Posted by
samzenpus
on from the growing-everyday dept.
Proph3t writes "The up and coming operating system, SkyOS has just announced the ports of Thunderbird and Firefox, both in their 1.0 stable versions. Moreover, they will be releasing a 30-page guide on how to port these two excellent Mozilla applications to alternative operating systems soon."
Re:Slashdotted in the mysterious future?
by
Daniel+Ellard
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I tried going to SkyOS to find out WTF it is, down already?
Search engines are your friends...
Anyone else care to tell me why this OS is of any relevance?
Because someone has the gumption to put together their own OS. This is how linux got started. Maybe it's irrelevant, or maybe it's not, but you've got to respect the attempt.
-- Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
Hate to say this and all, but...
by
Atrax
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
How many new Firefox users is this really going to contribute to the global pool, in the long run?
Good for SkyOS, possibly, rather a non-event from a Firefox perspective, at least numbers-wise.
Why is this significant?
by
Agret
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Beacuse it is showing that it is not difficult to port Mozilla Thunderbird & Firefox to your Operating System of choice. It also adds more to the user base beacuse the OS is shipping with a good browser rather than a hopeless one (You all know what I mean!)
-- Have you metaroderated recently?
Mirrored files
by
GrAfFiT
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Never ceases to amaze me
by
sethadam1
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
...nothing particularly exciting..
I love the gumption of Slashdotters. Such an arrogance to everything. A guy decides to more or less code an entire OS by himself, ports nearly all the apps, and has a running OS that does things in a pretty unique way, and some holier-than-thou nerd, with, I might add, zero credentials that we know of, immediately dismisses it. No wonder OSS gets a bad rap, this is the attitude of our citizens.
Re:Never ceases to amaze me
by
Jugalator
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
But why would it be exciting?
Yes, it's a great job on his part, few of us here would be able to pull it off, but why should we get excited? What does it offer? Just because someone doesn't get excited about it doesn't mean he dimisses his work. Heck, it might be a very powerful OS. But it's commercial. And it has basically no software developed for it, with little reason to believe it should increase in popularity, considering the already well established competition. To me it needs to offer something unique to be something else than a hobby project. And as long as it's that, why should the general public be excited? Please correct me if I'm wrong though.
-- Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Re:Never ceases to amaze me
by
Momoru
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Personally I think things like SkyOS are MORE exciting then *nix based systems. Just because linux etc are open source doesn't make it the best. Its still basically based on a 30 year old operating system. I really like the idea of a system written from scratch, and although it would be nice if it were open source, i don't see anything wrong with another commercial competitor. Just the fact that he was able to port Firefox "easily" makes it seem that he has put some thought into making an OS that will support common applications.
Re:Never ceases to amaze me
by
beforewisdom
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I love the gumption of Slashdotters. Such an arrogance to everything. A guy decides to more or less code an entire OS by himself, ports nearly all the apps, and has a running OS that does things in a pretty unique way, and some holier-than-thou nerd, with, I might add, zero credentials that we know of, immediately dismisses it. No wonder OSS gets a bad rap, this is the attitude of our citizens.
I have had similar observations.
If Slashdot was a religion people would call us fundamentalists or the "geek taliban".
If most slashdotters were women people would say we were catty and cliquish like high school girls.
I do see a handful of really cool people here and there though.
No offense to anyone, just an observation.
Re:Slashdotted in the mysterious future?
by
squiggleslash
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'd be happy with something not Unix based, as long as it's an open system - open in the sense of being open source/free software, expandable, etc. It needs to support TCP/IP, and it has to be mainstream enough to not cause massive problems with the concept of porting software. If AROS had more drivers and had memory protection, I'd be tempted by it because the UI works the way I want a computer to work.
But SkyOS isn't really it. It's a nice design, apparently, and it's got a mainstream enough design to make porting far from impossible (as this article shows), but it's proprietary (I can't make modifications to it or support myself) and it doesn't have the support of a large organization that'll be around for years.
The SkyOS fan club might want to look at Atheos. There, again, was an operating system developed by a single individual to furfill his vision. He then, for reasons unknown, dropped out of sight.
Thankfully, for Atheos users, he'd taken the precaution of GPL'ing the system. So Atheos users were able to support themselves, eventually making an official fork of the no-longer-maintained system, and continue development.
I use Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and OpenBSD. The former is proprietary but supported by a group that's not going to go away. The latter two are open and support for either's not going to go away. I have moral issues with the former, but for now, it's a good system and from a practical perspective, there's no issue with continuing to use it. SkyOS doesn't really fit as either, and past experience of pointing this out shows that, by and large, SkyOS's major online advocates are a bunch of loud-mouthed jerks who'll accuse anyone of being a free software "zealot" for pointing out the obvious (even when, as I did then and continue to do now, I said it was a choice between having major, guaranteed, commercial support or making it free software.)
So I can't really use it in the hope that if something goes wrong the SkyOS people will do the right thing and find a way to get users the support they need. I don't think they will, they're ideologically opposed to doing so. And because of that, they've created practical barriers to anyone who wants to use it for anything but the most trivial purposes.
-- You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Slashdot Mirror
dollars to doughnuts it will be plagued with viruses as soon as they hook it up to SKYNET.
We are all doomed.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Holy shit! Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I couldn't work out how the blurb was trying to spin it.
Jonathanjk.com
Mirror here.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
A 30-page guide on avoiding Slashdotting would be more helpful I think.
:)
http://www.skyos.org.nyud.net:8090/
Hehe, they used Slashdot in the Firefox screenshots, it's like they are asking for it
"I wonder how useful the document on how to port Mozilla will be for porting in general?"
Hopefully very useful, Firefox on Symbian (OS mainly used on Nokia and Sony Ericonsson phones btw) anyone?
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
Search engines are your friends...
Anyone else care to tell me why this OS is of any relevance?
Because someone has the gumption to put together their own OS. This is how linux got started. Maybe it's irrelevant, or maybe it's not, but you've got to respect the attempt.
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
How many new Firefox users is this really going to contribute to the global pool, in the long run?
Good for SkyOS, possibly, rather a non-event from a Firefox perspective, at least numbers-wise.
Forgive me oh Stallman, I know not what I speak!
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Beacuse it is showing that it is not difficult to port Mozilla Thunderbird & Firefox to your Operating System of choice. It also adds more to the user base beacuse the OS is shipping with a good browser rather than a hopeless one (You all know what I mean!)
Have you metaroderated recently?
A Firefox screenshot.
A Thunderbird screenshot.
And the about page of SkyOS.
...nothing particularly exciting..
I love the gumption of Slashdotters. Such an arrogance to everything. A guy decides to more or less code an entire OS by himself, ports nearly all the apps, and has a running OS that does things in a pretty unique way, and some holier-than-thou nerd, with, I might add, zero credentials that we know of, immediately dismisses it. No wonder OSS gets a bad rap, this is the attitude of our citizens.
But SkyOS isn't really it. It's a nice design, apparently, and it's got a mainstream enough design to make porting far from impossible (as this article shows), but it's proprietary (I can't make modifications to it or support myself) and it doesn't have the support of a large organization that'll be around for years.
The SkyOS fan club might want to look at Atheos. There, again, was an operating system developed by a single individual to furfill his vision. He then, for reasons unknown, dropped out of sight.
Thankfully, for Atheos users, he'd taken the precaution of GPL'ing the system. So Atheos users were able to support themselves, eventually making an official fork of the no-longer-maintained system, and continue development.
I use Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and OpenBSD. The former is proprietary but supported by a group that's not going to go away. The latter two are open and support for either's not going to go away. I have moral issues with the former, but for now, it's a good system and from a practical perspective, there's no issue with continuing to use it. SkyOS doesn't really fit as either, and past experience of pointing this out shows that, by and large, SkyOS's major online advocates are a bunch of loud-mouthed jerks who'll accuse anyone of being a free software "zealot" for pointing out the obvious (even when, as I did then and continue to do now, I said it was a choice between having major, guaranteed, commercial support or making it free software.)
So I can't really use it in the hope that if something goes wrong the SkyOS people will do the right thing and find a way to get users the support they need. I don't think they will, they're ideologically opposed to doing so. And because of that, they've created practical barriers to anyone who wants to use it for anything but the most trivial purposes.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.