Studio-33 is a BeOS related blog. Here you can find news from the Zeta and Haiku community, as well as articles and reviews on BeOS related topics. If you like this site please support it by submitting any content you feel that fits in.

Transfer

It has been pending for some time, but as of today I started writing on BeOSNews.com. This means that the regular stream of posts here will come to a hold, and you will have to tune in to BeOSNews for my view on the daily matters in the 'be' community. Studio-33 will not disappear though, I will keep it online for the content that is being linked elsewhere plus that at very un-regular intervals you will see some news about me trying to write code for BeOS/Zeta/Haiku. Studio-33 was a 125 posts long ride of fun, a big thanks to all the visitors, and now all head over to read my first post on BeOSNews!

Zeta team and Magnussoft part

Earlier today Bernd writes on his blog that he and the rest of the Zeta development team are parting from Magnussoft.

Rough translation of Bernd's post:
Today, I officially announce that there will be no cooperation between me and Magnussoft anymore. The same goes for all zeta developers who where being payed by Magnussoft and who are working with me.

Because the team itself didn't change, we will continue working in the same pace. As I said before, the update will be published in the near future.

It's a guess what the exact reasons for the split-up are, but profit (or better the lack of it) will probably be the key. Although Bernd says he intends to release the update the team is currently working on this makes the future of Zeta very uncertain, especially knowing that communication has never been the strongest point of Bernd and the other people behind Zeta...

Update on the way for Zeta

The first update for Zeta 1.5 is on the way, with a 50+ list of small fixes and tweaks. On the list are:

ATI Radeon X
- Added Radeon X support
Beam
- Fixed issues with MultiUser
- Fixed the broken Icons in the ToolBar
Firefox
- Updated to v2.0.0.3 that fixes a security wholes and a bad bug for ssl webpages freezing ZETA
im_kit
- Fixed login problems with MSN
- Added new AboutWindow
MakeMe
- Added a new feature for moving the sourcefolder
- Added “Start debugger”. Now you can start BDB with your application
- Users cannot use MakeMe: Fixed
- Now you get a dialouge when loading big projects
- Fixed the New Project view to allow making of sub-directories.
- Made creation of new empty projects with a different name than just ‘Project1′.
- MakeMe now is using the MultipleLaunch function
MediaFire
- Fixed problems with file names for AudioCDs
- Fixed problems when erasing discs
- Fixed the space issues of file names
- Users cannot use MediaFire: Fixed
MediaKit
- Fixed crashs in the avi.extractor
MultiUser
- Fixed problems with passwords
- Fixed probelms with writing to /var/tmp
- Fixed problems for getting Deskbar addons working

Most of the fixes are for MediaFire and MakeMe, view the full list here

BeOS max edition v4 out now!

After a short period of development, today Vasper released a first beta of BeOS Max 4. Max is a 'distribution' of the free personal edition of BeOS R5, originally released 6 years ago by Be inc. Vasper started working on BeOS Max long before Zeta came to life and in the years after Be closed down it was of the two actively developed systems, to other being Developer edition also based on PE.

After the third version Vasper decided that he would not start working on a fourth version, but on a Haiku distro instead. However last January he announced that work on Max v4 had started, as a 'test case' for the planned Haiku distribution, and now three months later the first beta of v4 is done and available for testing.

Get BeOS 5 PE Max V4 beta 1 here, a development report is viewable here.

3D-Accelerated Haiku Desktop

We all know DarkWyrm from apps like Mr. Peeps, Seeker, SimplyVorbis and Capital Be. Some might also have read his excellent articles on interface design and usability but now he writes on something completely new: a 3D desktop for future Haiku...

Quoted from the article:
Using the 3D accelerated power of modern video cards to do basic 2D desktop tasks is a novel concept. OS X pioneered it. Vista and Linux copied it. Haiku should improve it. This will involve significant -- major, in some cases -- changes to the Deskbar, Tracker, the app_server, and possibly other system components, but the changes will be well worth it. Visual effects detailed here are not merely "eye candy", as some would call it, but have the dual purpose of giving the user a better idea of what his computer is doing while making the interface more visually appealing.

Just like the earlier articles on interface design a very nice read. It shows just what a Be enthusiast DW is! Read the rest here.

Better late then never...

I've been away from my pc a couple of days and there is a lot of news, so I've some catching-up to do..

Most notably, as you can read on almost any BeOS related website: Haiku will participate in the Google summer of code. The next five days are the last change to apply as a student, so apply now!

Over at BeOSNews.com posts follow in high speed lately, and Stephen wrote a very nice howto about eSpeak. Besides that he shows off the possible new look of his site, and promises some new features. Although the header logo needs some work, the new design looks very very nice...

Also in the news, last week a new website launched; ZETA-Games. ZETA-Games is, like it's name suggests, a game portal for Zeta users. ZG will offer games for download and an online shop for commercial titles.

More on OSDrawer

As promised, here is little more information on the new website OSDrawer.net. OSDrawer is to become a meeting point both for developers and for the whole BeOS / Haiku / Zeta community. The site will host a system for the development of opensource projects, and offers the management of the source, a bug tracker, mailing lists, and a software repository that will become a meeting place for the community, world wide.
Although most of this information is already on ICO, here is a short email interview I had with Francesca from OSDrawer:

- Who are behind the OSDrawer team?

Andrea: he keeps track of the relations with the italian beos community. He also is the admin of the Italian Beos User Group website ( www.itbug.org). As for this site he'll take care of the graphic and the management of the projects.

Enrico: he is an expert sysadmin of IBM AIX that has a growing interest for Haiku's opensource world. Thanks to his knowledge he installed the server and had some night-long works to ensure a good working of the site.

Francesca: she's our translator and interpreter. At the time being she takes care of all our public relations.

- What was the motive to start a project like this, since BeOS related projects can also use SourceForge?

As haiku is almost ready we thought that having the possibilty of tieing all opensource projects together could have been an important input to the developement of new projects.

- Does the demise of BeUnited have a part in this?

Let's say around an 80%.. we already had the idea, but the demise was the thing that made us start.

- Did you have contact with the BeGroovy team, as they offered to take over the hosting of several projects from BeUnited?

Yes, we are cooperating with the Deej.

- Will OSDrawer stay Haiku/Zeta only, or will it also be available for non-BeOS projects?

No, for the time being we're planning to have only BeOs related projects

- Are there plans for other things than hosting software projects?

Yes, definitely, what isn't written on the introduction email, but might be interesting, is that we have just uploaded a jabber server, every user has now the possibility of chatting with the community through jabber protocol.

- Are there any projects that will be on OSDrawer soon?

We already have some projects in our drawer :) and we are contacting all developers that have been working in opensource projectd related to BeOs world.

- Is the OSDrawer team planning on doing their own software development as well?

Right now the OsDrawer team is really busy, but as soon as everything gets going we probably will.

- Are you in any way affiliated to Magnussoft or Haiku inc?

No, we're totally independent. but we are in contact with both teams.

As of today, deej from BeGroovy announced that after consideration BeGroovy will not be taking over the home-less projects from BeUnited. Code that is currently not hosted elsewhere will be transfered to OSDrawer. At this moment OSDrawer already has five active projects and almost 30 registered users. With BeUnited gone and BeClan very silent, let's hope that OSDrawer will be crowded with both developers and users, and of course lot's of new software!

Firefox 2.0.0.3

Firefox 2.0.0.3 is about to released by Mozilla, but of course BeZilla has their builds done already:

R5: firefox-2.0.0.3.en-US.beosR5-i586.zip
BONE: firefox-2.0.0.3.en-US.beosBONE-i586.zip
Zeta: firefox-2.0.0.3.en-US.Zeta-i686.zip

Happy browsing!

How to download and build im_kit

Only recently I reported that BeOSNews is being updated again, and already Stephen wrote a new 'howto' article. This time the howto is about downloading and building the im_kit.

Quoted from BeOSNews:
Thanks to the hard work of Michael "slaad" Eiman and others, the IM Kit has gone from an interesting proof-of-concept to being one of the best multi-protocol IM clients available. While it is mature enough for day-to-day use at this point, it's not very obvious how a non-developer can get their mitts on a recent build; there is a listing on BeBits, but a new build hasn't been posted since Feb. 2006.

Fortunately it's possible to obtain and compile an up-to-date build of the im_kit with a little work.

Read the rest

Newsflash: First Haiku distro out

OSNews.com reports: First Haiku Distribution Released! The Polish developer Grzegorz Dabrowski has released the first version of Pingwinek/Haiku, and with that he is the first to bundle the current Haiku snapshot with a bunch of applications into a distribution.

Quoted from Pingwinek
Pingwinek GNU/Haiku 0.1.0 is probably the first Haiku distribution. Beside the base Haiku system, it contains 40 packages ported from Pingwinek GNU/Linux distribution. It contains compiler (GCC 2.95.3), several simple games, SDL, Midnight Commander, ncurses.

I've prepared several screenshots of the distribution working on a real hardware. The distribution can be downloaded in a three ways: QEMU image, VMWare image and LiveCD. The LiveCD boots slowly but the games work much better then running under QEMU or VMWare. The LiveCD contains a read only filesystem which could cause some problems. The distribution doesn't have an installer which could install system on a hard disk. I think that some people will be able to do that without it. The Haiku system is still in an alpha state, so please be forgiving. Every next release should be more stable. Have a lot of fun!

Although I think it's a good thing that there are people interested in creating their own distro's of Haiku I doubt it if the Main Haiku dev's will feel the same way, from the beginning they have stated that they don't intend to release until 'When it's done'. Besides that apart from a qute name and a couple of games Pingwinek doesn't offer much more than the images available from the Haiku Build factory and it doesn't include an installer, something that any distro in the future should have. I do wonder if Pingwinek makes it possible to compile C++ under Haiku, since two of the packages included are GCC (2.95.3) and automake. I'll be testing that tomorrow.


Pingwinek showing the bundled packages and Midnight Commander

As said, Pingwinek/Haiku doesn't come with an installer, but there are vmWare and QEMU images and a Live-CD. Look here for downloads, and here for screenshots.