“Hello, I must be going”
Stephen B. - March 26th, 2007
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After announcing the redesign of BeOSNews last week, I’m finally ready to launch the new WordPress-based version of site – and bid farewell to the old, BBlog-based version (hence the schizophrenic quote in the title). If you’re still seeing the old site, give it a few hours for the DNS to update. Not all of the old content has been imported yet, but the old site has been left online so that links and search engine results should continue to work – the archives page is probably the best starting point if you’re looking for a specific older post. Now that the new site is live, there are several additional tweaks and new sections/features that I have planned over the next few weeks – keep an eye out! Also, if anyone has any suggestions – or if you spot any problems with the new site – please post in the comments or drop me an EMail. If the comment is that I’m an idiot for using a table-based layout, I’m afraid I’m already aware of that – but in my defense, it is partly-intentional as I hope to get the site looking half-decent in Net+ someday (it seems sort of blasphemous otherwise).
I’ll stay the summer through But I am telling you I must beeeeee…. gooooooo-ing -Groucho Marx
There was a rather surprising announcement from Bernd Korz today: as ICO, Studio-33, and OSNews have already reported, the latest post on Bernd’s blog mentions that he (along with the rest of the ZETA development team) will no longer be associated with Magnussoft. A planned update is still scheduled to be releaesd in the near future, however, and ZETA development will reportedly continue uninterrupted (many, many thanks to Studio-33 for providing a rough translation en Anglais). And now, an annoying (but brief – I promise) editorial interlude: in the past, I’ve tried to avoid the “let’s bash Bernd” bandwagon – I don’t think that joining in a dogpile/feeding-frenzy is the most constructive way to express criticism. That said. it’s starting to get ridiculous how frequently major, unexpected changes are announced regarding the ZETA OS. Especially considering that the previous relationship between ZETA and Magnussoft was never made entirely clear. I realize there may be valid reasons for the changes, but without any clear communication, we in the BeOS / ZETA community haven’t been given any reliable indications one way or the other. I think that that situation ultimately leads to confusion/uncrertainty regarding the ZETA OS – and that’s the sort of thing that makes prospective customers think: “So if I buy this OS, will it still be supported / in active development 6 months from now?”
There was a rather surprising announcement from Bernd Korz today: as ICO, Studio-33, and OSNews have already reported, the latest post on Bernd’s blog mentions that he (along with the rest of the ZETA development team) will no longer be associated with Magnussoft. A planned update is still scheduled to be releaesd in the near future, however, and ZETA development will reportedly continue uninterrupted (many, many thanks to Studio-33 for providing a rough translation en Anglais). And now, an annoying (but brief – I promise) editorial interlude: in the past, I’ve tried to avoid the “let’s bash Bernd” bandwagon – I don’t think that joining in a dogpile/feeding-frenzy is the most constructive way to express criticism. That said. it’s starting to get ridiculous how frequently major, unexpected changes are announced regarding the ZETA OS. Especially considering that the previous relationship between ZETA and Magnussoft was never made entirely clear. I realize there may be valid reasons for the changes, but without any clear communication, we in the BeOS / ZETA community haven’t been given any reliable indications one way or the other. I think that that situation ultimately leads to confusion/uncrertainty regarding the ZETA OS – and that’s the sort of thing that makes prospective customers think: “So if I buy this OS, will it still be supported / in active development 6 months from now?”
With all the focus on Haiku and ZETA lately, it was a pleasant surprise to spot a recent post on OSNews about the release of a new version of the BeOS PE Max Edition (also spotted by Studio-33). The updated release is a beta of version 4 of the BeOS Max distribution; release notes have been posted for the beta, but they currently appear to be offline (ditto BeOSMax.org and BeOSMaxFiles.org). It appears that users can still download the v4 beta from the BeBits entry, however. Not only is it a great distro, it also saved my bacon a few months back. BeOS MAX: it’s the OS that all the cool kids are talking about (I should know – I heard them talking about it).
With all the focus on Haiku and ZETA lately, it was a pleasant surprise to spot a recent post on OSNews about the release of a new version of the BeOS PE Max Edition (also spotted by Studio-33). The updated release is a beta of version 4 of the BeOS Max distribution; release notes have been posted for the beta, but they currently appear to be offline (ditto BeOSMax.org and BeOSMaxFiles.org). It appears that users can still download the v4 beta from the BeBits entry, however. Not only is it a great distro, it also saved my bacon a few months back. BeOS MAX: it’s the OS that all the cool kids are talking about (I should know – I heard them talking about it).
A Firefox update was posted to BeBits yesterday, bringing it up to version 2.0.0.3. The details for this release mention that there were no BeOS-specific code changes, but it does bring the BeOS version up-to-date with the latest official release on other platforms. Version 2.0.0.3 is also reported to contain several security fixes – full release notes are available here. There was also a very nice surprise on BeBits yesterday: Jonas Kirilla posted a major update to TrackerGrep. In addition to a shiny new version number – 5.0 – Jonas has also added a menu bar, many keyboard shortcuts, the ability to “target” a specific set of files for searching, and lots more.
OSNews editor Thom Holwerda has posted a review of the new ZETA 1.5 update (as ICO has already reported on) . The review is generally quite positive and – although he does fault ZETA 1.5 for some rough spots in its multi-user implementation – Thom does give the impression that the update is a worthwhile upgrade from previous versions.
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