Robert Szeleney has just released the long-awaited beta8.3 to the SkyOS beta team. This release includes major upgrades to the operating system as a whole; including important ports such as FireFox and ThunderBird.
SkyOS Beta 8.3 Released To Beta Team
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Thanks to Robert and his team. Looking forward to install and test tonight!
It should be “operating” not “opertating”
Nevertheless, great work Robert!
Tomasz Dominikowski
SkyOS Alpha Team
Yay! Been waiting for this….
w00t w00t
installing now can’t wait to mess around and use it.
I fixed the typo on eXp Zone already Tomasz
Yup, great news this, I’m glad Robert could finally put 8.3 out. Some members of the community we’re getting all jumpy about the so-called delays. but I really didn’t care.I’d rather have a working beta than a non-working beta!
Great Robert, keep it up!
That link is to expert-zone.com, which site btw. has the same news only that their link is to skyos.org.
Am I wrong or is someone trying to fool google ?
Can’t you link directly to skyos ?
I’m tired of theses link to this news site which links to this which.. all trying to get hits while we don’t even care.
“If I wasn’t such a hebe I’d try this out.
If only…”
hebe?
its common and curtious practice in the News Site community to source the site which the news is accredited to or originated from, this is done in one of two ways:
linking to the news article or by placing “Source: <site name & url>” at the bottom of the article
Why do you post this kind of message to OSnews, while it is practically unusable news except of a small number of testers… Anyway, the project *SEEMS* interesting, and your server is excellent!
according to the release notes it strongly recommends 384 megs of ram or above
how bloated can you get?
windows and gnome/kde linux desktops are bad enough, miles slower and heaver than beos etc
i mean, we may all have ubergigahertz boxes, but the vast majority of the world is on 128 meg boxes (stats from research – hence the amount still on nt4)
thats because debug apps are running and large amounts of debug code are still in skyOS apps and its core to help speed up bug finding, once all that is removed the system will require alot less RAM
SkyOS is not bloated. It is just that Firefox and Thunderbird ports need such an amount of RAM to properly start (256MB is enough for native, 384MB for VMware/VPC). It is only due to a buggy starting sequence, which of course will be fixed by 5.0 final. I hope this answers your question. No bloat here. Just beta phase.
Why do you post this kind of message to OSnews, while it is practically unusable news except of a small number of testers…
OSNews reports about Tiger seeds for example, which are also only available to a few people… What about Zeta? Same thing– they also ask money to beta test their software.
Please, be consistent in your comments then. I’ll be looking forward to your comment in the next Zeta/Tiger/Longhorn thread!
But seriously now people, SkyOS is moving at a fast pace. i’ve already tested 8.3 today, and it’s hugely more stable and a lot faster then previous betas. I still have my netw. prob– but it is veru likely this has something to do with my netw. setup of switches and such. Me and Robert are working on this, actually.
Great stuff!! Also, from the front page of SkyOS.org:
“A little-known fact about SkyOS is that it has supported command-line writing to CD’s and DVD’s since the early beta phase. We are now not only making this fact public, but also announcing that one of the big features of SkyOS beta 9 will be support for writing CD’s through the Viewer, using the graphical user interface. This interface will be very simple and unobtrusive, in essence, just another function of the Viewer window.”
Yeah
.
Skyos is progressing at good pace, with lots of nifty features. The community is quite stellar. We’ve been waiting a long time for this release; its a huge one, with hundreds of bugs fixed, plus FireFox and Thunderbird. Oh and a native office suite is in progress.
I pay to beta test because I like the OS and the input I give will help the final product be something I’d like to use everyday.
I am posting this message from SkyOS firefox! a little buggy this time around, but it really depends on your hardware. Of course not everything is supported yet. However, it works good enough on my Nforce3 even though my mobo is not supported officially, yet.
I would recommend people come and beta test skyos, its awesome, and it’s a os that is actually going somewhere and being actively developed at an amazing speed.
Just registered as a Beta Tester to try this out, the videos look really impressive on the website. Unfortuatenly, I have to wait for my account to be activated, unless Robert or Kelly is reading this and wants to activate my account 🙂
How similar is the file system to Beos?, does it use the same search mechanisms, etc..
Does anyone know of any decent reviews on some of the latest betas
and cool features. The project currently experiences a huge quality improvement session, so, let’s fix the bugs: find them and in the darkness bind them. *rofl*
It is not only, that there’s a small staff behind this load of work, it is that this staff is acquiring so much in this pace.
fazit: I like this project. It is cool.
Like Thom said, there is a lot of debug code, so that’s one reason you need 384 megs of RAM. Apps like AbiWord and FireFox need a lot as well. FireFox on SkyOS wont even launch on 128 megs and will be crashy on 256. RAM is dirt cheap so I don’t mind adding the extra RAM anyway.
I summited the news and at the time skyos.org didn’t have the news on there site. The expert-zone was the only site with the news. Even now that skyos has the news posted, expert-zone still gives more information on what’s been improved.
why should i buy skyos instead which will need more ram / pathetic hardware support/ can’t burn cds/ watch my movies(codecs?)/ hear mp3s(non existent sound drivers). Every other commercial os was better at a time it was released, so i would like to know what’s so special about this one?
Its a small OS so hardware support will be limited until more drivers are written. That said, it supports most common hardware, You can burn CDs via the command line, with a GUI coming in the next beta release. You can watch movies via the built in movie player and many sound cards are supported.
Remember, this is a project of just a few people and has made great progress.
what else? they’re recovering ground in relation to, say, linux or freebsd, mostly by using existing infrastucture (ff, gtk, OBFS are the first I can think).
But what will happen when they are on the same level?
It does not seem to me that skyos innovated in any way, until now, so what will happen when the “fast developing by importing existing stuff” phase will end?
Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? SkyOS apps might be from the *nix world– but the operating system itself contains so many features other OSs can only dream of (ie. ISS). I’m sure someone with better skills than me (ie. Kelly) can elaborate on this.
What does Linux offer that BSD doesn’t offer? What does BSD offer that Solaris doesn’t offer? What HP-UX doesn’t offer? What IRIX doesn’t offer? Etc.
You get my point. People want diversity in the OS business yet they shoot down everything that’s new. I’m getting sick of that hypocritical attitude.
I, myself, am a supporter for as much differentation in the computing world as possible. My x86 is a triple booter, my main machine is an iBook, and my seconday machine is an UltraSPARC.
“so many features other OSs can only dream of”
It’s like “its such a magnificent os that i even don’t know why it is so special”. I can see the difference between the os’es you mentioned and what makes them special. I like the consistency of bsd and the speed of linux(they are also free as in “speech” and that makes this sofisticated software pretty special). I am interested in new ideas of solaris (zfc,dtrace,containers). There are lots of differences like licensing/ ease of use/ different architectures in all thees os’es. I just assumed that skyos developers had something special about their os what will make people buy it and wanted to know about it.
What has changed since this review http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1385
I have been following SkyOS for a while now and it is progressing at an amazing pace. IMHO the UI looks very rubbish and ’85 hacker movies like but the OS itself is sweet.
The GUI sucks big time… you can see the idea was to make a shiny Aqua style GUI but it didn’t work out very well.
I can’t comment on the rest of the OS since I haven’t tried it and I will not if they keep asking money for a beta.
What does Linux offer that BSD doesn’t offer? What does BSD offer that Solaris doesn’t offer? What HP-UX doesn’t offer? What IRIX doesn’t offer? Etc.
What a weird compare. Normal People ™ don’t run HP-UX, Solaris or IRIX for the sake of ‘diversity’. The arguments for not running either are mostly freedom, cost and feature-related afaict.
SkyOS has:
Diff-FS: allows editing of files on read-only mediums which are stored to RAM for the period of the session of use.
ISS (integrated streaming system): allows other applications to use it in order to supply media playback.
context security: allowing for various combinations of security settings for different users this feature can also act as a filewall, blocking certain ports for certain apps or blocking network access completely
those are ones i can think of off my head. i know knoppix has something like Diff-FS that also resides in RAM.
“—.range81-153.btcentralplus.com” is me lol forgot to put my name in for post titled: “re: RE: RE: Verbat/cc”
the UI is hardly cutting edge but it doesn’t suck.
to compare it to apple:
all open programs have a slot on the task bar (like Windows) as opposed to minimized apps only like in Apple, useful because they stay there allowing some amount of muscle memory.
windows are self contained, versus apple’s finder bar AND window (and don’t even try to pull fitt’s law). so when you close a window the app actually closes.
other than that it’s a clean solid GUI and there’s nothing 80’s hacker movie about it.
Just saying hi!
This message posted using Firefox in SkyOS.
Also has the BeFS file system, which will in the future allow for search features as powerful as spotlight and beos’.
So technically, it will be one of a few OS’s that can do that, and really one of just two that are actively developed and stable.
That is, in the future
Although SkyOS is cute, and everyone respects the defiant spirit of “do-it-yourself from scratch” … this really is re-inventing the wheel for no sufficiently good reason.
Newsflash: X86 hardware isn’t going to be around for ever … by the time the OS is “really finished”, the hardware it’s made for will be “really finished” as well.
Trailblazer Op. systems (like NextStep and BeOS “way back in the day”) informed the next generation by (1) providing functionality that contemporary OSes lacked and (2) planning for the hardware of the future.
Playing “catch up” with X86 build Linux is a dead-end game. When you finally rebuild USB support, Unicode support, etc. etc., then what? You’ll be able to “kind-of/sort-of” do all the things that a Mac already does; and so what if you “did it yourself”? It’s closed source so nobody will really benefit from any ingenious new solutions to OS problems they may devise (if any…)
Yeah, it’s cute; but this makes QNX seem like “the OS of the future” by comparison … at least QNX could (in theory) run on almost any hardware.
At the rate its moving, it’ll be have more features than longhorn before longhorn is released
What are the unique features of ISS? The most detailed description I’ve found of it so far is this: http://www.skyos.org/tour/tour3.php
To me, it doesn’t seem very different to e.g. Gstreamer (http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org). What am I missing?
@zerblat
You are missing nothing, Thom and Youlle are hyping things up there is nothing wrong with that however, if you like/love something you sometimes exagurate, what was that again? love makes blind?
I think SkyOS is a nice hobby OS and always remains that, it has to fight Windows, Apple and Linux and its all depending
on software wich is original made for those three mainplayers. They have to port every single software app (besides the ones they create) to even try to catch up. I hope for them native software is going to be released, openoffice, mozilla, thunderbird, etc. otherwise the are doomed to stay just another hobby os and never get more attention.
Keep up the work SkyOS team, and keep up your faith there is a long very long road ahead.
other than that it’s a clean solid GUI and there’s nothing 80’s hacker movie about it
I was only commenting on the looks, not the usability (since I didn’t try it). But judging from the screenshots it looks to me like someone tried to make a flashy Aqua like look but failed miserably. And I don’t bash the guys for this, I bet Apple invested tons for their GUI (for both ergonomic research and intuitive design) so it’s quite clear one guy with some photoshop skills can’t make a solid GUI all alone.
“…it looks to me like someone tried to make a flashy Aqua like look but failed miserably…”
The design came from the GUI contest. Unlike most companies, we let our users tell us what they thought would be good for them to use. On top of that, there are extensive themeing capabilities in SkyOS, so if you don’t like how it looks, then by all means, change it.
“Although SkyOS is cute, and everyone respects the defiant spirit of “do-it-yourself from scratch” … this really is re-inventing the wheel for no sufficiently good reason.”
Tell that to 300 beta testers.
“Newsflash: X86 hardware isn’t going to be around for ever … by the time the OS is “really finished”, the hardware it’s made for will be “really finished” as well.”
Yes, and as new paradigms unfold, we will most assuredly be ready to embrace them. This will only stand to help us catch up. Currently, we have 10-20 years worth of hardware to support that companies like Microsoft have been building support for since the beginning. As new technology appears, we can add support for it directly alongside other companies.
“Trailblazer Op. systems (like NextStep and BeOS “way back in the day”) informed the next generation by (1) providing functionality that contemporary OSes lacked and (2) planning for the hardware of the future.”
Yes, and look where they are today. Personally, I would rather provide support that leads directly to tangible results, not attempt to extrapolate how things will/should be 10 years from now, and then end up folding because no one realizes that vision.
“Playing “catch up” with X86 build Linux is a dead-end game. When you finally rebuild USB support, Unicode support, etc. etc., then what? You’ll be able to “kind-of/sort-of” do all the things that a Mac already does; and so what if you “did it yourself”? It’s closed source so nobody will really benefit from any ingenious new solutions to OS problems they may devise (if any…)”
No offense, but we don’t pay much attention to what Linux is doing. That audience generally is not our target demographic. As far as Mac goes, in order to step into using a Mac, you are dropping a minimum of $500. You can use SkyOS on your existing x86 hardware for $30.
“Yeah, it’s cute; but this makes QNX seem like “the OS of the future” by comparison … at least QNX could (in theory) run on almost any hardware.”
That is all well and good, but our target demographic is comprised almost entirely of x86-based hardware. We would gain no added value by wasting our resources attempting to support something outside of that range of hardware.
You are missing nothing, Thom and Youlle are hyping things up there is nothing wrong with that however, if you like/love something you sometimes exagurate, what was that again? love makes blind?
No. You don’t get it do you? The SkyOS community is extremely critical towards SkyOS, contrary to the OSS fanboy community. Have you ever read any of my reviews of SkyOS? They contained so much critizism– and contrary to the OSS community, the rest of the SkyOS guys agreeed with me, understood what I ment, and Robert started working on my complaints.
That’s the difference, and that’s why I’m fond of SkyOS. But that’s about it. SkyOS still runs on an architecture I don’t like and where I won’t be putting any more money in (PPC and Sparc here).
I think SkyOS is a nice hobby OS and always remains that, it has to fight Windows, Apple and Linux
Again, you don’t get it do you? SkyOS isn’t fighting OSX. My main OS is OSX, and I can assure you: SkyOS will never be able to compete with this since SkyOS is an x86 OS and therefore has a huge disadvantage. OSX is completely intertwined with PPC.
Also, SkyOS is not competing with Linux. Linux users are smart and “geeky” enough– they don’t need SkyOS.
Windows? Yeah, maybe. That’s the only real one SkyOS is fighting here. However, even still, Windows and SkyOS can co-exist peacefully on one system.
BTW, a name change into “devnull” won’t hide you as the tr… err. Nevermind.
>No. You don’t get it do you? The SkyOS community is
>extremely critical towards SkyOS, contrary to the OSS
>fanboy community.
It seems you got slaped in the face while making remarks and/or comments on oss forums. Did you got that frustrated?
>Have you ever read any of my reviews of SkyOS?
No. I do not know you, sorry.
But i can read, http://www.skyos.org
>They contained so much critizism– and contrary to the OSS
> community, the rest of the SkyOS guys agreeed with me,
>understood what I ment, and Robert started working on my
> complaints.
Just because you got frustrated you switched to something where they would hear your prayers? Maybe you where asking stupid questions or making faulty remarks….i do not know.
Anyway, i am sorry that you met those people but it wrong to generalize because you had an experience.
I have a very good experience with the OSS communinity.
>That’s the difference, and that’s why I’m fond of SkyOS.
>But that’s about it.
So its the community of SkyOS that attracts you? right?
The rest of the OS is not important as you stated. Ok.
>Again, you don’t get it do you?
I am not sure, all i have read from SkyOS is that is an OS
developed by a guy called Robert in 1996 as a bootloader and its got developed further from there. It also uses a vast amount of OSS software but in the meantime will not open its own source. I do not like that, whatever the reason may be.
That one reason to never use it, but i have no problem with the OS or its supporters
>My main OS is OSX, and I can assure you: SkyOS will never
>be able to compete with this since SkyOS is an x86 OS and
>therefore has a huge disadvantage. OSX is completely
>intertwined with PPC.
Like on of the developers of SkyOS stated above:
“As far as Mac goes, in order to step into using a Mac, you are dropping a minimum of $500. You can use SkyOS on your existing x86 hardware for $30.”
That seems like competition too me…are you sure you got it?
My main OS is Linux and i can also assure you that SkyOS will never be able to compete with Linux or Windows for that matter. So what is your point?
Like i said it will always stay an hobby OS but that is ok, there is nothing to defend here dude.
I was just commenting on the fact that some ppl in here where making it sound like SKyOS had some special innovation in it, it has nothing of that but again that is ok.
>Also, SkyOS is not competing with Linux. Linux users are
>smart and “geeky” enough–
You could also say that Linux is more mature, complete and usefull. It seems you are trying to defend SkyOS on swampy
grounds.
>they don’t need SkyOS.
I know. I use more OSses than Linux and i am all open/currious for other Osses. I also do not need Solaris 10 but its a very nice OS and it nice to play with.
>BTW, a name change into “devnull” won’t hide you as the
>tr… err. Nevermind.
Execuse me, how do you have in mind? my name is devnull and my email adres is [email protected]. Is there somebody already here with that name? If so i am sorry but i am prob. not the one you are looking for.
SkyOS is in my opinion one of the cooler OS projects out there. They have set an obtainable goal and aren’t just blowing smoke like so many other new OS’s or the endless linux clone distros. Anyone else notice the poll on the right side of the SkyOS website? the one asking how much you would spend on a machine that had SkyOS preinstalled? I think I know why. THey gain a huge advantage in developing for only one platform they don’t have to write 10,000 different drivers since chances are initially hardware vendors won’t support SkyOS. So you come up with a standard configuration with known hardware and optimize the OS for that setup. Leaves alot more time for other development projects. In my opinion not a bad idea but a very hard sell in the long run to try and get people to buy into a prorietary platform.
You are misinterperating Thom. He said he was the one who critisezed SkyOS and Robert listened to it and fixed the problems.
“In my opinion not a bad idea but a very hard sell in the long run to try and get people to buy into a prorietary platform.”
Well, it wouldn’t really be proprietary. Whatever system design we go with, it will be built around x86-based components. This was more to:
a) Give people that don’t want to install SkyOS a chance to have SkyOS.
b) Provide a system that would GUARANTEE supported hardware. That is not to say that you couldn’t just install SkyOS on your existing system. It’s just that not necessarily all of your hardware will work with it currently. This will change as time goes on, and we support more and more hardware configurations.