Haiku Archive

The second version of BeFree has been released today. This is the first pre-0.2 version with a new design, which consists of some system calls for the Linux kernel instead of a user-space daemon. It is beta quality and may have bugs.The release notes are here. BeFree recently abandoned its FreeBSD-centric platform for the Linux one.

In the new OpenBeOS newsletter you will find an editorial, one article about Designer Power Tools and the CVS Digest (up to June 29th). BeOSJournal recently spoke with ex-Be engineer Jean-Baptiste Quéru, who even years after leaving Be Inc., still watches the BeOS Community with keen interest. There is a new update to BlueEyedOS, with an updated font rendering system and a new screen shot for all to see. Also, Cosmoe 0.7rc12 is now out, and includes SDL as its graphics library.

BeOS MaxEdition 3-beta1 is released (260 MB). This distribution of BeOS, based on BeOS 5 PE, has support for more hardware than the normal BeOS 5.0.3, including support for P4s and new AthlonXPs. Burning the booting image is a bit more involved than usual, as it is not a plain ISO image, so please read the readme file before burning the file. Elsewhere, there is a new donation project to help get OpenOffice ported over to the BeOS.

Michael Phipps of OBOS has posted a status update and response to some community discontent. In his post, he explains why a new name has yet to be announced, why some of the status graphs have gone without being updated, and gives a general idea of what is left to be done.

If you were to believe some, BeOS is a dead Operating System. If this was the case you would expect numbers at BeGeistert to be dwindling, but the reality is different, the corpse is moving and this was the biggest BeGeistert yet.

The OpenBFS team is proud to announce that a new version of OpenBFS (Beta 6) is available for download. This new version features a fix for the dreaded "Vnode already exists with a different cookie" problem, a fix for live queries, a fix for searching on non-indexed attributes and lots of other small corrections and additions. BeOSJournal features a mini-interview with BGA. Update: Here are part 2 and part 3 of David Reid's editorials.

This document describes the feature of the BeOS kernel to monitor nodes. First, there is an explanation of what kind of functionality OpenBeOS have to reproduce (along with the higher level API), then the author (Axel Dörfler) presents the implementation in OpenBeOS.

"From my perspective the work being done by OpenBeOS is amazing and the concept was acceptable last year. Zeta has changed the landscape now and their approach, offering backwards compatibility but trying to move BeOS forward as Zeta is a good one and with luck they will succeed. My only question is whether they've gone far enough to warrant the interest they hope to attract." Read the editorial at BeOSJournal, written by David Reid.

BeGeistert 010, the place for BeOS developers to meet up, is now over and BeOSJournal features a round up of the event, plus an interview with Sequel OS' Frans Van Nispen.

The final BlueEyedOS demo CD that we reported recently, is out and about and ready to get downloaded. The CD weighs 106 MB and it requires an XFree86 supported graphics card at 1024x768.

A handfull of well known --to the BeOS community-- developers have come together to create a new OS, which starts where BeOS left off. Bear in mind that this OS, named Sequel, is not a BeOS clone, but a brand new OS which adds new things in the mix while retains the best features found on BeOS and other OSes. The OS is closed source and it is in early stages: it currently boots off a floppy and has a shell. Editor's note: I am part of the small team, since its first days, a few months ago. I designed part of the UI for this OS, but I am looking forward to get a working GUI system before I dive in and do some "real" work on the UI and usability. Stay tuned for more news about Sequel in the future. UPDATE: Please note that this is NOT "my" project. I merely help out the guys on the UI, and nothing more. UPDATE 2: March 2003: I have resigned of my role on Sequel.

This is a little different OpenBeOS newsletter than normal. All three of the articles are opinion pieces and they are all on very related topics. "What about the OpenBeOS community?" "Yet Another Rallying Cry (maybe?)", "Press, PR, Progress and Purse". Additionally, Xentronix announced that they stopped work on their audio editing application, SampleStudio. They collect donations via Paypal, and after they reach the amount of $250 USD, they will open source the application (one of the top-25 apps ever written for BeOS). Check a screenshot here, taken from my BeOS installation.

I have been a big fan of BeOS since the Creative Labs OS Championship Team dumped it on me in 1999. At the time I was working technical support in Dublin and they had some guy looking after support for BeOS who really could not care less. He had never even installed it! I was deputy Linux champion and generally considered interested in OSes so they said "Hey, Stevo! Wanna be a champ? All you need to do is get this OS installed and play with it a bit." So, needless to say, I did and I was hooked.

The Issue 34 of OpenBeOS' newsletter is out. Topics discussed is VM2, is a newly designed virtual memory system designed specifically for OpenBeOS. It is completely object oriented and designed for easier maintenance. Another topic is "Beatrice: Coordinates, Views and Messages" and the commentary "The Fate of Microsoft".