SkyOS Archive

This is surprising.

SkyOS was quite prominent on OSNews between 2003-2008 - it was coded virtually entirely by Austrian Robert Szeleney in his free time. It achieved a relatively usable state on the desktop - especially considering it was a one man project - but it did suffer from what I call the 'ooh shiney!'-syndrome - it was a hobby project for Szeleney, and as such, focus tended to shift around quite often, depending on whatever he wanted to work on at that time.

SkyOS originally started out as a mere bootloader, but eventually expanded into becoming an entire operating system. In the early days - up until version 4.x - SkyOS was freely available, but it wasn't open source (I believe the 1.x versions may have been, though, I can't recall). After that, Szeleney started charging a small fee for access to the SkyOS 5 beta, which some considered controversial. The SkyOS 5.0 release cycle started with its first alpha release in December 2003, and ended with the release of beta build 6947 in August 2008 - a final release never materialised.

The project seemed to fizzle out, but Szeleney did experiment with using third party kernels, like a BSD kernel or a Linux kernel. That was the last we heard of it - and earlier this year, the website went dark.

So, it's quite a surprise to see that over the weekend, Szeleney has made the last beta release of SkyOS 5.0 - build 6947 - available for free. I somehow doubt we'll see development pick up again, but it's nice to have the latest release out in the open for everyone to play with.

The SkyOS website went offline last week following the expiration of its domain name. SkyOS was a thing way, way back in the day, but fizzled out due to disinterest from its lead (and only) developer. It's definitively gone now - I used to have virtually every release from 2.x onwards on discs here, but I threw them all out a few years ago. If you're feeling nostalgic, peruse our SkyOS news archive.

Not too long ago, Robert Szeleney put the development of SkyOS on a temporary hold. The challenges in keeping up with the ever-changing world of hardware support were simply too big to continue SkyOS then-current development model. As a result, Szeleney recently came up with the idea of using a Linux or NetBSD kernel as the base for SkyOS. Well, we've got a progress report on that one, and in true Szeleney fashion, a lot of work has already been done.

The future of SkyOS, the closed-source alternative operating system, had been hanging by a thread for a long time now. Barely any releases, until they came to a grinding halt altogether and Robert Szeleney explained he was pondering the future of SkyOS, and where to take it from here. One of the main problems was a lack of driver support which really made development difficult. Well, this is a problem Szeleney might be able to fix.

At the end of January this year, I wrote a rather harsh, but honest article on the state of SkyOS. I was very worried that the closed-source operating system, for which users have to pay in order to beta test it, would never reach a final version, something that was promised to the people paying the price. This feeling was strengthened by a lack of updates; we were five months without news, six months without a release, and 8 months without a changelog update. My article got the ball rolling, but now that we're five weeks down the road, is that ball still rolling?

SkyOS has always been criticised for the fact that you have to pay for it in order to beta test it. I personally never saw a problem with this construction, especially since the price included a full copy of SkyOS 5 (they dropped the five) once it was completed. However, as of late, it has become increasingly clear that there may never be anything like a final version - or another test release for that matter. Update: In the comments, Robert Szeleney explained the current SkyOS situation in more detail. For future readers who find this article via a search engine, I've attached Robert's comment to the actual story for completeness' sake. The reply can also be found on the SkyOS website.

The SkyOS team has released SkyOS Build 6947. This release comes with the new email client as well as the new integrated development environment which we reported about earlier. The SkyOS API has been extended with new classes, and of course a lot of bugs have been squashed.

"We are proud to announce that the next version of SkyOS will ship with a new Mail client. In contrast to the already available Mozilla Thunderbird mail client, the new Mail application completely integrates with SkyOS. For instance, all mails are stored as separate files with various attributes attach to it. So you can easily and quickly find every mail using the SkyOS Viewer and its query system."

SkyOS build 6814 has been released. Among its new features are streaming support, system-wide spell checking, the Mozilla embedded Gecko engine (which is used to create a few applications like a Wikipedia reader), an updated Viewer (file manager), a new theme engine, and more.

SkyOS has received a few updates. First, the new theme engine makes it possible to completely theme SkyOS, without having to write even a single line of code. Furthermore, with only minor changes, WindowBlinds and MS Visual Style (WindowsXP or Vista) themes can be converted to the SkyOS theme format. Additionally, the Viewer (file browsing application) has a new feature called 'NavigationView', which makes it possible to possible to navigate to your devices and manage files easier and faster.

SkyOS contributor Peter Speybrouck released his first version of a SkyFS/BFS reader for Windows. This application allows you to view the file structure and copy files from both SkyFS and BFS partitions. Additionally, it can read the file attributes supported by these filesystems. The application does not yet work on Windows Vista.

SkyOS beta 6762 has been released. "SkyOS Beta 6762 is now available to download directly from the Beta Center. This build features the new Viewer, a huge performance increase, 36 additional API Classes, updated libraries, a new font alpha blending method, 280+ fixed bugs including critical boot bug fixes."

SkyOS Beta build 6753 has been released. The installation procedure is now provided through a Live CD session thanks to BranchFS. This build includes the new C++ API, which makes development much easier. It also comes with three new services (PowerMonitor, SpellChecker and Registrar) and support for 45 more ATA/SATA chipsets. It also offers initial support for GNU classpath, Kaffe and Wine.

After months of work, there is now a new complete C++ API for SkyOS, which replaces the old C API. The C++ API consists of more than 150 classes, including support for thread and process information, full GUI support, and gesture support, to name a few. Additionally, news about the LiveCD and some of the technology behind it has been updated, including a few screenshots of the LiveCD in action.