The first issue of Zeta’s Magazine (in German), Zemag, is now online. ZetaNews has more details.
Zemag Goes Online
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
In case anyone didn’t get it, the whole thing is released by yellowTab. They charge € 3.90 plus shipping for it. So you have to pay to get propaganda and advertisements. Whatever, maybe some will appreciate it, but I doubt that any reasonably intelligent people will be among those.
What is it with yellowTab? First they let people pay to test alpha software labeled as “release candidate”, and then they let people pay to get their advertisements?
And why didn’t they just give us a legal, stable Dano with updated drivers? A lot of people would happily pay or that.
Instead they choose to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, including lots of half-bred applications making the whole system unstable and slow (in BeOS terms, still faster than Windows, mind you), spoil the beauty and usability of the BeOS (Preference Apps…), and target home or “idiot” users.
What is it with yellowTab? First they let people pay to test alpha software labeled as “release candidate”
Can you please back up this statement? That the RCs are actually alpha-quality software? I’ve heard too much good feedback to dismiss them as being alpha releases.
And what’s with this hatred against paying to test?? If you don’t want to, don’t. As simple as that.
and target home or “idiot” users.
How can you say something as stupid as that?? BeOS IS and always WILL BE aimed at the home user. I find it extremely disrespectful to call them idiots simply because they do not share your enthusiasm with computers. I see many people not being as interested in music as I am. Does that make them idiots?
Wat’s with this anti-yT attitude?? They are ALSO doing all they can to bring us an as up-to-date as possible version of BeOS. Currently I see no others doing that.
A true BeOS user/fan supports yT. Period.
Thom.. Theres a bunch of reasons as to why people dislike yT.. But I won’t go into any of them
I’m not really sure how you can have a magazine for a product thats not out yet, nor can I see what content it can have other then advertising.
I good computer magazine needs to come from an unbiased source imho too, or else all it can ever be seen to be is advertising.
Can you please back up this statement? That the RCs are actually alpha-quality software? I’ve heard too much good feedback to dismiss them as being alpha releases.
I would love to prove my statement wrong. But most things I heard about Zeta were absolutely negative (stability, consisteny…). I also had a chance to try “RC3” on my R5-comptible machine (XP 1700+, 80 GB HDD, GeForce 256, SiS900 & RTL8139 Ethernet, emu10k1 sound) for two days. Boneyard would crash whenever I clicked “Apply changes”, and I couldn’t bring any of my NICs up with the command line either. on R5 They both work perfectly with BONE. The Tracker was utterly slow compared to R5, and it crashed a few times. The preference apps were put together in one big “Preferences” app (but not even all of them, so it was inconsistent). The JukeBox application crashed a lot and seemed pretty unfinished. All graphics (except for the new SVG icons) seemed amateurish (So bad that I could do them better) and some were utterly useless clutter, like the ones in the Preferences app or the skin in JukeBox.
After two days I uninstalled it because the CD belonged to a friend who wanted to install it on his machine. Most problems I had were just default settings which I found odd and I had to change them, but still Zeta left a bitter taste of being too unstable and inconsistent.
“Release Candidate” generally means the product is basically finished, you just do same bug hunting and fixing, and translation may continue. YellowTab obviously doesn’t consider Zeta being in RC state (they still make major changes like including the new media player in Zeta Neo). My problem was with letting users pay to test software fraudulently called RC. Now that they don’t call their releases RC any more, I will just di like you said: If you don’t want to, don’t.
How can you say something as stupid as that?
I didn’t say that, you interpreted that. But to clear up any misconceptions, note that I used quotation marks around the word “idiot”. I meant to reflect a widespread opinion, without stating that I agree with it.
Au contraire, I realise that BeOS’s usability comes from simplicity, which is not only a good thing for a restricted community, but for everybody. I tend to make a difference between computer illiterate persons who just want to so some web browsing an email, and others who want to do exactly the same thing but apparently refuse to think while doing this (like instead of reading a self-explaining non-technical dialog they just ask in panic “now shall I click ‘yes, proceed’ or ‘no, cancel’?”). The last kind of people can be really annoying.
Wat’s with this anti-yT attitude?? They are ALSO doing all they can to bring us an as up-to-date as possible version of BeOS.
That may well be, but they seem so unmanaged and chaotic about it that I doubt we will ever see a release from them in usual BeOS quality. I would love to see them stop windowsifying or linuxifying anything any more, and just fix bugs. If they did, I would buy Zeta.
Currently I see no others doing that.
Uh, Haiku?
A true BeOS user/fan supports yT. Period.
Yeah, if you say so, then it must be so. No criticism allowed. Period.
You didn’t actually notice that this is a very dangerous attitude?
Take a look at http://www.zemag.de/files/zemag_Universell.pdf . You don’t have to know German to see that this is very basic information which is available freely on the web and is known to every BeOS user, and I think it’s not right to charge for something like this. Ads like this should be distributed free of charge, and they should have included this sort of information on the inside of the CD/DVD booklet, rather than setting up a “magazine” for it.
Bernd did publish a BeOS magazine before YT started, but its completely unacceptable for YT to publish the sole magazine about Zeta and act like its NOT propoganda. Its going to serve the role that an inflight magazine serves on an aeroplane…
Currently I see no others doing that.
Uh, Haiku?
Haiku isn’t doing that. Haiky is working hard, but they are still far from releasing anything as complete as Zeta. This is no attack on the Haiku team– hell no– but they have so many hurdles to overcome before they come even close to what Zeta currently has to offer.
Yeah, if you say so, then it must be so. No criticism allowed. Period.
You didn’t actually notice that this is a very dangerous attitude?
Well, the community should welcome anything done on BeOS development at times like these, even if you don’t agree with the direction they are choosing. The community is not in the position to be too picky and demanding. I think we should be grateful that a company is doing all they can to keep BeOS alive.
This of course does not mean that critisizm should be forgotten– of course not, Zeta is *far* from perfect. BUT, keep the critisizm a bit more real, instead of saying useless stuff like “Zeta is highly unstable on my machine and therefore it is crap” and “Paying for testing software is nonsense” and more of that stuff.
I, for one, am extremely happy with my Zeta RC2 install. I have experienced no speed loss, no crashes, no incompatibilities with R5 apps, and so on. In fact, I even had people who couldn’t run R5– then they tried Zeta, and it did boot, and install.
Just because there’s this die hard group of people who continiously say it ain’t stable, on every single thread, doesn’t mean they are all different people.
Was ich auf meinem “Zettel” stehen habe, ist unter anderem OpenGL, Java, DirectX, verbesserte Druckerbasis, native Browsertechnologie, Flash/Shockwave, PCI-Express, SerialATA und Treiber, Treiber, Treiber.
rought translation:
What is currently on my roadmap is, among others, OpenGL, Java, DirectX, improved printer basis (it makes no sense in German either) native browser technology, Flash/Shockwave, PCI-Express, SerialATA, and drivers, drivers, drivers.
OpenGl:
I would just say this seems very unrealistic in the near future.
Java:
AFAIK, they don’t support the BeUnited Java port in any way. So he just names it because he knows it’s one of the next big things which will hit the BeOS world and that it seems like it was their effort.
DirectX:
This man is definitely either purposely lying or he is just insane. Besides this is one more point where they want to windows-ify BeOS.
Improved printer basis:
Whatever that means, i guess it’s a good idea.
native browser technology:
So where is that WebCore port that yT announced almost a year ago?
Flash/Shockwave:
I believe there was once a developer on the yellowTab forums stating that he was working on an open source flash 6 plugin for BeOS, in order to get a certificate from Macromedia?
And can’t imagine how Mr Korz is going to convince Macromedia to release Shockwave plugin for 500,000 users. There isn’ even one for Linux.
Drivers: The things that would seem most important to most people are listed on the absolute bottom.
I would suggest yellowTab to make some SkyOS-like beta releases with all things except one special area disabled, so everything can be thoroughly tested and fixed. Just give us a BeOS 6 in BeOS quality, and think about OpenGL, DirectX and what not afterwards.
BUT, keep the critisizm a bit more real, instead of saying useless stuff like “Zeta is highly unstable on my machine and therefore it is crap”
I think you may have noticed that i am hardly the only person with experiences like this. Furthermore, if both R5 and Dano run like a charm on a machine and Zeta is a nightmare, it *is* crap.
and “Paying for testing software is nonsense” and more of that stuff.
But it is nonsense. It is correct if a company pays you to test their software. It is also correct if you test their software for free.if they give it to you for free.
But letting end users, or so called home users pay for a what is basically pre-release software also makes no sense for a company, because beta testers are generally a very techical audience. But if you target home users who are not so technically interested, these people will definitely have other priorities than finding and reporting bugs, and also since they are less technically experienced you will have more support issues than resolved bugs.
So paying for testing software *is* nonsense.
Paying to test software is not nonsense. It’s rather new– but not nonsense.
Take SkyOS. When they announced a payed beta program, they were laughed at. Now, I can assure you the beta team consists of close to 340 people, maybe even more by now. Are they all home users (SkyOS’ target)? Hell no, we in the beta team are mostly pretty technical people, who simply had no problems with paying 30$/25E to support a starting company. Remember that the money one sends to yT and SkyOS is put directly into the development of the OS itself.
The fact that *you* find it nonsense means just that– that you find it nonsense. It does not mean it actually IS nonsense.
It’s a different story whether the 100$ yT asks is too much– I namely agree with you on that. But dismissing paying for testing as nonsense is kind of ignorant. SkyOS is progressing at an amazing pace, it literally gets better every release. Proof that the model isn’t nonsense. It works (with the added bonus that the beta program includes a real copy of final, for free, when it’s done).
spend your time and resources on producing a usable product instead.
-G
Direct/X has a partially completed BeOS OpenGL port so no this might not be a lie or insanity. The people who started the port were a third party and at the time it certainly seemed a good idea as many developers only develop to Direct/X not OpenGL. I believe much of Direct/X was originally third party libraries anyway so a little unfair to call it Windowsifying as it is now a respected api (even if it has take a lot of work to get it there) which in many areas is better than OpenGL. Hopefully full OpenGL 2 will level the playing field gain.
As to why drivers might be listed last. They are definitely important and what many of us are waiting for but they are hard to make interesting 🙂 features are much easier to write about than a list of supported hardware.
rough translation:
What is currently on my roadmap is, among others, OpenGL, Java, DirectX, improved printer basis (it makes no sense in German either) native browser technology, Flash/Shockwave, PCI-Express, SerialATA, and drivers, drivers, drivers.
OpenGl:
I would just say this seems very unrealistic in the near future.
I also think it’s unrealistic, however, it’s really extremely important to bring OpenGL to Zeta. Currently only games and 3D applications use OpenGL, but as you can see from Mac OS X (and Longhorn will include a similar technology), more advanced GUIs will use OpenGL for much more than just 3D. And if YellowTAB wants to develop a competing GUI for Zeta some day, they’ll NEED OpenGL.
Java:
AFAIK, they don’t support the BeUnited Java port in any way. So he just names it because he knows it’s one of the next big things which will hit the BeOS world and that it seems like it was their effort.
According to this news item from OSnews, they do in fact support it:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5250
I don’t know if that’s still the case, however.
DirectX:
This man is definitely either purposely lying or he is just insane. Besides this is one more point where they want to windows-ify BeOS.
Actually, there has been an almost complete port of DirectX 8.1 to BeOS a few years ago. I googled for infos and the first link I found is this one:
http://www.begroovy.com/archives/000334.html
Nevertheless I really don’t believe that YellowTab will really come out with a hardware-accelerated DirectX for Zeta. (And of course, Bernd is a bit insane :-D)
Improved printer basis:
Whatever that means, i guess it’s a good idea.
That could mean CUPS will finally find its way to Zeta
native browser technology:
So where is that WebCore port that yT announced almost a year ago?
Good question.
Flash/Shockwave:
I believe there was once a developer on the yellowTab forums stating that he was working on an open source flash 6 plugin for BeOS, in order to get a certificate from Macromedia?
And can’t imagine how Mr Korz is going to convince Macromedia to release Shockwave plugin for 500,000 users. There isn’ even one for Linux.
I don’t believe that any single developer could develop a certified Flash 6/7 player in less than 2 years and certainly not in his spare time.
If noone licence the source from Macromedia and ports it over to BeOS, there won’t be a Flash player for Zeta.
And it’s true, it’s stupid to believe that Macromedia would develop a Shockwave player for Zeta as long as there’s no Linux version.
Drivers: The things that would seem most important to most people are listed on the absolute bottom.
Yes, but at least he says: “Drivers, drivers, drivers” 🙂
Not sure how much they have contributed since this announcement
http://www.zetanews.com/module.php?mod=node&id=118
but it seems likely that yellowtab had some involvement at some stage, they may well have inherited Be Inc’s ported code.
Are any of the beunited java team around to comment?
but they have so many hurdles to overcome before they come even close to what Zeta currently has to offer.
What does it offer over r5 + tweaks? Other than having all the tweaks in one place it offers very little
In fact, I even had people who couldn’t run R5– then they tried Zeta, and it did boot, and install.
And I can garauntee you r5 would if the proper addons were loaded on a boot floppy. But your right, it is nice that zeta can do that right off the bat. but I’m sure some r5 distro will be released with all those things added. *I plan on making one if for no other reason i need it.. heh..*
Nope, your wrong. Be was created for media pros. Musicians, and the others. It was created to be the MacOS of the PC, or the modern day Amiga, not to be a GrannyOS (Euginia, pls tell me if I’m wrong).
True BeOS fan supports yT? Heck I’m not even like what they did to OpenTracker with SVG icons, and that single-window browsing crap. That makes Be Linux-ish and Window-ish in the worst sense
. And now yT goes even further 
((.
What I’d support is a community-driven quality control of some sort, that would keep BeOS install small, up to BeOS standards, consistent and well-tested. Why anyone thinks that putting a big pile of garbage on R5 makes a good distro anyway?
That reminds me of something…
Didn’t Bernd stop the distribution of his old magazine one or two issues too early for those people having a subscription (which was payed in advance, iirc) ?
I think I should check my contract-documents on that matter.
And I can garauntee you r5 would if the proper addons were loaded on a boot floppy.
Don’t tell me how to handle the BE
Seems to be a lot of good German magzines for alternetiv Operating systems. Wish they wrote them in English thow
What does it offer over r5 + tweaks? Other than having all the tweaks in one place it offers very little
BONE?
USB2?
Localization?
Window Decors? (if you like eye candy)
BONE?
Count that among the “tweaks”.
USB2?
Yes, but even Bernd admitted that it needs improvement.
Localization?
Sort of. Most apps are already localized without a locale_server, which isn’t a beatiful solution, but it’s localized nonetheless. And the Haiku people regard Zetas locale_server as a dirty hack.
Window Decors? (if you like eye candy)
There’s WindowShade.
And the decors in Zeta are more of a “eye used chewing gum with dirt” than eye candy.
So, that’s nothing to pay $ 100 for. Okay it comes with Gobe Productive, but still, as long as the product is so unfinished, no…
RC 2 of Zeta ran for 90 days continuously for me and would still be running if I had not rebooted to install Neo. I am not a newby to computers and I am willing to pay to get an early look at OS improvements.
I may not always agree with every tweak but I consider it reasonable for small companies to get financial support in exchange for a look at their efforts.
I don’t find rants and arguments offer much when they exhibit inexperience in business matters. YT is investing in Zeta and that is very beneficial for the community. YT will certainly make mistakes and probably some big mistakes but they are putting investments on the line to do something very difficult.
Those that use something for a few days and then drag it through the mud make a clear statement about their own limited understanding more than about the products and efforts of others where they are so quick to find fault.
There is a way to give feedback to a company that may make a product better and benefit the community.
@ Andre4s: learn German! if you want to read those magazines. Right now, I’m taking German courses and it’s great to be able to read all those German resouces available.
Count that among the “tweaks”.
Count that among “pirated copy of instable beta software”.
The money you send goes directly into the OS. Well, that’s good to know. So where do they get the money to publish shiny advert-filled magazines? Does Santa drop it down the chimney?
“A true BeOS user/fan supports yT. Period.”
And to this I call bullshit. A TRUE BeOS user decides for themselves and doesn’t listen to any marketing machine – yT or otherwise. To quote the great BeOS marketing machine:
“Don’t just THINK different… BE different.”
So don’t ever tell a BeOS user what he/she should or should not do. Own a BeBox? Hows about having all the marketing for running a BeBug back in the day? Have anything other than PE to say you are a true BeOS user? C’mon, get with the program. yT is coasting on the fact it hopes that it’s marketshare stays small enough Palm (now run by JLG) won’t give a rat’s ass about people like yT smearing the good name BeOS. Thay’ve dodged most of it by calling itself Zeta. Woopty doo. And I’m not the only one that feels this way Thom. So get off your high horse and if you want to see yT more widely accepted, then you’ll have to see a big change in their marketing practices. Do note most of the felling in anything yT does is from the original BeOS community. You know, those who know what it SHOULD be running like, not this bastardized prophecy of a perpetual RC release schedule…
Kancept
BeDev ID: 22507
BeOS user since R3
(hint, ^^ there’s a sign of a true BeOS user)
Nice post..
yep, nice post, indeed! Respect!
Paying for testing is acceptable UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES.
I would gladly pay appl $500 membership for developer’s priviledges including getting seeds of the new OSes coming out, a fullversion of OS X client and OS X server (both of which are a combined retail price of 600+ dollars), and I am getting monthly updates and software CDs from them, and of course I can develop.
I would NEVER pay yT for an RC candidate because of the hassle. Had I done so I would have to pay for RC 1 ($100), mail the CD back ($12 mailing cost + 7.50 insurance), pay $30 for RC2, mail the CD back ($12 mailing cost + 7.50 insurance), pay $30 for RC 3, and then pay how much for “Neo” ???/
What a hassle that is not worth it!
I would NEVER pay yT for an RC candidate because of the hassle. Had I done so I would have to pay for RC 1 ($100), mail the CD back ($12 mailing cost + 7.50 insurance), pay $30 for RC2, mail the CD back ($12 mailing cost + 7.50 insurance), pay $30 for RC 3, and then pay how much for “Neo” ???/
What a hassle that is not worth it!
This is not how it goes. You just pay around 10 bucks and keep your old CD.
Has yT ever considered putting out a live cd? I mean, if you’re going to sell your OS for $100, shouldn’t you at least give people a taste?
Very nice post!
boot to the cd, hit alt+f2 to switch workspaces then hit control+alt+del and then click on ‘restart desktop’ and voila! you have a live cd.
Honest question, D… Do you have any idea what you’re talking about, or are you just typing out your butt? If ANYTHING, BeOS freaks tend to maybe make lots of noise in the other direction. That is, talking up things that maybe aren’t really quite as fantastic as proclaimed. (Before I catch the wrath of the BFreaks, I’d better say that I do think there are some wonderful things about BeOS that deserve all the positive talk and so on.. hehe). It’s not the BeOS communities fault that YT and its products are ridiculous. Any and all ‘bleating’ in that regard is well deserved. On that note, I’ll contribute my part.
Ba-a-a-a-ahh.
signed,
Former longtime BeOS community member and maker of sheeply sounds.
You call yourself a real BeOS User – anyway your Be Developer ID is expired cause Be doesn’t exist anymore. Just for the case you missed that news.
Marketing always includes the possibility of exaggeration. You’re right: Be never made any exaggerations*… OK, they also never made any marketing…
And why aren’t the true BeOS Users out there going to tell the people the truth about Microsoft and other Marketing- Made- Companies? The Community is always ready if there is something to criticise about their own OS. But it is never ready when there is something good to say about their OS!!! Nor if there is something to criticise about other Companies!
And btw: Since JLG is the chairman of Palm Source their stock price has been decreased…
*) To be honest: Be promised that there net_server was working fine – that was a lie.
that want to claim that using an illegal copy of a software is better than using a product that could have a future.
What the crap is that supposed to mean? You have no idea what you are talking about, do you?
You’re right: Be never made any exaggerations*… OK, they also never made any marketing…
Yeah, except for the whole Media OS crap that people keep believing to this day.
It was the Media OS, back when the alternatives where MacOS 8.5 and Windows 98.
I know what I’m talking about. Lot of those “Fans” say they use Dan0 or PhOS or whatever – both aren’t legal. They could use a legal soloution (old R5 or new ZETA) instead of this. But all they can do is comparing unfinished illegal versions of BeOS with ZETA.
But all they can do is comparing unfinished illegal versions of BeOS with ZETA.
And apparently Zeta still compares badly to some unfinished illegal test build respectively distributions based on that. So WHY should any one buy it?
You’re right, they could indeed use R5. But you’re not in a position to dictate which OS other people’s computers are running – no one should be, but unfortunately Microsoft is.
Well, I use R5 on my dual P3 PC…
I agree, those R5/Dano based compilations are all crap
. Sign of a true BeOS Fan, right folks? 
The longer it goes without a final release, the more doubtful I am about buying it. Opinions?
I don’t sprachen ze deutch, or I’d love to read this stuff.
I don’t want to tell anyone which OS he/she should use. I just wanted to say what I said.
Buying ZETA R1? I think it will be nice, but don’t expect any wonders – I hope that it will be at least a stable and worthy successor of BeOS. I’m not expecting any groundbraking stuff like OpenGL.
Isn’t zeta basically dano?
oh nooo.. its totally legal. riiight. no one knows that for a fact. It isn’t know for sure if zeta is any more legal than PhOS or dano. Get over it D
When will this “Zeta is illegal”-crap finally stop?
Zeta is legal. Dano is not. PhOS is not. Get over it, helf.
And you know this for a fact? Beyond a shadow of a doubt? I don’t doubt parts of it are perfeclty legal. But I’m not sure on the rest. doesnt really matter though…
“First they let people pay to test alpha software labeled as “release candidate”
Ha-haa… makes me think of all the maroons who payed Apple to beta-test OSX for 160 USD, with half of the more advanced features missing for a year or two…