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A New 'Linux-Based' OS?
nick++ writes "I was browsing iwin's site (iwin is a German company who is supposedly making some formerly-slashdot-mentioned Amiga-compatible machines), and found Xetos. According to iwin, 'Xetos is an operating system based on a Linux kernel which was extended by many components and features.' For example, '...there is a special Amiga mode included which allows you to use most of your older Amiga software.' I wonder if any of these "extensions" are GPLed?" Also, does "based on" mean we're looking at a kernel fork? Or is this just another new Linux distro? If anybody out there has tried Xetos, please let us know what it's like. Thanks.
Its kinda difficult to install, but works nicely. I give it a B+
Looks interesting. No comment on what license, however, or whether or not any source is available. Anyone know what requirements they have about releasing the source?
I hope that it doesn't screw this up with software using strange, non-opensource or pseudo-open source licenses. Yuck.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
yuk.
Hmmm, I wonder if how you pronounce Xetos will be more hairy that the flame war about how you pronounce Linux
In case of Emergency, Curl up in the Fetal position, and lick a Bible for comfort!
I went thru their site and couldn't find anything more than was presented in ./ article. .. nothing.
No pricing, copyright
Weird.
From the blurry and small screenshots, its looks very advanced.
I would not be suprised if some more "suprise" Linux distros pop up.
E
EverCode
cool beans
"If you really should have some troubles one time, then the electronical and intelligent assistant "Mr.James" will help you. "
That in itself kinda pigeonholes Xetos and what market it's directed at, doncha think?
Actually, I think it went -1 because at 0 it was "Overrated."
"In a world without walls, who needs Windows" - Someone from LinuxToday
make world, not war
This page is very very fuzzy, where's the meat (or a trial download)?
Well, there are two blurry screenshots and they do look suspicious. One of them appears to be a Win98 screenshot, the other one looks like Windowmaker to me (though I am not that much of an expert on Window Managers).
Hmm.
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You may like my a cappella music
Linux is a registered trademark of Linux Torvalds.
Did anyone else see this at the bottom of the page?
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
- Marketing's involvement in Linux. There was clearly some marketing influence on that page. Put simply, marketers don't like to put specifics or anything meaningful. Kelvin Cline ads anyone?
- They are trying to present Linux as ideal for non-technical users. Non-technical users, sadly, are scared by specific information.
- Ignorance is in.
And you thought Red Hat's web page was vegue! Caldera Linux is in this croud too: its page is about as vegue as it gets. Without the word "Linux" on the title, no one would know what they're talking about.Geeks, ready your non-commercial distributions!
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
"Linux is a registerred trademark of Linux Torvalds."
That kind of says everything you need to know
Now where the hell do you get it from? There is only one short page and a couple screenshots on that page. I couldn't find links to any other information. Anyone know anything bout this?
The terminology doesn't match up with real technology. If this thing really existed, it would be very popular. Oh yeah, and the HTML was done by the "CEO" of the company. What it seems to me they're doing is taking the rumours flying around (Linux Kernels, New Boxes) and creating a hoax. Turning it into the iMac of Amigas. And if you send money? theyWin.
And then, of course, you have to wonder about the "new" distro they're creating. What would the point be? RedHat's Rough Cuts CD has had a fully fuctional Amiga distro for quite a while. It would be stupid to create another distro to do the exact same job of another one already much more accepted.
Don't tell me someone is taking this seriously.
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
There, at the bottom left of the page it says it all: "Linux is a registerred trademark of Linux Torvalds."
or Xenophobia
*groan* How many "linux-based" products can we have that have little to do with linux but are, infact riding the "open source / free software paradigm"(tm)(c)(r)??
--
why post a story like this without at least trying to contact the company in question first? ...is it so lameasses can spread vapid conjecture and whine about blurry photos in order to avoid doing actual work? that's dumb.
These guys need an acid bath. Bottom of the page: "Linux is a registered trademark of Linux Torvalds." I almost wet my pants. These guys are about as vapour as it gets. Let's not encourage their behaviour by noticing they exist.
just another fucking hoax.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've heard of Iwin before, and I think they're a hoax company. Or is it just me that's suspicious of a company with unrealistic products, no pricing information, no dealers, and no-one who's used anthing they've made?
Amiga interoperability is probably a BINFMT_MISC entry that runs UAE in a500 mode on ADFs, and UAE in 680x0/RTG mode on amiga executables. You wouldn't even need a separate partition.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Please use this form if you want to order online any of our products. You must have already a valid dealer id number in order to process your order.
From their page: "You must order a minimum quantity of 10 for hardware and 25 for software. We only ship via DHL or TNT to you. First time orders can be only made with c.o.d or pre-payment (we will give you our bank information). With the second order we will give you a corporate account."
I have to return some videotapes...
From the looks, it looks like a Gnome or KDE based system using the winodwmaker window manager, with modifications that probably won't let you into a shell.
;)
Interesting also, I quote, (And not question-mark
"When developing Xetos we took care about the usability of the operating system and had an eye on existing operating systems."
And...
"Due to the Linux kernel, you can benefit already from a large number of applications. No matter if you are looking for office-, graphic-, or multimedia applications - Iwin Xetos provides you with the right software base."
So apparently they're talking on both sides of their mouth. Not only do they blast Unix for being too hard to learn, but Xetos can use a wealth of applications written for Linux, a variant of Unix. At any rate, it looks like it has a UNIX core. Hmmm...
--Rob
iWin shot its credibility down the craphole when it started making grandiose claims about creating a next generation Amiga computer. As the Amiga market, desperate for any kind of light at end of this long dark (and exceedingly depressing) tunnel, began to examine their product specifications... they began to realize that they were being fed a load of bullshit. I think some of this was thrown on up on Slashdot way back when.
iWin was creating an nextgen Amiga system, and yet their sales did not include either Kickstart hardware ROMS (standard Amiga equipment), or a copy of the operating system. Amiga Inc. was never contacted, and as such could not (and did not) officially lisence their tech. iWin continued to plead it's legitimacy, but (I'm not going to cite specifics, I'm just writing quick) more and more holes began to appear in their story.
I think it's fair to say that anyone who has followed the iWin story is convinced that they're full of shit. This feels like the "company" is just taking their hoaxing of the Amiga Market and throwing it in the face the larger Linux community.
Don't believe the hype.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
I got a good laugh out of that paragraph. Mr. James will help you... hehe... Office paperclip meets Ask Jeeves and answers *your* vaporware questions. LOL.
Someone spend the mod point!
Linux is a registerred trademark of Linux Torvalds.
That's quite interesting, I really thought the guys name was Linus.. haahaa
-----Transmission Complete----- If you want to email me...Don't
ln -sf `which vi` `which emacs`
:-)
--A vi usernTH p0sT b330tCh!!!! (where 'n' equals the number of the comment)
hey, you wanna see a real hoax? (or maybe, this time, is for real): http://www.fufme.com i have post this story to slashdot without result :( but yes, now i can fuck with my computer!
Well, I did some research and apparently Pjotr Semanov is the cheif developer for Xetos. Anyone ever heard of him in the kernel-dev community?
Iwin Xetos alread includes various tools and utilities which will make working with and administrating Xetos very easy. You will stay compatible with your old system. Iwin Xetos understands Linux, Windows, MacOS, Novell and AmigaOS
That seems to say that it can run all of those OSes binaries. Erm, no. That's not happening any time soon (how long has Wine been in development?)
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
Perhaps it is pronounced Cheetos. :)
I work at a major ISP that uses Xetos extensively.
Not only is it more stable than Windows NT and
regular Linux _combind_, it makes fabulous
Beouwulf clusters that totally kick ass!!!
I also give it a B+.
debain. The project name is pronounced Deb'-ian, with a short e, and emphasis on the first syllable. This word is a contraction of the names of Debra and Ian Murdock, who founded the project. (Dictionaries seem to offer some ambiguity in the pronunciation of Ian (!), but Ian prefers ee'-an.)
Somebody get our flag back!
Anyone notice that they identify Linux Torvalds as the creator of the Linux operating system. Everyone knows Bill Gates did!
A "Linux kernel based" OS that's not just a GNU/Linux distribution is actually possible: You could take the kernel (unmodified) but replace all of userland with a different system. The new userland could be distributed under any license one pleased, including fully proprietary.
With a different C library, standard utilities and file system conventions you could have a thoroughly non-Unix-like OS, even with POSIX system calls under it all.
Of course, why you'd bother is another question. I'd be fairly doubtful myself as to whether this is what they've actually done.
Zee-toes (an italian restaurant?)
Chee-toes (a crunchy cheesy snack)
Shee-toes (a really bad breakfast cereal?)
Ket-oh-ess (an OS for processing backward TeX?)
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
debain. The project name is pronounced Deb'-ian, with a short e, and emphasis on the first syllable. This word is a contraction of the names of Debra and Ian Murdock, who founded the project. (Dictionaries seem to offer some ambiguity in the pronunciation of Ian (!), but Ian prefers ee'-an.) -debian FAQ
Somebody get our flag back!
One of the first things that came up when searching for the iWin CEO name on the net was this: http://kleinbus.org/~zza/iwin/iwin-eng. html It's an interesting list of strange facts about iWin.
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I'm not sure if I'm a freak, but if an amigaesque company says I am...
It's prolly a typo. Maybe I should watch over your shoulder and bitch about your spellin =:)
This is to announce a new linux distribution. It understands alot of different os's, based on the linux kernel, and can even run DOS programs!! It's called LinuxLinux. Of course we don't have a web site yet, or even a domain name set up, but if you send money, we will ship it to you, as soon as we can burn a few cd's.
Read it more carefully though. It says Linux Torvalds. Not Linux Torvalds.
THWACK! It is supposed to say LINUS TORVALDS
Did anyone notice the footnote:
"Linux is a registered trademark of Linux Torvalds".
Yes, Linux Torvalds.
This site reminded me of that Turkish guy who was
kissing everyone.
It stands to reason that if the forked features are better, then in the long term that fork will succeed. Forking is not necessarily bad, and the right to do it is arguably one of the core strengths of OSS.
The biggest risk of fragmentation comes not from start-ups building vaporware and me-too distros with forked kernels, but somebody the size of Red Hat putting together a proprietary API that is great for developing apps but closed-source.
IMHO, neither phenomenon is a risk to Linux today, because no single player has the power to dictate terms to the market. If anybody tried to, they'd get laughed out of town.
-Sansbury
"Due to the Linux kernel, you can benefit already from a large number of applications."
:-). They'll also need to have glibc2.1 or libc5 & pthreads, libgr, etc, to provide Linux app compatibility.
No. The Linux kernel is just an ELF loader, and just provides a few functions (the ones that make Linux apps non-portable
What someone should do is fire off an email requesting source. The GPL sorta specifies that they have to give you a copy, and only charge cost of shipment.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
If you look all the way down at the bottom of the page you see "Linux is a Registered Trademark of Linux Torvalds". I always thought his name was Linus not Linux. How concieted to name an OS after oneself :) Anyway someone needs to inform HR over at Transmeta or Mr. Torvalds won't be paying any taxes this year!
Ah.. I love the taste of vaporware in the morning.
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
http://www.iwin-corp.de/enmain/Support-e/Driver_do wnload/driver_download.html
Well - they are really looking to support this 'Xetos' !!!!!
K, what good is the Standard 2x DVD drive doing anyone? I guess you can use software that's in danger of being sued out of existance to watch DVD's with no sound?
If this isn't a hoax, I'll eat a bug.
I like music
You will stay compatible with your old system. Iwin Xetos understands Linux, Windows, MacOS, Novell and AmigaOS.
OK, that's clue #1... you aren't going to run all those binaries through software emulation, at least not easily. Unless by "understand" they mean "will connect to via TCP/IP".
the electronical and intelligent assistant ?Mr.James? will help you
Clue #2... I wonder if "James?" is a talking paper clip?
Xetos Phantom... Special version for iPhantom workstations
The Phantom Workstations... didn't that star Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson? I wonder if these workstations use Transmeta's new Crusoe chip.
JMC
...seems to have replaced ``Amiga Persecution Complex'' as their affliction of the day. Has there been a single example of an Amiga-related announcement actually having been followed up by something more substantial than, say, more announcements? Any time in the last eight years? Just wondering...
(Oh, and how's that Amiga Mozilla port coming along? No, not that one, the other one.)
This was in response to the AC's post. Of course people have already said that the screenshots might be fake. Of course people have already said that iWin is a scam. That was not my point. If I had posted a new message that said "It's a hoax because"... then that would have been rightfully moderated as redundant. My point here is that this AC seems to be up to something fishy. As I am the only response so far to this comment, it could not possibly be considered redundant. The first part was just to back up my main point; the real point was that this AC could not possibly have installed iWin.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Linus Torvaldx?
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Xetos is brought to you by a company which also
o ry/body_iwin_history.htm
(allegedly) made "FidelGastro - a program for restaurants and hotels".
See http://www.iwin-corp.com/Iwin_internals/Iwin_hist
Are you sure it's not a tyop?
;-)
(with apologies to whomever did Transmeta's homepage
Score:-1 Stupid
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
In a recent survey, 2 of 3 dining philosophers said we need more forks.
Seriously, whence all the furor about forking with the kernel?
a) The GPL gives you the right to fork it up however you want.
b) In some cases a bit of forking around might be desirable.
Linux is evolving into the Swiss army knife of operating systems. Not only does it run on a large number of distinct microcomputer types, it also runs in everything from telephones to desktops to datacenters to supercomputers. Yes, it's a nice ideal to have a customizable kernel that will let you put in or leave out various types of support, but there seems to be a danger of attempting a too ambitious Windows Everywhere (TM) approach, and doing many things poorly rather than a few things well.
So let it get forked.
The important thing, IMO, is to maintain support for a well-defined "frontier" in the code base, so that your kernel variant replaces some well-defined "kernel of the kernel", and is therefore transparent to the rest of the OS.
Most important, IMO, is that some API be maintained so that I can move my GNU apps over to your new Linux-derived OS and compile them without any need for hackage.
Of course there will undoubtedly be those who will introduce deliberate inconsistencies in hopes of cornering market share, but I'm optimistic that the market will either route around them or else invoke the GPL and absorb them.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
This came from the downloads directory... apparently they have their own fscking browser as well...
This came from handheld computing
So now they have made applications that run on any handheld and are portable across various office suite formats. Wow talk about unifing computing.
RANT
This site has quickly gone from slightly humorous to downright annoying. And what of any dimwits that actually send him money? I have a feeling that the person behind this is going to be very hard to find indrrd. The attention we are giving him today just tickles his fancy a little bit more. In all likelyhood he is sitting here reading all of our posts and saying I love free publicity. Lets all shut our holes on this one for a little bit and wait for it to come out of the wash or for something real to materialize. What a waste of perfectly innocent ASCII this is.
END RANT
Ok. I am of my soapbox.
Flame Away.
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
Speaking of former employees, Martin Steinbach's former employer (whose company appears on the "business partners" section of the Iwin site) was contacted - he said he had dealings with MS, and recommended nobody else do the same.
Finally, if you're not convinced, here's a post from Matthias Ettrich on comp.sys.amiga.misc describing the Iwin press conference held to announce their Amiga product line:
This morning, I attended the Iwin press conference in Unterhaching.
Although in theory, 23 people should have come (there was room for 30, and according to [1], "7 places are still available"), there were only *three* guests (and I hadn't even bothered to apply for an invitation), the other two being from http://www.amiga-news.de/ (a more detailed report should appear there tonight).
Martin Steinbach arrived with nothing but ten copies of the Iwin "press kit", consisting of printouts of the PDF files we already know (product specs and the five-year roadmap), plus two sample ads ("Would you like this to be your new girlfriend? - Everything you were dreaming fo for such a long time" and "High end computing for game-console prices! Las amigas vuelven en casa..."). There was no video (as promised on [1]: "Iwin - an introduction") and no "Iwin Insurance 1.0" or "Iwin VideoStore" presentations.
We had a three-hour talk with Martin. Unfortunately, he failed to give a single convincing answer during that time. He claimed that the Iwin custom chips were basically UAE source code cast in silicon and that the sample chip design and production was done mostly for free by their hardware partners. He tried to explain the fact that he is a Merant employee with tax reasons (about the photos posted at compcity.nl, he claimed that some of them showed the Merant office, while the others showed the actual Iwin office, and the Merant pictures "should not have been published"). Regarding Tulip and the "Commodore" name, he stated that the price doubled from 18 to 36 million (he didn't specify a currency - I believe he meant Austrian Schillings, as he is from Austria) after an interview was published early. He said that "black boxes" will be shown during the Indianapolis show on the upcoming weekend, but made conflicting statements about the meaning of "black box" (just empty boxes vs. working beta hardware) and that they would not attend HEW due to problems with AInc. Germany. Regarding the fake files in the download section, he refused to give an answer and told me to ask Rue Ann instead.
The Holiday Inn lunch buffet was okay. Of course, most of the seats remained unused. :-)
I left with lots of promises (he wants to send me the missing video, a *working* PowerSE demo CD and tons of info material) and the uneasy feeling of having been lied to for three hours in a row.
It basically looks like he's an attention starved underachiever trying to get as much attention on his hoax as he can. In that sense, it looks like he's succeeded.
Daniel.
Watch Hysteria (a kids cartoon) and do not repeat other people's
jokes as your own.
If you peruse this site read the htm in the MrJames directory.... die laughing...
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
Thanks for yet another laugh.a mes/body_mr_james.htm
The fun is at:
http://www.iwin-corp.com/Products/Software/Mr_J
On a more serious note: this site uses quite a few gif's. Can anyone
tell if those were made with a licensed program. I wouldn't mind if
Unysis went after Uloose.
Here's what their website had to say about their "Mr. James" software:
... and of course you can also ask Mr. James questions in natural language (English, German, French, Italian and Spanish). Mr.James will answer you questions about the current application, about the operating system you are using, about general computing questions (Problems with harddrives, how to send emails, how to connect to the internet, etc.) and much more.
Mr.James was one of the first technologies made by Iwin Corporation (Worksoft) and started a new century in computing - in user friendly computing. Worksoft was the first firm ever which used an intelligent and interactive assistant for their software products.
Mr. James never was a graphical game like many other assistants are - it always was a great resource for any question. Many years before Microsoft introduced their assistants in Office, we already had them built into our applications.
But Mr.James does not only answer questions about the current appliction. It goes through every problem together with you - trying to find the right solution.
Mr. James wont disturb you during your work - Mr. James will assist you with every problem you might have.
Mr. James is not a separate product - it is included with every Iwin Application.
This looks more than a little suspicious. Looks to be about the same as the last article on /. having to do with a major overhaul and weird circumstances. The one about the asian guy coming up with a new company, new product (glossed over Red Hat release) and a coincidental IPO (stock offering). IMHO this is a total crock.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
They look like a mutant hybrid of WindowMaker, AfterStep, GNUStep, and AMiWM
Let me start by saying that I don't understand the Slashdot community's unfair approach to this brilliant, promising company.
We have been running Xetos for several months in our company, on a custom made massively parallel Iwin supercomputer with 2000 nodes. Each node is an Iwin C64, based on the venerable Commodore 64. Iwin's software is efficient and well written, and we can routinely get about 500 spf (seconds per frame) on Quake 3 without any problems. The high-end graphics hardware we use is also by Iwin, it is designed by Iwin CEO & webmaster Martin and contains about one hundred transistors.It has a built-in hardware implementation of the wonderful Mr.James technology, which is a great help during those long rendering sessions. Mr.James is much, much more than an ordinary help wizard, and can effectively converse with the user using several languages on a diverse variety of subjects ranging from Slovakian folk dances to James Joyce's Ulysses. It should be seen to be believed.
I assure you that everything on Iwin's site is real, and works perfectly. Iwin's CEO, Martin, is one of the most talented people I've met. He's been quite busy nowadays debugging the Xetos kernel source, and spending most of his time correcting the numerous mistakes of some Linus Torvalds, a nameless, incompetent contributor to he Xetos kernel project, which Linux is derived from.
Along with Iwin, we have a strategic partnership agreement with LinuxOne, too. I believe LinuxOne and Iwin are both great companies with similar visions and wonderful products. As with most of my colleagues, I also would really love to see a merger of LinuxOne and Iwin, which would undoubtedly have resulted in the greatest company on the scene today.
Better hope there are no buffer overflow problems so to speak.
I guess they read Slashdot too? :-)
>>Mr. James is not a separate product - it is
:) Maybe they can even have Mr.James bootup and replace Tux. Not only that. Have a boot screen with Mr.James on it (Wonder if Windows will ever put bill gate's picture on their boot screen *grin*)
:)
>>included with every Iwin Application.
Well, since it's included with EVERY application. I wonder if Mr.James will be just as annoying as Micro$oft's OfficeAssistants
This is sad. Someone shut this company down
Yes, I have one of these. It's got 128MB RAM, 2MB ROM, and a chipped RIM.
Unix(tm) looses the rumor to be difficult to use and to be just something for specialists and freaks.
FREAKS! Ha! Does nobody else have the image
of elephant man telnetting to the bearded
ladys box in a draughty old tent?
Who said it was a linux distribution? The term "linux distribution" has come to mean "a unix like system with all the unix-like tools, based on the Linux kernel". It is entirely possible to create an OS which looks nothing like unix but using the Linux kernel.
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
http://iwin-corp.com/Products/Software/PPL_-_Power _Programing_Languag/ You have to read this to believe anyone could even imagine such rubbish. I have never read such bs.
Dear Sir,
Iwin Xetos is a Linux based operating system. This means, the kernel is
always the latest stable Linux kernel. We have added some important GNU
tools and applications and made some applications and tools on our own.
So Iwin Xetos is somehow comparable with Corel Linux. We are currently
working on a much improved version of the webpages for Xetos, so you will
be able to get all information from there very soon.
Pricing:
The workstation version for one CPU will be priced at approx. US $ 89.
Xetos will be also available for download from our website because we
will offer it under a license similar to GPL (our own).
The retail versions (so not the download version) will include also the
source codes.
If you have any furhter question, please do not hesitate to ask us. If
you have any technical question please send it to tech@iwin-corp.de
Yours,
Conrad Meis
Iwin Corporation