Athene 3.4 is now available for download. The major new feature is backwards compatibility with X11 programs. This is achieved by running a rootless X11 server, the same technique employed by Mac OS X & QNX. The need for a separate window manager has also been eliminated by merging the window management functionality into the server itself. Screenshots demonstrating all this are here and here.
Athene 3.4 – Now X11 Compatible
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’ve been waiting for this for quite some time. I need to try it out tomorrow
What exactly is Athene anyway? Its not very clear on their website.
I think it is just a GUI environment on top of any operating system.
I guess it could be used in an business environment with custom branding, but a home environment, I don’t know.
You can’t download anything. You are taken to ads pages and your download never starts. I have tried with several mirrors.
Reading the definition of ‘virtual machine’ at Wikipedia may help you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine
The commercial version installs as a full operating system from CDROM. There’s also another commercial version that replaces X11 on Linux boxes. I hope that doesn’t confuse you even more… 🙂
If downloading the Windows version, occasionally Simtel.net gets in the way with a random ad, just press the “Skip this Ad” link and you’ll go straight past it. It shouldn’t be a major issue.
Otherwise, simply use this link instead:
http://www.rocklytefiles.com/files/software/athene_v34.exe
I discovered this OS a while ago, I also took the time to read much of it’s documentation, the planning & philosphy behind this OS is rock solid, I so wish it was viable as a standalone OS NOW!
With this release maybe it’s time for me to try Linux again
Thanks for the link! 🙂
As per title!
The commercial version is a stand alone and doesn’t require the X Window server as far as I know. Is that correct? It’s a like a different windowing system.
That’s right. It basically eliminates the need for the traditional X11 server and gives you a modernised desktop.
You still need the X libraries and fonts installed on your system in order to run X11 apps in the Athene desktop. In the next 1 – 2 years we’ll replace the most common X11 apps with native ones, then the compatibility layer can be dropped. This has been done so far with the SDL Library, so it’s just a matter of progress…
Ok – here is my test:
Box used – Athlon XP 2500+ with 1Gb of RAM and Radeon 9200 video. RH9 modified to the degree when you can consider it LFS
. XFree86 4.3 running at 1024×768@24bpp.
What I did not like:
1) Sloooow painting.
2) Has no idea about handling i18n at all (I’m using russian utf8 locale and was unable to type any cyrillic letters in any native apps, though X keyboard switching does work. The music player does not handle cyrillic tags in mp3s, etc.)
3) Configurability of the desktops = 0. I.e. you can’t even change the position of taskbar in wintel 2000 theme through some kind of mouse action or dialog
4) I’m left-handed, but the only way to let Athene know about this was typing xmodmap -e “pointer = 3 2 1 4 5”. There was no dialog to assign mouse. I had to use the underlying windowing system (X in our case). That is weird, especially for “Joe the user”, who seems to be the target audience for the system.
5) No keyboard switcher.
6) No athene-like theme provided for gtk+/gtk2/qt apps being launched. X resourses not modified for motif/Xaw apps to match fonts/colors of athene.
7) I do understand the desktop can be configured through some kind of XML configuration file or whatever, but in that case – why not use FREE sawfish or fvwm. And if I’m Joe the user getting a modern proprietary desktop I’m NOT supposed to fiddle with it’s internals using text editor.
If i buy Athene 3.4 Commercial, then i could use that one instead of XFree86 and would still have complete X11 Apps support, so that I could still even run say Gnome or Kde?
Does Athene Support Multi-Monitor/Xinerama?
If i buy Athene 3.4 Commercial, then i could use that one instead of XFree86 and would still have complete X11 Apps support, so that I could still even run say Gnome or Kde?
Right.
Does Athene Support Multi-Monitor/Xinerama?
Dual head support is in the graphics drivers but has yet to be added to the user interface. It’ll get there soon enough.
Thanks for your comments – constructive criticism is much appreciated. Some answers:
Slow painting: It really depends on the apps and operations in question, but running an X compatibility server through a genuine X11 server isn’t ideal. Worse, some X11 apps double-buffer their drawing operations, something which Athene already handles for all applications. The first issue is already resolved in the commercial version, which is our main priority. I think we can also compile a version of GTK which has the double buffering disabled to help with the 2nd issue.
I’ll take a look at the left-handed mouse issue for you.
I18N: This is an area of ongoing development. There is no Cyrllic font set installed as of yet, but there really needs to be more demand and cooperation from Russian users to make that happen.
Athene GTK Themes: Not really a priority. This is something that anyone in the userbase could fix if they really had an itch to scratch here.
Amazing work. Where has this been hiding for so long? This is the only X replacement I’ve ever been astounded by.
Thanks for your response. I really like the way Athene is heading and I wish you a very good luck. Your fonts also look very good (according to the screen shot). It’s good that you have paid attention to this from the very beginning.
“Athene GTK Themes: Not really a priority. This is something that anyone in the userbase could fix if they really had an itch to scratch here.”
Not that I get my undies in a bunch over GTK but my impression is that Athene is proprietary, and payware to boot.
I don’t mind, hell I enjoy, helping to fix apps when they are Open Source, but when they are proprietary then fixing them is your deal.
This GTK2 theme (Dwerg) looks like a pretty decent match for Wintel 2000.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=4206
One thing I have come to really respect about Athene is how dedicated Paul is to it. You will never find a comment/ question (good or bad) on OSnews that he does not take the time to personally respond to. Great work Paul!
I have looked at their website and I must say that it is not very clear in what it is, exactly.
If I understand this right, I can get rid of Windows XP’s teletubbie interface while at the same time being able to run native windows applications side-by-side with X11 applications and apparantly ‘native’ athene applications.
Is this correct?
Paul and team,
Thanks for the update. I’ll give the new X-server (or rather, X11 compatibility server) a spin when time permits. Based on past impressions of speed and responsiveness (from Athene on Win), I am wide-eyed with excitement. Finally I might consider toying with a linux-distro after a three-year hiatus spent waiting for clunky, resource-heavy X-servers to bite the dust.
By the by, how easy do you make it for people with RPM or Debian-based systems to junk Xfree86 in favour of your X replacement? (Any install details, and/or references to documentation would be greatly appreciated.)
Cheers.
So here’s an interesting thought:
With Xfree86 liscensing going amok, your timing into the X-server market seems appropriately timed.
Since there are so many open source zealots who would never even consider using a closed-source X-server, would you consider the following:
Awhile back on osnews, or was it Slashdot, a comapany basically said, OK, we want to make our program (I think it was a sound or graphics editor) open source, but we first need to be compensated for our work. And they set a target amount as a one-time price for the software and development (somewhere in the thousands of dollars), and allowed people all over to make donations. They were successfull, the target amount was reached and the software is now GPL’ed) Do you think Rocklyte would ever consider something like this? I think there may even be some organization set up to facilitate this type of transaction, or certainly the OSDN and/or FSF would be interested allies. Ask Eugenia or the folks at slashdot if you’re intersted. Either way, I am intersted in what your and/or Rocklyte’s response to all this is.
“Awhile back on osnews, or was it Slashdot, a comapany basically said, OK, we want to make our program (I think it was a sound or graphics editor) open source, but we first need to be compensated for our work. And they set a target amount as a one-time price for the software and development (somewhere in the thousands of dollars), and allowed people all over to make donations.”
Blender? The company behind Blender went bankrupt. The main author (Ton) demanded 200.000 (dollar or euro; iirc EUR) which it overreached. After that, a NGO was formed to back-up Blender. It is currently still maintained by the main author and contributors since it falls under the GPL. Books about Blender, written by the main author, are available on paper and a few months after that release they are available for Free.
Rocklyte however, isn’t bankrupt and the 2 programs are different and aim for different users. So the situation is different, too. The only similarity i see is that we’re discussing proprietary software; the difference is Blender wasn’t commercial anymore since the company behind it went zoef-zoef.
Which ones come with the full fledged edition?
would with work on a mac using X11?
I read the installer instructions and they said that it need a intel processor. But I am not sure if that is just talking about linux.
Anyone know if this work on a Mac?
By the by, how easy do you make it for people with RPM or Debian-based systems to junk Xfree86 in favour of your X replacement? (Any install details, and/or references to documentation would be greatly appreciated.)
It’s simple – that’s what the commercial download version is for. If you’re happy with the setup of your existing Linux system, you can install the Athene desktop to replace XFree86. You can continue to install RPM’s, compile from source or whatever you would normally do.
Do you think Rocklyte would ever consider something like this? I think there may even be some organization set up to facilitate this type of transaction, or certainly the OSDN and/or FSF would be interested allies. Ask Eugenia or the folks at slashdot if you’re intersted. Either way, I am intersted in what your and/or Rocklyte’s response to all this is.
It’s not actually possible as the full version implements commercial technology that doesn’t belong to us. Roughly 90% of the code base is already available though, and I think that’s enough for anyone wishing to tinker with the code.
Apps: X11 apps are currently being added to the CDROM (dependent on the space available). Anything that doesn’t fit will be put on the web site. Once the apps are confirmed I’ll add them to the FAQ for you.
Mac: There is no Mac version. It would be an expensive/lengthy development and for the next year there are some big R&D issues requiring attention.
Mr. Manias,
Does the Athene runtime environment for Windows include the rootless X11 server? I’m interested in an XFree86 replacement on that platform as well, mostly for performance reasons. Your docs imply that the Windows Athene is DirectX accelerated, a quality that would serve an X server well. Cygwin is nice but awkward to configure and use by Windows standards. The XFree86 port to Cygwin shares that awkwardness.
I’m afraid the X11 Server won’t work on Windows – although it is logistically possible to do, it would be time consuming to port and the resources to do it aren’t available. I’d be happy to give the source to anyone willing to give it a crack though. The results could admittedly be interesting
Thanks for replies, Paul.
About gtk/qt/whatever integration – it does not need to go as far as writing engines for themes, you could use just basic font/color substitutions (see grdb from gnome1 for example of setting resources for Xaw-based apps), it’s not that hard to do, but IMHO could improve the look of non-native apps drastically.
As for slow painting – the worst probs were with firefox and thunderbird.
Another question – any chance of FreeBSD port? Even with all the remarks I had, the thing still looks/feels good
Yet another one – anything about native mozilla and java?
I guess the GTK colours could be set in the commercial version, since it has GTK distributed in an install package, the colours could be set on installation.
FreeBSD: This is actually preferred over the Linux kernel – but Linux was supported first so until it is “complete”, BSD has to wait. OTOH I could allow someone to do a port.
Native Mozilla: Yes this is planned – work has not started on it just yet.