I’ve always been a huge fan of BeOS. However, there was no denying the fact that the BeOS was getting old. As many other BeOS fans, I closely followed two projects: Haiku, and yellowTAB’s Zeta. The latter released 1.0 a few weeks ago. Here are the findings of an old BeOS user.
yellowTAB was so kind to provide OSNews with several review copies. Mensys NL shipped mine, a clean DVD case, containing the disc, a quickstart manual and a card containing serial number and license key. The package looks professional, with a clear description and some screenshots. Minimum and recommenced system specifications are listed. The quickstart manual is bilingual (English and German) and is very easy to understand, even for newcomers to the BeOS platform. The serial and license keys are needed after installation; when you first boot up, a dialog pops up asking you for the keys.
Installation
The installation procedure is different from the old BeOS. First, the installer asks you which out of 25 languages you want to use (includes Russian, Chinese and Japanese). On faster computers, this change is instant, however, on my older PII 400 Mhz, switching languages took a lot longer (but that’s not surprising). After agreeing to the EULA, the partitioner loads up. This partitioner is powered by Paragon, but the functionality is limited. You can only resize partitions when there’s unpartitioned space available to do so (or when you only have one partition). You can’t delete partitions, which I find rather odd; especially taking into account that the partitioning engine is based on Paragon software. They should definitely improve on this.
A complete installation of all software on the disc takes up about one gigabyte. You can tweak the installation per package, so more experienced BeOS users can probably trim the installation quite a bit. When all packages are installed, which shouldn’t take more than about 15 minutes, the installer asks you if you want to install the BeOS bootloader. This procedure is the same on all flavours of the Be, and it’s easy to use. It will correctly identify Windows partitions and make them bootable; however, BeBootMan cannot boot Linux without putting GRUB or LiLo on the Linux root partition (as far as I know, that is).
After all this, the installation is finished, and the CD is ejected and your computer rebooted. This is when the fun starts.
First Impressions
The first thing that anyone notices who’s not familiar with the Be, is boot time. Or better yet, lack thereof. In that sense, Zeta hasn’t changed a bit since r5. Booting is a matter of, say, 15 seconds, completely blowing away any Linux, Windows or OS X install. The short boottime is something that has always been a huge selling point for the Be to me, as I hate slow-booting operating systems (luckily OS X has good sleep/wake functionality, else it would be such a pain to use). The Zeta bootscreen is basically the same as the old r5 one, just the graphics have changed a bit. In fact, the row of icons is still the same; from the atom to the BeBox.
Upon first boot, Zeta presents you with the new preferences application. This application is the complete opposite of what we BeOS users are used to: instead of having one panel per preferences group (ie. network, appearance, etc), you now have all the preference panels loaded into one application. I’m not entirely sure if I like it or not; one of the things I liked about BeOS were those individual panels. However, I think that one application where you can configure everything is a must these days, it’s something the computer user will be looking for. I, myself, prefer having individual panels. But that’s mostly a matter of taste. My hardware, which isn’t all that fancy (cmi 8738 sound chipset, Ati Radeon 9000, RTL-8139 network chipset), was all working correctly out-of-the-box. Even my internal IDE ZIP-drive worked like a charm.
The preferences application itself has grown a lot when it comes to stability. In previous versions of Zeta it could be quite a buggy experience, but it seems that the developers at yellowTAB have taken that criticism to heart: it’s stable as a rock now. You now change your resolution, and configure networking. The latter is something that should be done during install, as far as I’m concerned. There is no warning or whatsoever telling you that your network isn’t configured.
Another noticeable change is of course the SVG icon set. They look crystal clear and extremely sharp, and can be resized to any size without looking ugly. An improvement over the old BeOS icons? To me, yes, but I’ve heard different sounds coming from the BeOS fanbase. The window decor of Zeta is also different from the old BeOS; the tabs are now a bit more shiny. I find this an improvement, but for those who don’t, you can easily switch back to the standard r5 decor. The same applies for the SVG icons.
I did encounter some visual remnants every now and then, especially after unmounting drives. Sometimes, after unmounting my ZIP disk, the ZIP icon remains on the desktop as a remnant. Same applies for the E140 MP3 player. A quick restart of Tracker will fix this, but it’s not the way to go. I also encountered a visual bug in Deskbar: sometimes, it would partially turn all grey.
Applications & Hardware
The applications in Zeta R1 are quite familiar. For office work, we have GoBE Productive 2.0.1. This office suite is full featured, but is of course quite outdated (2000). However, for normal users GoBE will certainly suffice. Doing a port of OpenOffice.org might be a good thing in the future, but for now, GoBE will certainly do.
As for browsing, we have Firefox 1.0.3. Firefox 1.0.3 requires no introduction, however, a few notes on it are justified: fast & stable. I do not know what the yT guys and girls have done, but they made Firefox on BeOS stable and usable. And that’s a great achievement. Firefox loads in 4 seconds, and scrolling no longer tears webpages apart. Firefox is also completely integrated into Zeta: copying/pasting works fine, and graphics/fonts-wise it integrates perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. One minor thing: when you click a locally stored html file, Firefox tries to load, but terminates itself.
For emailing, Zeta recommends to use Beam, even though some people will prefer the good old BeMail. Noteworthy here is that in BeOS, emails aren’t stored in databases, but on a per-file basis. Each email is a file in Tracker (‘Explorer’ or ‘Nautilus’ or ‘Finder’ or whatever), that way, you can use multiple mail clients without problems. This is also very handy for the query features of BeFS (which I’ll get back to later). Another advantage of this approach is that you will not have any problems with corrupted databases.
Instant messaging is an area in which Zeta needs improvement. The only included client is BeAIM (for the AIM protocol, obviously), so it lacks for instance MSN support. Seeing that yT has stated that The Netherlands is their next target, they should definitely include a MSN solution (MSN has close to 100% market share in my country). Even better would be to include the im_kit in Zeta– and I’m sure that in the future, when im_kit has matured a bit more, it will find it’s way into Zeta. I won’t go into details, as im_kit is so extraordinary, it requires an article of it’s own. Anyway, if you want decent MSN support in Zeta, download BME. There is no official release yet but a pre-built package from CVS can be found here.
Zeta comes with a bucketload of multimedia applications. Various video players, music players, movie editors, and so on. I’m not a very multimedia oriented person, so I didn’t have tons of video and music files to test all those applications with. DVD watching is easy (it uses VLC), MP3 files play correctly, and the video and image files from my cameras all worked mighty fine.
As for hardware support, Zeta is a relief over r5. My two digital cameras worked with BeDigiCam (now known as PhotoGrabber). It does require some guesswork: as it turns out, my old Kodak DX3500 is a camera of Type I, whereas my newer Canon PowerShot S50 is one of Type II. Oddity: downloaded movies get stored with the filetype attribute set to ‘image/jpeg’, whereas it should be ‘video/mpeg’. I quickly changed this using BeOS’ FileType utility, but for new users, this could pose a problem. The filetype attribute can be set to ‘image/donkeypoophole’, and it will still play, but not by double-clicking the file, as it will load the image viewer app and not the video player. But, it will play correctly when you first load VLC, and then use ‘Open…’
My Flash-based MP3-player, SanDisk’s Sansa E140, works fine in Zeta. All I had to do was plug the USB cable in, and the Sansa appeared in the Mount menu (which is located in the desktop’s context menu in BeOS). I could then drag/drop songs and normal files onto it.
yellowtAB has put significant effort into supporting printers; now was my time to test this. I plugged in my HP Deskjet 3520, and opened the Printer panel inside the preferences application. My printer was in the list, and it correctly found the printer on the USB port. Zeta also supports IP printing, and you can also print to PDF.
Next up was my Canon CanoScan LIDE 30. This scanner was a pain to set-up in OS X, so I hoped this would be easier on Zeta, but obviously, I had my doubts. The Scanner utility is located in the ‘/boot/home/Pictures’ directory, or in the Graphics section of the Be menu. This application (Sanity) is a front-end to SANE, and this is what worried me; as you can read in the blog entry I just linked to, my scanner did not work with SANE on OS X. Unfortunately, the same applies to SANE for BeOS. My scanner isn’t found, end of story. Too bad.
Queries & BeFS
I wanted to pay special attention to BeFS’ capabilities in this review. With Apple, Microsoft and Linux putting so much emphasis on search tools lately, claiming innovation all over the place, it is always fun to be reminded of the fact that BeOS had all those capabilities even before Apple started working on OS X. I’ll try to explain some scenarios in which BeFS plays a major role.
First of all, let’s say I’m having a discussion via email with Eugenia. Because each email is stored as a single file, I can easily set-up and save a live query with all emails from Eugenia, sorted with newest on top. If the discussion continues to develop, I can refine that query even further, by adding a query on the subject of the emails. All that without ever starting an email client. Remember, these searches are instant; a lot faster than Spotlight. Also, they are ‘live’ queries, which means that they are updated automatically and instantly. You can save those queries as if they were directories. Again, this requires no extra applications or whatsoever.
Another interesting scenario to use BeFS is when you are putting songs on your MP3 player. Want all music from Bruce Springsteen? Or all songs from the Devils & Dust album? All songs from the ‘rock’ genre? You can do that without ever touching a music player or other specialized applications.
You are only limited by your imagination.
Conclusion
In this review, I have hardly addressed all aspects of using an operating system. Still, I have a clear-cut impression of what Zeta R1 is: it is by far the best ‘distribution’ of BeOS currently available. The hardware support is, when compared to r5, significantly better. Stability-wise, Zeta R1 is a huge leap forward when compared to older versions. Some areas still need work; but they are mostly minor things, nothing that will stop you from using this operating system as your full-time, primary system.
Also as a secondary system, on an older computer, Zeta is a good choice. It delivers much more functionality on low-end hardware than any other operating system. yT lists as minimum specifications a 200Mhz processor with 64 MB RAM. I tested it on a PII 400 with 192 MB RAM, and it flew.
The gist: a complete, stable release, with good hardware support and amazing capabilities, that does require some minor tweaking here and there. For only 99,- Euro, a bargain.
–Thom Holwerda
PS:
This review was perfomed on an AMD Athlon XP 1600+ / 512 MB RAM / Ati Radeon 9000 128MB.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
The Kernel is also updated. Now supports +1gig ram, It’s 20% something faster, etc…
JG
And there is a new VM in the Kernel, as well as the CPU depending FPU optimizations which the kernel now understands.
Even newest APIC-Support and HT and EMT64 is on the way, folks.
Best review i saw so far thks
This is a very nice review. The OS sounds very promising.
I’m very impressed with how this operating system is coming along. I’m one of those Windows users looking for something new. I’ve used various forms of linux, and will keep linux as a server OS, but am looking for something a bit new to use with my personal laptop. Anyone know how well this does with laptop support?
My Dell Latitude D600 works with no problem.
even my Wlan card (intel 2100)works (only with 128 wep)
My intel 2200 are noy working but thats a bug (I don’t get a ip.. and reported)
I hade to install the experimantal audio driver to get my sound to work.
and install the latest VLC 8.3 (night build from BeBits)for playing DVD
hmmm…if there were a livecd, I would try it out…
Notebook support _might_ be a problem. Zeta needs a 100 x86 System. A lot of notebook suppliers use to ignore standards of all kind. ^^ Well, for Windows it’s OK. They just add their own drivers for their hardware. The best way to find a suiteble notebook is going to the shop with the Zeta-CD and asking if you may install it! The other way round, going to the shop with a Notebook and asking if you may install one of their copies of Zeta on it, could be difficult.
Luckily the activation system is primitive and quite easy to get around.
(Hint: Replace the Registration app with something… else.)
YellowTab still hasn’t cleared up the legality of their product and what source code they have and how they got it.
It’s best to wait for Haiku, which will be open source.
Do they have the kernel source code and how they got it. Customers have the right to know. Yellowtab is a shady outfit for not coming clean.
As a quote here stated out, there are significant kernel – related changes in the Zeta R1 (Ram limitation, bigger Tracker-Addon space, new VM model f.ex.)
Working on these portions without having the Kernel Sourcecode is simply impossible.
Working on that without Palm’s Notice about that is impossible (if it occurs without their permission or whatsoever).
Meanwhile we still make some bla-bla about the sourcecode ownership of the Kernel of Dano etc., yT inofficially speaks out, that the next Update Version (R1.5) possibly will content a brand-new Kernel. But for sure in Version 2.0 including a 64-Bit Version of Zeta.
So go on living with rumours. Some even believe that OS X is a MediaOS with it’s nearly 40year old legacy OS underlying in it. So it’s ok.
It would be nice if someone from the community wrote an in-depth article about the various different apps that can be used in Zeta.
Thank you for this nice review, but a have one comment.
You say:
“Booting is a matter of, say, 15 seconds, completely blowing away any Linux, Windows or OS X install.”
While it might be faster than the mentioned operating systems, I can boot my linux system into kde in 20 seconds.
And my windows xp takes about 20 to 25 seconds to boot.
So I would not have used the words “blowing away”
>You say:
“Booting is a matter of, say, 15 seconds, completely blowing away any Linux, Windows or OS X install.”
While it might be faster than the mentioned operating systems, I can boot my linux system into kde in 20 seconds.
And my windows xp takes about 20 to 25 seconds to boot.
So I would not have used the words “blowing away”
You got a point, however, who’s to say that booting Zeta would take 15 seconds on your machine? Maybe it takes less? We can only know for sure when someone posts the boot times for the different OSes on the same hardware.
So I would not have used the words “blowing away”
Booting XP on my machine takes roughly 30 seconds. And yes, I find cutting boottime in half “blowing away”
.
Can boot WinXP and Linux to KDE in 20s on P2 400mhz with 192mb of ram? I highly doubt it ;p
Put things in perspective,
1. What is your system specs
2. What tweaking have you done.
I ask this because I have the fastest and greatest laptop and still dont get 15 sec.
Your computer is not typical. Every version of BeOS and Zeta that I have installed on my various computers throughout the years has always booted far faster than any other OS I have ever installed (various Linuxes (slow!), Windows 98 and XP, some others). BeOS/Zeta boots consistently under about 15 seconds while all others boot in around a minute (sometimes longer (Linux)). BeOS/Zeta is by far the fastest, most responsive, and best multimedia capible OS I have ever used.
> While it might be faster than the mentioned operating
systems, I can boot my linux system into kde in 20 seconds.
> And my windows xp takes about 20 to 25 seconds to boot.
I’m curious which version of Linux and which HW you use to have such fast startup, do you use a normally configured distro or did you have to change the configuration to speed up the boot?
The good thing about BeOS is that the fast boot time is the default.
An average AthlonXP P4 System with a 3.0 GHz CPU or alike one won’t need more than 5 Seconds for booting in Zeta R1.
Basically, it depends on the drivers which have to be loaded as an extra, especially if it’s a IDE Card or a SCSI CARD with connected devices on it.
But honestly, this makes XP Pro also slower as well as Linux.
15 Seconds for a 400 MHz CPU with an average set of devices is not a practical Value on W2K, XP, OS X or Linux – it’s utopic.
you all seems to forget that AmigaOs has the fastest boot time than any other OS mentioned here and this on an outdated 14Mhz 68k motorolla processor with 2MB of RAM.
Regards
Lio
What’s your point? DOS can boot in seconds too.
But, just like AmigaOS, its old, antiquated, and defunct. Sure, I loved my Amiga back in the day and would take one over a DOS machine anyday, but both of these systems are very simple compared to all the capabilities of a modern OS. BeOS just happens to offer almost every modern feature known plus it can boot up really fast.
Next up was my Canon CanoScan LIDE 30. This scanner was a pain to set-up in OS X, so I hoped this would be easier on Zeta, but obviously, I had my doubts. The Scanner utility is located in the ‘/boot/home/Pictures’ directory, or in the Graphics section of the Be menu. This application (Sanity) is a front-end to SANE, and this is what worried me; as you can read in the blog entry I just linked to, my scanner did not work with SANE on OS X. Unfortunately, the same applies to SANE for BeOS. My scanner isn’t found, end of story. Too bad.
MY Canon Canoscan LIDE 30 is working fine with SANE on Ubuntu (or pretty much any other Linux Distro). Is this specifically a problem with SANE on non-linux systems or something?
With the exception of the SVG icons, the new UI is awful.
The new preference pane is difficult to use, and the new widgets are ugly.
Luckily one can change the theme, but that doesn’t fix the damn preference pane.
All in all, this is a wonderful alternative to Windows and Linux* for users who don’t need to run those apps (Adobe products, Office, etc.)
*Linux has a long, long way to go before it reaches the “niceness” of Zeta.
—
And as for my previous comment, I’ve paid for my copy (seriously), I’m just not a big fan of OS’ that phone home.
Users can still run Pixel image editor from http://www.kanzelsberger.com
You say:
“Booting is a matter of, say, 15 seconds, completely blowing away any Linux, Windows or OS X install.”
While it might be faster than the mentioned operating systems, I can boot my linux system into kde in 20 seconds.
And my windows xp takes about 20 to 25 seconds to boot.
you can boot XP and linux on a Pentium2 400Mhz in 20seconds approx… thats some P2, takes 25seconds to boot XP on my Athlon64 (including all startup apps)
you can boot XP and linux on a Pentium2 400Mhz in 20seconds approx…
Not in my experience..
While many people like the ability to skin their windows, it detracts from one of the best aspects of BeOS’s little yellow tabs (and yellowTab’s namesake): that you can drag the title tab of a window, and layer them on top of one another, just like tabbed folders. I remember from using the earlier Dano builds that the new window decoration system removed this ability … is it present in Zeta?
While many people like the ability to skin their windows, it detracts from one of the best aspects of BeOS’s little yellow tabs (and yellowTab’s namesake): that you can drag the title tab of a window, and layer them on top of one another, just like tabbed folders.
But you couldn’t move the tab in relation to it’s window, could you? Because don’t you end up with a full window on the left, and a very thin window on the right when doing this?
—-
When OpenTracker added single window file browsing, that pretty much wrecked the whole of the tracker.
How is opening new windows for everything you click a good thing compared to using back and forward? I hated the clutter it gave on Windows and same on BeOS.
But you couldn’t move the tab in relation to it’s window, could you? Because don’t you end up with a full window on the left, and a very thin window on the right when doing this?
Yes, you could. Moving the tab doesn’t change the shapeo f the window, it moves the tab. Instead of having it on the far left, you could put it in the middle, or on the right, or whatever.
How is opening new windows for everything you click a good thing compared to using back and forward? I hated the clutter it gave on Windows and same on BeOS.
Having one window per folder strengthens the “folder == window” metaphor, as well is making it possible to actually use drag & drop to manage files. Most Windows users I know don’t use drag & drop, they use copy & paste (because going to another folder means you can’t see your original folder anymore). The problem is, there is no way to copy and paste files without either knowing how to use the right-click menu or knowing how to use the keyboard shortcuts (which is a UI design no-no).
Having used spatial Nautilus for a good six months in GNOME, I have to say its kind of hard to go back to anything else. BeOS’s Tracker wasn’t really spatial, but it was better than the “browser” paradigm.
“Having used spatial Nautilus for a good six months in GNOME, I have to say its kind of hard to go back to anything else”
amen! that is one thing I thought was horrible…. UNTIL i used it and got used to it now it is like tabbed browsing – nothing you miss until you use it then you wonder how you ever lived without it….
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Any MacOS user from the “good old days” will know this feeling. (=
Spacial is neat, relationalt database is better
Cheers,
. Knut
Yes, you could.<snip>
Ah, that elucidates a lot. Now I’ve only got to figure out how to shift the tabs..
If I recall correctly, you press Shift and drag the tab with your mouse.
Long time between drinks though.
Having used spatial Nautilus for a good six months in GNOME, I have to say its kind of hard to go back to anything else. BeOS’s Tracker wasn’t really spatial
What’s not spatial about it? Unless you have “single window browse” turned on, the only non-spatial feature I’ve come across is that Tracker (irritatingly) lets you open additional windows for the same folder *if* they’re in different workspaces. Originally it didn’t do that, but some misguided soul “fixed” it when Tracker was made open source.
Yes, you could slide the tab in relation to the window. If I remember correctly you just hold the ctrl key down, click and drag to move them.
I never moved them much, just used lots of workspaces.
How is opening new windows for everything you click a good thing compared to using back and forward?
Because then you don’t have to constantly resize windows to fit their contents.
I hated the clutter it gave on Windows and same on BeOS.
Clutter is not intrinsic to a spatial file manager, especially when you know how to use it.
I used to run BeOS back in the 4.5 days and it rocked as a desktop system. Why people use such a piece of shit as the proprietary Microseft XP system is beyond me.
It seems like Be’s distinctive feel has been lost a little. In particular, that big config app doesn’t fit in. In the old BeOS, every window basically had one function; this was easy to use and very consistent. I’m not sure YellowTab understood…
Actually, I guess no one really did. When OpenTracker added single window file browsing, that pretty much wrecked the whole of the tracker.
I agree. The nice thing about BeOS, was that it was a very Mac-ish UI, except fast and on a PC. Zeta seems very different, from the bloated preference app to the gaudy bling-bling tabs to the WinXP rip-off scrollbars.
On my r5 machine OpenTraker has the option of single or multiple window browsing…so the choice is up to the user. I use single window on my laptop because it only supports 800×600 resolution so opening a lot of windows can make me feel crowded.
the trick was to use CTRL + doubleclick. This would open a new windows and close the old one. I really like the multiwindow approach combined with all the shortcuts.
Zeta is a nice OS, but is doesn’t feel like the old BeOS anymore.. that is what i think. But still it is a good OS. And i like it … but it made a little problem with my pc .. USB 2 support did not work well .. did not see any usb devices and unplugging something from the usb caused a KDL ( Kernel Debugger Land, BeOS variant of the BSOD ) . After removing the ehci driver, the usb2 card work fine in USB1 mode.
And my new laptop just arrived : wireless and sound not working, but the rest works fine.
Yellow Tab have done very little to the UI Widgets past ironing out bugs. If you don’t like the way they look, blame Be.. all the look and feel comes directly from the post R5 appserver codebase.
>all the look and feel comes directly from the post R5 appserver codebase.
This look and feel ‘post R5’ was purely for testing/beta purposes, never released to public by Be,inc
AFAIK the app_server also runs some major changes since Dano – just look at for in the version on R1 😉
In fact there are realy just a few portions of ‘Dano’ which weren’t touched by yT, or rewritten!
I can’t fully agree. ZETA is much slower than BeOS R5 in startup time (but still much faster than any OS I know). I’ve tested this OS on Pentium 4 2,2 GHz and my old PII 333 MHz.
While it is quite stable the included Firefox is really a RAM Buster and it doesn’t make that fun to surf with that on my PII (also 192 MB RAM). I agree that this is better than surfing with R5 anyway.
I can’t say that Hardwaresupport is better than in R5 cause my PCs work fine with R5 too, so I simply don’t know. Dealing with USB Sticks is an improvemend in ZETA.
In some aspects ZETA is slower and less stable than R5. Nevertheless, it’s useable but it simply lacks of that genius great OSes from the real Gurus simply have.
Disapointingly the improvements between R5 and ZETA aren’t as big as years of development would promise (but they exist).
Referring to german user forums, ZETA isn’t able to print, scan, boot on SCSI systems and it didn’t supports Multiprocessing as well – that’s a shame, cause BeOS was famous for its’ SMP support.
If you’re interested in alternative OS Technology than ZETA is worth a look although you could have a look at BeOS R5 PE (which is freeware) just as well.
On my dual P4 Xeon, it supports both CPUs, works with my SCSI disks, and prints perfectly. I don’t have a scanner, so I can’t say anything about that.
The test was done on a 400MHz machine, so in comparison, its not bad at all!
Cheers,
. Knutsi
The test was done on a 400MHz machine, so in comparison, its not bad at all!
It wasn’t. The PII 400 is just a side-machine I have. The test itself was done on a AMD Athlon XP 1600+, Ati Radeon 9000 128MB, 512 MB RAM. If you looked at the screenshots, you would’ve known
.
What’s with some people and boot times. Sure, 15 seconds beats any on my Linux boxes. So? I boot my home server once per 40-60 days. Why should I care for boot times? Desktop, you say? Well, I boot my desktop PC (with Windows or Linux) once (maybe twice, if I have to leave to the office). I do it while making myself a brekfast and coffee. I still don’t care if it’s up within 15 seconds.
Yes, it’s nice to have fast boottime, but it’s overrated.
At work I need to have my computer started at a certain time or else my boss will think I’m late. It takes about 10 minutes to start up Windows with all the applications that’s needed for my work (Windows itself takes about 5-6 minutes). If I could cut that boot time in half I could miss a subway train and still have time over. So don’t diss boot times. Even though my situation depends a lot on how the autostart apps behave I would’ve saved time if Windows could behave better.
I care about boot times and maintenance-free computers because computers are made for the purpose of serving us humans, not vice versa, belive it or not. I view my *personal* computer similary to how I view my scientific calculator; which means that old fashioned mainframe-like behaviors (like maintenance, loud fans, heat, or silly boot times) disturbs me.
Best regards
Henrik K.
Zeta should release a trial version, I for one have interest on trying yellowTab, but I won’t cash out 99 bucks and _then_ see if it works or not on my laptop the way it should.
So a 30-day trial version, or even better, a LiveCD, would be great to attract curious users.
I fully agree. I prefer not to buy a ,,cat in a sack” as Polish proverb says. To see it’s to belive. 🙂
“I prefer not to buy a ,,cat in a sack” as Polish proverb says.”
Nice. We say almost the same in Italian: “the cat in the sack”
hmm, im starting to suspect that its a kinda universial expression as it exist here in norway to
In Sweden we say “pig in the sack”
>In Sweden we say “pig in the sack”
Which is obviously (
) the most correct. I mean, come on, who the fuck _buys_ a cat?
Granted, not many people buys pigs these days either supposedly the sayings are fairly old.
Round here you “buy a pig in a poke” …..it might be a moggy but you won’t know untill you “let the cat out of the bag!”
To me, Zeta *does* feel like BeOS, it has just moved on. Windows XP doesn’t feel like Windows 95 either, but still, it still has the same feel.
As much as I liked BeOS r5, there is no point in going all sentimental and holding on to 1999ish technology forever. Zeta is moving on, and that’s a good thing.
Windows XP doesn’t feel like Windows 95 either, but still, it still has the same feel.”
Correction: “Windows XP isn’t the same as Windows 95 either, but still, it still has the same feel.”
I wouldn’t say that was comparable, as windows doesn’t have a single feel. It randomly uses both mdi and sdi (or both, in office’s case), toolbars move around, dialogs are used for different sorts of things, and so on.
BeOS on the other hand was very consistent, with only some odd apps really needing to be learned, most you would just start using and feel comfortable with.
Moving to a garish look without a spatial Tracker isn’t “moving on”, its “moving backwards”. Having enormous, space-wasting icons in Tracker is moving backwards. Having a media player that looks like a children’s toy instead of a proper BeOS application (like SoundPlay does) is moving backwards. Having an “all-in-one” configuration app that violates several UI principles (eg: egregious amounts of blank space) is moving backwards.
for you it isnt but dont you remember that Yt is aiming for the NEW users in stead of the old user base? they want to sell…and many people already do…
as for the icons, you can make them smaller
as for the “garnish look” you can choose for R5 theme.
as for the Media Player..People want eyecandy..
i dont think its bad..look at Win XP everybody was saing the Teletubby Interface…and what hapened?? everybody uses it now…
just my 2 cents
I switched the company name and the product name
Is it possible to theme the UI so it looks exactly (or almost) like R5? I want the plain yellow tabs and original scrollbars present in R5.
Can boot WinXP and Linux to KDE in 20s on P2 400mhz with 192mb of ram? I highly doubt it ;p
As I said in the comments and as seen on the shots, this review wasn’t done on my PII!
Is it possible to theme the UI so it looks exactly (or almost) like R5? I want the plain yellow tabs and original scrollbars present in R5.
Did you even read the review?
It is possible, in the control panel,
not sure for the translation ‘appearance’
( dutch : uiterlijk )
But it doesn;t exactly look the same as in R5 …
That is another think i don’t know if i like it, the control panel, everything in one app.
Every menu-link to the separate preference apps still remain, they only link directly to a page in the new preferences app.
So you can still invoke a sub-part of the preferences the old way.
A short boot time is very important for laptop users. Windows and Linux have longer boot times because they have more hardware support and more features, which requires more services to load on startup, and so on. They have, maybe, more self-healing capabilities, increasing the boot time.
For example, Slackware had a very short boottime, until Pat decided to add hotplug support. You can still disable it easily (thanks, Pat) but leaving it enabled is advised, especially for laptops when you often plug in all kinds of hardware. Hotplug slows doen the bootup by several seconds.
Because I sometimes need to make a quick note, and I mean quick, I have installed DOS on a seperate partition. It has virtually no boot time at all, and all I have to do is “vi mynote.txt” to start editing. (I have installed vi for dos and command-line completion).
I recommend OS developers to offer some kind of console which must by ready to use before the whole OS has started up, so one can access files and editing textfiles within a few seconds after powering on the system.
,,A short boot time is very important for laptop users.”
Hibertnation. Suspend mode.
,,Because I sometimes need to make a quick note, and I mean quick, I have installed DOS”
Wha?! Maybe you want a pice of stone and something pointy? You could just add a instant-Linux based on initrd or a microLiveCD/USB. Installing DOS in 2005? To get quick note? I have no words.
,,I recommend OS developers to offer some kind of console which must by ready”
You’ve ever heard about init 1?
@ emil:
> Hibertnation. Suspend mode.
No. I need full startup to detect network settings and so on. You know, I have a laptop to take it to different networks.
> a instant-Linux based on initrd or a microLiveCD/USB
way slow compared to DOS on a harddisk.
> init 1
hmm, yes but forgot about that one. thanks for reminding 🙂
Well, on Linux all you need is hibernation and a icon pointing to “service network restart”. That’s going tp take all of 2 seconds+ whatever your DHCP takes.
the boot time is only true if you are using a non-Gentoo linux OS. With gentoo, my laptop boots in a manor of seconds, without a bloated kernel, and runs fine. But installation time must be factored in I guess…
and linux on the desktop remains elusive, perhaps we should rally around zeta as an alternative to windoze?
–or os x — though jobs may not open it.
personally i think they should re-write the entire OS to be x86-64 native.
LinuxBIOS. Boot times as low as three seconds if you have hardware that supports it. ’nuff said.
Now, back on topic. Will zeta play nice with Vmware workstation 5? My previous attempts to run BeOS on it have been less than pleasant.
just found an article about this (thanks to google)
http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20020702.html
if you use this, it gives you a simple shell really fast:
lilo: linux rw init=/bin/bash
if you use this, it gives you a simple shell really fast:
lilo: linux rw init=/bin/bash
*Don’t*.
If your distro uses an initrd image or your kernel doesn’t have all the required driver compiled into the binary image, at best you’ll have an empty OS under your hands.
sysinit is there for a reason.
Even init 1 may cause grief on some distros.
Gilboa
OK, thanks, I just stick to {
lilo: linux rw 1 /or/ lilo: linux rw single } then
*Java 1.4.2 or higher
*Firefox
*Thunderbird
*MSN
postgresql port would be nice..
Hell, I’ve been waiting for Java since the beginning
you’re an idiot, you’ve taken his comment out of context, its clearly sarcasm.
you’re an idiot, you’ve taken his comment out of context, its clearly sarcasm.
Oops, it was sarcastic.
Oh and you’re a mean poopy-face.
that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in the past day…
guess you could skip POST
Just a thougth you forgot about the sourceforge.net beos project , their is another beos still free to download , its open source and free to download , but My real question is is their a port of ndiswrapper for beos and wireless network support for it , otherwise I will never be getting it online at all ? I have a Wireless-G linksys type network with router
OpenBeos = Haiku
They just changed the project’s name.
As soon as we secure lawyers to defend us. In the meantime…
Microsoft Hires Ex-Be Employee –
http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/2005/32.htm
Jonathan Thompson joins LucasFilms –
http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/2005/33.htm
He got some important details completely wrong, though, and I OBJECT!
I have NEVER ingested anything with coffee in it! He must have been fooled by the smell from other coffee drinks nearby; I prefer hot chocolate, however…
Jonathan Thompson
I tried to change it to cocaine, but “sipping” didn’t work.
Hmm, sounds interesting. How would you say it compares to Mac OS X 10.0?
Cause it seems to me that OS X managed to get from 10.0 to 10.3 (The first truly useable system in my opinion, maybe Jaguar would do) pretty damn quick, and so I don’t see why YellowTab can’t do the same.
i agree boot times are important, i have a system i use at home after work for work related stuff, im an electrical engineer, so my system is full to the hilt of software for my job, it can take a good 5 minutes to boot that machine.
Great review, I’m on the edge of a purchase thanks to this… need a few more days to pry the wallet open
Here’s hoping Zeta gets a solid ‘bite’ of the desktop O.S market and the software base starts to gather more pace.
What’s with this boot time obsession? I’d label some of you with ‘Obsessive compulsive boot time disorder’ if it existed… move on, discuss something more important.
Thanks for the review. Now i can buy zeta.
Zeta hardware support is much better than what we’d expect. For instance, I connected an iPod and transfered mp3’s across using USB2 (BeBop is not iTunes, but it sure is faster). Zeta supports NDIS so you can (theoretically) use a lot of Windows network drivers. Wireless also works. CUPS for printing. SANE for scanners. Zeta actually detects modern CPU features (SSE, SSE2 etc) and uses them (check the syslog to see which components are patched).
It feels much more up to date than what you’d expect. It’s a shame BeInc couldn’t release this back in 2001.
YellowTab still hasn’t cleared up the legality of their product and what source code they have and how they got it.
It’s best to wait for open source Haiku
A fair amount of the review was fine, but the Spotlight stuff really bothered me. It’s just such a lie:
Remember, these searches are instant; a lot faster than Spotlight.
Sure, because in Zeta no content is being indexed. When you search for an e-mail in Zeta, you can search only by the metadata (author, subject, etc.). Spotlight will search the content (optionally, of course). Little bit more work required, no? It’s a completely unfair comparison. Searching by content is so much more useful that I’ll gladly take a speed hit for it when I want that functionality.
Again, this requires no extra applications or whatsoever…Want all music from Bruce Springsteen?…You can do that without ever touching a music player or other specialized applications.
Sure, ummm, but the author “conveniently” forgot to add the single most important thing! How does the BFS MP3 attributes database get populated? Unlike Spotlight or similar technologies, it doesn’t have the concept of “Importers” or “Syncers” or whatever you want to call them. Even if you’ve spent hours meticulously setting up your ID3 tags, Zeta won’t be able to find your music. You have to either manually enter the same information for each song again, or you must download a program that will read the ID3 tags and then set BFS attributes for them. In other words, unless you rip every CD using a BeOS program that can set BFS attributes and don’t have any MP3s you want to use from your other operating systems, *you do need specialized applications.* The rest of the world uses ID3 but BFS is blind to it.
This is the kind of thing that’s built into more fleshed out tools like Spotlight. Oh, and heaven forbid you ever decide to change an ID3 tag, because you’ll need to run the tool again to re-sync up the BFS attributes. This is also true of other standard metadata information, such as EXIF tags, Word document metadata, movie sizes, you name it. BeOS fans have tried to sell the world on BFS for years without ever acknowledging the massive amount of work it takes (speaking as someone who ran BeOS for four years) the user to keep the attributes correct and up-to-date. Spotlight solves this problem with Importers, which in addition to reading the file content can also recognize common metadata like ID3 tags, EXIF tags, etc., and populate the internal Spotlight database with that information. Whenever a file is updated, the Importer is automatically re-run for that file, so the database remains up-to-date. It’s a complete solution. The BeOS implementation is not.
For years, BeOS fans have been trying to sell people on BFS, but it’s simply not a complete solution. Since its creation it’s been technically very awesome, but all the “look how useful this will be to you!” talk is all smoke and mirrors until the burden isn’t on the user to get all that metadata into the BFS database.
The rest of the world uses ID3 but BFS is blind to it.
This is the kind of thing that’s built into more fleshed out tools like Spotlight. Oh, and heaven forbid you ever decide to change an ID3 tag, because you’ll need to run the tool again to re-sync up the BFS attributes. This is also true of other standard metadata information, such as EXIF tags, Word document metadata, movie sizes, you name it. BeOS fans have tried to sell the world on BFS for years without ever acknowledging the massive amount of work it takes (speaking as someone who ran BeOS for four years) the user to keep the attributes correct and up-to-date.
You make valid points about content-search, but I disagree about it being a BeOS failure that it doesn’t sync ID3tags with the attributes.
Theoretically, it should be easy enough to implement into the programs you use to change tags to also change the attributes, or to make some nifty OpenTracker plugins for it (anyone?
. But attributes are awesome, and the world should’ve adapted to attributes, not the other way around (and it’s only happening slowly now). Having different formats for song-information on ogg, mp3, midi and eac isn’t making things better (does Spotlight support all those tag-formats btw?). Having a singular attribute naming the song’s artist is a whole lot better. It would’ve been really nice if those attributes were downloadable across the internet unzipped by now.
Attributes are a nice idea in theory, but we live in a world of commodity operating systems, and it seems attributes just didn’t make the cut. At this point, I’m far more intrigued by Hans Reiser’s ideas about exposing embedded file information (eg: id3 tags, EXIF tags) through the filesystem itself.
Theoretically, it should be easy enough to implement into the programs you use to change tags to also change the attributes
Up to this point in the BeOS’s history, it has never happened. And because stale data is usually worse than no data at all, it’s a boil the ocean problem: every program touching any kind of metadata would have to be updated, because any chance whatsoever of updating a file without updating the metadata means the chance for stale (meta)data.
or to make some nifty OpenTracker plugins for it (anyone?
It is probably not the place of OpenTracker to do this sort of thing, although I guess it could be hacked in, unless Tracker wants to handle notifications for every file modification in the system. (I could be wrong on this point, but I believe that currently Tracker only registers for file modification notifications for files/directories that are currently visible.)
But attributes are awesome, and the world should’ve adapted to attributes, not the other way around (and it’s only happening slowly now).
The world didn’t. You can make whatever theoretical argument you want, but in 2005, if I download a (presumably legal) MP3 from the internet, it will have ID3 tags set but not extended attributes. If I receive an e-mail containing photos from someone, they will have EXIF tags set, but not extended attributes. The BeOS implementation remains theoretically cool but practically not very useful. Saying “the entire internet and most programs should be re-written, and then it will be useful!” is not really a good answer. Metadata-embedded-in-data-files is here to stay, at least for a while. Implementations like Spotlight have adapted to the realities of the world and managed to make things useful. It’s not like the concept of an Importer is rocket science. Be just never had the time / resources to really turn BFS into a end-user solution, and it seems that Yellowtab aren’t doing so, at least for now, either. Selling BFS as a convenient end-user tool is just dishonest.
does Spotlight support all those tag-formats btw?
Spotlight allows anyone to write Importers for any file type they want, much like Be’s concept of media translators. As for whether Apple wrote Importers for all those filetypes and shipped them as part of Tiger, I do not know. Certainly they did for MP3 and AAC, although I would be shocked if they bothered with OGG. Doesn’t stop anyone else from writing one, though.
Having a singular attribute naming the song’s artist is a whole lot better
…which is exactly what Spotlight does. The Importers Apple ships match the Artist tag from both MP3 files and AAC files to a Spotlight tag called “Artist”. Say a new format comes out and uses “Performer” instead of “Artist”. A Spotlight Importer could still map that tag to the “Artist” tag in the Spotlight database.
It would’ve been really nice if those attributes were downloadable across the internet unzipped by now
But they’re not and they won’t be any time soon, so devising a “solution” that relies upon that being implemented is foolhardy. I think a good analogy is Be’s (excellent) file type handling. If the file has a MIME type specified, great, use it! But if not, rely on the .extension to help identify it. In practice, it worked great. It’s a very similar approach to what Apple used in Spotlight. “No metadata for the file? Well, look to see if there’s any metadata embedded in the file that we can expose!” I imagine that Be’s engineers would have eventually implemented this, but the fact is, it’s not there, and Thom’s discussing it like it’s a complete, ready-for-the-user solution like Spotlight is simply dishonest.
If you’re willing to do a lot of work (i.e. manually syncing everything yourself, effectively meaning “use third-party sync-it programs like Spotlight Importers, but instead of having the system take care of the re-syncing for you, do it yourself”), BFS is extremely cool. But I can testify that as a multi-year user, it’s too much work to be worth the effort. And its coolness has been lessened with the years, as tools like Spotlight not only bring that kind of syncing to the table, but also allow for full-text searching and other features.
“If you’re willing to do a lot of work (i.e. manually syncing everything yourself, effectively meaning “use third-party sync-it programs like Spotlight Importers, but instead of having the system take care of the re-syncing for you, do it yourself”), BFS is extremely cool. But I can testify that as a multi-year user, it’s too much work to be worth the effort.”
Hrrrmm. I agree with many of your points, and disagree with some, but I don’t think Thom was selling it as a Spotlight-buster. And changing and resynching attributes are not really that hard… and how often do they change if they were well thought-out in the first place?
I still have R5.0.3. I am also bucking for Haiku (and have Zeta RC3 as well). BUT! My primary computers are all Macs running OS X 10.4.x. So I understand what you are saying… but to me, BeOS was great and BFS was fantastic and quite useful. I wrote code to use file attributes to map information to my wife’s artwork which could be pulled up and used via python on her website… it was fast and worked well and easy to add new images and map new attributes to it (since the data mapping could be done programmatically OR THROUGH the tracker).
What you are missing about BFS is that all attributes are immediately available via the user interface and modifiable as well. This is something Spotlight lacks. It is also faster and was programmatically very [easily] accessible since it is an integral part of the file system – granted having a large index file for spotlight is no slouch and works quickly as well.
Again, I understand what you are saying, since I am a BeOS user as well as a Mac OS X user (and a linux user and a windows user (on a regular basis)), but I think you are unfairly tearing BFS and file attributes down and punditing on your soapbox.
I always found it a li dumb not to be able to search other FS eg NTFS partitions in BeOS.
What about Be_indexed? It should do that Apple ‘importer’ does, tried it? I’m curious.
Also I’d like to search in specific folders only but the search function in BeoS can’t even filter that out : (
Nutela
What about Be_indexed? It should do that Apple ‘importer’ does, tried it? I’m curious.
Partially, but not exactly. I haven’t personally used BeIndexed, but from looking at its description, it looks like it’s simply a full-content searching engine. To the extent that Importers also provide the content to Spotlight, they are similar in that way. But really, BeIndexed is more akin to Panther’s search engine (i.e. “periodically index the drive”) than Spotlight.
Spotlight’s Importers also provide the metadata to the Spotlight database. The BeOS equivalent would be an importing engine that set the BFS attributes, so that you could do all the typical fun BFS things, like live queries, etc., which you can do with Spotlight. BeIndexed does not do that; it’s completely separate from BFS. And, of course, one of the most important things is that Spotlight is hooked into the kernel, so that the database information is updated when the file is — it’s always up-to-date. BeIndexed provides for no such thing.
So really, BeIndexed is more akin to Sherlock in Mac OS 9 or Panther’s full-text searching. It’s not really at all to the level of Spotlight, or even really BFS.
Searching by content is so much more useful that I’ll gladly take a speed hit for it when I want that functionality.
Eh, so will I – that’s why they have this neat little program called “grep”.
Sure, ummm, but the author “conveniently” forgot to add the single most important thing! How does the BFS MP3 attributes database get populated? Unlike Spotlight or similar technologies, it doesn’t have the concept of “Importers” or “Syncers” or whatever you want to call them. Even if you’ve spent hours meticulously setting up your ID3 tags, Zeta won’t be able to find your music. You have to either manually enter the same information for each song again, or you must download a program that will read the ID3 tags and then set BFS attributes for them.
Yes, Spotlight is a much more automagic system. The trade off is that it’s significantly less flexible than queries.
In other words, unless you rip every CD using a BeOS program that can set BFS attributes and don’t have any MP3s you want to use from your other operating systems, *you do need specialized applications.*
Or you can just play them in SoundPlay, which will write the ID3 tags to attributes the first time you play a file.
The rest of the world uses ID3 but BFS is blind to it.
Um, of course it is. Why would the filesystem have awareness of MP3’s internal metadata format?
– How close is the R5 theme to R5? Are the tabs shiftable?
– Is Tracker.NewFS compatible with Zeta R1?
– Do Switcher* keyboard shortcuts work?
– How good is the font rendering in Zeta R1 compared to BeOS R5 and Dan0? Does it have sub-pixel anti-aliasing? Is it possible to tweak it?
Thanks!
*Switcher: http://bebits.com/app/233
I tested Zeta R1 in both, and posted my comments on the yellowtab forum here:
http://yellowtab.com/phorum/phorum.php?read,41,118946
Sane has supported the CanoScan LiDE 20/30 for well over a year. My guess is that the USB interface isn’t handing off the correct info to SANE and needs a bit more work in Zeta. Of course, they might have just left out the SANE backend for the CanoScans.
I’ve left my impressions of the Zeta partitioning software on ZetaNews.
FurryOne
There was a test in the German c’t magazine last month and the conclusion was that it is not yet ready for primetime, so they don’t advise you to buy it. Even Zeta’s sales manager admitted that it should be used next to Windows since Zeta itself is far from being complete.
At least you get your money back if you can’t get it to work on your system with help of the telephone support
“At least you get your money back if you can’t get it to work on your system with help of the telephone support
”
Are you serious? That’d be good news for me! Where did you read that, please?
That German sale manager said so.
“Whoever buys Zeta and can’t get it to run on his machine with the help of our telephone support can send back his CD and will definately get a refund.”
Not sure whether this is only valid for German customers though.
Well, Atributes in BeOS are a good example of having a great technology (back in the mid 90’s and still today) and to not use it.
Apple made a trick with an additional Database to get a much nicer and much more userfriendly soloution of the same problem. They also use importes to fetch file information and to write them into the Spotlight Database.
Be could have done this with an easy grap_server (or Grap-O-Matic
10 years before, but they simply missed the opportunity to create a much more usable OS.
use id3attr to convert id3 to attributes
http://www.bebits.com/app/1652
use id3attr to convert id3 to attributes
Dude, did you even read my comments before responding? In both I specifically mentioned that you can convert from ID3 tags (and other common types) to attributes with the help of third-party tools. Here’s the Cliffs Notes version:
or you must download a program that will read the ID3 tags and then set BFS attributes for them
…*you do need specialized applications.*
Oh, and heaven forbid you ever decide to change an ID3 tag, because you’ll need to run the tool again to re-sync up the BFS attributes
If you’re willing to do a lot of work (i.e. manually syncing everything yourself, effectively meaning “use third-party sync-it programs like Spotlight Importers, but instead of having the system take care of the re-syncing for you, do it yourself”)
Of course, there are still several problems:
1. The user has to know what the difference is between embedded metadata, such as ID3 tags, and BFS attributes, and that you can only search based on BFS attributes. (Indexed BFS attributes, at that, but that’s a different issue.)
2. The user has to understand that the two, being distinct, can get out of sync, and understand when and why he/she must manually sync them (i.e. run the converter tool again).
3. The user must realize that every new file not originating from his/her system (i.e. if a CD is ripped in BeOS the program will probably set the BFS attributes, but files acquired otherwise won’t) will have to be manually converted, and must be vigilant in doing so.
Compare that to a system like Spotlight, where all that metadata is automatically populated and automatically kept up-to-date.
> Compare that to a system like Spotlight, where all that metadata is automatically populated and automatically kept up-to-date.
And if a user don’t want that? Or if a user wants automatic updates for a select number of different file formats?
And if the separate metadata used by Spotlight crashes or gets corrupt?
Apparently, Spotlight has the advantage of being userfriendly with eyecandy whereas BeOS/ZETA has the advantage of the journaled filesystem and the architectual solution that has by far the most flexible approach, that paves the way open for anything you can do with a attributed filesystem.
YellowTAB should not make the mistake of providing solutions that only affect the outcome (Ten’s of years of non-improving filesystems). They should not look to other OS-es but build on the immense strength of the BeOS architecture, but when providing interfaces to the user they should ask themselves what a user wants and how a user wants to invoke a function intuitively and speedily.
Strength comes from the inside, i.e. core design of an OS.
And if a user don’t want that? Or if a user wants automatic updates for a select number of different file formats?
Why would a user not want this? Are you telling me that users will say “yes, please let my indexed metadata becomes out of date?” Would then, for example, recommend that users can say “hey filesystem, don’t ever update the ‘modified’ date for .doc files!”
And if the separate metadata used by Spotlight crashes or gets corrupt?
…and what if the data in the BFS filesystem gets corrupt? In both systems, you’re storing the data somewhere and using it in the same fashion. Both therefore have a similar chance for corruption. The nice thing about a system like Spotlight is that the database could be rebuilt. If you had corruption within BFS itself, all your data would most likely be hosed.
Apparently, Spotlight has the advantage of being userfriendly with eyecandy whereas BeOS/ZETA has the advantage of the journaled filesystem and the architectual solution that has by far the most flexible approach, that paves the way open for anything you can do with a attributed filesystem.
I don’t think you really know what you’re talking about. For one, Mac OS X’s filesystem, HFS+, is (now) both Journaled and supports extended attributes. So BFS has no “architectural” advantages, and can do nothing as an attributed filesystem that Spotlight cannot. (Yes, Spotlight can query the extended attributes, just as BFS can).
Now, as for “most flexible”, this is where your point starts to get really absurd. With either Mac OS X or with BeOS, files can have extended attributes. How is BeOS more flexible? With Mac OS X, any (non-network) filesystem can be searched. With BeOS, you can only search BFS partitions. How is BeOS more flexible? With Mac OS X, any attribute — or content — can be searched. With BeOS, you can only search based on user-indexed attributes and cannot search based on content. How is BeOS more flexible? With Mac OS X, metadata is automatically populated and automatically synced. With BeOS, it’s left up to the user. How is BeOS more flexible?
Strength comes from the inside, i.e. core design of an OS.
Agreed, and you have made it abundantly clear that you are rather ignorant about the architecture of completing products.
>While it might be faster than the mentioned operating systems, I can boot my linux system into kde in 20 seconds.
>And my windows xp takes about 20 to 25 seconds to boot.
>So I would not have used the words “blowing away”
And even if it took WinXP 2minutes to boot it won’t change anything. Now that most OSs are so stable you’re only supposed to boot one time… It doesn’t change anything if it takes 2minutes or 15seconds.
5 or more years ago, ok… but today
Leo.
And even if it took WinXP 2minutes to boot it won’t change anything. Now that most OSs are so stable you’re only supposed to boot one time… It doesn’t change anything if it takes 2minutes or 15seconds.
Thing is, I have a life, which means that I don’t *want* to let my computers running all the time. It eats power, which costs money and is bad for the environment. At night, my computers go off. When I’m away from home for too long, they go off.
100% of the people I know do the same.
Thing is, I have a life, which means that I don’t *want* to let my computers running all the time. It eats power, which costs money and is bad for the environment. At night, my computers go off. When I’m away from home for too long, they go off.
100% of the people I know do the same.
Funny, I have a life too, which is precisely why I leave the machine on. All my applications and documents are open so that I can return to what I was doing instantaneously, without waiting for the machine to boot up and to relaunch applications. A properly designed machine with a modern OS in “sleep” mode eats as much power as your DVD player plugged in and not doing anything else. And as for anecdotal evidence, so what? 100% of the people I know leave their machines on and compete for longest uptime.
fast booting saves only one minute of my daily time on the computer, nothing if i compare this with my daily production time. Zeta seem to be quite useless for an operating system because the average PC user has to reboot other systems for real working issues.
looncraz here…
You know, the guy who has been playing with BeOS for so long that he can remember the change from hobbit to PPC, then to x86.
Yeah, that guy who made SuperDano, PhOS, and who created the entire idea behind Zeta.
Okay, I have gone through this before, thinking it is possible I have some record for fast-booting, so I’ll give the times I achieved last night when I finally worked out the last kinks in making the Haiku boot loader boot PhOS (Dano-hacked away like mad).
I used a stop watch, and would count from the time I hit ‘Enter’ on the keyboard to launch the boot process from the boot manager, to the time when I first saw the login screen (PhOS is a semi-multi-user BeOS).
This are optimized tests, mind you, I have removed *ALL* drivers I do not need. These include, but are not limited to, all USB, Firewire, Serial, Floppy(3 sec gain in boot speed alone), and SCSI drivers.
The only drivers remaining were all File System and Partition drivers (except apple, which is not needed on my machine), ATI Radeon driver + accelerant, Crystal Sounds audio driver (and supporting drivers), RTL8139 network driver, BONE (which has a driver), PS/2 mouse and Keyboard support, and that is getting pretty much to be it.
My first test was with Be’s Dano Stage 2 boot loader (zbeos), unmodified:
Three runs:
Best: 5.2 Seconds
Average: 5.3 Seconds
Next, I removed the boot images from the Dano zbeos, which saves time.
Three runs:
Best: 4.4 Seconds
Average 4.4 Seconds (little change in no-image loaders)
Now, to test the performance of my haiku-based loader, which, understandably, is geared directly to ideally support my specific hardware. To aide in making a more fair comparison, I included the Dano boot images into the Haiku-based loader, which required more work than I had thought at first glance.
Three runs:
Best: 4.2 Seconds
Average: 4.6 Seconds
Next, I disabled support for the boot screen, instead preferring to print text to the screen a mere five times, also preventing vesa mode change unless going into the menu is required (you have almost no time to get in though, which is probably the #1 advantage of this loader in boot-speed before not entering vesa mode).
Three runs:
Best 2.9 Seconds (no joke, no lie)
Average: 3.1 Seconds
As you can see, 15 seconds is horrible in my eyes, though I could probably mod up Zeta in a few days and get close to the same performance (or better, who knows).
Now, for my machine:
Athlon XP 3200+ [2.2GHz](400 FSB, 512KB) L2
….Overclocked to 2.8GHz with water cooling
1024 MB DDR 533 RAM (four 256 MB sticks, Patriot)
Seagate, 120 GB, ATA133, 8MB cache
Maxtor, 250 GB, ATA133, 8 MB cache
Western Digital, 80GB, SATA (experimental drivers)
Crystal Sounds PCI Audio Vortex or something…
ATI Radeon 8500 All-in-Wonder
Cheapo CD-Burner (Why pay more money for the same …….thing?)
Pioneer 16X Slot DVD Drive
Realtek 8139C Network
As you can see, I have a pretty quick little machine, so my times on the review machine would probably be a few seconds longer, meaning 6 or 7 seconds. And Zeta could probably boot in about 10~12 on my machine, making a net 50% speed improvement or so. 25% of the overall speed improvement comes from the removal of just one driver, too: The floppy driver!
Anyway, if anyone is interested in this stuff, just give it a try… start removing drivers you don’t need and you will quickly see how fast BeOS can really start!
–The loon
Correct name of the filesystem is BFS, there’s no such thing as “BeFS”
Crappy minds !
Spotlight isn’t a FS !
Spotlight can work on any supported local or network FS (VFS, NTFS, HFS, FAT, etc).
Compare BFS and Spotlight is silly and stupid.
But what’s the point of this? It’s closed source, it costs and as a result it’ll run the handful of applications that were written for beos and maybe a few more. I realise it’s a niche product and good luck to anyone who might choose to run it and same to yT. I hope they have all the success in the world but it’ll be used by a handful of people and probably not make that great an impact.
As I recall BeOS never had any security, logons, accounts, etc. I don’t suppose that changed. And, in the world we live in today,,, do you really want an OS that has no virus protection (it’s on Intel right – means buffer overflows are possible).
So what are yT’s plans regarding security in general?
Notebook support _might_ be a problem. Zeta needs a 100 x86 System. A lot of notebook suppliers use to ignore standards of all kind. ^^ Well, for Windows it’s OK. They just add their own drivers for their hardware. The best way to find a suiteble notebook is going to the shop with the Zeta-CD and asking if you may install it! The other way round, going to the shop with a Notebook and asking if you may install one of their copies of Zeta on it, could be difficult.
ACH! I’m sorry, my comment (above) should have been a reply, not a new comment.
May I suggest the readers to read about MY (negative) experiences I had with this Zeta-OS?:
http://tinyurl.com/dx2ol
Thanks
Uwe
Hi Uwe,
Where exactly do you work? In this small company or in Microsoft?
http://spaces.msn.com/
)))Please next time be a little more smarter
Boot Time is a very important indication of the kernel development excellence; If your OS boots quickly then this means the kernel is of micro type which means that the modules plug into it then if you have a faulty driver it won’t take the whole system with it. second it means that the development team optimized the kernel for fast boot ( not a lazy team indication ), third When the kernel is small the chances of its malfauntion is less thus the debugging and patching sizes.
Absolutely
I also add that a faster boot OS indicates an OS much closer to version 1. That could also mean no features yet or no bloat.
I see W2K boots on a pair of different xp2400s takes what seems several minutes (web pc) vs maybe 1m for disconnected. The slow machine uses a crappy old 4G drive which probaly slows things down a bit.
I still hope one day OS writers will get to a 1 sec boot from the HD spin up time.
Does anyone have any links for more information on BeOS? I’ve used Windows and Linux (a lot), and Mac OS X (a little), and I want to try out BeOS. Can someone give me some links on general information on getting BeOS and how it’s different from Linux, Windows, and Mac? This review was good, but I want to learn more about it…
Thanks.
These are a bit older, but nicely outline some of BeOS’ special features:
http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/
“Never buy a pig in a poke!”
In medieval times piglets were often taken to market in a sack to be sold. If the purchaser was particularly gullible and carried off the purchase without looking, he would later discover his mistake and have to “let the cat out off the bag!”. (you may also “be sold a pup”). Incidentally, the sack or bag was correctly termed a poke, hence a pig in a poke. (the diminutive of poke lives on today in modern English in the form of Pocket)
I’m sure similar things happen all over the world but i think some are mixing up their pigs and cats … zeta is definitely a cute looking piglet! I think we can see that…just we don’t know how fast its gonna run in a pig race or if its a boar or a sow, we’re just going to have to buy it from the farmer to find out! (stealing pigs would have got you hung back then!)
I’m a long time fan of the BeOS, but to start inserting amiga’s into this discussion, let’s get windows 3.1 and DOS 6.22 stick them onto a new machine and see how fast it boots… I bet it will be in the sub 15 second range… (I guess I’ll start looking for the windows 3.1 install disks!)
alphaseinor