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.

Zeta 1.5 shipping!

As of today Magnussoft has started shipping the first Zeta 1.5 cd's to their customers. Although 1.5 is almost a month delayed the developers did add lot's of features in the last phase of development. These include an Abiword port, drivers for PCL6 and Radeon, and others. Also added is the new application AudioTagger.

With 1.5 being shipped, Magnussoft also introduces 'MZSP' or Magnussoft Zeta Service Packs. MZSP's will be freely available in the future as downloads. To install MZSP's you will need to have your Zeta version activated, and they will only install on the most recent version. Alongside the MZSP's there is also an update application planned so you can keep your system up to date automatically.

After lot's of waiting I'm happy to finally see some real good news from Magnussoft, but I still hope that there will be some compromise for the former yT costumers better than sending in CD's by post. The news about the planned service-packs and the updater does show that Magnussoft is also thinking about these matters and I hope they will be a bit more transparent in their actions that yT was. I did understand that by German law it is not allowed to view any customer data from bankrupt companies, and that this is part of the reason Magnussoft can't simply provide former yT buyer with updates, nor have any way of checking if you ever legally owned Zeta just by your name and address. Anyway Zeta 1.5 should bring lot's of new customers if Magnussoft wants to continue development, and let's hope it does!

Read the news on zeta-os.com

A call for developers

As posted on HaikuNews, deej from BeGroovy is planning to provide SVN hosting for any project that became homeless after BeUnited shut down. He posted a list of over 30 projects to the Haiku mailinglist and asks for the project heads (or maintainers) if they've already moved to other hosts, and if not he's like to know if they are interested in (svn) hosting at BeGroovy.

In the list are besides well known projects like Pe, ProcessController and BeZilla a lot of abandoned or forgotten projects. Anyone interested in revamping the development of these oldies is also very very welcome, and can contact deej to move to project over to BeGroovy.

The list of projects is here, remember that the source-code of these project is open and available, so if you are fluent at Be API, but have no inspiration to start a project why don't you give new life to any of the abandonened projects.

Steal from the rich, give to the poor...

Something Magnussoft has done very well for Zeta is getting commercial games to their platform. Together with Runesoft the made 2 titles available for purchase. One of them is 'Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood' of which Runesoft created a demo version for you to try. Unfortunately the demo (and the full version) can only be run on Zeta 1.21 right now. Since I'm still on 1.20 I can't tell you much about the demo, but I guess it's more fun than any of the games that ship with Zeta on default. below is a screenshot for your pleasure:



Get the Robin Hood demo here.

Update:
It seems after all that it is possible to run the demo on a pre Zeta 1.21 machine, install MakeMe and delete your saved games after the first time you run the game and it should all work...

Recreational coding...

The long time member of the BeOS developing community, Bryan Varner posted some Be related news on his blog The LooneyBin today. He writes that since long he found time to do some 'Recreational coding' (to quote his words) and worked on BeOS's only workable Bittorent client Transmission.

 Transmission at work (click for larger image)

Transmission is a BeOS native OpenSource bittorent client, and is also available for Mac OS X (Cocoa interface), Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD (GTK+ interface). For information on Transmission visit the project homepage, BeBits or read Bryan's post here.

Since BeShare isn't all that crowded lately I'm a frequent user of Transmission and I must say that it's a good example of a very well designed application specifically for BeOS. Applications like this prove the fact that native software is usually a better choice that forks/ports and the platform is suitable also for more modern technologies.

News tipped by Manette, thanks!

Update: To stick with recreational development, read yesterday's post on this website, mysterious enough huh?

Haiku Getting UserlandFS

Good news from the Haiku-os.org site today, Ingo Weinhold committed 'UserlandFS' and several other goodies like NetFS to the repository. UserlandFS is useful when you are developing a filesystem for the kernel and want to test it without many reboots due to ending up in the infamous Kernel debugger land. NetFS eases intercommunication between operating systems using the Be filesystem.

Quoted from Haiku-os.org:
According to Ingo, "the UserlandFS interface is identical to that of the kernel FS interface. Having the kernel interface as an option is particularly nice for developers who want to write a file system for the kernel. They can develop, test and debug in userland, and then just recompile for the kernel. Not only can a buggy FS running in userland not cause KDLs, but the debugging facilities available in userland are also way more comfortable (break/watch points, single stepping, etc.)".

NetFS is currently a working implementation already, and it provides all functionality that could be expected from a file system under Haiku with the use of attribute and live query support. Still missing is a preferences GUI to configure NetFS, so for now server side shares and user permissions are defined using a config file. The client is also capable of automatically locating other servers on the LAN.

Read the full post over at Haiku-os.org.

Opinions and Code

The Studio-33 news-submit isn't the busiest place on the internet, but today I was greeted by a message containing a couple of interesting links. To start with, frankps known from his commits on ICO, updated his personal blog this weekend with a post in which he shares his views on the Haiku tech talk and the Haiku project in general. I can't say that I fully agree with Frank on various bits and I think he is remarkably negative for someone who calls Haiku his 'favorite Hobby-OS'. However everyone has the right to have an opinion and share it with the world, so head over and decide for yourself.

From the same news-submit, the French BeOS/tech blog LoLL announces 'MailMarker for Zeta'. MailMarker is a Tracker add-on that can set the 'Read state' of a whole bunch of email files in once. Handy when for instance you just synced BeOS with your online mail box and BeMail shows 100+ unread messages. MailMarker is heavily based on code from the equally named add-on from the BeOS developer examples but added is support for locale files. Early tests on my side prove that it does exactly what it proves and can be very useful if you are a BeMail user. You can get MailMarker here.

Thanks for your news-submit, Manette!

ICO presents: FlyingTroll

Today over at IsComputerOn a nice story about a new software project called FlyingTroll. Frank from ICO had a little chat with the developer of FlyingTroll, Nikita Zalyotov from Russia. FlyingTroll is to become a lightweight HTML browser, intended mainly to read documentation files. In the (near) feature Nikita hopes to add networking support and he will release sources for an enhanced BView that can render HTML. The work on FlyingTroll also be availeble to the Haiku project, so it can serve as a substitute for NetPositive.


FlyingTroll in action

Read the full post at ICO.

Haiku tech talk video online

As you all know, Haiku had a tech talk at Google this week and this event is now viewable in digital form over at Google Video. To watch the video you'll need a shockwave plugin or the 'Google Video Player' which both aren't availeble for BeOS, so Be users click here for a .avi (+/-200 MB) download, or try BeShare.

Job opening at TuneTracker

Well, not for an actual job that is, but TuneTracker is looking for someone that can code a driver which will allow BeOS/Haiku/ZETA to communicate with two-port serial adapter cards. DaaT posted this request today on IsComputerOn. The developers will of course be rewarded for his or her work, besides that the driver will be donated to the Be community for use in Haiku and Zeta. Another interesting bit is that the profits gained by TuneTracker with this driver will be invested back into the development of new drivers, which will also be available freely for BeOS users.

Read the full article at ICO.

Vista and a Brave New World

Deej posted a very nice article today on BeGroovy. Although the article is not (mainly) about BeOS, it is a very interesting read. Deej talks about the process of installing Windows Vista, and mostly about getting it to work. If I state that Deej isn't all positive about Vista it's probably an major understatement, according to his findings Microsoft's slogan could better have been 'The wow stops now'

Quoted from the article:
...the lack of compatibility and bug levels are so high for a “finished” and released product, I’m over my head in frustration. I’m packing to leave, and I’m not going to look back when I do. And I get the feeling I may not be the only one.

There is a window of opportunity here for Haiku. There really is. I’m actually getting excited about Haiku like I was once with BeOS in the R4 days. Microsoft has screwed up enough that someone might be able to get in the door easier than back in 1998. Take the moment and run with it… run like hell, ’cause it isn’t going to be easy to hit that window with Haiku where it currently is and where it needs to be. But it could be a very close race. Good luck to the Haiku team - I’m rooting for you to make it!

Read the full article here.

Haiku in the news

Following the SCaLE presentation of Haiku TG Daily features a nice article on Haiku. They headline with 'It Lives! BeOS fans resurrect their favorite operating system'. Now that's a title! The article describes the formation of the Haiku team plus a short history of what Haiku is and wants to achieve. A nice quote from Micheal Phipps talking to the TG Daily:

If I didn't have BeOS, I'd pack up all my computers and move to an Amish community.

It's good to see that the recent Haiku endeavors are being noticed on the web, after all it's all about the buzzword...

Read the article on TG Daily here.

The BeOS boot icons

Looking desperately for news I found this text. I turned the translated text into a little article for all of you to read. The article describes the various stages BeOS goes through while booting. It's a very interesting read for any computer enthousiast and especially for those of you who've always wanted to write their own operating system.

A little excerpt from the article:

Hello, Drivers



After turning on the fourth icon (a stylized EEG machine), the kernel starts up the kernel_team and launches several threads needed to maintain system integrity. Then it starts the drivers linked to the kernel and those in zbeos. The drivers here are kept to a minimum, but several are needed because the kernel has reconfigured the machine in such a way that the BIOS services stored in the system ROM will no longer work, and it has to do everything itself.

Read the full article here.

Familiar faces meet at Google

Yesterday the Haiku Tech Talk took place in Mountain View at Google, with some interesting visitors! Between the audience were some former Be inc. employees, including BeOS initiator Jean Louis Gassee.



As you can see in the picture, Gassee did not only listen to the presentation but also took place behind the mic and gave a few words of support and encouragement for the Haiku project. Another familiar visitor was Andrew Bachman, known from Java for BeOS. Overall the tech talk at Google was a success, for the curious a video will be posted over at Haiku-os.org.


More photo's can be found here.

New looks

Since there was not a lot of news to report today I spend some time changing the colors and layouts of Studio-33 today. Obviously I saved the old settings and images, so let me know if you think I should keep the new layout.

Just to fill the lack of news, here's a Screenshot of my current desktop...

(wallpaper)

Be Supportive

For an operating system to be usable in daily life there need to be good applications for the tasks you use your computer for. Whether it is browsing the web, reading email, listining to the music you like or producing documents, it is not the OS you use but the available software.

For any software project to be succesfull the target platform needs a solid user base that will be using your applications.

For any user choosing between operating systems the system needs to have a good amount of applications available to do daily tasks.

Now this may seem a chicken and egg problem, and it is. But you can help by supporting BeOS through various ways. read on...

Haiku to attend SCaLE 5x

Of course you allready knew that the Haiku team was going to SCaLE 5x, or the Southern California Linux Expo. But as of today more information is available on the activities that are going to take place:

Update:
On the Haiku website reports on the first day on SCaLE are coming in. Right now the projector + screen are working after they the were mysteriously lost. The first Birds of a Feather session took place with about twenty very interested listeners, and overall there were lost of positive reactions from the visiting crowd. The Haiku representatives also had nice talks and even a dinner with the creator of the New-OS, Travis Geiselbrecht, on which Haiku's kernel is largely based.

Here's some photo's to get a feeling of the atmosphere at SCaLE 5x:

February 10 (Sat), 8:00PM

• Title: Introducing the Haiku Operating System
• Description: This is an introduction to Haiku, an open source operating system designed from the ground up for the desktop, inspired by the concepts and technologies of BeOS. The presentation will cover the concepts and features that make Haiku unique, as well as a hands-on demo.
• Presenter: Michael Phipps
• Place: Midway conference room

February 11 (Sun), 7:00PM

• Title: Haiku Technology Insight
• Description: This presentation covers some of the technologies that make Haiku a unique operating system, including the OpenBFS database-like file system, the original HVIF icon file format, and Haiku's unique implementation of devfs.
• Presenters: Axel Dörfler and Bruno G. Albuquerque
• Place: Kennedy conference room

For more information on the presence of of Haiku at SCaLE, read this.

From the clean-air department...

After a (long) time of no updates, Chris Simmons from Haiku News posted today with an apology for the absence of updates on haikunews.org. Just like what happens to anyone (including me) who tries to write daily messages for the internet he got a bit fed up with the work and time involved so posts stayed away.

Quoted from haikunews.org: I have been entirely too lazy with keeping any semblance of news on the site, and I do apologize for that. It's a travesty.
Anyhow. It appears Haiku has achieved a few milestones, with some symbolic numbers to show for it. Awesome. Despite my writing absense I've kept a careful eye on its progress and it looks like Haiku is shaping up nicely.

Chris also has a very lucrative offer for any Haiku fan with journalistic aspirations, he's offering to pay for news articles submitted to his site. So here's not only a podium to display your writing capabilities but you might even be rewarded for it!

Read the ful article here.

Haiku in the spotlight

While slowly approaching a R1 release it is time for Haiku to spread it's name and create a little Buzz. After all it is the predecessor of the Buzzword enhanced Operating System! Luckily some websources have been showing interest in Haiku lately, and so is OSWeekly.com. They featured a short article about the aspirations and progress of the Haiku project.

Quoted from the article:
A Neat Concept, But Is This a Realistic Project? Before I jump too far into this, I think I should point out why these volunteers are not embracing Linux as an alternative OS. In their own words, there is the feeling that Linux is lacking a common set of goals for a common OS. With that said, based on what I have seen, Haiku is aiming to be a no frills basic OS.

Read the full article here.

New Zeta application: AudioTagger

Today Magnussoft annouced a new application that is included in the upcoming Zeta R1.5. The application simlpy does what it's name suggest, it allows you to store additional information along with your music files (much like id3 tags). AudioTagger can handle six audio-formats, including MP3 and OGG. A notable feature of AudioTagger is that it can communicate with MediaFire, also a new R1.5 app, allowing you acces and change the tags of a file from within MediaFire, using AudioTagger.

AudioTagger and MediaFire in action (click to enlarge)

Read the full post on zeta-os.com here.

Cosmoe under active delepment again

Interesting news about Cosmoe yesterday! Bill Hayden, developer of Cosmoe wrote a message to the Cosmoe mailinglist telling that he has been back to developing in full force lately. Improvements were made to Cosmoe 0.8 and he has been working on syncing it up with Haiku.

Quoted from the mailinglist message:
Well, I couldn't stay away. My lengthy hiatus away from working on Cosmoe is now over, and I am back in full force!

Over the last two months, I have rigorously improved Cosmoe 0.8 and also synced it up with the current svn version of Haiku. The result? Things are looking pretty good. Mind you, this is still much more of a technology demonstration than a full-fledged GUI at this point, but I think Cosmoe has come a long way. I hope to work more closely with the Haiku folks and foster a symbiotic relation with the Haiku project.

Here's the screenshot included from the Message:


Bill is trying to gauge interest in Cosmoe and hopes to complete a source code release in the next few days for testing. I'll keep you updated...

Haiku stats

In this post in the Haiku mailinglist I found an interesting mail about some stats about Haiku deleopment the past two years.

Did you know that:

• Haiku has a little less then 5 million lines of code
• 28 Developers have committed code
• Of which 24 developers in the last year
• Bonefish committed most code with 3959627 lines in the last two years
• And geist the least with 40 lines, also in the last two years
• Axel Dorfler is the most active developer with 23000+ lines of code committed each month, and 2727 commits in total, for the last two years


• The total outsourcing costs would have been over 83 million (dollars) ?
• This figure is calculated with an average year's pay of 55000 dollars, and a total of 1515 'Person years'
• 93% of the sources are c++ code
• The total filebase is 7717 files large
• And 6 out of 7 files have a GNU ot MIT Licence

Don't trust these figures to much though since the source I got them from also states then 1% of the Haiku code is written in Visual Basic...

Test Haiku the easy way

Curious about Haiku? Not sure how to try it out without hassle? Haiku developer Sikosis shows his win32 programming skills and has created a simple tool to try out the latest Haiku build in a virual machine on Windows.

Here's how:

• Get the free version of vmWare and install it.
• Download and install this windows application and run it.
• By now you should be booting into Haiku in a vmWare virtual box.

vmHaiku is a win32 tool that wizzards you trough the procces of setting up a virtual machine, downloading the haiku image and configuring the vmx file for you. It works as simple as any BeOS application and always gets the latest Haiku build for you without manual downloads, or writing vmx files. The only requirement is that you have the free vmWare player installed.


vmHaiku in action


Booting Haiku in vmWare


The Haiku desktop in vmWare, on winXP

I'm not dead (and neither is BeOS)

Reading this article it suddenly all came back to me, once upon a time I maintained a blog about BeOS, Haiku and Zeta news. I wondered what had happened with the blogger acount and the daily pageviews. Obviously the content was still there, much of it resides on my ISP's servers, but to my surprise there was also still a handfull of people visiting Studio-33 everyday. By this time I started fealing a little bit guilty, after all I left all of you with nothing after one single post asking for contributors.

The last few days I've been reading up a on Haiku's progress and the latest BeOS news, and I must say that I'm really impressed with the state Haiku is in right now. Ofcourse there are some major milestones to be reached, networking is one of them, but overall Haiku looks and feels much more polished then for example Aros, Visopsys or even SkyOS. Haiku really shows that BeOS R5 was way ahead of it's time back when it was first released. With this newly invoked enthousiasm I made some minor changes to Studio-33, for instance most ad-sense adds are removed and there is welcome message on the main page for new visitors.



Let's not forget what I should have done back when I abandoned this site, big thanks for all the positive feedback I received while writing for Studio-33 and for visiting this site so frequently. With this being said, I have no plans to start writing news articles on daily bases (yet). However I am in doubt if I should start writing a 'Haiku where are we at: Part 3'article.

Vista being launched recently in Europe and Windows 7 on the way, I still believe there must be a market for a modern but simple and low-profile operating system like BeOS was and Haiku is to become. The emphasis should be on the applications and not the system beneath it. All the spare Gig's of RAM and Hertz on modern computers don't need to be soaked up by the operating system, people should upgrade their desktop systems for usefull applications and not because of Redmond. Isn't it ridiculous that when buying a car you can choose from hundreds of brands, but all computers are preinstalled with Windows? Most of my colleagues aren't even aware that there are alternatives. Proffesional, easy to understand systems like BeOS should be on a competative level with Microsoft to lower prices and raise quality.

Like I said in my previous post almost a year ago, the future of the Be Community is what we make of it. Well allthough the future of Studio-33 is at this point uncertain, it is never more or less than what I make of it and I'm sure that somewhere I'll find the inspiration to turn it into quality content instead of quantity content.

To be continued...
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