Rocklyte Systems has made Athene 3.3 available with a number of new features including an updated file manager, music player, and find files program. There are 11 updated and new UI gadgets, improved multi-lingual support and a revised SDK. The graphics performance has improved further since 3.2 by using XDGA to give a 25% performance boost when in X11 full-screen mode. Read more for the changelog and screenshots.
Screenshots
Change Log
- Enhancements to the File Manager now mean that it supports toolbars, dialog boxes, menu and view options. Cut and paste file operations are now supported and column viewing mode is now used by default.
- Updated the Find Files program to support a new toolbar, directory browse button and auto-refresh for scanned files.
- Rewrote the Mini Player for improved music playback, now includes support for all the basic player options and a play-list manager.
- Bitmap fonts are now cached to prevent re-loading.
- [X11] The mouse wheel is now supported correctly.
- [X11] Implemented new DGA rendering for optimum graphics throughput in X11 – about 25% faster than earlier methods. This feature is enabled only in full-screen mode.
- [Linux] The root: assignment has been replaced with a complete list of discovered hard drives that have been found on your system.
- [Linux] Athene now sets up its home directory in the Linux user’s home directory rather than its own directory tree.
- New DML classes: Button, CheckBox, ComboBox, Dialog, FileDialog, Input, ScrollBar, TabFocus, ToolBar, View, Window
- API calls are now possible from DML.
- The default date format for files can now be set in the System Options area.
- Translation support for foreign languages has been added for scripts and menus.
- Fixed gradient drawing in 16 bit graphics mode.
- Personal shortcuts can now be created from the File Manager by clicking the Create Directory button when at the root view.
- The image quality for resized icons has been improved significantly.
- The AltGr key now works correctly. Support for Shift + AltGr has also been added so that up to four characters per key can be supported.
- Added Russian and United Kingdom keymaps. Fixed errors in Estonian and Spanish keymaps.
- Screenshots are now saved to the file “user:screenshot.png” and not “pictures:screenshot.png”
- QikInstall now supports a browse button next to directory input boxes.
- Added an ‘Are you sure?’ dialog to the Uninstall application.
- [Win32] Fixed a file-handle bug that prevented files and directories from being returned to the system after use.
It downloaded, installed, and booted without a hitch. Easy to use as always, and 3.3 appears more “finished” than previous versions.
Not all roses though. When browsing the Athene website for companion software, I found what I was looking for. At the bottom of the page is a short list of entertainment titles. But then I read this:
“Note that all of this software works on the Linux and Athenyx platforms only.”
What’s up with that? Why no software for a Windows install? It’s dissapointing to see a continuing lack of applications, especially considering how long Athene has been around.
The OS itself looks great though.
-Bob
The SDL package is compiled for Linux only I’m afraid. Although a Windows compile is possible, maintenence of that and the game binaries is very time consuming and internally we need to be working on other things. It’d be nice to see hobbyists pick up on some of these areas and port complete software now that the new SDK has made things much easier.
Remember that we don’t profit from the Windows version, so it’s understandable that most of our time goes into Linux/Athenyx development.
I’m glad you like it though – this release does have a great all-round feel to it and will provide a solid foundation for a bunch of new stuff in v4.0 :-).
Maybe I don’t understand the concept of Athene, maybe it is in work, but I don’t know why there is still no Internet support. Is there?
There is native Internet support scheduled for inclusion in the 4.0 series. I expect we’ll be releasing the X11 server next, so it will also be possible to run Mozilla and other Internet apps quite soon as well.
Both look nice! Especially Omega. If it is what it claims to be, it’s a gem for me. Is it possible to run either on a different (GNU/)Linux distribution? What about the Display Manager? Couldn’t find all of this info, but according to the pages you release your software as open source. Where is the source? Where’s more info about this software? Depending on these factors, i’d like to port it to the GNU/Linux distribution i’m (already) running.
The source to the desktop environments (like Omega) is found in Athene. Just install and then look in the programs:boot/ directory. Source to the binaries is in the Pandora SDK.
The Athene Linux version works on all recent Linux distro’s, so you don’t need to do a port unless you were using Linux PPC.
This is x86. Doh, well i guess understand it now. I’ll try it Soon, thanks for explaining.
‘A commercial version of the Athene desktop also exists for people that want to use our graphics technology to replace X11. ‘
I’m running on a PII 333 and X11 running KDE or GNOME eats up too many resources. Do you have any benchmarks comparing your display technology with Xfree86 (latest)?
Does your graphics technology comply with the X11 protocol? If not, does that mean running into portability issues when trying to use linux software?
The most recent benchmarks are at http://rocklyte.com/news_20030917.html
Comparing to the current X11 version, X11 has 5% slower throughput, which isn’t bad, but there is no video blitting capability when run in full screen mode. It does not feature full integration with the Athene desktop (things like changing the speed of the mouse cursor, gamma correction etc are only in the commercial version).
My personal machine uses a 450Mhz CPU, so at 333Mhz I think you’ll be fine. Just make sure you have 64MB RAM at least to cope with the graphics buffering.
Currently, Linux software compatibility is limited to console based programs. The X11 server is in development and is expected to be released next. You’ll be able to run pretty much all existing Linux software once it’s out.
It still irkes me how you refer to XSHM as a “shared imaging hack.” Just because it doesn’t fit into your “direct-rendering” view of the universe does not make it a hack. Its fine that you’ve designed the programming model for Athenyx the way you wanted, but realize that there are a number of other perfectly valid ways of doing things.
Thank you Mr. Manias.
I greatly look forward to the release of Rocklyte’s X server. (Will it be GPL, I wonder?)
“…we still have a research objective to release a complete X11 replacement for the free software world”
I am starting to have greater hope that a true, viable desktop linux may indeed be a few vital steps closer.