In the next beta of SkyOS, users can look forward to seeing a completely re-designed Viewer. The new Viewer will take advantage of the powerful features of the SkyFS (derived from Haiku’s BFS), including extremely fast searching and organizing of files, on-the-fly filtering of files and folders within the Viewer, fast insertion of meta-data into multiple files, and more. Update: Screenshots!
SkyOS Viewer gets Overhauled
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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WOW!
This is amazing, talk about kranking out features, what will the do next? I like there mock ups, they look very clean, although perhaps a little bloated?
I wonder how long this will take to implement.
“I wonder how long this will take to implement.”
Robert was hoping we could get it all done in 1-2 weeks. He has to completely re-code the Viewer from the ground up. Depending on what else we try to squeeze in, that timeframe may waver a bit, but we’re really excited about the feature, so we’re going to try to get it in as quickly as possible.
What has Robert been doing prior to starting the SkyOS project?
i’m sure the SkyOS team is tired of hearing this, but it would be really nice to see free versions during beta testing or atleast free memberships to test beta’s. I find it really odd that you would have to pay to test a beta :
I mean for god sake, even Microsoft does free beta testing…
“i’m sure the SkyOS team is tired of hearing this”
EVERY time skyos is mentioned someone want something for nothing. nope never get old. I’m sure the dead horse can take a few more beatings. You get the beta for free it just comes with a $30 preorder of the Skyos final.
“You get the beta for free it just comes with a $30 preorder of the Skyos final.”
it’s not really free then is it
Why would you preorder before you know it even works?
One thing that’s missing from the FAQ is:
5.5: You use icons from open source projects, including KDE. Aren’t this artwork licensed to you under the GPL? How does this work with the answer to question 5? (“SkyOS is a closed-source operating system.”)
I look forward to the clarification!
Distrubtion != derivation. The GPL explicitly states that bundling does not create a derived work. A problem would only exist if SkyOS created new icons using parts of the GPL’ed ones, without opening the source to those icons (SVG files).
Why pay $30 for 5.0 Final Preorder? Because you get to use the beta 5.0 releases in the mean time. And by doing so, and joining the beta team, you help to find and squash bugs that are relevant to you. I made my bug reports, and 5 have been fixed, 3 more to go.
It’s kinda cool to see the OS progress anyways, now I am tryping this message from SkyOS Firefox, it has really improved since the last time. Basically, you can pay $30 now and get early access as a benefit, or you can wait for the final, and pay a little more (because the price may raise when 5.0 goes final).
Just a couple of questions;
1) Have you got (developer of SkyOS) got the specs for the ATI Radeon cards? just wondering as making drivers without them would be rather difficult.
2) Regarding drivers and so forth; have you written up an API documentation outlining how one writes a driver for SkyOS?
Please someone tell me Robert is actually Robert(s)
This guy seems to be one hell of a programmer to do all this!
I’ve never tried SkyOS (mostly because I don’t want to pay to be a beta-tester) but I must say news on this project are always exciting. Keep up the good work.
This reminds me of my days with BeOS, look at all those happy users
Let’s just hope there are no focus changes from SkyOS that leave their user community high and dry like Be Inc. did to theirs. Personally I would prefer to see Haiku mature into a usable product, I hope I am being realistic.
I’m a great believer in the open source and GPL but at the same time I’m happy to see some people trying to make a living while working on something that might benefit some, or all of us in one way or another.
True I do not believe in paying for beta, but than again I’m not running the company
I say, Good on Ya Skyos, though I would not pay for your Beta and can’t promise about the Final, but I do support what you do…
Peace Out.
So what kind of benefit will SkyOS bring anyone? I don’t see that. If it’s aiming to be a propietary competitor to Microsoft Windows, then don’t bother. You’re not winning that. Microsoft has more money than SkyOS and I don’t think that will change anytime soon.
Who of you works for free? None, right? Then, why such attitude towards propietary software? Hypocrites!.
It’s ok to develop open source software, but not everyone has time or will enough to spend on that extra work.
Paying for a beta sounds like a bad strategic move from the SkyOS developers, though.
I’m not agains propietary software. I never said I was. I’m just saying, trying to compete with Microsoft using another propietary product is not going to work. And SkyOS seems to be even worse than Microsoft, because they use opensource software to complement their propietary OS. And they even charge for the beta! Not even Microsoft is that low.
What should give me respect for this program? The fact that only a small team has made it? Well I’ll have respect for those guys, then. But the product is crap, to me.
For crying out loud people get a grip! If you don’t want to pay for a Beta/Final version – that’s fine. Don’t! If you disagree with the closed source nature of SkyOS – that’s fine too. You can always use Linux/BSD/Syllable and others.
But do we have to hear about it every time? There’s nothing illegal/immoral about trying to make a living in your field of expertise.
It’s a simple choice – not a religious philosphy.
“…because they use opensource software to complement their propietary OS.”
At the blessing of the leaders of each of those respective projects. The only one that has a problem with it is you.
Please contact any developers of open source softwarewho’s software has been ported to SkyOS. Then, ask him whether he finds it a problem. If you can find one, and proove it, then come back whining about this non-issue.
You don’t need to make your OS closed-source just to make money. I think Red Hat, SuSE/Novell and Mandrake have proven that.
It’s a control thing, not a money thing. Either that or ignorance.
youknowmewell, it is a control thing, just not a bad one. Lets say an operating system is a painting. Robert and the people at SkyOS are making a painting that pleases them, they don’t want everybody else to be able to change it at a whim. Can’t you just accept this. If you like their product you buy and support it. If you don’t then simply forget it ever existed. Open source stuff is like a group made painting, everybody sees it as a compromise of sorts. Most people are happy with some aspects and unhappy about others. It is definitely NOT an issue of ignorance. Next time “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
Frankly I could careless if this project was open or closed source, my only real “dislike” w/ it is the fact that even the beta’s are placed under a “pay to use premise” which in my opinion is just low.
If i was a business owner and was interested in using SkyOS for something, I sure as hell would like to try it out and give it a good test run before paying for it. Just as I would anything else?
The project really seems like it has a bright future, but as of this moment it is kinda alienating it’s self from the public and it’s future user base, at a time when it should be specifically trying to gain peoples respect & put it’s self in the lime-lite.
A good example to follow might be QNX? They are a pay to play OS, but still provide a test bed for future users and people interested in implementing it in a business type scenario…
It’s good to make money, especially to do so doing something you enjoy, it’s even better to make money and be respected while doing it…
Much luck!
If they want to make their own “painting” then why are they using Grub, Bash, GCC, Glibc, BeFS and so forth, of course without help these projects get better. Hell, one guy even said that it’s recognised as *NIX on the net.
Whens the next skyos mag coming out. wasn’t it a monthly thing.
Amen! People treat it like a religion. its annoying.
“The project really seems like it has a bright future, but as of this moment it is kinda alienating it’s self from the public and it’s future user base, at a time when it should be specifically trying to gain peoples respect & put it’s self in the lime-lite.”
We currently have almost 500 beta testers. Additionally, I think we’ve provided almost 50 beta accounts to the media and other representatives of the community at no cost of review and testing purposes.
If you don’t want it, don’t buy it.
It’s the same argument people make complaining about prices at a restaurant. Look at the menu, if it’s out of your budget, go home and bake yourself some Linux.
A new “painting” can be created from the same paint, brushes and even using the same paining techniques of other painters and still be unique. Using your line of argument, it is possible to argue that every painter should create their own materials and borrow no features from the work of other painters.
Another metaphore: most car makers make their engines using the generalised model of a car engine as their basis. Different makers however change the generalised design of a car engine to increase efficiency in some way. How is a car maker modifing the generalised design of a car engine any different to the SkyOS team modifing the OpenBFS?
If you oppose SkyOS using a modified version of the OpenBFS, shouldn’t you also oppose car makers ‘stealing’ the concept of using an internal combustion engine as a power source for a car?
The process of development mostly involves building on and improving the work of others; not the re-invention of already invented components. Building on something which is well-ordered and already exists takes less time and usually produces better results than re-inventing something which already exists.
I think it’s a good thing to make peoples pay for the beta (Don’t forget they also get the final) … It helps to evaluate your beta testers and their dedication. Besides, 30$ is not that much considering you get an OS to play around with.
Isn’t this exactly the argument for open source software and against proprietary software? That proprietary software is typically closed to reuse/copy as well as extension (outside the controlled set of apis). The world is moving past proprietary software implementations, just some software development groups haven’t realized that yet. Thankfully it appears that number [for SkyOS] is limited to about 500.
I would like to point out that there is no restriction from bundling open-source applications into a proprietary operating system release. Back to my painting analogy, each one of those open source programs is like a color. Not being allowed to use open source applications in a proprietary operating system is like saying “Well everyone is allowed to use the color red, but not on any paintings that aren’t editable by the public.” If you don’t want these software programs to be used by anyone else, DON’T MAKE THEM OPEN SOURCE. If it is open source, it is open to everybody, what is so hard to understand about that.
“The Mona Lisa may be a masterpiece but I was not allowed to change the woman’s hair color, therefore it is bad.” Give me a break.
BTW, I don’t care about the cost.. they could charge 5000 if they wanted, I’m all for making money doing what you love. Making money != producing and distributing software properly (as can be seen in the Windows world). Most of the arguments are against making a proprietary operating system this late in the game (or ever). Maybe if it were still 1990.. but definitely not now. It’s simply a bad idea.
The painting analogy is a terrible one, it doesn’t apply at all to operating systems. Operating systems are utilities used and are customized/used extensively to get a large varying amount of computational work done, paintings are pieces of artwork that are looked at. Besides, the style, model pose, colors, and brush style from the Mona Lisa painting have all been copied into many other painters’ paintings. Please move on.
Why doesn’t the painting metaphor work? Because MS has its own “painting” that millions, even billions, of people rely upon. We see now that when they have absolute control over Windows that a lot of good can come out of it, and a lot of bad. They’ve made computers ubiquitous, which is a good thing. But they’ve also used the control that comes with being ubiquitous in very bad ways. It’s also allowed MS to sit on its hands in terms of innovation or building new functionality into their OS, simply because there was no real competition.
This situation has proven the absolute necessity for Free software. This is not some mere painting, this is something that affects all of our lives either directly or indirectly. Locking us out of it hurts us, but helps you and MS.
That said, I will continue to ignore this and any other alternative proprietary OSes, and I think others who agree with me should do the same.
SkyOS has the right to be closed source & be a pay product. Lots of work is going into this making this OS. It only seems fair for them to charge something.
I understand the arguement about paying for a beta version (& getting the final SkyOS version for free – this is what their actually doing), but lets check out SkyOSes point of view (if they gave out free betas). You download the free beta, test out the OS, like it, but don’t want to pay for the final version – so you continue to use the beta. They make no money & then further development has to stop or slow down & SkyOS disappears. (Other scenario is you dislike the OS and so having tested it out you save the $30 for it which is also valid).
I say, if you don’t want to part with $30 for SkyOS (to test it out) then move onto another OS until you think it is worth paying for it. Yes, it would be great to have a live cd or an installed 90 day trial version to test it out, but the developers of SkyOS need to be compensated for the work put into the project (takes time & effort to code an OS).
We all have to make the choice ourselves. Some people will pay & use SkyOS and think it is the greatest OS out there. Others will not even bother with it (because of the $30 cost). Still others may try it out and think it is OK, but needs further improvement, etc. You are entitled to your opinion, but don’t be bashing an OS because you think the developers have the wrong ideals, or you don’t like it, because there are others who do like it & think it worth the $30. You only give a one sided (negative) view of it.
It’s not necessarily a “religious thing”. I’m not opposed to SkyOS on principle. I use proprietory software every day, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t. However, I’m also practical. I realize that the OS is the foundation of an entire software stack, and is thus a rather important component. Historically, small, closed-source OSs have not survived in the desktop space. BeOS and Amiga come quickly to mind. Heck, even large closed-source OSs haven’t done very well (MacOS, OS/2).
There are a handful of desktop products now that have significant marketshare *growth* in Microsoft-dominated niches. Nearly all of them are Open Source. OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Linux come quickly to mind. To me, it is an entirely rational decision to judge open-source products in the desktop market to be “safer bets”, than closed-source ones.
I think paying for the beta would be a good thing, it restricts it to a somewhat dedicated group, so productivity per capita is, probably, greater. The one problem with it I see is that it does limit the number of users and, likewise, hardware. So, when 5.0 final comes out dont complain if your hardware doesn’t work and your not a beta member
“Yes, it would be great to have a live cd or an installed 90 day trial version to test it out, but the developers of SkyOS need to be compensated for the work put into the project (takes time & effort to code an OS).”
When SkyOS 5.0 Final is released, there will be a LiveCD that can be used to test SkyOS, available for download for free.
To code a whole OS from scratch would be a lot of work & take much more time (ie: look at Haiku project (BeOS clone); http://haiku-os.org/learn.php – around half way done & was started about 4 years ago. Probably another 2-3 years before ready for release & use). Using components from other OSes will speed up the development. Plus, this code is already well written and why should SkyOS have to redo the code when it is available for use & works? Most non Windows OSes are fairly posix compliant, so they are fairly similar to an extent (very close in how they operate and are programmed).
SkyOS only has to opensource any code it gets which is GPL’ed & modified by them. It doesn’t have to release the source code to the whole OS (ie: if they took Grub sourcecode & modified it for their own use, then they would have to release their altered Grub sourcecode, not the sourcecode to the whole OS). I think Grub is GPL’ed, I haven’t checked. But, if they don’t change the Grub program then no need to release the sourcecode at all.
I think it is an interesting project. I have not tested out SkyOS, but one day this may change. I have other OSes to play with for now that satisfy me. There is lots of progress happening on this OS & I hope to see it continue. It will at least provide some people with an alternative (to Windows or Linux).
There also seems to be some misunderstanding between Free software and free software. It’s almost like people can’t imagine how anybody could make any money with an open source and Free OS or software project. I guess they completely ignore Red Hat, who is doing nearly the same thing as SkyOS, except they are completely open source and Free and give back to the community, and making a mint at doing so. They completely control the direction that their OS goes, but they don’t attempt to lock others into their OS.
“Historically, small, closed-source OSs have not survived in the desktop space. BeOS and Amiga come quickly to mind. Heck, even large closed-source OSs haven’t done very well (MacOS, OS/2).”
Historically, non-Microsoft OS’s have not done very well. I would hardly say that Linux is doing well. I would say that it is barely scraping by, similar to Mac. At this point, there is only one relevant operating system on the market. Every viable operating system that is brought to market is another way to chip away at the monopoly stranglehold in the operating system market. You should encourage every alternative that becomes available, rather than picking away at it from all different angles.
To add to Kelly’s comment:
He is obviously talking about Linux on the desktop– not the server market.
“When SkyOS 5.0 Final is released, there will be a LiveCD that can be used to test SkyOS, available for download for free.”
That is great to hear Kelly. I’ll be looking forward to checking it out.
SkyOS faq says “SkyOS 5 final to be released around Q2 2005”, so I guess we won’t have too long to wait (probably out by summer 2005).
I don’t see the problem in paying to betas test. Bigger companies do this as well (Linspire, yellowTAB, Apple) and no one is bothered with it. Heck, a lot of companies don’t even give out betas at all! They keep all testing in-house and completely ignore the users.
However, and that is a thing most people do no seem to understand, so I’ll emphasize it one more time (*sigh*): You do not pay for the SkyOS beta’s. They are completely free of charge. It’s just that there’s one condition: you have to pre-order 5.0-final. On top of that, you get beta access.
And don;t bring RedHat into the game, allright? All they have done is bundle some OSS software, add some graphics, some config tools and that’s that. SkyOS is almsot entirely written from scratch.
You know… it does cost money to run a business.
Don’t be a whiner. If you don’t like SkyOS then walk away quietly. If you do, then pay the bill and help out a bit, with SkyOS development. I’m sure you’d like to be paid for the work you do.
“For crying out loud people get a grip! If you don’t want to pay for a Beta/Final version – that’s fine. Don’t! If you disagree with the closed source nature of SkyOS – that’s fine too. You can always use Linux/BSD/Syllable and others.
But do we have to hear about it every time? There’s nothing illegal/immoral about trying to make a living in your field of expertise.
It’s a simple choice – not a religious philosphy.”
Exactly right! Opinions are like a**holes, everybody has one, so just make sure you’re not being one! I come here to read (and occasionally share) “intelligent” comments from others and weigh my opinions, knowledge, and beliefs against theirs for my own benefit and theirs. I learn much from this site and them. I don’t come here so that some can be “self-important” with their comments while they’re actually displaying how little they know of the world around them.
I’m thinking of signing up for the beta program because I love the structured direction of the OS. That is one of the problems I personally have with linux is that it grows uncontrollably in all directions and it is hard to stay on top of everything, for most people thats a plus, but for me its a negative.
I was just curious if anyone uses SkyOS for their main desktop, or spends most of their time in it. Is there enough software for it to be pretty useable at this point? I know its in beta, but just curious. Thanks.
Ha! You’re actually going to say that Red Hat hasn’t contributed back to the vast majority of products they use? Just look up how many Red Hat employees are involved in the development of the Linux kernel, gcc, GNOME etc.. And what about original Red Hat projects that get contributed back?
GFS, Global File System
http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/
and Anaconda to name a couple. I’m positive there are more but I can’t think of any off-hand.
I don’t want to go into that here, but one more post can be done:
Of course, I never said RedHat doesn’t contribute back. But they built basically their entire operating system upon existing material, and only made alterations and additions, whereas SkyOS has been written from scratch, with only some additions from other projects. That’s a major difference.
I’m not trying to belittle what RedHat has done/is doing, I’m just trying to put things in perspective here.
It’s a bit pedantic to draw those dissimilarities, especially since I don’t see SkyOS’s developers contributing their original projects like Red Hat has.
The main point of contention is the argument that one can’t make money with open source and Free software. I’ve shown that’s wrong and you’ve just tried to downplay the amount of work Red Hat has put into their distro and into original projects started and built by them. Your argument is that the SkyOS developers deserve money for all their hard work. That’s fine with me, but don’t say that it takes a closed-source and non-Free OS to make money because that is absolutely wrong.
“Viewer”, “Explorer”, “Finder” – nobody can come up with a half decent name for these things can they? What was wrong with “File Manager”? (Other than it being an outdated, horrifically bad user experience)
GUI seems a nice hybrid of XP but leaning more towards Os X.
Lets see Start button on the top center. Hard disk image on left instead of the right. All this ripped right off Windows
Installation windows with status being shown in list form on the left-lifted straight from Os X.
So far I haven’t seen anything original. May be easier just to buy a Mac mini with excellent included iLife software and built in support for iPod.
But, all in all, an excellent effort for a one-man project.
If SkyOS was opensource, would YOU buy it? Would anyone buy it? I doubt it. Why would you buy that which is free? Linux is just a kernel, not a distribution. SkyOS is a complete operating system.
To bring up another example, Apple provides the Darwin sourcecode to anyone who wants it. If you want to download it, you can, for free. Now if Apple provided the full Mac OS 10 sourcecode, would anybody buy Jaguar, Panther, or Tiger? I don’t think so!
@joseph:
“Most of the arguments are against making a proprietary operating system this late in the game (or ever). Maybe if it were still 1990.. but definitely not now. It’s simply a bad idea.”
Why?
I’m not aware of any realities that have changed that make a Proprietary OS a bad idea…
Why would you make this up?
I would hardly say that Linux is doing well. I would say that it is barely scraping by, similar to Mac.
You’d be wrong in saying that. Linux, as a serious entry into the desktop market is maybe five or six years old, and already it is comparable in marketshare to Apple (a $3.7bn per year company). IDC says that the market share of desktop Linux has doubled in the last three years (overtaking MacOS), and predicts that it will reach 6% by 2007. Gartner predicts 7.5% by 2008, and Seimens predicts 20% by 2008. Meanwhile, Apple’s marketshare has been stagnant for years, and even in this recent upswing, it’s growth rates just don’t compare.
Now, this doesn’t even factor in worldwide adoption, in which Linux is growing its fastest, and in which Apple has traditionally lagged.
I’m not aware of any realities that have changed that make a Proprietary OS a bad idea…
Do you remember 1990? Hell, even back in 1995 we still thought that OS/2 had a chance, and that MIPS and Alpha would soon replace x86. Apple was still in the game, thinking about Copland and Gerswhin, and IBM was dreaming up an OS with Taligent. Now, the Microsoft hegemony is complete, IBM is out of the OS game, and Apple exists because Microsoft allows it to.
SkyOS is ID’d by web servers are an “Unknown UNIX” because of its POSIX Compliance not because of any “free” software it includes, and SkyOS has given code back to Haiku for OpenBeFS, but when SkyFS was altered to allow Grub to be installed on it 100% Compatibility with OpenBeFS Was lost.
Predictions are nice. When I see the real statistics in 2007 and 2008, I will believe them.
No, I’m not trying to slam the SkyOS effort.
However, I am rather interested (although poor as heck) to purchase a license for SkyOS, but unsure with a with a relatively dim future. Therefore, I would like to ask this question to the SkyOS team…
Have you ever thought of “Releasing the source code under BSD license” (or GPL if the team pleases) NOT at this particular moment, but if (or when) the team decides to discontinue the effort (was is Transgaming or Codeweavers who came up with such a plan?)?
I am one of the many (ok, I may be optimistically thinking) who got burnt with the “focus shift” of Be Inc., and am hesitant of purchasing a license without a “the project can be continued by interested parties since the code will be released if/when we decide to quit working on the codebase”-type assurance.
I understand that it is your code, so you have the right to do whatever you want with your own code. Just was curious…
sjk
I signed up as a beta-tester back when 5.0 was announced.
I was (and still am) excited by the concept. 30$ was chicken feed. Still is if you think about it, how many of you smoke? Or drink?
In any case, skyos has come a long way, I am fortunate enough to have access to a large variety of hardware, and am able to custom build a box to meet the OSes’ needs.
The “original” 5.0 version was not suitable for the desktop, but improvements have come rapidly and I hope the b8.4 is.
Nice work guys!
Most KDE artwork is LGPL
You still don’t get it, do you? Red Hat was making a killing when they were selling RedHat Linux, even though one could download it for free. How about Mandrake today? How about SuSE? Think outside the proprietary-box, look at the precedences that have been set, and realize that you CAN make money with open source and Free software.
You can make money independent of the licensing. Some companies use OSS and fail. Some don’t. Some companies use CS and fail. Some don’t. It all comes down to the company. Us making money has nothing to do with the licensing we pursue. Let’s put this (highly irrelevant) discussion to rest.
Gartner predicts 7.5% by 2008, and Seimens predicts 20% by 2008. Meanwhile, Apple’s marketshare has been stagnant for years, and even in this recent upswing, it’s growth rates just don’t compare.
Get a grip. 20% by 2008? Siemens is obviously on crack. Linux on the desktop is basically non-existant because most people don’t think software is a religion. We heard that 2000 was gonna be the year of the Linux desktop.
“Gartner predicts 7.5% by 2008, and Seimens predicts 20% by 2008. Meanwhile, Apple’s marketshare has been stagnant for years, and even in this recent upswing, it’s growth rates just don’t compare.”
Yeah and analysts predict a doubling of marketshare as well for OSX in the comming year.
http://www.expert-zone.com/index.php?module=announce&ANN_user_op=vi…
Is it possible to nuke entire story comments? I have a hard time looking at the comments of skyOS news because even thought the news is different, the comments are always the same. They revert back to the good/evil of skyOS costing money. Just once I would like to see the comments stay on topic for a skyOS story. skyOS needs some special faq or a generic page with a copy/paste of one of these threads hosted on OSNews. That way, ppl who want to argue about it, can go there and get all warm and fuzzy inside.
Just once I would like to see the comments stay on topic for a skyOS story.
The problem is the nutcases that think everything should be free and with code don’t seem to grok that nobody cares what they think.
Once the parts arive to finish-up my second desktop, I’ll be putting SkyOS on it, atleast until the -final of Hoary comes out.. but if it’s good, I’ll stick with it.
I really couldn’t care less that it isn’t open source, SkyOS still contributes back in many other ways (it isn’t forced to, but the project still does). I bet the majority of people here saying they won’t pay to play with SkyOS are those sitting on XP machines right now.
I mean, $30, it’s hardly going to break the bank, and if you can’t afford that, then it’s probably because you’re 14 years old and wouldn’t have much to contribute anyway.
These predictions are grounded in real growth rates. Linux marketshare on the desktop has consistently been growing at double-digit rates. There is no other OS (on the desktop), that can claim this. That’s what makes Linux (and open source in general), a safer bet on the desktop — actual demonstrated growth. Growth, ultimately, is the difference between a vital product and a moribund one.
You guys, really, why do you hate SkyOS for costing money? Know why they charge $30 to beta test? Because otherwise, there would be no betas. They needed the money to begin with, and believe me, I’m a highschool student without a job and so I have no money, yet if it were not for the fact that I have dialup I would totally buy the beta (or prebuy the final, which is a lame argument. It is closer to say that you buy the beta and as a perk for testing you get the final free). And what is wrong with not releasing the betas for free? Most videogame companies don’t, or they do but only to select people who they know buy and use their games in a consistent manner, and who will give good input. Now, since SkyOS had no way of knowing all this, they decided to charge for the beta, to get only interested people. Robert doesn’t want just anyone playing arround with the OS until it is to his complete liking. (Almost every argument given here he talks about on the site, by the way. Has no one read that?)
And furthermore, so what if the OS isn’t going to knock MS of its perch? Neither is Linux or Apple or OpenSolaris or any other OS. The only way to even compete in the OS world is to have different marketing systems. Apple’s is to make great hardware and force you to buy that with the OS so that it seems that it is faster than it is to people coming from a six year old Compaq. Linux is to be open source, so that you can get most programs for it for free, as well as many complete OS’s for free. SkyOS is taking another approach, using free software on a closed kernel. What is wrong with that? It doesn’t compete with Linux as much that way, and introduces a new, well-thought-out business strategy.
And one last thing that no one is mentioning. RedHat chargest $2,500 per a computer per a year. That is a lot of freaking money. So when you cite them as a good “Free” business model then say you won’t pay $30 for an OS, I can say nothing but that you are biased and I don’t want to hear stupid arguments.
And, as to the Viewer search and Filters, which I actually commented on yesterday before this news item came out, that is so awesome, and no one today is arguing that SkyOS has nothing new to offer today, unlike yesterday’s thread.
Get a grip. 20% by 2008? Siemens is obviously on crack.
Undoubtedly. But my point is that a lot of analysts are prediciting the same thing, that suggests some consensus on the issue.
Linux on the desktop is basically non-existant
Well, that’s just not true, at least if you consider MacOS X to exist. Several sources put Linux’s desktop market share close to OS X’s. That’s a huge feat, considering how established Apple is as a platform.
But that’s getting away point. The point here is that it’s demonstrably true that open source products do a better job competing in Microsoft-dominated niches than closed-source ones. How many browsers, besides Firefox, are gaining marketshare against IE? How many office suites, besides OpenOffice, are doing the same relative to MS Office?
The link you provided says nothing about OS X doubling its marketshare. Instead, it points to a research note in which the author states that Apple has the best chance of increasing its market share in the next year. While that’s an interesting point, it really doesn’t contradict mine — Apple has not demonstrated several years of significant growth on the desktop. It might, but it hasn’t yet.
introduces a new, well-thought-out business strategy.
That’s the point of contention. I don’t think, after the failures of Be and Amiga, that selling a closed-source OS on x86 *is* a well-thought-out business strategy.
It is a better strategy than going bankrupt because of bending over backwards to provide free betas. It is a better strategy than letting anyone put your OS in the direction they want rather than the well-thought-out direction you want it to go in, to a niche that isn’t filled. It is a better strategy than trying to exactly emulate what Linux is doing, because know what, if it did this thread wouldn’t exist, no one would even realize SkyOS wasn’t another Linux distro, and no one would care to pay for it, and it would go bankrupt. It is a much, much better strategy than any of those concepts.
Besides paying $30 to congratulate you on an immense effort, what do I get with SkyOS that I do not get with a custom Debian install?
What native applications are there only available on SkyOS, or that run better (require less cpu / ram) on SkyOS?
A file system is great, but it’s not everything or BeOS would be on everyone’s desktop and pocket PC by now.
I personally don’t give a rat’s behind about the licensing, just “is it better (and how) that what is currently available, or does it solve any problems that other solutions do not.)
Any comments about the Viewer? I think it’s pretty common knowledge that people have different feelings about open-source at this point. Does it really need to continue to be discussed in every SkyOS thread?
As I said in the news post, we are trying to make it very extensible. Any suggestions for what you would like to see?
A address bar like in explorer Kelly.
Or make it have the ability to let one add it to there. ex have it hidden then if the user wants he can add it in.
I said before that when Red Hat was selling their RedHat Linux distro, they made a mint doing so. Today, they have a different market they are selling to, but that still doesn’t mean they aren’t Free. CentOS is Red Hat Enterprise Linux for free-as-in-beer AND free-as-in-freedom, repackaged without the trademarked things like the shadowman icon, etc.. This is allowed because RedHat is Free, and you know what? RedHat LIKES IT. It helps them far more than it hurts them, and they realize it. You don’t realize it, however.
It is a better strategy than going bankrupt because of bending over backwards to provide free betas. It is a better strategy than letting anyone put your OS in the direction they want rather than the well-thought-out direction you want it to go in, to a niche that isn’t filled. It is a better strategy than trying to exactly emulate what Linux is doing, because know what, if it did this thread wouldn’t exist, no one would even realize SkyOS wasn’t another Linux distro, and no one would care to pay for it, and it would go bankrupt. It is a much, much better strategy than any of those concepts.
Who said that you wouldn’t have control over your OS if it was open-source? Novell, RedHat, Mandrake, etc. all have their own distros and control the direction that their distros go. However, I’m not locked into their distros if I become unhappy with it.
If SkyOS was just another linux distro, do you think it would be at the top of osnews.com like Arch Linux, a distro I’ve never heard about until a month or so ago? How about Gentoo? Ubuntu? These all started out as just-another-distribution and have since gotten their own following. Your distro would be in a different group along with Linspire, SuSE, Xandros, etc., and all the poor and downtrodden distro developers. I pitty whoever is part of that bankrupted group.
It’s not about the money, it’s about the CONTROL, ABSOLUTE CONTROL over the OS. You want an absolute monopoly on the interface and the APIs you’re developing. You’re hanging on to the proprietary software developer’s dream, following in MS’s shadow.
This is all fine by me. It’s a flawed strategy, a stupid strategy, but your strategy. Good luck, you’ll need it.
Undoubtedly. But my point is that a lot of analysts are prediciting the same thing, that suggests some consensus on the issue.
These other analysts are on crack too, if they think that linux on the desktop is going to be close to 20% by ’08. And why do you even post these predictions unless you give them credence. We heard all this stuff back in 2000.
Well, that’s just not true, at least if you consider MacOS X to exist. Several sources put Linux’s desktop market share close to OS X’s. That’s a huge feat, considering how established Apple is as a platform.
Maybe, who knows. How can someone even be close to knowing how many linux desktops are out there? Is it just Linux or does that include BSDs, Solaris, etc…Does this include fluxbox or what? At least with OSX you can have somewhat reliable numbers.
There’s not going to be some mass migration though, no matter what the fanboys want. People just don’t care about source code.
How many browsers, besides Firefox, are gaining marketshare against IE? How many office suites, besides OpenOffice, are doing the same relative to MS Office?
Completely irrelevant to linux on the desktop. I run Firefox on windows and Linux.
Kelly, will the preview for documents include the first sentence or two from the document. If it doesn’t, I think this would be something useful in determining the content of the document. I know that I am sometimes lazy in my naming of documents, and this feature would help a lot.
For photos, could you implement something akin to your album idea, but with photos. For example, Johnny’s Birthday pics all together, or Island vacation pics.
Maybe the mods should start doing their job and edit out posts (about 95%) that have nothing to do with the announcement itself …
I’d like the skyos viewer to display information about a file when the mouse goes over it.(like what kde does+animate video and play sound) I’d like all the files to be editable/ viewable in the viewer (exp. view/edit .rtf files right in viewer with an abiword plugin) and to make it opera like in navigation (Exp. right+left click to go back, Tabs, middle click opens file in new tab middle click to close tab)) and the ability to group tabs. That’s all I can think of now.
@MacManiac (re: Viewer Question):
It will be something similar to this.
@MacManiac (re: One more thing regarding Viewer):
Yes, this is currently the plan. You will be able to assign them to a photo album name, and even assign a photo to represent the album cover (which is the icon that will represent the “album”).
These other analysts are on crack too, if they think that linux on the desktop is going to be close to 20% by ’08. And why do you even post these predictions unless you give them credence. We heard all this stuff back in 2000.
They don’t. The other analysts say 6-8% — try reading the post… Is 6-8% that hard to believe? Linux desktop usage doubled in the three years from 2000 to 2004, from about 1.5% to ~3%. Is it that hard to imagine this trend continuing.
As for “we’ve been hearing about ‘this is the year of desktop linux’ since 2000”, that’s bullshit. First, show me dated articles where anybody but a marketing department claimed that. Second, and more importantly, we’re not talking about some magical “year of desktop Linux”. We’re talking about growth continuing at close to its present rate.
It is a better strategy than going bankrupt because of bending over backwards to provide free betas.
I don’t think they should have free betas.
It is a better strategy than letting anyone put your OS in the direction they want rather than the well-thought-out direction you want it to go in
“Well-thought-out” doesn’t sell OSs. If it did, OS X would own 95% of the market, not Windows. When Windows became popular, it was complete crap. Elegance and quality have little to do with popularity. That’s a rule proven time and again in the software realm.
to a niche that isn’t filled.
And that niche would be? It seems pretty well-filled by Windows to me. What is unique about SkyOS that puts it in a different niche?
Completely irrelevant to linux on the desktop. I run Firefox on windows and Linux.
And *that* is completely irrelevent to my point. I *was* talking about the merits of open source as a strategy for competing with entrenched Microsoft products. Linux was only mentioned tangentially as a supporting example, before somebody contended that Linux wasn’t competitive.
And *that* is completely irrelevent to my point. I *was* talking about the merits of open source as a strategy for competing with entrenched Microsoft products.
Being open source has nothing to do with the success of Firfox. The only reason it’s a success is because of the tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and it’s free. If it was closed-source and free, it would be just as successful except to a handful of fanboys (who wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails out of the code anyway).
They don’t. The other analysts say 6-8% — try reading the post… Is 6-8% that hard to believe? Linux desktop usage doubled in the three years from 2000 to 2004, from about 1.5% to ~3%. Is it that hard to imagine this trend continuing.
It’s hard to imagine anybody having any clue about what the real numbers for linux/bsd/solaris or any other downloadable OS on the desktop is.
As for “we’ve been hearing about ‘this is the year of desktop linux’ since 2000”, that’s bullshit. First, show me dated articles where anybody but a marketing department claimed that. Second, and more importantly, we’re not talking about some magical “year of desktop Linux”. We’re talking about growth continuing at close to its present rate.
I wouldn’t classify Slashdork as a marketing department. It was all over there in 2000. And every year we hear the same thing. You are right about one thing. It’ll eventually take over Mac, but when you start throwing out 20% by 2008, then you start sounding like a fanboy (yeah, it was Siemens but you still posted it).
In any case, there are still major problems with Linux/BSD/Solaris whatever on the desktop. KDE’s toolkit has a crappy license so it’ll never take off, and Gnome has a crappy framework.
I think an adress bar is pretty important, makes it easier to copy/paste it.
I’d say tabs would be my No. 1 want though. Firefox has ruined me, and I hate not being able to tab things more than anything else. To be able to have three different folders open in one window would be so nice and space-saving.
One thing about the Windows in general, it seems that the space arround the windows is rather large, if that could possibly be scaled down at all, that would be nice. Anything to save space.
Maybe not make all files editable in the Viewer, but if the *.TXT editor is openable in a tab, that would rock.
One question : by the time SkyOS 5.0 is in its final stage, will it have hardware powered 3D accelerating ? If not, then having movies play in the preview might be somewhat too much of a power hog.
Finally. The option to turn the previewer off. That is super-important for people who will be running SkyOS on older systems.
I know this doesn’t pertain exactly to the Viewer, but if the scrollbar in SkyOS could look a little bit different from the edge, give it some more contrast or some markings or something, that would be really nice.
Address bar: We’ll see. Not a big fan, and it doesn’t fit in with the navigation we are pushing towards, but we’ll see.
Tabs: Already on the list to do.
Editable files: Interesting. Will consider it.
Movies in preview window: Already implemented, will be in the new Viewer as well.
Previewer off: It doesn’t take much of a system to use it. Will consider it though.
Scrollbar: Always a work in progress.
although the overall look/layout is nice and pretty clean just seems a little disproportunate (go did i murder that word), like the file filters seem a little large, and will there be a way to shrink the icon size in the lower right area? 4×3 would be ridiculous trying to scroll though like 90% of my folders. Nice work though, fits well with the rest of the GUI
We will be playing around with the proportions of the various parts of the Viewer. For what it’s worth, I do agree on the size issue, and will be adjusting it to see what works/looks best.
Preview on/off : cool, if it doesn’t take much system, that is great. I just know running the preview on some old Windows 2000 computers is painful, because the whole system lags as it tries to create the preview. If yours doesn’t though, more power to you.
And the editable files is someone else’s idea, though I’ve been trying to find a way to tab Notebook in Firefox on Windows for ages, so if you guys do it I’d be way willing to switch.
I have no problem with the fact that SkyOS costs money and that it uses
oos software but does the SkyOS dev team also makes the ports or changes that they make to the oos software (gpl or not) back to the original autor, or the source code freely available?
I think SkyOS is maturing fast and is can become a nice OS wich can fill up the gap between Windows and LInux (on the desktop).
I too am bothered by having to pay for a product that is not yet truly useful. I also have a problem with it using so many OSS apps. Linux already has all of that stuff….and much more…for free. When this project started it seemed original, but now it is totally dependant on OSS apps which are better implemented elsewhere for free. Even all of his eye candy is Linux derivative. I see nothing here new or original to compel me to play with this. I realize that the purpose of open source is so people quit reinventing the wheel…but this just looks like the same tired old stuff recycled. How about being creative and make something with a little bit of originality …open sourcing this might inspire people to code apps specifically for this platform. The only reason that such a small team poduced this so quickly is merely testimony to the power of copy–>paste.
I mean come on man YOU wanna try developing a graphical OS parallel with coding apps to stand in for all the oss stuff out there that people can’t live without? keep in mind this is like one guy and i think there’s a couple helping on the app side, but at the moment you can count the applications on SkyOS with out taking off your shoes. I’m sure when version 5.final comes out more of his efforts will go towards making more native apps.
latest beta runs great, dont anybody listen to the OSS trolls, they will start flamewars just to do it, not even if they have a valid point or not. I had no trouble paying for beta access, some people pay for microsofts beta access (a hell of alot more than 30 dollars mind you) and that 30 dollars doesnt just go towards you getting the final product. it goes into buying hardware to test and make compatible with the operating system, so basically your paying for the chance to whet your appetite for something different, the chance to make changes and be part of molding this os into something good, and stable, you pay to help get hardware supported, and you get your cd when it switches final. 30 bucks for all of that is being generous, and if some of you actually do work in this field, 30 bucks is less than an hours work pay