess) I never experienced since every BeOS session now flashes me an ugly warning that it failed to load (would I like to debug it?? lol… no way in hell). I certainly hope Zeta is more modern than this, and that vital apps don’t crash in an out of the box install.
I must admit I much prefer Linux and GNOME atm, and I do believe that after trying BeOS I will save my money for something else than Yellowtab’s Zeta 1.0 release.
It probably was cool tech when it came out, but years of being out of development certain has shown that even good ideas suffer from bit rod.
Sorry, but BeOS has some serious catching up to do in some areas – however their filesystem seems quite snappy, and NetPositive is a nice little webbrowser (I love the downloader app, it’s so pretty and functional).
Note I really tried posting this comment under BeOS, but the IDE driver upgrade caused even more crashy behavior so none of the webbrowsers liked me much and I was forced to reboot into Linux again…
Re GeForce 4 drivers. I am running a GeForce 4 MX card and the driver acceleration is not finished yet. The best you can do is drop to a lower color level. I tried 8 bit but I am back to 16 bit for now – just to make things look a little better when browsing.
I am having trouble installing GoBe Productive 2.01. It seems like a CD problem but I am wondering if it is something about Max3 somehow. It is not installing properly and the update tends to hang with a CRC problem. The 2.01 upgrade file on BeBits has a broken link so I cannot get a fresh copy of the upgrade. It did work fine on 5.03 (same file) so I don’t quite know what to think.
Max3 is enough different that I am stumbling about a little getting it set up as I want it.
No tracker warnings here but there are a few other rough spots. I intend to use it full time until I can try out Zeta.
The window decors shown there are awful… why would they include a bunch of poor decors instead of one or two good ones? They have good stuff to work with (ie: GONX)
I have used SuSE from 8.0 and up. I have used the following linux distro’s:
Debian, SuSE, Redhat, Mandrake, Knoppix and Corel.
Linux has made huge steps over the past couple of years but because Unx and Unix like OS’s are needlessly complicated for a desktop OS under the hood it makes things difficult. Installing third party apps is terrible. You really need to just stick with the supplied distro or things go wrong quickly. I have used apt on Debian, and apt for rpm on Redhat and SuSE. They always end up breaking things.
I believe that Linux on the desktop post kernel 2.6 and Gnome 2.6 and KDE 3.2, will only be small improvements. I hope the Freedesktop specification matures, is widely accepted and is adopted by third party software developers. That could lead really make Linux of the Desktop awesome. Until then third party apps will always look crappy compared to their cousins on Mac and Windows. Do me a favor, try Komodo on Linux and then try it on Windows. Which is more consistent. In my opinion Komodo on Linux just looks junk. Download the latest mozilla RPM. You will see that if it is not a SuSE rpm it looks junk because the fonts are just hideous. When we get a common specification for the desktop that becomes the new lowest common denominator then Linux will be on its way.
A BeOS, Amiga type OS on the desktop would be cool. I hope Zeta succeeds and share the concerns others have shown with regard to the management of Yellowtab. I think we should cut them some slack, I don’t think MS was particularly professional 2 years into its lifespan.
Months ago, I emailed YellowTAB asking if I could send them a money order for their software. They never responded. On their website, that basic info is still missing, after all, it’s not everybody who has a credit card.
I know it’s a new company but one of the priorities of any business is to make sure their product can be bought without going through the hoops.
Seems to me to be a good story about a well deserved upgrade of a great OS. I will purchase it anyway. I need to have a legal copy of dano anyway.
A serious question:
Will it run on 32mb of ram?
>Will it run on 32mb of ram?
Yes, 32 MB is its minimum limit.
It should work with 32M (I got R5 booted with as less as 8M), however the SVG Tracker tends to use some more RAM than the regular one, so it will be a bit slower. I’d recomment 64M if you can afford it.
While I have not used Dano ir Zeta,I have used R5 extensively,and really, in all reality,I would recommend more than 32 megs of ram,especially if you want to see the richness of the ‘multimedia OS’! apps like 3DmiX Love RAM and personally I would suggest 128 as a good starting point,although a 32 or 64 meg system is just fine for lite web surfing or playing mp3’s and office typing work,etc.But RAM is fairly inexpensive these days,so grab yourself a 256 or 512 stick,shove it in there and ‘assume the power’!
Exactly how is it accomplished,I have nevr seen BeOS boot up with less than 32,it usually hangs up on the splash screen for me,even with 16 megs
I have a computer with 1,5 Gb of ram memory. I have Beos 5 Professional, but I cannot install it because the kernel cannot work with more of 1 Gb of ram.
I want to know if this issue has been solved on Zeta.
While I think the article was useful in that it showed a lot of screenshots, calling this thing a “review” is more than generous. Quite frankly, the entire time I got the feeling that the entire point of the article was to try to persuade you to buy Zeta, even at the cost of stretching the facts far beyond what is acceptable (I would call some parts outright lying, personally). I think it’s great that yT is trying to keep the BeOS alive, but misrepresenting things to potential buyers is just not acceptable.
The OS has a very consistent look, which enables an easy learning curve for the use
The screenshots in the “review” alone show four separate types of toolbars; five if you count Mozilla’s. But I’m sure that they all function identically (customizing, mouse-over behavior, tooltips, etc.), right? Even though their codebases share nothing. How consistent. Zedit, unlike the other editors shown, has a Font menu and a unique sidebar that no other BeOS app has. Some editors are shown with “View” and “Window” menus, yet zEdit has merely “Windows”. Mozilla at least has “View”. Beam has nothing of the sort. Or how about things like certain icons (such as the CD) not being SVG?
It’s not that I think it will be hard to use; the BeOS has never been very hard to use. But throwing around phrases like “very consistent” when the article itself has screenshots displaying numerous inconsistencies demonstrates well how concerned the author is that readers get an accurate assessment of the situation.
opening common file format to presentations is possible
Umm, just what software does Zeta give you for presentations? (And please don’t say Gobe’s “go one page at a time on a timer hack. Not to mention that the autor makes the claim before even mentioning that Gobe Productive is included.)
We changed its status to DHCP and immediately an IP address was assigned. As I did not believe this could be done so fast
On Windows or the Mac OS (and I’m guessing Linux), if the OS detected your network card, it would automatically put it into DHCP, so in the author’s setup, the user would be online without having to do anything.
The Intel virtual machine, BeBochs, even makes it possible to install Windows on your Zeta system, though it will not run on full speed.
That’s the understatement of the year. Full disclosure would be saying, “but it will be way too slow to do anything useful.”
I could go on, but I think the point is clear. You’re not reading a review. You’re reading a bunch of propoganda that throws out feature after feature (some imaginary) without mentioning how well any of them work or any of the downsides. This won’t be a problem for longtime BeOS users; they already know of the limitations in BeAIM or BeMSN, that the BeOS port of Abiword is incredibly lacking and Abisource is threatening to drop the BeOS port altogether, that MeTOS (the graphical interface creation tool) was never completed and hasn’t been updated for a long time, or that the vast, vast majority of the software mentioned in the review lacks considerable polish. But potential buyers who don’t know these things are being highly disserviced by this sales pitch of a “review”.
I think your point is weak. I would agree that it is not a particularly critical review but then what are we reviewing?
This is not the final product. It is EXPECTED that things will be a bit better when the product is released. I certainly hope you have a copy of Zeta when you make such harsh comments like “highly disserviced”. I don’t have Zeta so I don’t really know whether the “very consistent” is a terrible exageration. Mozilla is an application, not part of the OS. To me the term inconsistent is best represented by Operating Systems that would have you click the “start” button to shutdown the system. This is grossly unintuitive and inconsistent. “Very consistent” does not mean 100% consistent, big deal.
The solution to your concerns will be some other reviews and they are coming. Some will be overly critical and some may be even less critical than this one. Again, big deal, it is only a review. Any buyer who purchases an unfinished product from a “new” company is taking a risk.
If you are concerned that what you get may not meet your expectations then don’t buy this. Wait for several reviews of the finished product first, or better yet wait for the second update thereafter – then all the warts will be clear.
That TimeZliner application looks awful! Isn’t there a thing like a HIG?
And does it really just anti-alias to grey? How would it otherwise be possible for black letters on a black background to show random grey pixels?
For me, it just seems that YellowTab threw in lot’s of unnecessary features. Beos 5.03 looked very polished. It was very consistent, was very fast and the UI was really clean. Now they have added an extra panel, themeability, SVG icons and more hardware support. Do I need any of them? No.
And now, for example, KDE. It is very consistent. It has network transparency. It has good anti-aliasing. It has Konqueror. All very handy.
And Gnome. It has AbiWord and GNumeric. It has Evolution. It has Galeon. It has a very beautiful login manager, configurable without logging in. It is very consistent. Also all handy features.
And for Windows, the same story applies. So after all, it’s only the multimedia I think BeOS is great for. I mean, does it have any advantage in daily use over Windows or Linux/BSD?
Seems like ppl that loved Be and BeOS as it was can never be happy again. “Be’s engineers are gods”, end of discussion. Forget that they actually created the 1 gb problem? I feel too that delaying the 1 gb problem was sad. But what if yellowtab didn’t put their intressest and money into BeOS at all? Palm certainly doesnt want BeOS to resurrect again. They dont even seem to know what to do with the code. If the kernel havent been compiled for over a year must mean that Be’s engineers are very interessted in developing it further since they have compiled it. I really hope that it doesn’t mean yellowtab don’t have access to the kernel. Then i dont see the point of developing on it. I must be naive, but why couldnt Be’s engineers, yellowtab AND openBeOS colaborate on this nice os together?
>Forget that they actually created the 1 gb problem?
That limitation made sense back in 1994 you know, when most people only had 4 MB of RAM. Other OSes also had the same limitation and other similar limitations, but because they were continued to be developed, they overcomed these limitations. So, this has nothing to do if the Be engineers were Gods or not. IMO, they were.
Version DR8 of BeOS would not even boot with more than 128 MB of RAM. So yeah, the engineers were kept working on it, but at some point, they stopped doing so, after Be went under. Makes sense.
>Isn’t there a thing like a HIG?
No, there is none for BeOS. They would need to create one, or adopt a hybrid between Apple’s and Gnome’s, to save time.
>This is not a “review”
You are, as always, right on target Billy.
Yes, he’s critical, but that’s what’s needed here, after the years of hype and questionable information that has squirted from yellowTAB’s people over the years since they started out. bkakes is only pointing out the things that indicate just how lacking Zeta’s developers and managers are in the area of “attention to detail” and “professionalism.”
About Frans’s review…
I know Frans a bit from working with him on betatesting and I think the reason his “Review” lacks all the critical statements some of us want to see is that he is: 1. Shooting for a basic introduction to Zeta for people who may not know what BeOS is (which he states in the comments area of the review), and 2. Being very optimistic and positive about something he’s probably very excited about.
Reply to anonymouse’s comments:
YES, you CAN tell how inconsistent an OS and associated software is from its screenshots. YES, you CAN see how horrible the UI is on those new applications (TimeZliner shouldn’t even be in a public release if the developer has UI coloring problems that make it unreadable). NO, it’s NOT okay to say that things are expected to be a little rough in this version and that we can expect it to be better in the final release because THIS is called a “Release Candidate!” The point being, yT should now have the OS ready for release and this Candidate is the last set of steps involved in checking to make sure that everything was indeed taken care of; that all is as it should be for final release.
It should not have missing features planned for R1. It should not have incomplete development planned for R1. It should not have controls and widgets and labels and text edit boxes misaligned, misshapen and clipped. It should not have “I wish I were an artist, oh well I will play with the GIMP and make some skins” quality window decors. It should not be missing icons in the “great new SVG icon format.”
It should not, in other words, be anything less than what is intended for the final release. You create a CANDIDATE to see if it is good enough. Not to show people that you haven’t finished things but want to give them a taste now (as long as they pay for it so that you can start bringing in funds).
From appearances, this is NOT a RC. It is a late beta. Developers should take the responsibility to call a duck a duck. But I guess that kind of consistency in development terminology shouldn’t be expected from developers who provide the kind of consistency we’ve been seeing from yT. Buyer beware, I guess.
yellowTAB, LISTEN to these critiques!! You MUST stop ignoring these things! When the big name reviews start coming along, they will notice when the OS lacks polish. They will know when they can label something as not being seriously worth consumer interest based on appearances and consistency and quality of information and communication.
As for Human Interface Guidelines… I am personally working on this task for the beunited.org/OSBOS community. It’s a long process because there is much to do (it doesn’t help that my primary BeOS machine is now dead and I am waiting till I can afford a new MB combo). It is influenced by many UI documents published in book and Internet form (such as Apple’s HIG, Jeff Raskin’s Humane Interface book, and others, as well as my own considerable experiences with UI). I hope to make it be rather complete and thick! 🙂
Please note, however, that even with a beautifully crafted, glossy color photo-filled, spiral bound, brilliant wonder of a book of Human Interface Guidelines, it is still up to the developers to actually read it and take its council!! There is lots of material to teach developers the right way to design a UI. Free and commercially distributed info. In HUGE GOBS! Yet we still have applications that look like… well, what those critical members of this forum have already pointed out above in Zeta’s “RC1.” It is ultimately up to the developer to WANT to do a good job and to LISTEN to wise council about their designs. Don’t worry about your ego. Worry about your product’s effect on its audience!!
Does anybody know the minimum footprint of Zeta?
(OS without all the apps…)
I’m doing music, although I am just exiting a period of musical hiatus. I have been busy with lots and lots of things. And I’m moving, so I won’t start any complex musical project before I get settled. I’ll probably also be a bit deranged, during the move days – but that shall pass, hopefully.
Well, what about yourself?
What is the default media player? I saw a screenshot where they had Mplayer but none of the reviews have said anything about it. Was it a real screen shot? Mplayer would be really nice.
I’ll probably be buying this RC1 version provided I can convince the missus that it really is a good idea to do that.
I doubt it will be perfect, hell, R5 for me is far from perfect, what it is however, is stable, fast and fun. Provided this criteria is met, the rest can be polished with time.
Whilst I do understand some of the comments here regarding the UI, I feel deep down that this is YT’s first stab at an OS, even with a lot of the code already being present, I genuinely feel that people should cut them some slack, with luck, the crew at YT will be reading with interest the feedback and be putting their backs into sorting out the various issues raised by people here (most of which were fair).
Just to get some perspective on my reasons for cutting them some slack: Bill Gates bought the code for MS DOS and it took him a Decade to get a decent system in place.
I doubt this will be an M$ killer, but I genuinly believe that once this ball is rolling, that there will be a large market for just this sort of product. The impressive bit will be getting that ball shifting at a fast enough rate in order to get to the point where it goes mainstream. Marketing will be the key to all of this.
Bernd, if you’re reading this: GET YOUR PERMINANT MARKER READY FOR MY ORDER
I saw quite a few comments doubting the availability of the BeOS kernel source to YellowTab. I scanned through the comments and didn’t see any final words on the subject. Am I correct to assume this is still up in the air, or has someone figured out the answer?
nivenh
Lotta nit-pickers here, but I guess that’s the way of all geeks & programmers. I’m just a user who fell in love with BeOS in 2001 just before it went belly-up. Have ordered yellowtab’s DeLuxe bundle at last – I was prepared to jump through any amount of hoops to get it, even to the extent of setting up a PayPal a/c.
Couldn’t agree more with mario’s “To increase the visibility of BeOS, that helps OBOS. To show people what BeOS can do, that helps OBOS. By showing that there’s still life in this amazing OS, that’s helping OBOS.” Especially the bit about increasing the visibility of BeOS. Soon as I get & install this RC, I’ll be showing off all the good bits to everyone I know.
I hope that many folk will zeta a go, yellowtab need our support ASAP if we really wanna see BeOS on the desktop before BeOS is totally forgotten.
As soon as R1 is available, then I’m going deluxe. Yes, I’ve read the above, and yes, I know the limitations. Guess what? Doesn’t matter.
Be is the only OS that consistently brought a smile to my face-fast, smooth, easy to use, POSIX compliant…my only major issue was hardware support. Even a kernel over a year old has to be better than the 5.0.3 version I have.
Personally, I can’t imagine what Be might be like at the limits-1GB of video memory and ram must be one smoking OS.
Now, can we go back to Gobe for a new version of Productive?
Already sent them email asking them for a new BeOS/Zeta version. I think everyone should send them an email asking for a new version.
My opinion is that they don’t have it, or at least don’t have the rights to change it.
I saw some conversation with that mmu person, and he was dancing around the question. “It’s newer than what is in R5”
“Isn’t that good enough?” and Bernd’s talking of replacing it.
So, they don’t, but eventually they plan to replace it with the openbeos kernel, or some other kernel as soon as it is up and running.
Heck linux would be a good kernel choice… seriously.
Much the same… Hiatus and then new equipment which I can’t take advantage of the way I intended since my PC’s MB died… Going to see what I can do without any sample editors and my premade sample libraries and just work with my new (used) Akai S6000 sampler and BeOS Sequitur. Just have no recorder without my … um… WinXP setup. 🙁
If you change email addresses when you move, keep in touch with me so we can keep chatting about Sequitur.
bewine at entermail dot net 🙂
I guess all those who claims that supporting Zeta will revive BeOS and it’ll be very good since yT will definitely help OBOS movement etc.
I got news for you!
From interview at ZetaNews 2003-10-06
Bernd:
Well, that depends on how much we want and can use. We have no plans to replace Zeta with OpenBeOS at all, only some parts.
Bernd:
For the GeForce 4 we are waiting for Rudolph, it would be a waist to do things twice.
So if you wanna buy Zeta to support OBOS and bring hope to the BeOS community you better think twice.
Zeta is Zeta and is not BeOS according to themselves… nor will they benefit OBOS or benefit from OBOS.
I’ll send my money to BeUnited.org