After popular request, the SkyOS folks put up two mpeg videos showing the v5 of the OS.
SkyOS.org Posts Mpeg Videos
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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i must say, SkyOS has evolved a lot since I last tried it (bout v3.5 i think). Very nice work. I look forward to trying out v5 and see how much the OS has really matured.
WOW!
I could not find any info on the skyos pages about their Kernel. Is it Linux based or is it their own development?
The kernel is their own design. From the looks of the API, it seems to be modeled on Windows, though I’m sure someone will correct me
I hope they call their TCP/IP stack SkyNet.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/14/148247&mode=thread&tid=…
But seriously good videos.
Whoa. That’s pretty raunchy marketing material
I just wanted to let everyone know that we intend to release about 6-8 more videos showing SkyOS in action. Pictures are neat, but I have always felt that I get a lot more from watching videos for this sort of stuff. =)
We had to use a camera to get the video. Hopefully in the future we will be able to just capture it right out of the computer.
To be honest I have more hope in this OS to be better for desktop then Linux. I could state reasons but dun want to start any flame wars. In either way very nice work! I do hope the gui becomes fast, clean, well made, and great looking! Also icons ~~~ must have some kewl icons like thoes cyrstal svg for KDE.
–Idoxash
That’s what I was thinking, but then they began demonstrating how one video can cover the other
Also how you can move the window with the video really fast so we can’t see what is happening :B
…but portions of the second video are not safe for work for some people.
When people criticize hobby OS projects (or even mainstream ones) by asking “why can’t it do this” or “why doesn’t it include this feature” it normally pisses me off because you can’t expect them to live up to every hope.
…well, thanks a lot for proving me wrong
Seriously, you’ve come a long way, and it the OS looks fantastic in every way at this point in its developement – technical and graphical. I wish you and your minions well in continuing to build upon the substantial momentum you’ve created.
To be honest I have more hope in this OS to be better for desktop then Linux. I could state reasons but dun want to start any flame wars.
Hah! That was a joke right? Software applications make great desktop not 1 minute videos.
Maybe that’s what makes your desktop. You can’t speak for him.
The videos reminded me of BeOS. I miss BeOS so much it’s not funny. When I had it I did not realize how short it’s life would be or I would have treated her better.
“When people criticize hobby OS projects (or even mainstream ones) by asking “why can’t it do this” or “why doesn’t it include this feature” it normally pisses me off because you can’t expect them to live up to every hope.”
Yah you are in ways right but they already asked for one suggesting on one of their polls. I mearly stated that it would be nice if they had some svg class icons. Heck they might have svg class icons and I dun know. Really I’m sure the skyos ppl are looking for advice, opinions, ect … in ways they can be sure their OS is great for everyone. If you truely into being mad about something then how about this comment by root:
“Hah! That was a joke right? Software applications make great desktop not 1 minute videos.”
s/he seems to think I was joking because I thought skyos will become a great desktop OS someday. From your name I take it you use Linux? I wonder if you ever in your life hoped that LINUX would become a better desktop OS? Yah you are right thoe APPs what really makes a OS great but they all start from somewhere and skyos is a great start.
–Idoxash
Lets make sure to keep focus here, this is a SkyOS discussion, not a SkyOS vs. X discussion. Linux and SkyOS are two completely different projects, with potentially different goals. Just because one finds success does not mean the other cannot. =)
Back on topic, we are still working on icons. Aside from little touch-ups, that’s pretty much all that is left to add to the new interface. We have decent new icons (that I made), but we could definitely use some more.
Well the GUI seems to be really fast, but who knows maybe SkyOS is running on the ‘TOM’s Hardware’ tweaked Pentium 4 with 5Ghz (special cooling)
Good work Robert & Co.
🙂
This videos were captured from a Acer Laptop:
1.2GHZ
256MB RAM
ATI RADEON Mobility running at 1024×768.
Running from the LiveCD
It’s amazing how this os has evolved from being a “hobby like” os to a Professional looking OS in such a short time
.
You have my respect Robert and company
Thanks Robert for the info.
I have almost the same configuration except it’s a SONY with Duron950.
Hope to be able to try V5 out as soon as possible.
Wish you the best.
forgot to ask:
are still beta tester needed?
We are still accepting beta testers, yes. You can sign up here:
http://www.skyos.org/beta/beta.php
After watching that vid it has made won’t to try SkyOS out.
What sort of kernel dose it use monolithic, macro, micro?
And what sort of driver support dose it have for NVIDIA, creative Audigy 2?
The GUI doesn’t look all that fast to me. For example, when he is moving that window over the other windows, you can see some lag as the area is exposed. He also doesn’t show resizing, which is a major weakness in any GUI.
Of course, take my comment with a grain of salt: I used to be a BeOS user, after all
I can’t (easily) find any information of how loading and saving graphics and media overall is done with the API. Why I’m asking is that a modern system should not be left without something like the BeOS translators. Having seen how much trouble the lack of this feature in windows has caused, there’s no reason other OS’s should be without it.
Window resizing will be shown in one of our next videos.
Please consider that this is a debug build with tons of debug information, debug code and no optimization. (The release version is about 20% faster). Using release modules you will not see the lag anymore.
> how does it handle loading and saving graphics?
To load graphics you can use a simple function like:
GI_load_bitmap(const char *ucFileName, unsigned int uiImageIndex);
This function will load BMP/GIF/JPG/PNG/Icons by default or query loadable bitmap loaders to load the bitmap.
For saving, a similar function is available.
Ah, that makes reasonable sense.
This function will load BMP/GIF/JPG/PNG/Icons by default or query loadable bitmap loaders to load the bitmap.
so this will work like BeOS translators only that it’s just meant for bitmaps? so dropping a JPEG2000 bitmap loader will give systemwide support for JPEG2000?
Also, one issue that I had with the BeOS translators is that it’s rather limited, for example a resize engine would be wonderful. Why? Because formats like SVG are getting more popular, and why should you need to use a different lib just to load SVG icons for your toolbar compared to loading BMP icons?
Let’s say that you have a resizable toolbar set by default to 16×16 icons, you specify this size when you load the image. If you resize the toolbar to 24×24 the regular icon loader will be asked to resize the image to 24×24, this isn’t possible because the bmp icon file only contains 16×16 and 32×32 so it will output the appropriate size and let the system resize it to 24×24 while the SVG loader renders the image in 24×24. If the toolbar is resized to 32×32 the BMP icon loader will provide you with the 32×32 image while the SVG loader simply renders it in 32×32.
I don’t know if this makes any sense to you, I’ve recently woken up an I havn’t had my coffee yet
Firsty, who is that gut in the upper lefthand corner.
Secondly, did that woman shove the cat’s head where I think she did?
Um’kay
Robert Szelene said…
Window resizing will be shown in one of our next videos.
I don’t know when you will create or release the next videos but I hope you could capture directly from the computer somehow.
Anyway great work.
I too am interested about the kernel.
@Robert
Is that a Acer Travelmate? I have a Travelmate 740 – so my hardware may be supported…?! kewl 😉
$30 to beta test??? This is worse that YellowTab wanting €90 odd for a release candidate!! Daylight robbery. Especially when it did not clearly state up front that it costed *me* anything. There was me thinking I was going to get paid for doing SkyOS a favour. I have 7 or 8 machines of varying specification, incliding P200mmx, P2 400, K6-2 500, Duron, Athelon, P3 1Ghz and P4 2Ghz. They just lost testing on all of these.
The source issue has been explained, so quit trolling.
For $30 you get to become a beta tester, you get a copy of the beta shipped to you, you get access to the beta testers forum to get questions about 5.0 answered personally by the team, and you also get the final version of 5.0 shipped to you when it is finished at no extra cost.
It even does the slow boot thing! Fantastic! (looks like BeOS/KDE boot screen)
Seriously though, this is a bloody major achievement. Not my kind of OS, I’ve never liked things like Windows or UNIX even, but a lot of people are gonna love this. These guys are serious, unlike the OSS community who are blinded by the “Let’s make a UNIX!” attitude, about getting out a decent OS (from a usability/applications point of view). Don’t let Microsoft crush you. Take this chance while they are giving way to the pressure of Linux and Co. 😉
If you watch the “dodgy” clip closely you’ll see that its actually a clip from a show like Tarrant on TV – it seems to be an advert, where people are tying to throw a surprise party, but catch the woman ‘in the act’. I’m sure other countries have their very own Chris Tarrant, so non UK people must know what I’m talking about
SkyOS is an incredible achievement – I am so impressed by everything that has been achieved in such a relatively short space of time (with regards to the number of people working on it!). I look forward to everything it has to offer in the future!
Hi Robert,
Thank you much for the 2 nice SkyOS 5 Preview Videos. :-))
Well – a few questions about the OS – Will it be a free downloadable iso on your website after release? at which time a release is expected this year? Does it have support for my Hercules 8500 Pro 128MB ATi Card? Will Soundblaster Live work? Can it be used on my ABiT NF7-S 2.0 (nforce2 Ultra 400 Chipset) (chipset supported?) and especially the soundstorm Audio integraded in MCP-T Southbridge?
Is S-ATA supported?
thanks for reading,
tank
I am guessing it will. All released versions to the present have been. He makes no mention that the OS is going “commercial”.
$30 is nothing to offset the costs he must incur developing the OS. I paid the $$$ for Zeta (and don’t use it) because I applaud their efforts. I’ve also contributed to BeUnited and other OS causes. Anything to bring a GOOD, freeware/shareware OS to the world.
Sorry folks, but I think that there are no space to another consumer proprietary OS. There are already Windows and MacOS X in the market.
If there are many people who think that linux will never have a chance in desktop (even linux being free as freedom and as beer), why someone pay to use a different and non free OS ? This is the reason why OS/2 and BeOS are dead.
In my country even MacOS X is a distant third place operating system. Windows is the first (unfortunately with a big advantage) and Linux is the second with a big growth rate.
So why can’t I download the ISO from your website and give you feedback for free? I’m sorry, but as the OS is *free* normally, up to this point, $10 is a rip off. What does it cost to ship a CDR? $1 for the CDR, $5 for shipping, $2 for packaging – tops. All under $10. Believe me, I’ve shipped custom music CD’s worldwide, and it costs less than $10 to ship from Europe to California. I see proffit here, plain and simple.
Give us a live CD to download – time-limit it and make it unable to be transfered to a new partition and I’ll give you all the feedback I can. I will not pay you for the privilege though.
>$10 is a rip off
just to clarify – I mean, “even $10 is a rip off”. $30 more so.
I see proffit here, plain and simple.
<sarcasm mode>Oh no! Not profit! How dare Robert want to put food on his table!</sarcasm mode>
Welcome to reality, Arthur. Believe it or not, it is possible to do something because you both enjoy it and want to make money off it.
Adam
“So why can’t I download the ISO from your website and give you feedback for free? I’m sorry, but as the OS is *free* normally, up to this point, $10 is a rip off. What does it cost to ship a CDR? $1 for the CDR, $5 for shipping, $2 for packaging – tops. All under $10. Believe me, I’ve shipped custom music CD’s worldwide, and it costs less than $10 to ship from Europe to California. I see proffit here, plain and simple.”
You must be a user of LINUX. I dun see nothing wrong with them charging 30 bucks. Maybe they do want to make a lill money after all you got these great coders putting their time in making one heck of a OS and you worried about cost. Sure I can’t afford the 30 bucks right now or I jump into beta testing it my self. This is why LINUX is more of a thrown together OS for hackers and not a desktop OS. Not everything is for free. They give their free time to give you a Free OS at least they have the right to charg something for it. If this OS works on my computer totaly and does all I want I would pay 50 but no more then 50.
“So why can’t I download the ISO from your website and give you feedback for free? I’m sorry, but as the OS is *free* normally, up to this point, $10 is a rip off. What does it cost to ship a CDR? $1 for the CDR, $5 for shipping, $2 for packaging – tops. All under $10. Believe me, I’ve shipped custom music CD’s worldwide, and it costs less than $10 to ship from Europe to California. I see proffit here, plain and simple.”
For all the stuff your getting I would say that’s a OK cost but I just hope that the final product is kewl. By reading up on it I can say it’s a nice lill OS and can become great but for me it’s all about working with my hardware and runing my hardware as good as Windows. This might not happen right away in skyos5? Anyways good luck.
–Idoxash
Not only do they need to put food on their tables but also need to pay for the bandwidth that they’d use IF they made an ISO available. 30 bucks isn’t much money to spend, I just joined their beta program (I’ve never used,tried, or heard of SkyOS before yesterday). I just say that 30 bucks is a donation to these guys for their years of effort, and I get a beta CD and a real CD along with it. Not a bad deal.
LOL, big mess up on that last post of mines for the last section should be this (this is what you get with LINUX half way copying and pasting sometimes it dun work):
Well freak it I can’t get this LINUX to copy and past over what I wanted seems as if it’s all stuck on one thing. This is about your reply, Hexydes, about the cost and what your getting.
–For all the stuff your getting I would say that’s a OK cost but I just hope that the final product is kewl. By reading up on it I can say it’s a nice Little OS and could become great but for me it’s all about working with my hardware and runing my hardware as good as Windows (mainly my modem and Audigy 2). This might not happen right away in skyos5? Anyways good luck.
–Idoxash
<sarcasm mode>Oh no! Not profit! How dare Robert want to put food on his table!</sarcasm mode>
I would bark if Microsoft wanted money to beta test their OS. Let’s be clear, MS has enough money to pay the coders right now.
But not enveryone is MS with large bank account. I think that Robert put lots of time in SkyOS and has the right to make a little money out of this. And you do get 5.0 final for FREE. It’s only 30$, get a grip! Stop screaming fools.
Has anyone else experienced incredibly slow speeds downloading the videos?
Yeah, its slow. I guess the server is being over run. I think OSNews has its own slashdot effect now. I’ll host a torrent when I finally get the movies, unless Robert objects.
I’d like to know how easy it is to theme. I don’t like the current one all too much (not bad, but to each his own), and it would be cool to convert windowblinds or msstyle skins over (with permission).
I believe the actual 5.0 will be free.
You get more input, that is, more say than us cheapskates, with the beta.
Yes.. my server is taking quite the beating here.. (server 2) mostly because of the large files. A torrent might not be a bad idea.
Also, the theme engine in SkyOS 5 is very powerful and getting more and more powerful as new features are added to WindUI. It is just a theme you know.
Hexydes, I was just wondering how many hours and how many days a week the design team put in for this to come together. The GUI contest wasn’t that long ago and I was very impressed with this much work in such a small amount of time.
“Not only do they need to put food on their tables but also need to pay for the bandwidth that they’d use IF they made an ISO available.”
Many free software authors use free services like sourceforge.net or GNU’s savanah.
Oh, of course, I am speaking of free software not of a software that you have to pay $30 to download a alpha release…
SkyOS is free software or not ? What license (BSD. GPL, LGPL, MIT, etc) ?
Sorry everyone… My download has completly stoped… 0k download. If anyone has it archived I will be happy to host the torrent, but untill I have a complete file I’m unable to do anything.
SkyOS is free software or not ? What license (BSD. GPL, LGPL, MIT, etc) ?
BeOS Personal Edition was free, but closed source. Users paid to upgrade to the Pro Edition with more features and software.
Perhaps SkyOS will go the same route.
“BeOS Personal Edition was free, but closed source. Users paid to upgrade to the Pro Edition with more features and software.
Perhaps SkyOS will go the same route.”
Thanks for the answer. My opinion that it is a wrong strategy. I will go to the same route of BeOS, the death…
SkyOS is very interesting at the techical point of view but while the development remains concentrated in one person it will remain as a toy OS like BeOS was or a hobby OS like many others…
Hexydes, I was just wondering how many hours and how many days a week the design team put in for this to come together. The GUI contest wasn’t that long ago and I was very impressed with this much work in such a small amount of time.
If I had to guess, I would say about 100 hours. Our design team worked on many things. One or two people did all of the wallpapers. Another did the software installer and OS installer layouts. Yet another did the design for the window layouts. I did the icons, mouse cursors, and cut up all the graphics for Robert to implement. The past 6 weeks or so I have been working with Robert about 3-4 hours a day.
We actually have 3 development teams: The OS coding team, the graphic design team, and the software development team. Robert is the only one on the OS coding team. The graphics team had about 6 people on it (only myself and two others now, as most of the graphics are done). The software team has about 4 active coders, who are working on various projects. Right now they are still learning the ins and outs of SkyOS. Gaim is being worked on, and another coder finished their first test app (a calculator). We hope to move them to bigger projects in the near future.
Well hopefully there isn’t any SCO code in SkyOS..just kidding! Personally i think this project is awesome mainly because these guys have a clear focus Desktop/i386. May not sound like much but having a clear obtainable goal is the key to making things like this work. Hopefully they can come up with a easy solution to other OS compatiblity issues. What a headache…
if people want to help other than coding. What is the best way to help this project along? Cash donation? Hardware donation? other?
Thanks for the answer. My opinion that it is a wrong strategy. I will go to the same route of BeOS, the death…
This strategy made BeOS very wide spread and known to a lot of people. I’m still amazed that so many people know about BeOS when I mention it, even some “regular” people.
But, they would have needed something more to sell. BeOS Pro wasn’t much different from PE other than the license. If they had spent their time developing a few media production apps for it they would have been able to make some money. But few saw the need for the Pro version, so few paid for it.
SkyOS is very interesting at the techical point of view but while the development remains concentrated in one person it will remain as a toy OS like BeOS was or a hobby OS like many others…
For you perhaps. For me and many other BeOS got the job done, and quite beautifully I might add. To me Windows is a toy OS. Sure, I use windows for music production but it doesn’t work very well for me. I really long for an alternative on x86 hardware. BeOS is still there, but it still has no decent apps for hdd-recording.
So what might be a toy for you is perhaps a lifesaver for someone else.
When I said that BeOS was a toy OS I wanted to say BeOS never was used in production systems like a server or like a workstation. It was restricted to loyal home users (I used it in past but I never believe its future as a popular OS).
There were no major technical problems with BeOS but because it was made by a little company and not being a free (as freedom and as beer) software, BeOS never had a critical mass to atract commercial software developers and to have drivers made by hardware manufacturers.
But I agree with you that Windows is an expensive toy OS 🙂 But is a toy because it is buggy, bloated and monopolistic.
>>>When I said that BeOS was a toy OS I wanted to say BeOS never was used in production systems like a server or like a workstation.<<<
Actually it was, and is. Niche markets used it in workstations. LCS used them in their lighting products (MIDI-controlled stage lighting and such) and there are a few music stations (as in music creation, not radio-like) that use BeOS for the OS of the hardware. TuneTracker is commecial radio-station software that uses BeOS. FinalScratch was a CD mixing interface that used BeOS. The ZOOM kids center used it for their video editing. There are a handful of other examples, however I just mention these off the top of my head. It is still used in those systems. Just because you never saw it in action or read about it, or it isn’t “the norm” doesn’t mean it never happened.
It’s true that BeOS didn’t dominate the computer world, but it never was their intention to do so either. However, it was used professionally in a lot of places. It was for example used for audio processing and such on several concerts and tours (even madonna iirc). Also the Edirol DV-7 Video Canvas uses BeOS, and that’s a professional(and expensive) workstation.
And the fact is that companies like Steinberg, BIAS (and several other known media software companies, was porting their applications to the BeOS. Luckily enough, Be made their focus shift right before they had a chance to release them.
Would they have made people interesten in BeOS? There’s no question about it. Most of the people I know in the media production biz was very interested in BeOS and was awaiting the arraival of those apps to be able to switch. Fact is, even with WinXP and OSX around some of those people are still asking be about the status of the BeOS.
So there’s really no question that it would have made a success in that area of the computer industry if it hadn’t been for the cursed focus shift.
As for me, I do use it professionally as a web developer. It’s not that it does stuff that other OS’s can’t do, but it’s such a convienent and relaxing environment to work in. That’s something that can’t be measured by tech specs and benchmarks. And that’s also the reason why people in the media production biz don’t want to use WinXP no matter what. We artistic people are obviously very sensitive about that stuff
Can someone start a SkyOS software website depository or something
? It’s gonna need a BeBits-esque site to continue to grow, and the sooner it gets started the easier the transition to Sky will be for users. I for one would like a usenet application and an IRC client, along with the stock IM apps.
Amen, you hit the nail on the head. We don’t want to use Windows or OSX for what we create, we want an elegant and simple OS which is a powerhouse for our apps. None of this crap that chokes, gets in the way and generally p1sses us off.
I have had my audio workstation moping around for two years cause of driver issues with Windows and the factr that I hate using it. I hope with Zeta and OpenBeOS Steinberg will get Cubase SX out onto it. At least my soundcard maker has been taken over by a decent company that can write drivers (go ESS).
Vive le difference
how do we get the videos now that the server is dead ?;) how do we ?
osnews’ed
hell
We have used 80+ gig so far in bandwidth! So bare with us on the servers, they are taking a beating. We are considering some other options for the next video release, including Bit Torrent and other compression technologies to keep the file size down. Any ideas are welcome.
“Can someone start a SkyOS software website depository or something
? It’s gonna need a BeBits-esque site to continue to grow, and the sooner it gets started the easier the transition to Sky will be for users. I for one would like a usenet application and an IRC client, along with the stock IM apps.”
We have talked about this. I think it’s a great idea, I’d like to release something like this about the time of the final 5.0 release. Is there any premade software the calibur of BeBits? I really like how they have that site setup. But I have some other ideas that I would like to include in it as well.
As the subject says, you may want to consider it. Swarming makes sense.
Sorry about the server trouble.
But thanks to LINUX I am grabbing that vid at a faster rate then most people. Apps like I am using to do it are what we want it an OS.
Will there be repositories of updates? Will there be security patches? Who are you inviting in to help the OS become a usefull tool? I am sure you are thinking about these things, and I hope you share your ideas.
It took forever to download, so maybe this will help anyone else who still wants to download it. http://isource.org/files/movies.torrent
This is one torrent for both movies
I just noticed something. I went ahead and created a torrent before I watched the videos myself. While the demo was very impressive I think there is some material that is unsuitible for some people. I was going to link to it from my website, but I’m not sure I will now. In anycase keep an eye out for my article at tech.isource.org. Untill then I highly sugest watching these demos, but if you are easily offended stop the opengl mpeg when the demo computer loads the movie. The boot mpeg is interesting. I love that most of the boot text is replaced with graphical information.
Yes I noticed that too,seems like some comercial or somehing, not very proffesional to make a presentation with a clip that might be misstaken for porn…
Also I find the buttons on the “bars” on the windows to look rather big and too intense (look at the screenshots…). Personally I would prefer somthing more elegant & refined.
Very nice GUI.. Are there any 3D effects too?
@Adam
“Welcome to reality, Arthur. Believe it or not, it is possible to do something because you both enjoy it and want to make money off it.”
$30 for a beta, that ultimately will be a fre download, is still $30 more than I would have to spend after it’s released. I’m not willing to pay a developer of a *hobby* OS $30 for the pleasure of debugging his code for him… If we charged our clients to debug our code for us, we’d quickly have no clients left. (Debugging includes finding and reporting bugs IMO.)
@idoxhash
“You must be a user of LINUX.”
No. I’m a completely anti-LINUX. I’ve used it on both intel and ppc hardware and it’s just not my thing.
My OS of choice is BeOS – and I run it on ppc hardware, so we’re not talking about the free version here. I paid for my with cold hard cash, before Be went under and when it was still $50+ for R5.
I honestly believe I could have helped them – I do have access to all the hardware I listed. It’s just such a shame SkyOS has taken this route against the end user as opposed to something like Syllable. Such a shame.