Reportedly, Kurt Skauen hasn’t work on AtheOS for the last 9 months, as he currently taking some long vacations away from his pet project. All this time, a lot of dissapointments have been expressed in the (dying) mailing list about the future of AtheOS, already a (semi-)fork has occured with Cosmoe, but still no word from Kurt if or when he will start working on AtheOS again. Update: It seems that a complete fork has already happen, created by some of the main third party AtheOS developers.Some of the main third party developers of AtheOS, are working on visual IDEs, a new Desktop, a Launcher application for the desktop, drivers and someone started looking at some low level OS developement of AtheOS, hoping to continue development of this young multi-threaded modern OS.
We hope that everything will change soon and either Kurt will come back to the project or the third party developers will take the project on their own hands completely and push it further.
We tried to reach Kurt several times the last few months about the issue, without much success (via email and IM) as he did not elaborate on the specific question of AtheOS’ future.
Such a good OS stalling because of one man’s (extended) vacation. A shame.
Leave the guy alone, man! Stop bugging him. Maybe he has found out there is more to this temporary life than computers and staring at a screen all day…
There is??? 🙂
Why isn’t a fork done on AtheOS to continue the OS work without Kurt. I mean, a fork that is a full fork, not a semi fork like Cosmoe. From what I read, this isn’t Kurt’s first vacation. Plus Kurt is like Mosfet, anti-collabration. So I wonder, if a few guys group up and continue developing AtheOS free from Kurt, that could be a good thing.
My opinion is that if someone doesn’t like what’s happening, they can fork it and continue as they like. Yes, it is Kurt’s baby, but I think after a certain period of time without feeding the other developers and users it’s ok to fork a project. Kurts done a fantastic job so far with the core parts and it’d be a shame to continue without his involvement. But eventually, what can you do? You can either wait…and wait…and wait or you can shut-up and do something. It’s GPL’d so it’s free to take and improve if you want.
My $0.02
Just my opinion. Atheos is a remarkably usable OS with a lot of potential, given that it is in it’s early stages of development.
Before anyone says it “yes we all knew Kurt’s deal before we used it”. However, it has generated a good deal of attention, and interest by more than a few geeks. It would be a shame if it languished in undeveloped obscurity. It’s GPL’ed. Fork it and develop it. Or wait for kurt to become interested in it again. If he ever does.
…nothing more needs to be said so stop crying and start coding. Sheesh.
Hmm, I dont see you coding. Your just hanging around posting useless comments. You won’t even give us your real name or e-mail address. Lol…
As it seems, the webserver (atheos.cx), which is hosted on an AtheOS machine, is up like 20 days, which means someone maintains that machine. I wonder who…
Open Source software doesn’t die – it just fades away.
Just stay tuned over the next week.
What ya got for us, Vanders? C’mon tell us now.
What ya got for us, Vanders? C’mon tell us now.
It is obvious. Either
a) Kurt is returning, and/or
b) He is forking AtheOS.
As it seems, the webserver (atheos.cx), which is hosted on an AtheOS machine, is up like 20 days, which means someone maintains that machine. I wonder who…
I dunno, sometimes it is up, and some times it isn’t.
I dont really see why he would totally just break off his project for nine months, other than the fact that he might *GASP WINK GASP* just be tired of doing it?
Yeah, after all, he does all the work and doesn’t like anyone else meddling with it.
Could it be, that he needed time-off?
I’ve done the very same in the past, I coded my buns off for months on end, then take a break. It’s not uncommon and if the weather is nice outside, it’s very tempting to go play.
I’d give him more time and it doesn’t hurt to go and fork the project. Those who do fork it, would have a better understanding of how AtheOS works. Plus, you’d see how much time and dedication it takes to develop/support the platform.
C’mon. I’m like a three year old when it comes to operating systems. I gotta know NOW!
😉
Maybe he has found out there is more to this temporary life than computers and staring at a screen all day…
So OSNEWS is where my wife got that crazy idea!
😉
Well, after such a long time of ‘incertidumbre’ and ‘descontento’ from all the community, the fork is on the air.. and i think we are all going to enjoy having this new atheos working.
Here is the SF web site:
http://syllable.sourceforge.net/index.shtml
(I know it was a secret Vanders, but.. PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW! AND WANT IT NOW!)
(The power of press.. )
What does it mean?
Could it be, that he needed time-off?
Nine months is a awful lot of time-off time.
> Nine months is a awful lot of time-off time.
He could even have time to get pregnant and give birth in nine months… 😉
(joking)
He could even have time to get pregnant and give birth in nine months… 😉
(joking)
It could be a possiblity if he was a female. We males have it so easily. Reproduction for us is even fun 🙂
What does it mean?
From webster.com
Main Entry: 1syl·la·ble
Pronunciation: ‘si-l&-b&l
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 : an operating system based on AtheOS (okay, I added that entry)
2 : a unit of spoken language that is next bigger than a speech sound and consists of one or more vowel sounds alone or of a syllabic consonant alone or of either with one or more consonant sounds preceding or following
3 : one or more letters (as syl, la, and ble) in a word (as syl·la·ble) usually set off from the rest of the word by a centered dot or a hyphen and roughly corresponding to the syllables of spoken language and treated as helps to pronunciation or as guides to placing hyphens at the end of a line
4 : the smallest conceivable expression or unit of something
The name Syllable was choosen because its a well known fact (O.K, maybe not, but bear with me!) that all of the really good Operating Systems have easy to remember, 2 or 3 syllable names. BeOS, Linux, AtheOS, MacOS etc. Knowing this, I spent a week or so trying to think of a name for the OS. I was continually thinking “Two or three syllables!”. In the end, I realised that “Syllable” actually fitted that definition quite well, so I ran with it (I hate thinking up names, you see) Syllable is it.
True story! (Disclaimer: I am not an English Major. A name is a name!)
Well…
This is a good example of how good opensource is. If one man leaves his project, then other people taking up the project and create it to a new project for them! I think it is good… not that he left the project, but that he allow people go create there own thing of the code!
I just checked over the web page. pretty spiffy. Two issues:
Your screenshots are “broken” (not loading)
Need CD support (to boot and install). Why Atheos never supported this is beyond me.
Apparently cd drivers are very difficult to write (I’ve been lurking on the AtheOS mailing list for ages so I know).
Need CD support (to boot and install). Why Atheos never supported this is beyond me.
In the AtheOS forums one 0reality someone posted how he did an AtheOS install from a CD.
Take a look:
http://www.0reality.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=3d31bad75…
Disclaimer: I’ve never tried it.
And you cannot install it without a cdrom, perhaps its not yet ready for you.
Its not close to being finished. And honestly it installs more easily then any other *nix-like os Ive tried. Simple commands, well documented, etc.
I’m really happy this fork is coming, ifconfig/route/something else wasnt done right and alot of people couldnt get atheos on the net even with supported hardware. So hopefully this will adress that, and let me really play around with ahteos.
Chris:
The screenshots are not done yet. Since syllable is just being built as I write this, there won’t be screenshots until the earliest tommorrow
.
Also cd support is a feature we will be adding soon
. We just need to get some driver coders 
.
Will the new fork continue hogging on the same graphics server? I suggest you guys fork Fresco, which is a vector graphics server, as oppose to a raster one. Then layer it above the current graphics server (Fresco requires a console (like GGI, DirectFB, etc.), the current graphics server could be made into a console). How does that sound?
Your screenshots are “broken” (not loading)
They’re not loading because they don’t exist yet! You have to understand that Syllable was, uh, pre-emptively announced. The website is incomplete, we do not have a complete build ready for people to install yet, and most of the documentation is missing. You have to give us a few more days; I’m a busy man right about now
Need CD support (to boot and install). Why Atheos never supported this is beyond me.
IDE drivers are, apprently, difficult to get right. However, William Rose has written a driver that does Programmed IO for IDE devices, and is currently working on adding ATAPI support to it so that you can at least see the CD drive on the IDE bus. We still need an ISO-9660 filesystem driver, and William has told me that without DMA, the driver is actually slower than the current BIOS driver! Still, its a promising start.
Will the new fork continue hogging on the same graphics server? I suggest you guys fork Fresco…
We have a GUI & display system that works, and is fairly lightweight and well understood. Syllable is not trying to place itself on the cutting edge of new, flashy, unproven technology. We know that raster based, bitmap blited graphics work, so we’ll stick with it. Besides which, layering two graphics servers on top of each other sounds like a sure fire way to add instabality to the system, and slow it down at the same time.
So much work, so little time
I was going to tackle the DMA part of the IDE driver, adding to William Rose’s code base, but I didn’t have a second computer to debug. I will help tackle the development, if someone is willing to donate a computer for Serial line debug output.
I will say, for those that are driver writers, the code is very nice C++ that is easy to extend and those that no more about DMA and ATA might have a quicker time improving the IDE Driver than I would have. (Hooooo. The possiblility of a Disk Virtual Memory.)
I my self is a Linux user but for quite long time keep on watching OpenBeOS progress. I’ve tried AtheOS and quite impressed with its speed and GUI system. However since Kurt stop coding it, my hope for good desktop getting sour.
Since Syallable already started, I wish to see who is the winner, OpenBeOS, BuleEyedOS, YellowTab, Cosmoe or Syallable. Since OpenBeOS just good in pubishing news, I’m hoping that Syallable team will work on different way, providing the usable OS rather than just progress gimmick without any usable thing to try. (well, at least Linux does works and the most usable open source OS currently although many said it lack of this and that)
Hmmm, I wonder if this will even be read with this item so old
As someone said, tehre is:
OpenBeOS, BuleEyedOS, YellowTab, Cosmoe, and Syllable
One problem is that all of hese Os’ have close but sligtly different API’s and they will (hopefully) slowly evolve. I purpose seperating out the GUI and developing a more general GUI so taht compatability can be kept among all these small little bodies and support overall will increase.
My overall vision is for teh desktop something like OBOS/Syllable becomest eh short term desktop OS with a long term goal of GNU/Hurd/Fresco
Forgive me for the mistyping error