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yellowTAB's Zeta 1.0 Reviewed 296

Posted by timothy from the obscurantism dept.
Provataki writes "OSNews' Thom Holwerda posted the first in-depth review of the recently released Zeta 1.0. He goes over installation, impressions, usage, application and hardware support, BFS queries and concludes that yellowTAB's Zeta is the deserving future of BeOS; plus, it's the only one based on the original source code by Be, Inc."
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yellowTAB's Zeta 1.0 Reviewed More

yellowTAB's Zeta 1.0 Reviewed

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  • Interesting Review (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Arghdee ( 813921 ) * on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:24AM (#13101924)
    However, I noticed a few niggles.. The fact that minor oversights like videos being image/jpeg instead of video/mpeg exist suggest more testing is needed. I would expect more of a major version release, even if it is only Version 1. (Being that it is based off a relatively well aged code base) I really do hope this does succeed - I would hate to see the developers waste their hard work.

    • Re:Interesting Review (Score:5, Informative)

      by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:21AM (#13102072)
      It seems to me from reading the article that the image/jpeg problem is only there when transfering videos from a digital camera, not when downloading films from the Internet.

      I can only assume that the application expects a still picure camera to feed it still pictures and have some glitches in support for the limited video features of these cameras.

      This makes the glich a little less important.

  • Deluxe Edition? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:24AM (#13101927) Homepage
    From the Zeta FAQs:

    "The Home Edition and Developer Edition don't have all the applications the Deluxe Edition does."

    That's fine, I just want to poke about with the OS and see if I want to go further.. Developer edition will be fine thanks.

    Pop to the Shop section.. Alas, only the bloated Deluxe edition with 3Gb of apps I'll never look at is for sale.

    Back to *nix..
    • Indeed.. a stripped down test version to see if my network, graphics, and sound will work would be great.

      Alas the hardware list is typically sparse and I don't particularly want to fork out 99 Euro's on something I can't be sure will work with my system.

      Nevermind!
      • My first introduction to BeOS was a live CD of BeOS R4.5, which was distributed on a magazine's cover CD for the purpose of giving people a taste of BeOS and the chance to see if it'd run on their machines. I suspect they gained a number of customers from that live CD (me included), and I also suspect YellowTAB could benefit similarly.
  • I know BeOS was a cool thing (especially BeFS), but it has been recently sidelined into the hobbyist OS category (unfairly yes, surprising no).

    The sad part is that you can hardly run it on an old box. To run it properly you need at least a good video card (which I never spent much on).

    • Re:Hobbyist OS ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dysprosia ( 661648 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:35AM (#13101962)
      Well, BeOS's target was always in high-end multimedia, and old boxes aren't always the best for that sort of thing, regardless of OS...
    • BeOS you could certainly run on an old box, I ran the free demo and I remember it being snappy with the hardware I had at the time (like 300 mhz).

    • Re:Hobbyist OS ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tha_mink ( 518151 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:17AM (#13102059)
      The sad part is that you can hardly run it on an old box. To run it properly you need at least a good video card (which I never spent much on).

      Actually, the sad part is that you have to pay out the heinie (~$114 USD I think) for it. I give YellowTab props for picking up the project but damn...I can buy Windows XP Pro for $85 USD.
      • XP Pro for $85? Is that an "upgrade" or full version price?

        http://www.compusa.com/products/products.asp?N=200 704&Ne=200000 [compusa.com]

  • sometimes, it would partially turn all grey.

    come again?

    good article though, despite the minor confusing bits.

    It looks like quite a nice operating system for 'geek who has everything'. Runs nicely on outdated systems too, and it will have a bucketload of security through obscurity too. reasonable hardware compatability and loads of bundled apps means its pretty functional too. 99 euros seems quite reasonable too (I was looking at RHEL prices for work this morning!).

  • Good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:32AM (#13101949) Homepage

    Look, a faint dim spark that still lights the way toward the wondrous land of OSes that are not encumbered with the baggage of Unix and Windows.

    The forward thinking population of /. will now mock it because:

    * It's old.
    * It's not Linux or OSX.
    * It's not free.

    They will ignore the fact that:

    * Much of what OSX has just started to do, in terms of usability, BeOS explored all the way back then.
    * It's really easy to develop fast GUI apps for.
    * And to develop for in general.
    * Diversity is good, and a billion people writing GNU-style apps for Linux is not diversity.

    In summary, I -- hey! Get out of my yard! Damn kids these days.

    • Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drsmithy ( 35869 ) <drsmithy@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:44AM (#13101986)
      The forward thinking population of /. will now mock it because:

      The only reason I will mock it is because it isn't multiuser.

    • The forward thinking population of /. will now mock it because:

      It will mock it because it has the same problems as Linux, BSD, OS X, and Windows, and on top of that isn't even backwards compatible.

      Diversity is good, and a billion people writing GNU-style apps for Linux is not diversity.

      Diversity is good. Too bad that BeOS and its derivatives don't provide it.

    • Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 )
      Look, a faint dim spark that still lights the way toward the wondrous land of OSes that are not encumbered with the baggage of Unix and Windows.

      An OS that's not encumbered by the baggage of Unix or Windows is an OS that:

      1 - does not take advantage of decades of POSIX normalisation, made by hundreds of thousands of high-level developers and designers.

      2 - does not take advantage of the huge existing base of developers who know the POSIX and Windows API inside and out the world over.

      3 - can't run any of t
      • Other designers have already been there, and while there's a lot to say about the heavy legacy of various existing designs, they work and have billions of man/hours put into them.

        Well, I think people ought to explore new directions. Trouble is: BeOS/Zeta isn't doing that--it is basically the same as mainstream systems, only with more bouncing heads and less modularity.

      • Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)

        by haggar ( 72771 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:23AM (#13102283) Homepage Journal
        The effort invested in BeOS is worthwile, because BeOS doesn't feel anything like Linux or Windows. It's the most respnsive desktop OS I know, with it's great emphasis on multithreading and it's near-realtime scheduling (but not completely realtime - it's tweaked for responsiveness, not hard-realtime).

        I have heard and read arguments like yours, and without a single exception, they came from people who did not use BeOS (booting it up is not using it). Those who used BeOS apps for at least a few hours, understand why BeOS is worth the effort.

        The other remark I would make, is: having people experienced in a certain area/product is useful, but sometimes it's much better to take the leap into the new area, instead of regurgitating old ideas and contents. That's the only way to progress. Otherwise, we would still use (very advanced perhaps) core memory and valves in our computers today. At the advent of semiconductors, valves were a really mature technology, but semis were so much better that the choice was clear, at least for computers. Valves are still in use today (as will UNIX be) because they offer unparalleled performance in high-power high-frequency applications.

        • Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)

          by ltbarcly ( 398259 )
          I have heard and read arguments like yours, and without a single exception, they came from people who did not use BeOS (booting it up is not using it).

          Every time I've heard someone say turds aren't good to eat, it's been someone who doesn't even eat turds (tasting it and spitting it out isn't eating it).

          And now hopefully you see why you are wrong.

        • Re:Good (Score:2)

          by Otter ( 3800 )
          I have heard and read arguments like yours, and without a single exception, they came from people who did not use BeOS (booting it up is not using it). Those who used BeOS apps for at least a few hours, understand why BeOS is worth the effort.

          Put me down as a first case. It worked beautifully and had the second-best API I've encountered (next to Qt). The problem wasn't the OS itself -- it was that using it for even basic real work required buying a whole set of new applications. The price barrier to entry

      • Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)

        by AnObfuscator ( 812343 ) <oneringNO@SPAMphys.ufl.edu> on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:52AM (#13102418) Homepage
        1 - does not take advantage of decades of POSIX normalisation, made by hundreds of thousands of high-level developers and designers.

        2 - does not take advantage of the huge existing base of developers who know the POSIX and Windows API inside and out the world over.

        That's just.. wrong. BeOS *is* Posix compliant. Always was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS [wikipedia.org]

        3 - can't run any of the good, and not-so-good software written on any OS for the last 30 years.

        as to "can't run software" arguement, well, a similar argument can be made for Linux or even OS X.

        4 - Re-implements design flaws that have been already been purged out of Unix or Windows (well, just Unix)

        Example?

        Personally, I wish they didn't waste their time reinventing the wheel. Other designers have already been there, and while there's a lot to say about the heavy legacy of various existing designs, they work and have billions of man/hours put into them.

        Personally, I am glad to see that people are willing to continue exploring alternative UI designs, new FS's, etc. Reinventing the Wheel has a LOT of benefits -- faster algorithms, new programming technique, and so on. More ideas being tested is never a bad thing, no matter how many "man-hours" have been invested in the "old way".

        Also, I'd like to point out that Apple, Google, and MS are "reinventing the wheel" in desktop search, since BeOS had this 10 years ago. BeOS also had true SMP back before MacOS even had multithreading. BeOS is *still* one of the most innovative OS designs around, and I'm thrilled to know that it's development is being continued.

        on the other hand, I don't think Zeta can make a go of it -- unless they start distributing it for free. Alas, they don't seem to want to do this...

    • Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jedigeek ( 102443 )

      Actually, a lot of the things in BeOS had been copied from what Apple started in the 80s. And what do you mean by "what OSX has just started to do, in terms of usability"? os x has been basically the same (although it has clearly evolved) for nearly 5 years now. I'm just wondering: have you even used a mac?

      If you take time to read the badly written review on OS News, you'll notice that Yellow Tab seem to have totally derailed what made BeOS good, and made a bizarre version of BeOS mangled with terrible

      • os x has been basically the same (although it has clearly evolved)

        Something cannot basically stay the same, and evolve at the same time. Evolution signifies a significant change. Basically staying the same defies that evolution.

        In short, I think you were right the same time: OS X has basically stayed the same, and Apple has charged its fanboys every 12-18 months over $100 to 'upgrade'.

    • Quote:

      * It's really easy to develop fast GUI apps for.
      * And to develop for in general.


      I thought BeOS required programming in C++. Has that changed? Because IMO nothing that requires C++ can possibly be called easy.
      • Nice attempt at a karma-whore with the meme, but every platform has a bit of a learning curve as one becomes acquainted with the way things are done. Your 'argument' can also be applied to KDE, which has quite a few applications already developed for it.
    • Agreed. I was a big fan of Be, just had no practical reason to use it. Gotta love a box that booted 10-15 seconds after POST. Everything else was fast. Amazing what you can do when you throw away decades of legacy crap. (And, inevitably, a bit sad what you lose.) I never had enough files on it to make use of the cool filesystem, but the right-click navigation was awesome and super-obvious to use.* I wonder if Zeta is as fast as Be was on, say, a classic Pentium 150 with 32 MB? I also wonder if Zeta has the

  • I would love to try it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by castlec ( 546341 ) <(castlec) (at) (yahoo.com)> on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:33AM (#13101955)
    Unfortunately, the price is just too high to justify. The effort required to customize a linux installation is well worth 99 eur in my opinion. If they survive, I may try them in the future but not right now.

  • They have been selling the beta since about a year (Score:4, Informative)

    by yormas ( 900810 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:39AM (#13101972) Homepage Journal
    On german teleshopping Zeta has been sold for more than a year - thought only a beta version. Pretty expensive but hailed as virus free. And they always say: "You can do everything with Zeta that you can do with WindowsXP" Yeah sure - tell that your kid when he tries to install any game.
  • ... I am still wondering how an operating system with virtually no native software and no developer and/or user base will survive, let alone compete against Lin/Win/Mac ...

    • Re:Good luck, but ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Aluminum Tuesday ( 317409 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:54AM (#13102013)
      Check out bebits.com for BeOS native software, including the Firefox browser you probably used to post that message.

      If it survives (and here's hoping), it'll be because its specialised and does what it does very well. Video editing on a 300MHz PC running BeOS 5 Pro was a lot less painful than you might think. I hope they keep that up.
      • Is there modern video/audio editing software for it? Particularly, is there a recent version of a production grade audio production suite (like protools or logic or cubase) for it?

        If not, then why are people touting it's multimedia capabilities? I mean sure, it's damn cool, but it's not going to be used for pro audio video if they're not there. I however, am ignorant--what's out there for Be in the audio/(video) world?
    • Well, actually they hire developers and want them to move to Germany

  • BeOS is not Linux (Score:5, Informative)

    by Aluminum Tuesday ( 317409 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:51AM (#13102005)
    There seems to be some confusion here as to what BeOS actually is - it's not just a hobby OS or a Linux clone, but a full-featured media-centric OS designed for music and video production. It's fundamentally different to Linux and other Unixes: it's designed to be low latency rather than to have a network-aware window system and multi-user capabilities. It was designed from the start to be a desktop OS - when everyone else was going multi-user, Be stayed single user and concentrated on its multimedia specialisation. It's worth a look, and I hope they do a demo live CD the same way that Be did for R4.5. Otherwise most of you non-pirates are never going to see how cool it is.
    • it's designed to be low latency rather than to have a network-aware window system and multi-user capabilities. It was designed from the start to be a desktop OS - when everyone else was going multi-user, Be stayed single user and concentrated on its multimedia specialisation.

      If that's all it has to offer, I'll just hack together a distro with low-lat Linux kernel packed with all kinds of A/V drivers and software, with login taken out. Gee...

      My point is, existing software already does that, be it Linux, W

      • Re:BeOS is not Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Aluminum Tuesday ( 317409 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:18AM (#13102061)
        "I'll just hack together a distro"

        And for media pros without the skill, time or inclination to do that, here's BeOS! Ready-made for what they need. Understand?

        And maybe BeOS was offering this stuff before the others were; did you think of that? Maybe there's an established user base of people who want to keep using the OS they're used to, rather than switch to one you'd like to see them using. Maybe they don't like your choice of OS, and maybe they wouldn't like the one you'd put together for them.

        Maybe Be and YellowTAB "get it" in the exact way that you don't.

        • Re:BeOS is not Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

          by wiit_rabit ( 584440 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:50AM (#13102155)
          I think Roscoe has probably never used BeOS, much less Zeta. Although I will sound like a fanboy of BeOS (or Zeta), I encourage everyone to experience this OS. Other posts and the article talk about low latency, but you need see the OS first hand to understand what this really means. Secondly, with millions of PII '440BX' or similar based systems out there being tossed in the trash pile for no good reason other than they won't run XP very well, they should sing running this OS.

        • Re:BeOS is not Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:50AM (#13102158)
          First, let me say I have a dual 133MHz BeBox at home and used to think it was a wonderful system. So I'm not an anti-BeOS zealot.

          But exactly what apps are these media pros using on BeOS? The OS can be designed for that kind of work as much as you want, but without the apps to take advantage of it. Correct me if things have changed, but what replacement would any 'media pro' have for any of Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Motion, Logic, Cubase, DVD Studio Pro etc etc? Because those are the apps all the media pros I know of use.

          It's nice that BeOS has a fast system-wide search with live queries, and it's nice that it had it before other systems (I remember using it back in 96 or so). But most 'media pros' don't spend all day searching for files.

          No matter how great the OS is, no matter how great it is at running on an old machine, it's the apps that matter. Sad, but true.

          I might consider installing it on an old machine for my dad who surfs and does nothing much more. But it'd be useless for any 'media pros'.
        • And for media pros without the skill, time or inclination to do that, here's BeOS!

          I seriously doubt that Media pros will be using an OS for which there are almost no professional applications.

          An OS lives and dies by the amount and quality of applications available for it. I just don't see anything around for Be or yT.
    • it's designed to be low latency rather than to have a network-aware window system and multi-user capabilities

      First of all, the Linux GUI uses shared memory and IPC, just like almost every other desktop OS in common use.

      Secondly, none of those things are mutually exclusive. For example, ultiuser capabilities have no impact on the Linux kernel or its performance.

      Be stayed single user and concentrated on its multimedia specialisation.

      Yes, and that's a needless specialization. All major desktop OSes ar

      • Re:BeOS is not Linux (Score:3, Informative)

        by paulbd ( 118132 )

        All major desktop OSes are more than fast enough to handle multimedia.

        That depends on your definition of multimedia. There is no (mainstream) Linux distribution that, "out of the box" is fast enough to handle professional audio requirements. The fact that Linux can handle such things when patched is because of the great work of people like Ingo Molnar. Yes, the stock 2.6.12 kernel is now better than any Windows release to date in this area. But its still not possible to get the performance of OS X wit

  • Why do I want this? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TedRiot ( 899157 )
    I admit that I'm totally ignorant of BeOS - all I know about it is the name.

    Who is this for and what kind of things are they supposed to do with it? What does it offer that current operating systems with lots of applications don't offer? From the GUI orientation of the article I suppose this is not for some specific server need.

    Variety is good, but what (good) variety does this bring?

    • Re:Why do I want this? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kahei ( 466208 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:11AM (#13102042) Homepage

      It's main benefits are:

      Very good with all things video
      Fast, especially at GUI tasks
      Very good filesystem, such that you can define a folder as 'everything in /etc that is less than 5 days old and is a sound file'
      Easy to write for
      SVG graphics! Okay, not really a solid benefit but a cool technology; graphics are vectors and therefore zoom and scale as you would expect.

      It was designed to be an efficient single-user graphical OS, specially for use in multimedia (ie they couldn't think of any other niche for it). As a result it's much faster than Unix/Linux and much cleaner and freindlier than Windows for doing GUI tasks and as a platform for video codecs.

      In terms of apps, the big open source projects (firefox, vim etc) are all there, but there's precious little else.

      The main DISadvantage is that nobody uses it and there's not the slightest chance that anybody ever will :) However, it is more comfortable and responsive to use than any other OS I can think of -- a bit like using NeXT, in fact, if anyone remembers those.

      • And its two insurmountable drawbacks as well:

        - Very narrow video, storage, and device driver support; you are unlikely to get it to run unless you shell out for compatible hardware in addition to the OS itself

        - Very few applications of any kind; sure, it runs a smattering of applications from the open source world, but not really very many at all in comparison to the number of OSS apps out there, and there's little diversity, but precious little else unless you want to write it or port it yourself

        You bas

    • Re:Why do I want this? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Aluminum Tuesday ( 317409 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:14AM (#13102048)
      It's a single-user, low-latency media workstation OS for audio/video production. It does pretty much everything you can do with media on Mac OS X or Windows XP - but it does it faster and in a way that BeOS fans will be used to and comfortable with.

  • "In Depth"... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mike Connell ( 81274 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:13AM (#13102047) Homepage
    For the MTV generation maybe, but I didn't see a great deal of depth there: filesystems? 3D support? network stack quality? hardware coverage? It looked a lot more like "I installed some CD and this is what happened" to me.

    Not to mention that a review containing "Firefox 1.0.3 requires no introduction, however, a few notes on it are justified: fast & stable. I do not know what the yT guys and girls have done, but they made Firefox on BeOS stable and usable. And that's a great achievement." strikes me as a little suspect. Is Firefox not normally fast and stable, or is the reviewer really stuck for good things to say about Zeta?

    • Re:"In Depth"... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by i-neo ( 176120 )
      I think the reviewer is probably a former BeOS user. He used to have problems with programs such as Firefox (display bugs).
      This comment is interesting for people like me who used BeOS before, but stopped because of the lack of support of the open source comunity.

      However I agree this is not an in-depth review, just the experience of a user.

      As review are often biased, I prefer to know what the review did or experienced rather than having a lot of numbers and charts that often don't mean anything since you m
    • Firefox used to suck on BeOS; it was sluggish and crashed if you looked at it the wrong way. Obviously yT has fixed it.
    • Well, on my system, Firefox has a tendency to lock-up once a day or so. I have to kill the process in task manager, and it takes a few moments to do so. Loading it for the first time after a reboot seems to take forever, and if I try and load it twice, both windows will then pop up instantaneously. Really bizarre. But everything works aside from those 2 anomalies.

  • Haiku OS - BeOS clone (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:17AM (#13102058)
    The BeOS clone Haiku [haiku-os.org] also made some nice progress during the last months. Most kits do work and are in alpha or beta stage. There are vmware and vpc images to try out on philipp schmid's blog [schmidp.com] and also some screenshots [schmidp.com].

  • screenshots (Score:3, Informative)

    by doubleshot ( 863072 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:23AM (#13102081) Homepage
    http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?re lease=223&slide=1&title=zeta+os+deluxe+edition+scr eenshots [osdir.com] here are a few screenshots for your viewing enjoyment
    • Sorry for Zeta, but this looks like fvwm95 or windows 95 without the goodies installed. They may have been way ahead, but I will prefer my KDE desktop over this any time.

  • New hardware (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <giles.jones@nospaM.zen.co.uk> on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:32AM (#13102104)
    I would have liked to have seen the review done on modern hardware. Large SATA hard disk, dual core or hyper-threaded CPU, Nforce chipset, PCI express graphics etc..

    It's popularity will be severely limited if it doesn't support as much hardware as Linux, never mind Windows.

  • 99 euro? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Zedrick ( 764028 )
    "For only 99,- Euro, a bargain."

    Even compared to FreeBSD or how much a Linux distro would cost me?

    Sounds nice, but for 99 euro I would at least want a time limited installation to try out, before taking out my VISA.

  • So? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Willeh ( 768540 ) * <rwillem@xs4all.nl> on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:06AM (#13102226)
    While it's a nice thing to have for the former BEos enthusiast, the rest of the world shrugs and says "So?" I think that with the pool of apps ported to all platforms (Firefox, VLC, Thunderbird et al) A modern platform has to have some significant advantages to stand out.

    I just don't think that having a Spotlight(c) like functionality in the OS is much of a selling point, neither is "Good video editing" capabilities. For all i(and everybody else) know it's just another video editing application, when in the rest of the OS world there's already plenty to satisfy the budding Spielberg or (god forbid) Uwe Boll. It's just an example to illustrate the lack of REAL tangible selling points this OS has. Any of the real BEos fans want to educate a sceptic with some real advantages instead of that subjective "It's just a better experience for ${APPLICATION}" garbage you hear in every platform discussion?

    • For all the knocks Uwe Boll gets (and justifiably, I might add), I'm sure he cries himself to sleep on a big mattress full of cash every night. Makes me wonder if I'm in the wrong business...
  • I'm glad BeOS still lives in some form - it deserved to survive. But it will be forever a niche OS.

    a) Expensive. Sorry folks, but however nice BeOS was it wasn't enough of a leap ahead to make people want to pay for it instead of make do. DOS taught the world this decades ago - cheap wins in any mass market environment.

    b) Driver support. Linux has enough trouble in this regard - how does BeOS (pardon me, Zeta) plan to do it? By becoming like Apple and selling box+hardware? If so they'd better get
    • "I think there is one, and only one, way to get people to switch operating systems on a massive scale - mathematically provable security and quality. A system that can be proven uncrashable and unhackable will change the world, since that is currently the great unmet need."

      OpenBSD and Solaris 10 are very close to this goal, yet they still remain niche OS's to the masses. It will take what you suggest AND the ease of installing OS X or Windows XP for the masses to adopt. However, the more secure operatin
      • > OpenBSD and Solaris 10 are very close to this
        > goal, yet they still remain niche OS's to the
        > masses. It will take what you suggest AND the
        > ease of installing OS X or Windows XP for the
        > masses to adopt.

        It's nothing to do with ease of installing. The majority of users never install an OS.

        What they need to do is to start getting pre-built hardware sold with the OS installed. Get a lower spec machine (cancelled out by BeOS's higher performance), stick a decent office suite on there with
      • OpenBSD is a good server system, but for desktop use it doesn't quite cut it for me. I tried getting everything working for a desktop on OpenBSD, and it was a little bit disappointing. I think, more than anything, it's just the fact that it is a niche player, even moreso than Linux. It's not impossible to use as a desktop, but Linux does have more support from game vendors and other things necessary to have a good desktop offering (is OpenBSD able to run Linux binaries? IIRC, FreeBSD can). Perhaps if

    • b) Driver support. Linux has enough trouble in this regard - how does BeOS (pardon me, Zeta) plan to do it? By becoming like Apple and selling box+hardware? If so they'd better get moving, because Apple has had tha market locked up for years now.

      Yes, they really should build their own hardware. They might, for example, call it a BeBox [wikipedia.org] or something. Yes, that indeed is a neat idea.
  • I also downloaded (pirated, whatever) for evaluation a copy of Zeta 1.0. I was interested in just testing it on a old celeron 700 box with 256meg memory, intel 810 chipset (onboard graphics) and a 20gb hdd.

    First, I did a test install inside a pirated VMWare 5.0 Workstation. Installer loaded without a problem, using something that looked like a 8bit vesa graphics mode. No problem, I thought, this is VMWare and it's unlikely they would have a driver for VMWAare's svga adapter. About 5 minutes into the instal
  • It didn't seem very in-depth to me. They hardly covered applications, and I would have liked some more information as to what's changed since r5. There are still rumors that they do not have access to the source code. The biggest changes noted in the article were cosmetic or to new applications (i.e. the new preferences panel).

    They have ported Firefox, which is great, but IMO they need Thunderbird and OpenOffice as well.

    I am glad there is a new player in the OS market, but I doubt it's going to get much
  • Another interesting scenario to use BeFS is when you are putting songs on your MP3 player. Want all music from Bruce Springsteen? Or all songs from the Devils & Dust album? All songs from the 'rock' genre? You can do that without ever touching a music player or other specialized applications

    Well, I guess we know which company Microsoft's going to purchase next...
  • How does Zeta [yellowtab.com] compare to Syllable [syllable.org] technically?
    Yes I know I can read the puff about them both, but that's just what they want us to believe.

    btw, I thought that BeOS was sold to Palm. How come it's Zeta now?

  • Boot Time (Score:4, Informative)

    by R.Mo_Robert ( 737913 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @09:45AM (#13103358)
    Booting is a matter of, say, 15 seconds, completely blowing away any Linux, Windows or OS X install. The short boottime is something that has always been a huge selling point for the Be to me, as I hate slow-booting operating systems (luckily OS X has good sleep/wake functionality, else it would be such a pain to use).

    Umm, 15 seconds might blow away my Windows XP and Ubuntu box, but it is certainly pretty close to my new iMac G5. I haven't timed it, but it is surprisingly fast. This author makes it seem like OS X boots SO slow (I have seen slow-booting Macs: OS 9 and OS X on G3 iBooks, but, um, let's stick to technology from this decade if you're complaining about boot times, because I bet he's not testing on a comparable PC ... though he does mention a PII, but also mentions faster computers) and that using sleep/wake is the only way he can stand it.

  • 640k? That's not a microkernel.

    This [l4hq.org] is a microkernel.

  • Novel hobbyist toy (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ehaggis ( 879721 )
    Although I like the look and concept of Zeta, where does it fit into the OS ecosystem? Unfortunately it does not. Zeta may be doomed to a novel hobby OS. It has several disadvantages in competing with other operating systems. (Assuming it is competing.)
    1. Look and Feel - OSX hands down is better. Dare I say, even Windows XP is better?
    2. Drivers, Support, Compatibility - Windows XP
    3. Cost - Linux
    4. Stability - Linux, OSX
    5. Security - I'll give Zeta this category, only because there would only

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