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yellowTab Announces Complete BeOS/Zeta Systems
Allman writes "The return of the BeOS? Seems like Bernd Korz is delivering what he had promised (and more). After all these years it seems that yellowTab ("the new BeOS company") is finally ready to release and sell new BeOS-based products. Surprisingly, they're not only selling software, but in some way following the footsteps of Be Inc. by also selling hardware - will these things eventually become the new Be Box-es? Hehe.. who knows? From their website: yellowTab is proud to announce the "Complete Zeta Solution". Both in laptop and desktop forms, yellowTab will sell, to Europe only, complete and compatible systems. All systems come with a 2 year Warranty included.""
For those of you like me, that know nothing about BeOS, here is the FAQ
Davak
Tech-Recipes.com
I'd comment but can't even get to the article. No, I'm not new here...
If not now, when?
knocked over in record time...: www.yellowtab.com/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:YaXZiyaAKTQJ
Is there really a market for these solutions? Sure, BeOS was great a while back, but Mac OS X, Linux and even Windows have all catched up in many respects. There's also OpenBeOS, even though it's not finished yet.
So, is there a market, or not?
.: Max Romantschuk
Wow, even Hollywood actresses are into open source.
Oh, hang on...
CGI-limits reached, please try again later!
:)
Great for highbandwidth stuff. Right.
"Richard learns to quit being sarcastic"
Marketing/Sales meeting - yellowTab corporate offices:
"So, any idea on how we're going to increase sales and save this company?"
"Anyone?"
"Richards? What's your idea?"
"We could sell....BeOS systems....I guess"
*snickers*
"Great idea, Richards. Lets get started this!"
"Sir, I was just..."
"You were just saving this company! You're going to go places here! I like your style!"
Cool. So, when does Cubase, Pro Tools and other cool nice audio software get ported? That's why I became interested in the OS, and why I gave up when they changed direction so set-top vapourware.
You can't keep a great OS down!!!
As an aside, I've installed BeOS on every laptop I've run across (to me, the ability for an OS to run successfully on a laptop is the ultimate test of the capability of the OS) and I've found far *fewer* laptops that BeOS *cannot* run on, than I have found in regards to *nix. Yes, I was surprised, but very pleased. Nothing looks cooler than firing up BeOS on a laptop.
Looking forward to an ultra-modern laptop with YellowTab.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
YellowTab is based in Germany. They have both software and hardware for sale. I belive they will ship you the software anywhere (they haven't stated othervise), but sending hardware all over the world is quite expensive. Scince Zeta will run in (almost) any x86 machines, you could just order the OS and install it wherever you like.
http://www.beosjournal.org/index.php?ct=r&ru=2003- 06-03-zetab5
...and I quote from the yellowTab website...
"Latest BeOS Software,
xstarfish
Pulse
GTKBeEngine
Office Vorlagen fur GobeProductive2
FreeCraft-1.18"
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Freecraft project recieved a "cease and desist letter" from Blizzard and was shut down. What does this say about yellowTAB, as they are publicly announcing they have binary packages of Freecraft on their servers for BeOS?
I think that it's remarkable that Zeta managed to get Centrino working for BeOS. I mean, I can't buy a new PC laptop because Linux doesn't like the chipset. I wonder how it is that some little, tiny company has drivers for the Intel wireless adaptor, when they simply DO NOT EXIST for Linux. Very strange.
Anyway, the systems are only for sale in Europe. Too bad for us Canadians. Well, maybe I'll have to give the new BeOS a spin. It's been ages.
BTW, I have an old NEC Versa LX that I've tried to run BeOS on. I can't find drivers for my DWL-650 wireless NIC, and the keyboard won't work unless I upgrade to Dano. Any reasons for this? I'd rather run straight 5.0 Pro (which I purchases) but find it rather challenging to use an OS with no keyboard.
Now, I've been wondering when /. would talk about it, it's days old already :P /.ed anyway !
Feels good to be
I really like the hierarchical menus; they actually indicate where a complex selection begins and ends. Very nice detail.
It's a pain in the ass but it's possible
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Simple - BeOS is able to use closed source drivers, Linux drivers tend to be open source.
Due to the design of the Centrino chipset, Intel asserts they are unable to release the specs for the chip, or source for drivers for the chip, and maintain FCC type certification. For part 15 certification, the device cannot operate outside specified limits on frequency and power. For a closed source driver, Intel is able to insure that is the case. For open source drivers, the user could alter frequency and power outsiee the limits imposed by the FCC.
This was always the case for BeOS - it could play files, access hardware, and in general do more than a free system could, because Be could sign NDAs and the Free development community could not.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Some people here seem to not know, or be a little confused about how this company named yellowTAB came to be the BeOS people, and what is happening in the BeOS world at the moment. Also, I'm not associated with yellowTAB at all, this is all my observations.
.
yellowTAB
Bernd Korz first appeared in the BeOS community when he released a magazine named InsideBeOS. Only one or two issues were translated into english from the native German of the magazine (I purchased the first english edition!). This magazine stopped publication sometime around when Be flopped and as far as I saw, Bernd sort of disappeared again. When Be filed for bankruptcy, there were many outcries from the community for the source to BeOS so that it's legacy could continue. There were several formal proposals from people to purchase the source as well. Then came the announcement that Palm had purchased Be's intellectual propert(IP)... and were not going to continue development of BeOS. Luckily (in my opinion), Bernd was smart enough apparently to ask for a license to the source and not to purchase it. So, before Be sold their IP to Palm, they gave some sort of full license to yellowTAB to release new products based on the source code. Presumably that license just transferred to Palm's ownership with everything else.
So, here we are today, yellowTAB is about to release their new OS named Zeta (sort of BeOS R6) which contains unreleased code from Be plus new stuff and bug fixes that they have added. The article does not make it very clear, but yellowTAB is actually selling RC1 (Release Candidate 1) of Zeta now to the world. The R1 (Release 1) will be available to people who purchase RC1 for 10 Euros.
BeOS rewrites
There are a number of projects that are aiming their sights on rewriting the BeOS. Some totally opensource from conception, others planning on releasing their source after they have a public binary release under their belts. The main contenders that are around at the moment are OpenBeOS (soon to have a name change), BlueEyedOS , and Cosmoe
OpenBeOS is taking the approach of totally rewriting the entire system. New kernel, new appkit, new interface kit, new storage kit... everything. They're not changing the basic structure of the system, in fact, they're attempting to completely duplicate the system even down to binary compatibility. As a basis for their project, they have used Be's old header files, and written API documentation. They are hosted at source forge and are using the MIT license for all their source.
BlueEyedOS is taking the approach that they perceive the Linux kernel and XFree86 as suitable for building less traditional system on top of them. They are using the Linux kernel as their Be kernel, and X windows as their display. They've released a demo CD so far that is quite interesting and appears very promising. Their code is not available to anyone but their developers at the moment because they've chosen to start their project closed. I've believe that I've heard though that they are planning for a source release later on. The demo CD can still be downloaded from their website.
Cosmoe is a primarily one man show that has taken the Syllable (was Atheos) source code and altered it to run on top of Linux and X. It's author's primary goal seems to be to give the Unix, Linux community a new user interface and the Be API. Code for this system is occasionally released under GPL and LGPL.
Remind me not to let you anywhere near my laptop then! ;-p
A little planning goes a long way...
Maybe because Europeans (and I believe Asians as well) pay a little bit more attention than Americans to true quality and show less "herding" behaviour when doing purchases.
The Raven