Here is the June edition fo the “SkyNews Monthly” e-zine which discusses a number of SkyOS aspects.
SkyNews Monthly: An e-Zine for SkyOS
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 read the whole thing. Lots of great info that I always wanted to know about SkyOS. Its really a remarkable project in many ways, and I can’t wait to see what it becomes!
Wow, quite a thorough article. Kudos, and thanks!
“Diff-FS is one of the better examples of innovation at work. No OS (That I know of) has done this yet.”
Well, if you rule out the various implementations of the concept of “union fs”, then I guess Diff-FS is the first, yes 🙂
Also planned:
“Contiki Enterprise Review”
“ObscureOS Quarterly”
“AtheOS Comics and Stories”
“OSThatOneUses Gentleman’s Magazine”
I hope the e-zine will progress as quick as OS is.
He talks about SkyFS quite frequently, and the fact that it’s “an incredibly powerful databasing filesystem” yet makes no mention that SkyFS is simply a port of BeFS, with some slight SkyOS specific changes. Let’s give credit where it’s due.
Adam
Heh, the line you quoted is the only mention of SkyFS’ quality (in fact, I wouldn’t have found it if I didn’t have Ctrl+F). All the praise in the article is about Diff-FS, something BeOS does not have at all.
By the “slight SkyOS specific changes” I assume you mean tiny (yah…) features like true multiuser support / security context, which BeFS doesn’t have but SkyFS does, for some reason?
Whether he mentions the quality of SkyFS once, or a dozen times, is irrelevent. Here he is, writing about the great innovation going on with SkyOS (and though Diff-FS is arguably innovative, it certainly isn’t a concept unique to SkyOS), but doesn’t mention that the great native filesystem for SkyOS is actually the great native filesystem for BeOS.
As for those changes to make SkyOS multiuser…. Well, let’s not forget that BeFS had the concepts of ownership and permissions, much like any *nix system, long before SkyOS came along. Those are the foundations of a multiuser system that Robert extended.
Adam
“no mention that SkyFS is simply a port of BeFS”
This is very true, and SkyFS would be nothing without it. Change made.
Cool 🙂 I’m glad you weren’t offended by my slight criticism. Other than that point, I liked this months edition 🙂
Adam
Oh, it’s no problem. I welcome true and constructive criticism.
Oh yeah, and, I need authors! I wrote the whole june edition, but I don’t think I’ll be able to keep it up when school starts.
As for the statement some make “1 man alone can’t program an OS!!!!”, that’s just stupid and doesn’t warrant an answer. In place, I’ll leave you with the words of Andrew Tanenbaum “Of course, Linus didn’t sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code…. He had my book…. But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up.”
That’ll shut the TrOLLs up.
Diff-FS appears to differ from union mounts in that it tracks the any changes to underlying filesystem itself and hence benifits from storeing only diffs rather than merely allowing multiple filesystem to coexist under a single mount point. However, the basic concept is far from original. I believe SunOS 4.1 was the first Unix to support filesystem unions, where it was called the translucent filesystem (tfs). Before that, OS/360 did something similar.
I think only the people outside of the beta program think this OS develops quickly. I am a beta tester and I can say, yes it does get improved, but it seems quite slow to me, most of the ‘new’ features the team seems to add in usualy are half finished, or don’t work as advertised, most people in the beta forum can’t even get the beta installed still and were on beta6. I really felt I wasted $30, that I could have given to another OS dev team, such as Haiku or Syllable..
“I think only the people outside of the beta program think this OS develops quickly. I am a beta tester and I can say, yes it does get improved, but it seems quite slow to me, most of the ‘new’ features the team seems to add in usualy are half finished, or don’t work as advertised, most people in the beta forum can’t even get the beta installed still and were on beta6. I really felt I wasted $30, that I could have given to another OS dev team, such as Haiku or Syllable..”
Well, I dunno if it really was SkyOS where you sent your money to, but hell, what you’re saying has nthing to do with not being able to install beta 6. It is that GRUB isn’t compatible with SkyFS yet, so, you cannot boot into SkyOS on a harddisk wihtout the CD. This is being worked on.
Instead of rambling on here, report to Robert and the beta team memebers.
as far as im aware only 3 ppl cant install the beta at the moment, and those that cant do something about it e.g. download Trial vers of VirtualPC, VMWare or get SkyOS 5.0 running under Bochs. may not be the best solution at the moment but it works, and you get to find out what does and what doesnt work, also as you said this is a BETA, remember BETA’s are test versions, after the beta releases which there are atleast 2 BETA’s left to release there are going to be release candidates.
Well, I dunno if it really was SkyOS where you sent your money to, but hell, what you’re saying has nthing to do with not being able to install beta 6. It is that GRUB isn’t compatible with SkyFS yet, so, you cannot boot into SkyOS on a harddisk wihtout the CD. This is being worked on.
I don’t think that’s what KillGrinder is talking about. I, for example, am unable to install SkyOS on my machine at home. At least 9 out of every 10 attempts ends up with my machine locked during the installation processes. In order to get it installed, I had to download vmware 4.0 for Windows (because SkyOS won’t work with Vmware 3.2.1 or vmware 4.0 for Linux) install it as a demo version, and install SkyOS to my harddrive that way.
Of course, my demo license for vmware is about to expire, so I have no idea how I’m going to install beta7 if it suffers from the same lockups.
Adam
im no expert at bochs i’ve only ever tried linux under bochs as it comes with a linux config file already, but you could ask someone on the skyos.org forums who has used bochs to create a config file to boot SkyOS 5.0 under bochs.
again not an ideal solution.
you could also once your VMWare expires download trial version of Microsoft Virtual PC 2004, i think its a 30 day trial
“The proof of this is that he messed the design up.”
That’ll shut the TrOLLs up.
”
one man’s opinion doesnt represent the world view
> because SkyOS won’t work with Vmware 3.2.1
VMWare 3.2 works here, no special settings. The only thing I had to do was assigning more RAM than I had thought first (I think 256MB are needed… or were it 128? I don’t remember). No USB, no network, no sound (as none of those features were usable when I last installed SkyOS). It should work that way.
Is that VMware 3.2 with Windows as the host or Linux as the host? If I use 3.2.1 or 4.* under Linux, then the video is completely screwed up for SkyOS, making it unusable.
Adam
are u using VMWare 3.2.1 for Linux? as i think thats wht adam is using
At least 9 out of every 10 attempts ends up with my machine locked during the installation processes.
You may nee dmre patience; there’s a package that takes very long to install, it then may seem it locks up.
At least 9 out of every 10 attempts ends up with my machine locked during the installation processes.
You may nee dmre patience; there’s a package that takes very long to install, it then may seem it locks up.
there’s a package that takes very long to install, it then may seem it locks up.
I assure you, that’s not the case. The mouse complete stops responding, the keyboard completely stops responding (including the caps-lock and num-lock lights), the CD drive stops spinning, the hard drive stops showing any activity, and the debugging output on the serial line completely stops. And it stays this way for at least 30 minutes.
Adam
“…most people in the beta forum can’t even get the beta installed still and were on beta6.”
There have only been a small handful of people that could not get SkyOS installed natively, and only a very few people that could not get it installed at all (VMWare, VirtualPC, Bochs).
Most people have even been able to set up Grub to boot with only 2 commands typed. In the future of course, this will be an automatic process.
off topic: lol 2 posts
on topic: the packages in question are BASE.pkg which is the base files for skyOS; kernel, GUI, etc and Quake.pkg that can sometimes take longer than base.pkg to install
“You may nee dmre patience; there’s a package that takes very long to install, it then may seem it locks up.”
what he has described on the skyos.org forums before is a classic System Lockup, e.g. mouse, keyboard stop responding, IDE access stops.
Sorry, it’s VMWare 3.2 on Windows. And there are some very small quirks with the video that leave horizontal lines on the screen from time to time, but nothing that would make it unusable. Hope this helped you anyway.
Posted this onto skyosnet too
> Is that VMware 3.2 with Windows as the host or Linux as the
> host? If I use 3.2.1 or 4.* under Linux, then the video is
> completely screwed up for SkyOS, making it unusable.
Vesa support in VMWare up until version 4, at least on linux, is completely screwed.
http://www.osnews.com/moderation.php?news_id=7495
I was being friendly and simply giving an answer as to why SkyFS uses OpenBeFS.
It was in response to the following post. Maybe that should be moderated. Although I wouldn’t know why that should be done, because I can’t understand the logic for why my post was removed.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=7495&offset=0&rows=15#253…
“As for the statement some make “1 man alone can’t program an OS!!!!”, that’s just stupid and doesn’t warrant an answer. In place, I’ll leave you with the words of Andrew Tanenbaum “Of course, Linus didn’t sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code…. He had my book…. But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up.””
linux is a kernel so this argument doesnt apply to SkyOS. besides almost all of the userland stuff is under gpl so why the gpl hatred all of a sudden.
learn to accomodate other people’s beliefs
“Now, I’ve read ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ and I respect what Eric S. Raymond and what he has to say, but I have to respectfully disagree with the bazaar method of development for projects as incredibly complex as a system kernel”
wrong again. worked for *bsd and linux amoung many others. so thats invalid too
linux is a kernel so this argument doesnt apply to SkyOS
Does SkyOS lack a kernel? I’m pretty sure the SkyOS kernel is what people are talking about.
worked for *bsd and linux amoung many others.
Well it really hasn’t. No UNIX decendant or clone has made its way to the desktop. I’m not saying the model doesn’t work, but that more than one person working on it doesn’t automatically mean that it’ll grow that much faster. One man made the SkyOS kernel + SkyGI, whereas thousands of people made the Linux kernel and XFree86, and it isn’t that much faster or more advanced.
“Does SkyOS lack a kernel? I’m pretty sure the SkyOS kernel is what people are talking about. ”
hello?. i said linux being a kernel can be written by one person. the same argument quoting tannenbaum doesnt apply to sky os
“One man made the SkyOS kernel + SkyGI, whereas thousands of people made the Linux kernel and XFree86, and it isn’t that much faster or more advanced.”
lol. very funny. do you know how much more advanced these are?. you have a distorted view of reality
lets see who wrote all those core utils, abiword, gtk, open befs, gimp, khtml, linux drivers(which the skyos people look into), crystal icon set and huge amount of stuff that skyos reuses. whats the comparable user base and level of features?
skyos is not even comparable and nothing without the huge amount of work done before them
you have a distorted view of reality
You have a rude view of reality. Thank you for your comments, they will be taken into consideration.
well XFree86 is using a code architecture that is over 20yrs old, when ever an update was made you had to wait for the next release for that update to be included, also XFree86 team kind of shot them selves in the foot with the licence they have which is now no longer compatible with GPL.
and in terms of linux drivers? how they wouldnt work with the SkyOS Kernel? they’re tied to the linux kernel and Xfree86 so how on earth would they work on skyOS, if you know how please tell me? i’d love to get my network card running under SkyOS using the linux drivers for it
well XFree86 is using a code architecture that is over 20yrs old, when ever an update was made you had to wait for the next release for that update to be included,
Well that’s not really accurate. The X11 design may be over 20 years old, but the code architecture has undergone huge changes in that time. Even between XFree86 3.3.* and XFree86 4.* the changes were significant.
Adam
I liked the newsletter, very informative and obviously a lot of work went into it…
Thanks!!!
Well done!