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Monday, March 05, 2007

Zeta 1.5 Screens and first impressions

I found a nice present in the mail today, the Zeta 1.5 upgrade. Installing on top of 1.21 is a breeze and worked flawlessly. After installing the upgrade you need to do a reboot and you are greeted by the new login screen:

Zeta's new login screen - click for larger image

Something awkward is that the installer changes your backgrounds on all workspaces to a default Zeta 1.5 one, but that and my FireFox settings are all that was lost during install.
Zeta's new administration preference panel is were you can add and edit users. The settings are all pretty straightforward, and adding users seems to work fine. One glitch I did find is that the preference panel doesn't seem to show your current user icon. Happily enough there is an option to automatically login to a set account, so if you are the only one using your computer there's need to select your account on every boot.
Each user on Zeta has his own 'home' directory which is located in '/boot/users'. The directories of unactive users are hidden and the '/boot/home' folder links to home directory of the currently active user. This way you have access only to your own home folder, and applications load with your own settings. To load another account there is no need to reboot, you simply logout and the login screens becomes visible. However if you load a account without rebooting you 'userbootscript' is not run and it seems that some applications like FireFox keep running while changing users.

Zeta's administration panel - click for larger image

Zeta's administration panel - click for larger image

Also new in 1.5 are the application AudioTagger and limited versions of Pixel and MediaFire.

AudioTagger - click for larger image

MediaFire - click for larger image

Pixel - click for larger image

Abiword was also promised but is not installed by the upgrade. According to Magnussoft they will post information on Abiword on there website soon, so I hope I will be available for download.
Last but not least there is a new preference panel called communicator which holds the settings for BeMail (MDR), Vision and the Instant Messaging.

Communicator preferences - click for larger image

After using Zeta 1.5 for a few hours I have not yet encountered any problems, but there are mostly fixes and new drivers, locale files and SVG icons. There are no major changes between 1.21 and 1.5, except for the multiuser implementation. For the complete changelog click here, more on Zeta 1.5 later...

Labels: zeta

23 Comments:

The new 1.5 looks really good, and the login screen looks sweet and modern.
The windows have a clean but modern gradient look, and it looks like they have scaled down on the purple and is more subtle now. Neat.
By the way, is Magnussoft going back to the old window decor, or did you change that yourself?
This BeOS thing is definitely not "lickable", like Mac OS X, but in my opinion is something better: "Clean and Out of your Way"-able

By Anonymous, at 3/06/2007 12:35:00 AM
Windows decor??? this is the old BeOS decor.

Torrent like? Nice joke ;-)

By Anonymous, at 3/06/2007 07:04:00 AM
I *know* the one showed on the screenshot is the old BeOS decor. But every version of Zeta produced by yellowTab has shipped with a more stylized window decor, with rounded borders and glass-like titlebar.
So my question was: is the decor shown on the screenshot Magnussoft's choice? Or is it just a customization of the author? Note that in this same website more window decors can be found: http://www.xs4all.nl/~pmlans/studio-33/html/beos_decors.html

By Anonymous, at 3/06/2007 07:44:00 AM
The gradient in the tabs was there in earlier versions too. The Zeta thing in the Startbar or whatever its called is new and doesn't resemble the old Be menu at all.

By Saad, at 3/06/2007 08:47:00 AM
Window decor?

If you look in the right corner of the images, you'll see the glassy yellow. Which means whatever style is selcted, it isn't very consistant.

A more adequate question, in my humble opinion, are the tabs again moveable? I find the lack thereof in earlier versions the biggest backstep.

Jakob

By Jakob, at 3/06/2007 09:41:00 AM
It seems you haven't played around that much with the upgrade. My experiences are not that good.

You told about the Autologin feature but you forget to mention if you let the default settings to "5sec" you have to hurry up when you want to change from one account to another. - That's very annoying. And after I get back to the root account after several tries I deactivated it again.

Another not really working thing will only mention all non English customers. The menu entries in Deskbar (the formerly BeMenu now called Zeta-Menu) are not localized, means here you have to know how a Preference app is called in English.

And that's not enough, also very dirty seems to me the zeta-network implementation. While with v1.21 it was good to remove the bone-profile folders when your network options are not working well, as it is on my system with an onboard forcedeth nic. Now you have to edit the file "/etc/network.conf" - never seen this folder before? me neither. But it exists , and was there also in the beos times, but i never had to look for it. While the system was developed by Be. Inc. all system settings where placed under /home/config/settings and it was easier to edit a configuration file when something went wrong. And now?
The network problem I wrote above, forced the the system bit by bit to crash. First thing that doesn't worked was the Tracker the next was the app I started directly after the start and in any time in between the Deskbar crashed too. Before v1.5 I used a vmware image to get to the installation on the real hard disk partition and removed all folders under /home/config/settings/bone/profiles. But with 1.5? Zeta started to reconnect after a restart also without the profiles and i had to figure out what went wrong. I found the hidden settings telling Zeta how to continuously use the unsupported nic ("static ip" or "dhcp"). And because the crashes I wrote about before I couldn't fix the prob in 5 min. :-(
So the solution - if anybody else encounters this annoying behavior - open Terminal and enter "StyledEdit /etc/network.conf". I commented out every line including "forcedeth" with a leading "#" and after the next reboot Zeta works fine again on my machine. But without network.

I also updated my VMware installation but now this isn't a solution anymore, since 1.5 the mouse moved to the upper left corner after the first move, and stayed there for the whole session (restarting of the inputserver didn't helped). So how to get to the Deskbar? I don't know but it's not really cool :-(
Okay I tried it on the real system and an half hour later it was fixed, but to much time for an "easy and ready to use system".

The next thing I'm missing, how to change administrative settings from a regular account? There is no way to do this currently. So every time you have to change an administrative setting you have to logout and login to the root account. If an OS behaves this way users will never change to a more secure environment. You just have to look to WinXP, how many users uses Administrator accounts? Argh, the next missing thing: how to set user privileges in Zeta? Theres no option in the new Administration prefs app for such tasks.

And another one I figured out were some entries in the Deskbar. First of all back in my regular account I saw the "network.conf" file under recently used files, although I modified it as root.
Additionally you have different entries under development in the ZetaMenu in root and user account: root has two entries "bdb" and "Install dev tools" and in the user account menu I found broken links to "Cortex", "MeTos", "Pe" and "Spy" and the working link to "bdb". But where is MakeMe the new Zeta development environment? It's in the app/development folder but there's no link to it in the Zeta Menu.

And last but not to forget to mention MediaFire Pro, do you have a Serial for this app? No? But I have and I tried to enter this into the registration dialog that pops up the first time you open the app, "Serial is wrong" I read after I entered it and I tried it again and again. (BTW you have even to enter a company/organization that's mantadory). Okay, here the solution. Close MediaFire Pro and open it again now your key will be accepted.

MediaFire Pro reached me two weeks before the zeta upgrade and the first thing that happened when I opened the installer I saw the MF Pro splash screen and after that the installer crashed. I tried many times on different machines but every where the same. So I tried to get support. On the Zeta-OS-website I found a support email address sent the mail and a few hours later I got an answer mail from the zeta-mailserver "no more mails accepted for this account" (or so). After some more investigations I found a mail formular in the zeta-shop and on this way i get contacted to the support. But is this the best way to keep contact with customers? I don't think so.
The Problem with MF Pro was an old MakeMe version which doesn't worked correct with the installer. I missed an error handler that shows a dialog telling me there was a missing lib or old version of app xyz. - Really not cool!

After all I'm disappointed and expected more after the delivering was delayed for some more bug fixing. And how about the price for an unfinished product upgrade? For me it smells a little bit like being part a public beta testing program for 29Euros.

But there is a good news to the information mentioned in the Zeta 1.5 preview article I'm replying to, all previously installed apps and some settings like the Firefox profile are not deleted. They are saved by the upgrade installer in an archive on Roots Desktop.

thomas

By Anonymous, at 3/06/2007 11:49:00 AM
does zeta come with gcc and all dev tools? what is the gcc version?

By Anonymous, at 3/06/2007 02:19:00 PM
looks like win 2k lol

By neostyle, at 3/06/2007 05:09:00 PM
should have posted screenshots of Zeta in the default look-n-feel theme!

By Anonymous, at 3/06/2007 06:51:00 PM
I dont think the GUI is even close to look as clean and good as windows 2000. Its tragic, they should really work on the gui a bit more.

By Anonymous, at 3/06/2007 07:34:00 PM
The GUI? They screwed that up, it is. The good old Be Inc. Days are over, and then YellowTAB and now Magnussoft are screwing the once so good BeOS up. Okay multi-user support and stuff ... but the GUI is screwed up, configuration files, as i read are spead all over the filesystem, like a linux system.

By Andre, at 3/06/2007 08:23:00 PM
Some of you clearly have no idea what you're saying. Jakob: it was actually Be, Inc. themselves who took out the sliding tabs functionality. I remember yellowTAB has stated simply not being concerned with bringing it back right then, because they were still working on the themes.

And Andre, the configuration files have always been in their respective location, this has been the case since the dawn of BeOS.

If you want to post something useful, give a counter-review like Thomas did. Now that was an interesting read and I hope Magnussoft will soon address these issues. Thank you, Thomas, as well as a big thank you to whomever is behind Studio 33: thanks for taking the time to give us a taste of what R1.5 is like. Good job!

It's funny though, several years ago I remember people whining "oh they made a USB2-stack and stuff... big deal, they should work on a multi-user environment!" and then they implement it so now people go "Okay multi-user support and stuff ... but the GUI is screwed up, and..." (the latter is a literal quote from a comment made above). Am I the only one who gets annoyed by that?

By Anonymous, at 3/06/2007 11:34:00 PM
Whats the price? I mean its probably not worth more than a few bucks.

By Anonymous, at 3/07/2007 08:47:00 AM
"does zeta come with gcc and all dev tools? what is the gcc version?" - interesting question. And I tried the "Install Dev Tools" entry in root's ZetaMenu. A dialog appears telling me "Insert Installation CD". The installation CD is v1.21! - Upgrade 1.5 does definitely not change the gcc so the output of gcc -v would not differ from Zeta 1.21:
"Reading specs from /boot/develop/tools/sdk/release/H-i586-pc-beos5/T-i586-pc-beos5/lib/gcc-lib/i586-pc-beos5/2.9-beos-000224/specs
gcc version 2.9-beos-000224".
But this supprised me although, I guessed Zeta changed in one of the previous versions.

"Whats the price? I mean its probably not worth more than a few bucks." - I agree. I don't think that it's worth the price magnussoft demands. It lacks all over the place (these are my thoughts and no one has to agree with me).
I mean, if I would telling someone I've included a Multiuser environment, then I wouldn't release something that uses a root account as the default account. I got the feeling Bernd and his programmers never tried MacOSX or Ubuntu, didn't they? On these systems you never have to know something about "root", and for the administrative tasks you have to enter your user password and after that you become for a limited time a user with the privileges you need. I guess that's the way it should work.
If people think the M$ way is the better way and there's so much more software. Okay I'm fine with it, just use the system you prefer. On a previous XP installation I even failed with using hardware like a Mustek scanner or a tv card without beeing in the admin group. Why do I have to be Admin, to scan pics? or watching tv? - But that's another thread.

Btw. if I read comments to the screenshots: "I dont think the GUI is even close to look as clean and good as windows 2000", hey folks who cares about how an os is looking like if it doesn't let you do your work? If you want a nice looking gui buy xp or vista and install thinks like windowblinds. Alternatively you could give Linux a try there are many desktop environments and in these you can change as much as you like. And the new composite managers Compiz and Beryl are definitely great eyecandy. But what I want is a fast, modern and fully functional system. And the Zeta upgrade fails in many of these aspects.

Up to now Zeta does not support WLAN with WPA/WPA2 encryption. My AMD64x2 is not supported, I even have to disable one core in a kernel settings file else the system freezes while startup. And where is OpenOffice? Short before yellowTab was liquided they announced they are working on a port to Zeta - now they continue their work for magnussoft, but I still can't see the free office suite. The next promise they gave, with the upgrade to 1.5 they said AbiWord would be included - it isn't. So what is Zeta currently good for? I bought it because I'm still hanging on BeOS, I remember a nice working OS, easy to use fast and with features like replicants or the DB-based filesystem, things that are added to MacOS in one of the latest releases, M$ is still working on the DB-based filesystem WinFS. I could use such features a long time ago in BeOS.
Zeta gives a lot of promises but what they release is something like the M$ betatests. I payed for the last unnecessarily upgrade and I'm very disappointed for what I get for my money (Upgrade 1.5 (29Eur) + Zeta1.21 Update (10Eur) + ...). If you don't have a previous version you pay a full price for an unfinished product.

It seems I have to wait for haiku R1 and behind to get back the smart os BeOS was about ten years ago. Until then Ubuntu is fine to me, but I could never forget the great system BeOS was.
Apropos haiku - They never promised things they couldn't do, and from time to time I'm trying one of the alpha revisions and then I could feel the good old BeOS feeling, plus the devs behind haiku polished the gui with nice SVG-icons. And the moving tabs I liked in BeOS too are also included. And when haiku will be released one day, this system will be for free.

thomas

By Anonymous, at 3/07/2007 12:27:00 PM
What happened to Refraction? Oh.. they bought it, changed the name and make you pay for a new version of program just to get update/support, but oh wait you have to buy the 'new' version of the O.S. to even be able to do that in the first place. That is both dumb and evil.

The only thing left to say is "MOO".

By Anonymous, at 3/08/2007 10:38:00 AM
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

By Anonymous, at 3/08/2007 01:47:00 PM
"does zeta come with gcc and all dev tools? what is the gcc version?"
ZETA comes with 3 differant versions of gcc. You can find them in /boot/etc/develop changing the gcc versions is done in a Terminal window with "setdev 'gccversion'"

The sliding tabs were missing from the day BeInc started work on 5.1 (many probly seen the screenshots and those who had a running install from the leaked version can confirm that)

Theming was started a way back already ... so far only up to user enviroment ... now the first Icon themes are appearing thus giving the whole UI a new face.

MU is still in an early stage but so far still pretty good imho, if there are errors then it's best to report them so then get get fixed.

By Begasus, at 3/09/2007 11:16:00 PM
How about BeOS Workstation? A year ago I herd a guy speaking about this ultaBeOS type system, and how the things where fixed that Zeta has not. and AbiWord was included, and it was free.. But Where did this project go? By the look and feel of that gui, it brought back the true beos way. It kinda suckes on how everyone basicly is putting down zeta, and for heaven sakes it's about all that we have left of an Operating System that was better then MicroShit could come up with. Look at vista, Is that worth 10 cents? Certainly not the 399.99 that they ask for the things that should be built in anyway. (as par on Vista basic)Dont both complaining about an Operating System that you dislike, It's like a big waste of my time to read it!

By Anonymous, at 3/10/2007 02:33:00 AM
@Begasus
"ZETA comes with 3 different versions of gcc. You can find them in /boot/etc/develop changing the gcc versions is done in a Terminal window with "setdev 'gccversion'" "

Okay, but now the question is back: what versions are included and which one was used to compile Zeta 1.21/1.5?

Welcome back again in the Console environment. You have o use the Terminal app to see what gcc-versions you have. Damn, that su***! Again, I'm not amused about software/settings in a hidden folder like "/etc".

But for all those who are interested in, here is what I get when I enter ls -al /etc in a Terminal:
- haiku-r1-gcc2-x86
- zeta-r1-gcc2-x86 (currently used)
- zeta-r1-gcc2-x86-oliver

Hmm, now I still don't know what version I have gcc v2.1 or 2.9? As I mentioned above it is 2.9.

@Begasus
"MU is still in an early stage but so far still pretty good imho, if there are errors then it's best to report them so then get get fixed."

Good to read about this fact AFTER I get the upgrade CD. I'd like to have the choice before ordering.
And NO, it's definitely not in a pretty good state. I remember an announcement that it will not be possible to see other users files. That's wrong. The only limitation I see so far is that I'm not allowed to modify these files but exploring is still possible, through the whole [visible]* filesystem. So what is MU in Zeta currently useful for?

*And in the Terminal it's surely possible to see what's in /dev, /etc and so on...

BTW Begasus, I read your German comment in the Zeta-OS forum. Thank you for your statement, but so far I see, I will leave the zeta-os community and will not spend more money in supporting the next big upgrade. But there is a little bit of hope in it, the Zeta developers should try to fix as much as possible of the things I wrote down in my replies. If they pack into the next "free"!!! MZSPs as much as possible improvements we will see. And I don't mean any new features, I just want that the recently included stuff works.

@Anonymous
"By the look and feel of that gui, it brought back the true beos way."

Great to hear that there's someone happy with the upgrade, but sorry I don't get the feeling back.

@Anonymous (continues)
"It kinda suckes on how everyone basicly is putting down zeta, and for heaven sakes it's about all that we have left of an Operating System that was better then MicroShit could come up with. Look at vista, Is that worth 10 cents?...
Don't both complaining about an Operating System that you dislike, It's like a big waste of my time to read it!"

Sorry to say you that, but I'm not happy about the OS situation these days, but before Zeta is not changing into a more solid state the number of alternatives will never change. What about Linux, "Linux is for geeks" or somethings like that I heard years ago. Now step by step stability and usability changed and the request for Linux increases (see the Dell Ideastorm). Again, I'm REALLY sorry to say but Zeta seems to me is going in another direction. Try it yourself (especially the Autologin function with the 5Sec default setting is worth a trial), and then come back and write your comments about it. And try it without telling there is more than one problem in this upgrade. (Good luck)

How can you say I didn't like Zeta? If I didn't I have had no reason to order the upgrade. Do you think I have to much money and to much time to waste it in experiences I have gone into with the "great" and "fabulous" 1.5 upgrade? No. I'm disappointed because I expected what magnussoft promised: Abiword and a working MultiUser environment. And isn't the upgraded Zeta 1.5 now called a PRO-version? Again, it is not worth getting such a label. Sorry. I really hope the future of Zeta-OS will be brighter. After my current experiences I believe I will use Haiku instead of Zeta in the future.

thomas

By Anonymous, at 3/10/2007 01:49:00 PM
- haiku-r1-gcc2-x86
- zeta-r1-gcc2-x86 (currently used)
- zeta-r1-gcc2-x86-oliver

These are all 2.95 but with different patches.

- zeta-r1-gcc2-x86-oliver:
Are referring to this one (not 3.xx)yes gcc 3 and 4 can be used in zeta/beos if it's only for compiling c and not c++
http://www.bebits.com/app/4011

- haiku-r1-gcc2-x86:
Are the on from Haiku (thought that they was using Oliver’s)

- zeta-r1-gcc2-x86 (currently used)
This are probably the default from Be?

As always with BeOS/Zeta/Haiku and probably some times with a Linux system as well it's about selecting the HW to match the OS.
Usually in BeOS community and Be way are to do it all by GUI and have a fast GUI without fancy graphics that takes power.

I’m running Zeta 1.5 with 3D HW support and Wlan (wep) activated on a Dell Latitude 8200. (ok I hade to install Rudolf’s driver from bebits)

To get most out of your zeta a system with VIA chip are advised (it has usually audio recording support). I’m not buying the Zeta for what it is but for what it can be :)

Perhaps I’m making the mistake to compare Zeta to BeOS 5 but Zeta are still faster than Windows XP and those version of Linux I have tested (I still making the mistake to install Linux time to time)..

//ModeenF

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By Anonymous, at 2/04/2008 07:36:00 PM
Sooy, I received my Zeta some time ago and I LOVE IT. I turn to it hiding from winblows every time I can, and sincerely, I believe people should make more and complain less. I personally like it, I'm running 1.5 plus the 1.51 update and I like it a lot.

By Anonymous, at 4/17/2008 10:13:00 PM
The program saves USENET articles in what I call sportsbook “Pineapple Message Format” files. PMF files have the usual complement of BeOS attributes that allow you to perform queries on them and to use the Tracker as a suitable substitute for viewing a folder full of PMF files.
This bet nfl is the first and only major BeOS application I have ever released to the public. In retrospect, I can see I should have picked something a bit less ambitious to start with. But I really wanted to have a newsreader that http://www.enterbet.com I wrote myself so that I could make it behave exactly the way I think is correct.

By pedro velasquez, at 9/23/2009 06:11:00 PM