TechIMO has published the first preview of the next-generation SkyOS platform. With the new beta program gearing up, this article may provide some insight into what features one can expect when testing SkyOS 5. Many screenshots included. Ever busy with improvements, Robert and the SkyOS team have added the following to SkyOS 5:
– Bochs 2.1 is now working and will be available in 5.0
– SDL 2.1 was ported, and will also be available for 5.0
– SkyOS and all libraries were updated to fully support unicode/UTF8 handling
– new window style for inactive windows (screenshot here)
Finally, the first round of beta testers are starting to receive their SkyOS 5.0b CDs. Work with the beta testers should begin shortly.
I think the GUI is rather amateurish looking. But other than that, neat.
The GUI looks ok enough but it will be the responsiveness that will make or break this OS
…one of the most intuitive graphical user interfaces ever. Gone are misconceptions about conformance. SkyOS serves as a reminder to GUI developers that the current status quo will only suffice for so long.
Great project and all, but I fail to see anything about SkyOS breaks away from the ‘status quo’. The GUI is really just ‘more of the same’.
“However, I do not understand waht separates this from operating systems such as Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.3 or Xandros Desktop Deluxe 2.0? Where does this OS shine?”
Exactly. When it comes down to it, if you just want a useable gui, there ain’t much difference. But think about this….
Windows XP/2000=Largest and most expensive software project ever attempted in the history of mankind.
SkyOS=Mainly the work of one man, working for free.
SKYos is small, clean, well designed, and free of legacy baggage, but under the skin it’s not as mature as the other OS’s you mentioned. But… once the linux compatability is in there (which will mean Wine too) it’s right up there with those other OS’s for everyday computing tasks. Truely astonishing.
>The GUI is really just ‘more of the same’.
It can’t be anything else, what did you expect? As long computers ship with a keyboard and a mouse, the paradigm will always be the same and all UIs will be similar-enough to each other.
To truly innovate in UI today, you need to invent new pointing/input/output devices. So, don’t expect brand new things by any OS. First, wait new things from hardware manufacturers and then from software developers, because software just runs on top of the available hardware anyway.
MS is currently studying new ways of moving windows and stuff (and they do both the hardware and the software for this project), but it is still alpha (it is way of moving windows as you see in the ‘Minority Report’ movie).
Remind me of Win 3.0 era
1 Control Panel
2 DOS box running WP 5.1
3 Solitaire
SkyOS is not X-Window; to say that ‘it could be X with some theme’ is just saying that X can be made to look just about any way one wants to. However, to take some good ideas, string them, make an appealing whole and use that as a standard is something bold and difficult. What OS X does, Windows does (not very well), BeOS does, seemingly SkyOS does and UNIX just doesn’t wish to do.
It can’t be anything else, what did you expect?
I’m not really expecting anything, but that is what they are claiming (in the preview article).
I think this is a fine example of what you can do when you really put your mind to it, and I for one will probably get a a copy of this to not only show my support, but to give it a spin. Who knows, it could be the next great OS.
It can’t be anything else, what did you expect? As long computers ship with a keyboard and a mouse, the paradigm will always be the same and all UIs will be similar-enough to each other.
He didn’t say he expected anymore Eugenia he was just illustating how “loaded” the preview seems, frankly I agree.
My last post arrived a little late.
Yeah, it’s not very beautiful. But compared to other projects of this kind it looks rather good. But it seems like they are missing basic classes like toolbars cause they are inconsistant.
I am tempted to make a few mockups and suggestions but I don’t have the time right now. It would be fun though.
Keep in mind that these shots are compressed with jpeg so they look a lot worse than the real thing.
POLISH POLISH THE UI
and rule the world
I think the GUI designers have done a good job with creating the GUI. I remember that the GUI contest for SkyOS was not too long ago and the team has developed quite a bit in such a short time.
Keep up the good work.
I think it’s amazing how fast this seems to have developed in recent times….
It looks great so far! I’m very impressed with these guys effots so far, and I wish them well.
Graphic user interfaces spend more than 90% of their time waiting for input/command from users while consuming valuable system resources.
I think open source has the resources to improve upon this inefficiency of this type of interface. It’s not just about how a graphic user interface looks or how it is arranged, but about how efficient, responsive and unobtrusive it is to users.
One would have thought as every other technology is proceeding towards nano-size management and manipulations, computer applications, interfaces and design methods would approach minimal resource usage and optimal efficiency. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.
Graphic user interfaces are becoming bloated, obtrusive, confusing, complex, resource inefficient and just unusable. Yes, that includes Mac OS X, the supposed epitome of graphic user interfaces.
The conclusion I’m trying to draw is that advances is graphic user interfaces should not primarily be based on looks and widget placements. For me a break through in graphic user interface application is when an application uses 0-10% of my resources when it not been used and a reasonable amount of my system resources when it use.
That entails a complete redesign of application graphics and theme engines as well as graphic toolkits. There is a lot we can learn from console game developers. They write the most efficient and complex graphics systems and more often than not, they design creative and useful interfaces.
But I digress, lets get back on topic. Sky OS is an interesting project.
Actually, there are lots of ways left to innovate using the existing input devices.
One thing that bothers me about today’s UIs is window clutter. When I’m writing a research paper, for example, I want all my research-related windows (browsers, word processor, etc) together. I don’t want to have to hunt around in a task-bar cluttered by unrelated items, unless I want to switch tasks. You can do this with virtual desktops, but a data mining engine could probably make associations and groupings automatically.
In, fact, I’d like to get rid of windows entirely. 90% of the time, a person is only working on one window. They don’t need to deal with the manual resizing/moving. Instead of individual windows, apps could be full-screen, with an additional mechanism to handle the relatively rare cases when you need two windows onscreen at once. Apple’s “sheets” are a great step in this direction.
I’d also like to see more use of color. Current UIs use color to look pretty, not be useful. Humans are highly sensitive to color, and its a shame to waste that potentially useful skill. Again, Apple’s color-coded folders are a right step in this direction.
On a different track, I’d like to see more use of UIs that take advantage of natural language. Not spoken language, because speech technology is rather cumbersome, but typed natural language. I’ve found that people find Google *extremely* simple to use. If they are thinking of something, they just type in key words (people seem to have little trouble understanding the concept of search queries as key words) and get the information they want. It’d be great if someone who doesn’t know much about the computer could just type “mail” into a little box and have the mail program pop up. Or “internet” and have the internet program pop up.
Lastly, I’d like to see (optional, of course!) tighter integration between the CLI and applications. Hotkeys are nice, but they don’t make up for a truely CLI-friendly program like Vim
I’ve seen the CLI used extraordinarily well in engineering apps like AutoCAD, and I think it could be quite useful for other apps as well.
I am not sure if SkyOS has the equivalent of a My Documents folder but if it doesn’t then may be it should get one.
The reason why is that with most computers having CR Burners a neat feature would be a BackUp option when you Right Click on the My Documents folder. A little dialog box could pop up instructing the user to place a blank CD into the CD drive. Kind of making back ups easier.
This feature may be partially present in other OSes but not labeled as a back up solution. Most of the Right Click options just mention buring a data or music CD. Which then start up the full buring application. I think some operations can do without having to use the application’s full interface.
I think the OS looks neat and sounds like it would be kewl. I shall try it out and hey if it works good on my hardware might evne use it ~~~ Best of luck to SkyOS and hope to see more and much better releases.
–Idoxash
The first paragraph is already full of subjective wording which tells you what the rest of the review is like. So it might be more correct to call it an advert.
Other than that, it’s good to get some information about one of the promising new OS’s around and the screenshots are a nice. I would also really enjoy seeing a technical review about the internal workings of SkyOS. It seems like a black box to me, albeit a pretty black box since the new GUI came in.
It’d be great if someone who doesn’t know much about the computer could just type “mail” into a little box and have the mail program pop up. Or “internet” and have the internet program pop up.
Kde/Gnome, etc: Alt + F2 and some well placed symbolic links.
Windows: Slickrun (http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/)
I am currently using slickrun with windows and it is one of these apps that make you wonder how you managed to get the job done before it’s arrival. It makes use of “magic words”, an idea much like symlinks, but with some extras: Where the program should be started, if the application window should be minimized, maximized or in “normal” mode at start, what parameters to send, if interactive parameters ahould be allowed, and my favourite, @multi@ keywords, which let you run several of your magic words using just one magic word, like poor man’s scripts.
It takes some configuration to get it really useful, but the process of adding new words is very user friendly (point & click).
I think there’s mistake – there’s no such thing as SDL 2.1. Current SDL is 1.2.6 IIRC, and SDL 2.0 wasn’t even started yet (only some plans). Also on SkyOS website there’s “SDL 1.2”
There are however one strange choice:
Why create your own shell? Why not just use bash, tcsh, etc?
Why create your own shell? Why not just use bash, tcsh, etc?
Although powerful, the shells you mentioned have a heavily cryptic syntax, it looks to me like they’re aiming toward SkyOS being an easy-to-use OS.
🙂
>>
In, fact, I’d like to get rid of windows entirely. 90% of the time, a person is only working on one window. They don’t need to deal with the manual resizing/moving. Instead of individual windows, apps could be full-screen, with an additional mechanism to handle the relatively rare cases when you need two windows onscreen at once. Apple’s “sheets” are a great step in this direction.
<<
Oh please, make it happen!
(Actually i am working on a WM to do just this, still in concept phase, though.)
Sounds cool. There are quite a few problems with windows:
– Complicates graphics system (overlapping (What windows are visible? Which part of a window should be re-drawn?) etc.)
– Wastes screen space (title bar, resize bars)
– Requires user to manage/move/resize/align/etc.
– Other windows can be distracting
I still believe DOS was easier to use than Windows in a lot of situations (when using a program, not at the CLI), but quite limited by not being able to switch apps. I ran DR-DOS once which had a program switcher, but it crashed a lot 🙁
A window manager with full-screen and split frames would be mega 🙂 I can imagine some useful situations:
– Split text editor/browser for designing web pages
– Two file managers, Norton Commander-style
– A command shell at the bottom of the screen
– Any app, full screen would be nice
You could have switching between apps hidden, it could appear by pressing a key such as… the “Windows(TM)” key or something like that. You could then select with the mouse or arrow keys, maybe lock the mouse so it can’t go outside the app selector.
You mean you want something like ION, rtl, or PWM?
Ion screenie:
http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/screenshots/look-dusky.png
Cool, I’m emerge-ing Ion now 🙂
I’m probably gonna get modded down for this – but it amazes me the degree to which people have begun to fixate on GUIs on this site, to the determinent of the operating systems behine them.
Good God, for a handful of people to have created a 32bit OS with decent memory management, multi-processing and a network stack is astounding. But no-one in the forums is interested in these details, most of it is just moaning about the interface (which is damn good for such a small team) and making profound statements that the OS’s future will be decided by its GUI. Linux was using the console and fvwm for the first eight years of it’s existence, and in that first eight years it gained a significant presence because of it’s size and performance.
In comparison with the other features in an operating system, GUIs really aren’t that important. It makes no difference how usuable and intuitive a GUI is if the VM thrashes about every time you switch apps.
Now I can’t contribute anything very meaningful to this conversation, as my OS knowledge is pretty sparse, but it’s kinda sad that reading the comments on this site won’t improve things. SkyOS is an astounding achievement for four year’s effort by a handful of people. I’d love to know how it’s internals work, what kind of MM etc. it has. The colour-scheme of its UI and other such trivialities really are just icing on the cake. It’s th internal issues that an OS site should talk about.
Rayiner Hashem have you read The Human Interface by Raskin? Some of your ideas are in that book.
I have used Fluxbox for over a year but decided to give KDE 3.1.4 a try. I have been using KDE for a month now. In some places KDE gets in the way. I know some people will say you can customize KDE to what you like but I could also do that with Fluxbox. Fluxbox just starts out uncluttered. On my WindowsXP machine the GUI theme was bad so I reverted it back to the Classic. It seems some of the popular GUIs give you everything at first and want you to turn off what you do not want.
So which is better, starting out with everything turned on or starting out with a minimal amount of stuff turned on? The first option people have to take away stuff they do not like and the other option people put in what they only like.
I prefer the minimal.
While it looks nice, i find it odd that there are two screenshots, one dated Jan5th, the other, Jan13th, and they both show Super MarioWorld in the same world state??, are these mockups or what?.. also, wonder if Nintendo reads these columns
.. Maybe i’m just missing something, it’s 4:10am, gimme a break 
Hey, I’ve used Ion(-devel) for half a year now, and I really can’t imagine using a “normal” window manager again.
But since most OS’s apart from *nix just use one window manager, I doubt I will switch to another OS any time soon, even if SkyOS looks very promising.
@the guy who wants to emerge it:
You should do a “ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=”~x86″ emerge ion-devel” since the other ion branch is nearly two years old now.
Preview page down… I guess they got Slashdotted.
Heh, I’m using it now, but I’ll go and get the devel version *presses F2*
Trying to find a way to slow mouse down (Resolution setting in XF86Config/InputDevice doesn’t work, I normally rely on KDE to do this for me).
Sure, all these alternate OS’es are neat.
To an end-user, all we care about is if it has apps we want/need to run.
So, develop the OS. Great!
But what about apps?
I’m MUCH more excited about ReactOS, because once it’s usable… There are TONS of apps for it.
Once, it’s usable. I can use it right away. FULL TIME.
All these neat Alternate OS’es like SkyOS, Syllable, etc… Are nice. They must be fun for the programmers to write.
But, to an end user, if there’s no Word Processors, Check Book Programs, Web Browsers, etc…
What good are they?
For an End User, an OS is not the end in and of itself. It is a means to run Apps.
<quote>I’m probably gonna get modded down for this – but it amazes me the degree to which people have begun to fixate on GUIs on this site, to the determinent of the operating systems behine them. </Quote>
The reason people (myself included) are so fixated on GUIs recently is because we have NO acceptable solution currently. 96% of home computers are running i686 intel compatible processors, so the best we have is Gnome/KDE and windows XP. Knowing OSX is so far advanced and yet not an option because of the closed nature of its hardware is pretty brutal.
Frankly, the reason you don’t hear people saying “WOW! skyOS is really robust and handles virtual memory REALLY efficiently” is because we already have that. FreeBSD/Linux/BeOS and even Windows XP are perfectly fine in this regard. What we need/want/crave is a next-generation interface.
_Mike
“I still believe DOS was easier to use than Windows in a lot of situations (when using a program, not at the CLI), but quite limited by not being able to switch apps. I ran DR-DOS once which had a program switcher, but it crashed a lot :-(”
Did you ever use Desqview by Quarterdeck? It did premptive mutlitasking for DOS in 1993 or before. It was very crash proof with 95% of the DOS apps at the time.
I think the linux community may be a little too nice to the osx gui. After using it I am just not impressed. I think 9 was better (the gui) b/c it really focused on developing habits that were useful with every application. The best example would be the task bar at the top. While osx still has this, it added the dock which looks cool but is a pain in the neck IMO, all while losing the really nice aspects of the taskbar at the top (side alignments, consistant menu titles, task switcher). I am sure some people would disagree and I do believe that someone can learn a crappy interface and be efficient but I think while a work of art, osx makes it harder to work.
On SkyOS btw. I didn’t get to read the article but I have certainly been impressed. The gui contest brought out some really nice looking interfaces and I am excited to read a review (whenever the article has ceased to be slashdotted
But the point is there are tons of next generation OS ideas out there (though I can’t give any names or links off the top of my head). There are some that have shifted a lot of functionality into userspace (the HURD) or into libraries. Some have gone full whack at the everything is a file model (Plan 9), some allow core components to be changed without rebooting (HURD again).
And then there’s scope to re-write the application model. Java features a sandbox where different permissions with regard to functionality (access to files, network, etc.) can be granted to different apps – it’s perfectly feasible for a similar feature to be coded for GNU GCC based systems like Linux, or the like, which could drastically improve security.
There’s loads of different ways of looking at the filesystem, with a load of BeOS stuff beginning to get resurrected, both in terms of functionality and algorithms.
There’s an awful lot happening in OS-space, with an unprecendented amount of amateur efforts reaching public attention, and while GUIs are interesting, they should only be considered a part of the whole.
Finally as regards minimal but powerful window managers, E17 could be interesting when it comes out (although when it comes out could be anything up to a decade away!)
@Scorched Earth: You know, somebody else has suggested that book to me too! I’m definately going to have to take a look at that book.
@Eric: You kind of get used to OS X. Its quite different from the Windows “taskbar” motif, but I think I like docks better overall. OS X is definately not as good as MacOS Classic, though, in the HIG department.
I too am an Ion-devel user, and like the other guy, I can’t see myself using any other type of window manager again. It may not be the slickest looking thing, but my god, it’s certainly the one that gets in my way the least. The default key bindings really suck (imho) but once you have it configured to your liking, _everything_ can be two or three keystrokes away.
To anyone that has not tried Ion, I highly suggest taking Ion-devel for a spin, and give it a bit of time, cause it’s really quite different than traditional WMs.
But making money from other peoples GPL software, by charging $30 for a CD, is not right. Even if they provide the shipping of the CDs , and some tech support.
So, what do you think about the linux distributions? They do exactly this. All of them.. They all take gpl code, put in a CD and sell.. There may be some linux distributions that are made by people in their free time, but the main distributions want to earn money, as any other company.
And SkyOS is not using GPL code for the system. All the code was made by Robert. We are now in process of porting and developing some applications that may or may not be GPL. All the GPL applications will be distributed for free when they are ready. The ports are not finished yet, and for consistency, the code were not released yet. All the authors were contacted by the team, and they all agreed with it. The applications will then be released in the CD with SkyOS, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. There’s a lot more developed by Robert than GPL code in there.
Trying to find a way to slow mouse down
xset m 1
(Or higher numbers for more speed.)
The first thing that jumped out at me was that the drop shadows look like they are a different shape than the windows from whence they theoretically come into existence.
Also, the drop shadow on the task bar thing at the top should not end on the right side like it does, but should extend to the top of the screen, in my opinion.
I agree, and the plastic button thing around the window titles look out of place (but that can probably be changed with themes)
Also the Free Software Foundation spoke of the distribution model: Let the software be free but earn money with shipping. Nowadays, this is quite a little outdated, but it’s to show you that earning money with free software that way is absolutely ok.
If it’s not worth the money, you can still get the software from elsewere. So where’s the matter on this?
Ok so for some like myself, full screen windows are the way to go for some apps but there are instances when I prefer to have smaller windows and run multiple apps at the same time.
Personally I like the MS way of dealing with things with the use of Alt-Tab as a means of cycling through full screened apps when I need them like Graphic Design apps when at work or Opera and OO when I’m working on a document and researching on the net.
I like the choice but I do agree with a simple clean interface on the desktop to start with allowing me to add to it rather than having to cull items to get the minimalisation I require. I also like the use of quick launch bars which I have configured with the apps I like to use frequently.
Also take into consideration that the monitor will be going through a transformation, dimensionally, going from 4:3 aspect to 16:9 and some running multiple monitors too. Can’t have to little options for users as everyone is different but we don’t want everything including the kitchen sink running to start with. GUI’s are nice for me compared to comand prompts for half my tasks but I like a mouseless operation so keyboard navigation and usage is preferable. Any GUI that is mouse dependant sucks in my view (-:
Oh yeah, candy isn’t that great either. Whenever I come accross a PC with XP default GUI on it I show the owners how the same system can respond under the classic setting. Don’t waste CPU cycles on eye candy.
So, what do you think about the linux distributions? They do exactly this. All of them.. They all take gpl code, put in a CD and sell.. There may be some linux distributions that are made by people in their free time, but the main distributions want to earn money, as any other company.
The difference is that Linux distributions, at least provide the sourcecode on the CD you are purchesing or in most cases provide a site that you can download the source code for free.
How ever you put it skyos is making money from other people’s work.
GPL says you can take fee on the transfert of the software. In another word you can put a gpl program on a cdrom and sell it, or put it on a web site and take a free to autorise the download.
It says that the program must be open source. That every program that would use some code of a GPLed program must be open source. And that you must give to possibility to get the sources.
Most Linux distribution does the right thing (at least, Lindows doesn’t).
I don’t know if there is gpl code in SkyOS 4.0
and I’m waiting to check the official SkyOS 5.0