This is a sneak preview of what you can expect from Athene 3.1. New features include:“All-new high resolution icon set, consisting of ~400 images from Carles Carbonell Bernardo. Icons will automatically resize themselves to match your current screen resolution. Translucent, alpha blended windows and menus. New high speed alpha blending routines ensure excellent performance. Very fast non-rectangular window support! New fade effects – menus neatly fade in and out of the display.
Translucent scrollbars – now you can see what your scrollbars are obscuring… The Spacewalk and Wintel environments have been specially revised to show off all the new features.”
Athene 3.1 Includes New Looks
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
First thing I thought was I’m looking at Windows 98 with a
Windows XP taskbar.
Overall pretty good.
any apps ready for this new thing?
nuff said.
Hmmm, it looks like KDE crashed into XP. Eugenia, are you running this?
Looks pretty good.
God! Those icons are awful! Disgusting…
Please, no one make any comments about the different themes provided by default. Whenever somebody does that, I get the following mental image:
Customer walks into a MacDonalds. Cashier ask “would you like fries with that?” Customer’s head explodes.
Seriously — at Taco Bell, there are at least six different permutations of Chalupa. Even the customers there seem to have no problem handling the choices. People buy cars every day, and have no problem choosing both interior and (gasp!) exterior colors! I don’t think people’s choice of a theme is going to be any different.
A lot of people seem to be extremely bitter about something. They tend to stalk OS news sites in order to trash someone else’s work with little intention of offering anything constructive or useful.
No, the icons are pretty good, they are consistent and large and kindof the same perspective and colourful.
Actually, I don’t think many people share your opinion here: that icon set seems to be a modification of Noia, and is one of the highest rated sets on http://www.kdelook.org. Also, its my personal favorite icon set, so stuff it
PS> Carles AKA Carlitus has a website here: http://www.carlitus.net/
These guys are thinking and exploring vs. coming up with the ultimate edition of Windows 1.995K as the GNOME guys seem to be doing.
Aliased, deformed, cluttered, beveled all to hell. I’ll take the KDE icons over that crap any day of the week.
Looks good and some new features are obvious. Regardless of what I think, bubbly icons seem to be here to stay, no matter what OS – Mac, Windows, and now Athene.
One thing I can see, and have noticed in past Athene versions, is inconsistent use of icons and names. For instance, in the taskbar “Flames” is the Rubix-cube icon. On the desktop it’s called “Flame Demo” and the icon is a blue circle; the RubixCube icon on the desktop is for “Boing.” Should have been straightened out before this…
I look forward the release and to inspect the new features for myself. Right now I’m downloading 3.02; 3.01 is the most recent I have installed.
Best Luck to the folks at Rocklyte!
-Bob
Am I the only person who really doesn’t care all that much about the look of icons? I honestly wouldn’t care if an OS went back to using System 6 style mono icons. As long as it’s easy to tell them apart, the look of the icons seems totally insignificant.
Aliased, deformed, cluttered, beveled all to hell. I’ll take the KDE icons over that crap any day of the week.
I couldn´t say better. And I realize that it is some modification of the Noia icon set and that´s why I dislike it so much. And yes, I also know that it is one of the highest rated icon set in KDE-Look, but I honestly don´t know why.
Everaldo´s Crystal icon set beats this hands down any day. Even the old Hicolor default from KDE looks much better than that. And one can find a lot of better and more consistent icon sets in there, too.
However, I didn´t want to start a flamewar. If I somehow have offended somebody, please accept my apologies.
Best Regards,
DeadFish Man
Yeah, please get a crisis over a few icons. Geez.
This is a notice about the new comming Athene 3.1 release, not for a iconset release.
Please, comment or ask about Athene, not just for icons. The icons is only a part of a new-comming system, and its function (a part of illustrating files&directories) is just decorative. If you don’t like modern desktops as Athene, just use old-text-shells or Terminals.
I know this site is visited by geeks, and geeks and os-purists don’t like the extra-colorized and curved icons (i’m not flamming). In other kind of sites (such customization sites), this iconset will have more success, as Gentoo 1.6 will have a lot of succes here (OsNews) or in Slashdot.
I’m not afraid by comments (i received killing menaces too in 3 years making icons), so don’t comment more my icons in this thread, comment only Athene.
I love noia icons– been using them in KDE since they came out. They actually have COLOR, unlike blue-ish icons sets like Crystal and XP icons.
The transclucent scrollbars are pretty good idea.
I hope that ZSnake menus can be implemented in this.
Also, what sort of font renderer does Athene uses? Does it use freetype? I hope so.
Translucent scrollbars seems very innovative to me, the question that can’t be avoided however is : Why is Athene getting this kind of translucensy very xfree?
Can ofcourse not judge it’s speed so it may be same fake stuff that’s in KDE etc.
Beautifull, readable, AND professional: great work !
(Actually, I don’t like so big icons… but that’s up to everyone…)
Leo.
It lookes alot like windows ( 98/2000/XP )..
Anyway, its alot nicer then the previous shots Ive seen.
the web site design is total http://www.linuxjournal.com ripoff. The icons are beautifull and I hope more original the web site.
not to everyone’s tastes I’m sure but me likey a lot.
I’m a bit confused as to what I’m looking at though, is this a different shell, a new OS, a linux/window theme what – the site makes it far from clear (having windows and linux downloads)
the question that can’t be avoided however is : Why is Athene getting this kind of translucensy very xfree?
Not sure EXACTLY what you’re asking here…but Athene isnt using XF86, they have their own GUI, powered by Scitech SNAP video drivers. So they can do pretty much whatever they want.
Those fonts are pretty good. They look like the MS Sans Serif ones from Windows.
Looks good to me. DLing the 3.02 version to check that out right now…
How is software installed in this OS? Is there an apt-get style package system or something like Gentoo’s Portage?
I really don’t see the point.
Who needs a “virtual OS”? Who would want to
buy/install Windows or Linux just to run Athene
on it?
Maybe the standalone (real OS) version could
be interesting as an “alternative OS”. But
there is no try-out version of this beast
to download.
And does it run on my hardware? Are at least
the basic applications (web browser, email-client, office suite, etc.)
available? What about development tools (a port of GCC at least)?
I don’t think Athene has this stuff.
I don’t want to bash this OS or something but
I really don’t see any reason why anybody
would want to buy this? (The company sells it already)
netean,
Athene is an operating system that installs within Windows or Linux, the same as BeOS PE, Qube, some Linuxes, and older QNX. This way users can download and preview Athene without creating partitions and multi-booting. At this time it can’t be installed stand-alone yet.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Max,
Athene hasn’t been developed yet to the point of stand-alone installation. Until the final product is ready, I’d rather install in Windows instead of a full-install.
No, there are few apps available at this time but it is operational. There’s no sense at bashing a project so early in development. I don’t know how long Athene has been around, but to expect every OS project to have the resources and success of Windows or Linux is unrealistic.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By the way, who’s going to be the first dumb#$* to ask why doesn’t Athene just join up with another project, instead of creating an entirely new operating system? Or who’s going to be the first to post, “I’m not going to even try it, if it doesn’t have OpenOffice/PhotoShop, etc.”
There’s usually ones like that after most project announcements. Those people just don’t get it…
-Bob
By the way Max,
“Who would want to buy/install Windows or Linux just to run Athene on it?”
I doubt there are very many people that don’t have access to either Windows or Linux. Those are clearly the two most-used PC operating sytems, and therefore the two best choices for this type of release. Clearly they could have released for only one…
-Bob
I would urge people here to realize that not everyone has the same taste in graphical design. If they did, the world would be a very sad place. While some people might not like a particular look, a lot of other people might. Take cars for example. Personally, I hate the look of cars like the PT Cruiser, Cooper Mini, Volkswagen Beatle, etc. However, their popularity suggests that a lot of people do like their looks, enough to make them quite successful lines. So let’s try to turn the conformity down just a notch, m-kay?
Hi people, thanks for the positive comments! And the release is less than two weeks away – I can’t wait, and I’m running it :-). Finally, Athene is going to really prove its worth with a cutting edge interface and lots of never seen before GUI concepts. I guess this release has been a long time coming…
With respect to the icons, I think they’re fantastic and Carles did a great job producing a scalable iconset which not only looks good but is very complete (~400 graphics). The actual number of complete icon sets developed by a single individual is pretty minimal – even the Crystal set has 3+ contributors. What matters to me is that 8 out of 10 people have indicated they like these icons on voting sites. If the other 2 out of 10 are going to complain here, that’s cool – you definitely can’t please everyone.
There will be a Crystal icon package coming anyway, so perhaps the other 20% will switch to that and then everyone can be pleased 🙂
Some answers to comments:
* The translucency effects are 100% authentic – there is absolutely no faking/cheating going on in the code to produce these effects. You will see for yourself once you get 3.1.
* The rocklytefiles.com web site is not a linuxjournal.com rip-off, they both just use the same PHPNuke theme. Who cares anyway – it is just a sister-site for file downloads and will probably be redone in a few months.
* The new release will work just fine on X11 as it always has, complete with alpha blending and translucency etc. This is made possible because in this context, Athene just uses X11 as a glorified output device and isn’t doing any window management. Graphically the X11 version will not be anywhere near as fast as the commercial version (Athenyx), but it will probably beat the pants of GNOME and KDE, because they have to jump through hoops to achieve these types of effects. I know this all too well, having tried to do it a few years ago when Athene was also part-window manager.
* The font system is indeed freetype based (with all the extra rendering options turned on).
* A Mozilla client may not be too far off…
> This is made possible because in this context, Athene just uses X11 as a glorified output device and isn’t doing any window management.
Ah.. does this mean that any apps that are athene based will be run in one (perhaps fullscreen) window in X11- somewhat like vncviewer, Xnest, or vmware? I’ve been waiting for someone to do this for a while, as it allows the creation of a custom window compositor by passing X. By one window, I’m thinking one window as specified by a conventional window manager. Everything in the window would probably look like a giant pixmap to X.
I just downloaded and tried the last available version. Must say I am impressed with the performance, running under win2k. Would be really interresting if it was “stand alone” and had a few more everyday apps.
The new features seems cool too. Will check it out.
Ah.. does this mean that any apps that are athene based will be run in one (perhaps fullscreen) window in X11- somewhat like vncviewer, Xnest, or vmware? I’ve been waiting for someone to do this for a while, as it allows the creation of a custom window compositor by passing X. By one window, I’m thinking one window as specified by a conventional window manager. Everything in the window would probably look like a giant pixmap to X.
Yes. You can run it either as a client/virtual desktop inside an X11 window manager, or you can use the -xserver switch and Athene will open up a new X server display, for which it has total ownership.
I just downloaded and tried the last available version. Must say I am impressed with the performance, running under win2k. Would be really interresting if it was “stand alone” and had a few more everyday apps.
It’s already running stand-alone in the pre-retail release of Athenyx (at our online shop). I agree about the apps, but with the interface and graphics system now under control, we can spend a lot more time on the Mozilla client and X11 application layer. It shouldn’t be too long before Athene has some serious productive uses.
So you can have translucent scroll bars and translucent windows, but the icon text has to sit on an opaque background?
The UI is inconsistent and quite ugly.
I don’t know if somebody looked at the development manual, but the http://rocklyte.com/pandora/manual/index.html“> example written in C is IMO quite frightening. Maybe the reason is that they really want to encourage programmers to use DML instead.
<p> On the same page, the DML equivalent is much more simpler but still, I’m not convinced that programming in XML is very efficient in the long run and for big apps, especially towards maintainability and legibility. Did anybody found some example of C++ code or peek at the source code? In principle it should be simpler since C++ is inherently OO and should integrate more nicely in their OO framework.
<p> Mmmmh, I’m beginning to suspect that they wrote Pandora completely in C by applying OO concepts to the design and that there is no native C++ API …
for the above formatting, I’m not used to post comments.
Is there an easy way to uninstall on linux?
Yeah…can’t you do the same thing in Python with like 10 lines?
The one at the top before the BASIC one is also way too baroque. Does anyone ever do return 0; with the 0 in parentheses? Why? Also: what’s with the parameters passed to main()? And why do you need stdlib.h when plain stdio is sufficient?
Argh. My inexperience is probably showing through.
So you can have translucent scroll bars and translucent windows, but the icon text has to sit on an opaque background?
Look again, the background behind the icon captions are translucent much like the gnome icons was before it became a solid color in 2.x something (or possibly in some dev release prior to 2.0).
As to my question earlier (why athene is getting nice translucent effect ‘very’ xfree), I typed “very” instead of “before” for some reason, but amazingly my question was answered anyway.
Nice thing also is to see the window border being solid, and the content being transluceny, this is more similar to a full composite then the translucent effect in Windows and alike (where it’s all or nothing).
Hmm, seems that a Chrysler fan (Mopar = Chrysler OEM parts division) got a little miffed at my comments about the PT Cruiser
You know what? I don’t like the Prowler either! I drive a Volvo 
I don’t know if somebody looked at the development manual, but the “Hello World” example written in C is IMO quite frightening. Maybe the reason is that they really want to encourage programmers to use DML instead.
The purpose of that example is to show you how to get a -real- program up and running with a window and working interface, not to say ‘wow, let’s try and do hello world in 2 lines of code’.
On the same page, the DML equivalent is much more simpler but still, I’m not convinced that programming in XML is very efficient in the long run and for big apps, especially towards maintainability and legibility.
DML is intended for constructing your interfaces. Basically you write your program core in C, then use DML to build an interface that will represent the application. You can write an entire application in C if you want, but it would take longer and your interface would be hard-coded in that case.
Mmmmh, I’m beginning to suspect that they wrote Pandora completely in C by applying OO concepts to the design and that there is no native C++ API…
There is no advantage in using C++ over C when writing Pandora based apps. There is much discussion of this and the system structure in the manual, so I won’t go into it here…
Nice thing also is to see the window border being solid, and the content being transluceny, this is more similar to a full composite then the translucent effect in Windows and alike (where it’s all or nothing).
Great, somebody noticed! It gives a nice ‘through the looking glass’ effect when you drag the window around the desktop. It’s an extremely difficult feature to implement on any system — Athene’s graphics support had to be given some special enhancements to allow it. I’m glad at least one person was able to spot this.
Why dont you make the normal buttons to be like the taskbar buttons?And the Mandrake Galaxy window bar theme would be much nicer than this Windows like window bars.And it would match with the taskbar.That would be nice…Also,you need a Video Player.I will buy and use Athene when I can get a browser,mail client,IM client and a video player…
Is Athenyx to be a standalone OS? And it isn’t the same as Athene 3.1?
Thanks!
Why dont you make the normal buttons to be like the taskbar buttons?And the Mandrake Galaxy window bar theme would be much nicer than this Windows like window bars.And it would match with the taskbar.That would be nice…Also,you need a Video Player.I will buy and use Athene when I can get a browser,mail client,IM client and a video player…
The screenshot is just a sneak preview – work on the GUI is not finished yet :-). The final version of the Wintel desktop is just about complete though and the screenshot will be updated soon to reflect this. A screenshot of the new Spacewalk environment will also be online once it’s ready later in the week. It will all look beautiful by the time of release.
Is Athenyx to be a standalone OS? And it isn’t the same as Athene 3.1? Thanks!
Athenyx already exists and is installed standalone. It’s specially customised for running Athene and includes extra features and files that aren’t available in the free version. You will notice in the Win/Linux versions of Athene there are options that won’t work (e.g. gamma adjustment) but in Athenyx it all works because it’s fully integrated with the Athene desktop. It’s also very, very fast graphically and has roughly a 6 second boot time on most machines :-).
The ‘final version’ of the Wintel screenshot has just been posted. It contains the window decoration that we are actually using for final release, plus updated menu bars, scrollbars, buttons, border colours etc. Use the refresh button if you have looked at the previous screenshot.
http://www.rocklytefiles.com/files/screenshots/athene31.jpg
Now, that looks pretty damned good… right? 😉
No, actually it looks pretty shitty. I like the standard win32 look better, but you need to do a better job of making it behave more like win32.
“No, actually it looks pretty shitty. I like the standard win32 look better, but you need to do a better job of making it behave more like win32.” ….so use Windows. You’ll find it behaves a lot like win32.
I’ve gotta say I’m getting sick of seeing comments like this by anonymous posters. If you can do better Mr Anonymous then go ahead and do it, or at least have the balls to put your name to your comments. Bashing other peoples ideas and projects on this site only serves to put people down that give their time freely to make our favourite OS’s (whatever they may be) better for all of us.
Criticism is important but at least try to make it constructive.
http://www.rocklytefiles.com/files/screenshots/athene31.jpg
I hope this is not the default theme. What where they thinking when they made that Menu button? It looks like it’s only a label for the taskbar, and not the most important part of the desktop. For new users with no Windows (or GUI clones) experience, this is probably the last place they would think of clicking.
Well, at least the window decoration isn’t just a knockoff of Windows 95 any more. That’s good. But it’s bizarre to have a 3D-looking shape for the widgets, complete with hilight, that fades into a totally flat pattern. It’s the same with the taskbar. The menu and the tray look beveled outward, and the rest of the bar is beveled inward, and it looks very inconsistent.
At the very least, if you’re going to have a change in the surface like that, you should how the two surfaces actually join, instead of just having them fade into each other.
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