Am I the only one amazed at the progress being made on SkyOS? Kelly writes in to tell us that SkyOS has just gotten sticky note support (screenshot). Read on for more. The sticky notes work much like they do in other systems, however, one unique characteristic is the fact that they work in concert with SkyOS’s attribute system. This means that you can do such things as right-click on an image file, select “Notes”, and the Sticky Note window appears showing the note associated with the file.
In other news, the SkyOS team has added a new page in the media section displaying all of the wallpapers currently available for SkyOS 5.0. The page can be found here.
I’m sorry, I forgot to say that there is of course a screenshot of the stickys in action on the front page.
http://www.skyos.org
This guys don’t sleep and work 48 hours a day, right?
I wonder how much coffee one needs to do all that.
Actually, I don’t drink coffee, though I do have a number of empty Coke cans sitting near my desk.
i haven’t looked closely at SkyOS in the last 6 months, but is it still using OpenBeFS?
great job adding support for stickies in file attributes, that is awesome! great job guys!
WTF, this is not possible… tell us your secret, Robert, *please*,
Victor.
I wonder why attributes were so under used on BeOS.
I just took a look at the screenshot… jesus, in a couple of months SkyOS is getting to same level Linux+Gnome took years to get to? How is that possible?
Victor.
I think they were underused simply because some things still had to be done at a command-line level. You couldn’t right-click on a file and see/edit attributes or add new ones.
Maybe I’ve missed something on BeBits but I think this is still the case. And I believe even when you create new attributes for a file type you have to copy a file to have it accept the new file types. Seems to me like there was some strangeness to it.
Still, attributes are great. It will be neat to see how OBOS, Cosmoe, SkyOS and any other OS that has attributes compete with each other over the best use of attributes. I think there’s a lot of usability waiting to be mined with it.
Robert is a multi-armed “Goro-style” group of clones.
Please don’t confuse him with the group of single-armed Axel Dörfler clones.
Sticky notes. Big deal!
People do not seem to realise that SkyOS has been in development for quite a long time. Little gimmicks like ‘sticky-notes’ are trivially implemented once the core functionality is in place.
Sticky notes! OMGOMGOMG!!!!11one Keep us posted on these exciting new applications.
I’m gonna have to agree with you.
It is cool, SkyOS looks very promising (if only it was open source
) and they really seem to be moving ahead quickly.
BUT, as cool as sticky notes are, considering that the sound interface was just finished, it does seem that this is mostly a gimmic, while some core stuff still arn’t done.
For example, people compare this to gnome/kde+linux. So how good is the kernel compared to linux? (preemptive, etc…)
Does it have a mature IPC mechanism for the desktop? (Bonobo, DPOC, and now DBus)
How about implemented standards? (OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL, etc…)
I don’t know much about SkyOK so some of these questions might not make sense.
So to summerise, SkyOS is very cool, but you can’t compare it based on sticky notes to day that it is a complete OS/DE framework as mature as Linux+KDE/GNOME
I cant wait till they fix their forums. Right now you can register, and the forums is supposed to send you an activation link email. However, it does not. Does anybody have an ETA on when the forums will be fixed?
theres a conspiracy going on isn’t there! Anyway.. I’d love to see SkyOS multi-user (modify openBFS)
😉 I know i know, you all are going to do it past SkyOS 5.. but it would kill Zeta =D
Well, we do have over 700 people registered at the forums, so at least 700 people were able to register.
You’ll have to give me a bit more description, and I’d be glad to help you with your problem. We’ve had a few people who did not get their confirmation e-mails. Often times they get blocked by Spam blockers.
This is rather off-topic though, and I don’t want to get this thread moded that way. If anyone else has problems outside of the topic, feel free to e-mail me.
[email protected]
So is anyone developing apps for SkyOS other than the core developers?
i think they should fic other tings first. like the icons in the taskbar….
but overal its looking impressive
The ONLY thing holding SkyOS back when its released is lack of distribution. You guys need to figure out a way to distribute it and make money doing it. Online Shops need an efficient way to match pricing that you will offer in the official SkyOS store.
“Am I the only one amazed at the progress being made on SkyOS?”
No. It’s especially interesting since SkyOS is not open source, nor strongly backed by corporations. I’m also not really clear as to what their goal is (I mean, beyond just hacking fun).
What I am wondering about is, if SkyOS can do it, why can’t others? Where is the XFree86 replacement that kicks ass? Where are extended attributes in the major operating systems?
Where is the XFree86 replacement that kicks ass?
The difference being that XFree86 supports 2D acceleration on nearly all video cards and 3D acceleration on quite a few… How many video card models does SkyOS support?
Where are extended attributes in the major operating systems?
It’s called BFS. Or reiserfs4. Or xfs… SkyOS is not even close to the first to support extended attributes. In the case of SkyOS, this support is literally lifted from the BFS filesystem.
I’m not trying to take anything away from SkyOS. They are doing incredible work. But let’s put it in perspective before we start commenting on other OSes not moving at the same perceived speed that SkyOS is moving at.
Adam
First off, SkyOS is actually starting to look really good! Keep up the good work guys.
However, from an end-user perspective, Abiword sticks out like a sore thumb. Someone needs to come up with a gtk engine that mimics the native widget set. As it stands it looks fugly
And the font for pango should be set to match the system font as well. It’s looking a little cramped there.
Percieved speed my nookie.
SkyOS is moving along 100x faster than Linux developement. Thats a fact so get over it. SkyOS is usable for end users (if you have supported hardware) and Linux is not, arguably sp.
And yeah – – I don’t see the big deal about sticky notes either.
The linux zealots better start picking apart its flaws now while its still young and has easy ones to find; cause in another year (at its current pace) SkyOS will make Linux distros look like the piecemeal garbage they are.
And the font for pango should be set to match the system font as well. It’s looking a little cramped there.
Rather the system font should be set to match Pango (notice the larger note looks much better). Or better yet, ditch Pango for Freetype2. It is good to know that Robert and Kelly are finally paying some attention to the fonts. They have sucked for a long time.
I still think it is a bummer that SkyOS is not OSS. That alone prevents me from using it for my personal stuff. OTOH, it may be one reason why they are able to develop so quickly. Imagine building a system they way you want it versus answering 10,000 emails and reviewing 100 patches a day. The former is much easier and more productive to do.
However, they could release the source code on a review only basis…something like what Kurt did for AtheOS. He released the source but rarely accepted patches. Now look at Syllable.
SkyOS is moving along 100x faster than Linux developement. Thats a fact so get over it.
Thats…funny. I didn’t realise SkyOS was popular enough to start attracting the rabid fanboys just yet but it looks like I was wrong.
SkyOS is usable for end users (if you have supported hardware)
Yes, and that if is the big if for most people. Most people here also have very little to base any arguments concerning SkyOS usability on, too. Aside from the SkyOS developers and a few beta testers, nobody has actually sat down and used SkyOS in an abjective manner. For all you or I know there might be huge holes in functionality or horrible user interface problems. Screenshots rarely show those sorts of problems.
The linux zealots better start picking apart its flaws now while its still young and has easy ones to find; cause in another year (at its current pace) SkyOS will make Linux distros look like the piecemeal garbage they are.
Linux certainly has problems but accusing Linux zealots of ignoring those problems while you, as a SkyOS zealot, ignore the problems in SkyOS you’re just being a hypocrite and making yourself sound silly. SkyOS currently has some pretty screenshots but so far it hasn’t done anything to get your panties in a bunch over.
>> Where is the XFree86 replacement that kicks ass?
> The difference being that XFree86 supports 2D acceleration on nearly all video cards and 3D acceleration on quite a few… How many video card models does SkyOS support?
The major ones, I’d say. I know that XFree86 supports a lot of video cards, but the system itself lacks features that people want and provides a subobtimal user experience. Projects exist to remedy this (X.org X Server, Y window System, Fresco, …), but none of them can boast achievements like SkyOS.
>> Where are extended attributes in the major operating systems?
> It’s called BFS. Or reiserfs4. Or xfs… SkyOS is not even close to the first to support extended attributes. In the case of SkyOS, this support is literally lifted from the BFS filesystem.
I am well aware of these points, and a strong reiser4 advocate. However, OpenBeos cannot yet live on its own like SkyOS can, and, although Linux supports reiser4 and xfs, and there is an extended attributes patch for ext{2,3}, the APIs for accessing extended attributes do not appear to have been standardized yet, and they are certainly not widely used.
All this will come, I’m sure, but I am amazed that a closed source volunteer OS has embraced all that goodness so quickly.
How can SkyOS make such insane progress so quickly? Wow! What I’d like to know is how SkyOS is supported. It almost seems like this has to be a full time job for at least a few developers. Is it? If so, how is it supported? It seems unlikely that selling copies on CD or t-shirt sales would keep it alive.
Perhaps I simply lack the massive levels of motivation and dedication required to pull something like this off after working all day at some other job or whatever. Anyone know the secret? 🙂
“Aside from the SkyOS developers and a few beta testers, nobody has actually sat down and used SkyOS in an abjective manner. For all you or I know there might be huge holes in functionality or horrible user interface problems. Screenshots rarely show those sorts of problems.”
Currently we have 108 beta testers, who regularly give us feedback, both via e-mail and the discussion forums. We have also given copies to a number of non-beta testers, and there has been at least one preview that I know of so far.
We make no claims that SkyOS is functionally perfect at this point. But at the other end of the spectrum, when you say that very few people have tested it, you are quite incorrect.
Currently we have 108 beta testers, who regularly give us feedback, both via e-mail and the discussion forums.
Some of whom can’t get it to install without using vmware 🙂
Adam
I know that XFree86 supports a lot of video cards, but the system itself lacks features that people want and provides a subobtimal user experience. Projects exist to remedy this (X.org X Server, Y window System, Fresco, …), but none of them can boast achievements like SkyOS.
Nor does SkyOS boast a lot of the achievement of XFree86 and it’s forks. Things such as 3D drivers, network transparency, and multihead setups. SkyOS is sorely lacking in this area (though Robert has indicated that he’ll be supporting dualhead configurations on ATI card with more than one port).
Adam
SkyOS is usable for end users
So I can browse websites that use java, javascript, CSS, flash, etc? I can balance my check book? I can play games like NWN, Q3A, UT2004?
Adam
I’ve asked this before when a SkyOS story came up and have looked in the SkyOS forums, but never found my answer. The question is how are they planning to support Opengl when nvidia drivers(and I believe the latest and greatest Radeon too) are closed? Are they able to get a NDA for the chiplevel specs or maybe write a wrapper to use the windows or linux drivers?
Any ETA on when the 5.0 Final cds might be ready?
You guys that are trying to put SkyOS down….might wanna stop and consider that there is a small group of people working on this software that probably have real jobs also.
considering that, the progress is pretty darned fast.
I’m still waiting for OBOS, but SkyOS could be really good competition too!
How people can get so rediculous about making comments, and not being able to see things for what they are. The less I use computers, the less I miss them these days. They’re tools, not life. (For me at least)
By the way, nice work on the OS
One AC in comment #25 made a very good point:
SkyOS develops so quickly because it uses* the code of others. Paraphrasing Sir Isaac Newton, Those who are great, are so because they stand on the shoulders of giants.
In a since, SkyOS is almost corporate in its regard to the OSS world. It reaps the benefits of using it’s libraries and code* without giving anything back to the OSS community. That’s what we call a bad citizen.
The true pioneers are those who hack out the drivers for these chipsets. The SkyOS guys are doing a fine job of integrating others’ work, but I have yet to see true innovation or original work. They ought to be commended for building a nice system (if indeed that is the case, time will tell) but not for doing something unique.
Mad props go to the hackers of:
– GTK+
– Pango
– Abiword
– the BSDs – for tons go generic code that I presume was used
– OpenBeOS – for OpenBFS
– OSX – for the ideas behind WindUI
– Linux – for drivers and specs
– XFree – for more drivers and specs
– FSF – for the GCC toolchain
– Cygwin
I can go on, but anyone who has not gotten my point, won’t ever. Yes, I’m being a little presumptuous with the above claims, but I stand open to correction. Robert, please tell us whose code is worthy of patterning after.
* by using code, I mean learning from it, not cutting and pasting. If that is the case, I have no way of knowing without the source code which is not available.
I think that there are two people going the wrong way. First, the people bashing SkyOS. I want you to go out and write a simple bootloader that starts all the standard features (32-bit, A20, pmode, etc.) and then write a kernel. Then, try to make it do what Robert and the others have done. Then you have the right to come back and bash SkyOS, but then and only then, once you have been in their shoes.
Second, the people who try to make SkyOS seem like it could beat every other OS out there. Now, not to be rude, but it couldn’t. And I don’t think the development team meant it to be. Though, I’m not saying that SkyOS is astounding. I am thoroughly impressed at what a small group of people can do. And this isn’t easy either, because, for those who don’t know, kernel programming and making your own applications takes a strong knowledge of a language (I’m guessing C).
I am truly stunned by what these people pump out! It’s amazing stuff. So what if Sticky Notes is stupid, if it’s something the programmer wants, so be it. It’s not like it’s YOUR operating system. I think it would be awesome if One or more of the development people wrote a book on OS development. I would buy it, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
I think the fonts look fine/nice. Maybe different but I don’t care.
Are any other GTK apps going to be in SKYOS?
Nice work, I am condidering purchasing V5 or maybe something later depending on drivers.
Tis a good day just got an e-mail from Kelly Rush, I’m an official winner of the Beta Giveaway looks like I’ll be trying this out first hand.
I can’t wait!
Congrats! see you in the Beta forums!
>> The difference being that XFree86 supports 2D acceleration on nearly all video cards and 3D acceleration on quite a few… How many video card models does SkyOS support?
>
> The major ones, I’d say. I know that XFree86 supports a lot of video cards, but the system itself lacks features that people want and provides a subobtimal user experience. Projects exist to remedy this (X.org X Server, Y window System, Fresco, …), but none of them can boast achievements like SkyOS.
I think the Syllable developers would disagree with you. It supports more chips (Way more) than SkyOS and can do things SkyOS cannot. Syllable still doesn’t do things that XFree can do though (As someone else pointed out E.g. multi-head, 3D) so I don’t see how you can claim that XFree lacks features, or that no one else can match SkyOS.
> We make no claims that SkyOS is functionally perfect at this point. But at the other end of the spectrum, when you say that very few people have tested it, you are quite incorrect.
I did say “abjectively tested” SkyOS developers and beta testers have a vested interest in SkyOS and are highly unlikely to be critical of bad design. I hope you understand that.
I agree with you. Why the hostility around here?
What’s the point of bashing either SkyOS or some other OS versus SkyOS?
What’s the point with all the SkyOS vs *nix comments?
Why try to hurt either SkyOS or any other Free/OSS/Alternative/whatever OS?
I love that Linux desktop development has finally taken off and expect to see some great stuff this year.
However, I also love how fast SkyOS is progressing and how it’s more and more looking like it really could be a pretty big player in the desktop market pretty soon.
It doesn’t matter if SkyOS isn’t another *nix flavor or that it’s not OSS. Any and all serious desktop alternatives are very much welcomed by atleast me.
First, congratulations Robert! He’s a great guy to talk with, and for sure a great developer..
Just one more thing.. More important than developing a software, is testing it.
Even being a great developer, and being able to do wonderful things (I really think SkyOS is a great project), I don’t think Robert itself is able to test everything that he develops.
And it would be hard to convince somebody (me, a company, whatever) to use a plataform that was never trully tested.
Have you ever imagine how many bugs skyos should have?
(I’m not saying this is Robert’s fault, that’s just the way it is)
Best luck to Robert
It’s an excellent OS so far… from what I see
Pardon my (french? nah… lets say english
) but it’s a HOBBY OS godammit! (isn’t it?) so why start comparing it to linux BeOS and others in the first place?
Not that I’m saying that it doesn’t compare to them…
SkyOS must have matured for people like yourself to be expending the energy to try and discredit it.
I tried V4 which was not much other than just being able to boot and play around with a few very simple apps. But screenshots of Abiword, a new file system, GTK+, ISS, etc, etc are enough to convince me of rapid progress.
Gosh, I wish osnews had proper threading…
Missing features in XFree86 are, for example, server side storage of window contents (last I checked it didn’t work). This is painful both locally, where expose events kill performance, and remotely, where you basically don’t want to try dragging a window over another without having some coffee handy.
Despite many claims that X11 is fast if programmed right, experience as a user doesn’t show that. Blame the toolkits, but without them, the system is quite annoying to code for. So, depending on your point of view, it either lacks good performance or a good API.
As for Syllable, I recently tried to install it but it wouldn’t boot past the first stages (where it displays something not unlike the Windows NT BSOD). I’ve used AtheOS before and been quite impressed by it. However, to my knowledge, neither one supports OpenGL, so you can pretty much forget about high performance graphics. GTK and extended attributes are also right out.
PS: I don’t mean to say that XFree86 lacks features that SkyGI has and not the other way around. Just that XFree86 lacks features that matter to users, and that SkyGI does have
Isn’t it the point of open-source to not reinvent the wheel and re-use existing stuff ?
And what about Linux: didn’t they use Unix’s XFree,… ?
Didn’t Apple use Mach kernel with MacOS X ?
…
Hi
Oh. nothing is wrong but complaining about the stuff you improve upon is bad.
you dont need to bash others to call yourself good you know
One truism I have learned to be usefull in IT is “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”.
robert said that he does infact use alot of open source code (like under the MIT license) SkyOS also has alot of GPL packages.
SKYOS DOES NOT VIOLATE LICENSING.
SkyOS is just using its resources creating their own code and using some open source code–which is one of the main reasons some of the projects used were not under the GPL.
Kelly and/or robert: Do you have information regarding distributing SkyOS, allowing online shops to sell it?
We haven’t yet decided how we will be working with “resellers”, though, information will be forthcoming.
Perhaps bug fixes?
*cough* OpenBFS
I’ve used AtheOS before and been quite impressed by it.
However, to my knowledge, neither one supports OpenGL, so you can pretty much forget about high performance graphics.
I think both SkyOS and Syllable have Mesa now. Neither of them can do hardware supported 3D. That doesn’t mean they cannot do really good 2D graphics at a decent speed though.
GTK and extended attributes are also right out.
With Syllable? Yes they don’t have GTK+ but there is a good reason for it. If you read the SkyOS forums too you’ll see that the developers want to discourage use of GTK+. I think they made a bad decision to port GTK+ to SkyOS, because they’ve killed a lot of interest in the native SkyOS GUI now. I can see them being stuck maintaining GTK+ for the life of SkyOS and having two different toolkits. It’s going to end up like Linux.
The Syllable filesystem does support extended attributes though. I don’t know where you got the idea that it didn’t. The AtheOS/Syllable Filesystem and BeFS are supposed to be very similiar. They both do extended attributes, journaling, indexing etc.
P.S: Your problems installing Syllable are quite common. It’s a problem with the IDE driver but its going to be replaced with a better one in the next release.
“I think they made a bad decision to port GTK+ to SkyOS, because they’ve killed a lot of interest in the native SkyOS GUI now. I can see them being stuck maintaining GTK+ for the life of SkyOS and having two different toolkits. It’s going to end up like Linux.”
There hasn’t been one application ported to SkyOS that uses GTK outside of the two we ported. Conversely, there have been about 5 native programs written in the last two months by members of the community.
We’ve said a number of times we do not intend on providing any more than the smallest bug fixes for GTK. In fact, the only reason we ported it was to quickly get support for AbiWord and GIMP. We look forward to eventually having native support for both those applications as well.
GTK is not a solution in SkyOS. It is a workaround. It will be treated as such by ourselves and our community.
“The Syllable filesystem does support extended attributes though. I don’t know where you got the idea that it didn’t.”
Sorry, my bad. Not having seen extended attributhes in AtheOS filesystem, I did a quick google for syllable and extended attributes, which did not turn up relevant results. I am more than happy to hear that Syllable does have them. 🙂
As for GTK, the very obvious reason for wanting GTK is that numerous great applications have been written for it. Going against you, I actually think it’s a Good Thing if people write applications to a portable toolkit like GTK, rather than whatever native system happens to be on some platform. It should be possible to wrap GTK around native GUI systems, and if not, the GTK project should be happy to adapt GTK and make it more portable.
Of course, GTK suffers from being written in C, so it could be preferable to use a different cross-platform toolkit. Anyway, my point is that portability is good and we should work towards it, and certainly not against it.
Since you seem to be a SkyOS spokesperson and have addressed various questions, will you please address my question how SkyOS is going to get accelerated Opengl when vendors like Nviidia have closed drivers and don’t release chip-level specs?
I don’t speak for Kelly or Robert, but other OSes have done this simply by repackaging and wrapping the existing Windows or Linux drivers in “adapter code.” This is how BeOS can support modern graphics chipsets. Doing this sort of wrapping does not incur much of a speed hit since it is often a simple data translation. Besides Linux is virtually POSIX-compliant. This makes code reusage very easy.
I assume you mean hardware acceleration for 3D. Its a good question, let me know if you come up with an answer to it.
Seriously though, we’re trying our best. ATI and Nvidia are very unwilling to help groups like us with even things like driver specs. Very poor business if you ask me. I assume this is the position that Linux was in a few years back, before Nvidia and ATI wrote drivers for the OS.
We’re doing our best. Believe me, I know how important it is to get full support for these types of cards. We’re working on it.