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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.
That and it has a very suspect item at the bottom of the page:
Xetos WSS: Single CPU Version for Workstations
Xetos WSD: Double CPU Version for Workstations
Xetos SVS: Single CPU Version for Server
Xetos SVD: Double CPU Version for Server
Xetos SVQ: Quad CPU Version for Server
Xetos Phantom: Special version for iPhantom workstations
I hate to remind anyone but Linux is scalable, automatically, to any of those configurations. It is automatically a workstation and a server, depending what daemons you have running, and by recompiling the kernel you get SMP support. Why would this OS be splitting itself into all these different versions...
unless...
they were planning to close-source major portions of it and sell it..?
I'd keep an eye on this pile of embers.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
However, if they used the more general sense of Linux - meaning Linux and accompanying tools, they could easily distribute proprietary tools. This isn't really another OS, it's another distribution that wants to pretent to be its own OS.
Neither one would suprise me.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
"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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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.
"Linux is a registerred trademark of Linux Torvalds."
That kind of says everything you need to know
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
*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)??
--
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
Clearly it's "cheetos".
puffy synthetic air-puffed cheese which smears in your hands and makes your teeth gritty.
wait, have I been drinking again?
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Last I checked, SGI actually did exist; I haven't seen any evidence of existence from this company, though.
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!"
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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...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.)
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
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.
If you look at their iBase webpage you'll see what is meant by "Mr.James".
In normal computing it is called context sensitive online help, the kind of
help you usually get if you press F1. The big difference is that Mr.James
gets invoked by pressing CTRL+F1 (check their VideoStore page).
For a really good laugh check any of their products. I personally am
addicted. This better than HBO. They have a wordporcessor which is
touted as devoid of bloat yet you can surf the net from within it. It also
can change to look like any other wordprocessor (that way the screenshot
could be explained despite looking very much like Notepad). Did I mention
their database software which is so powerful it EVEN has a scripting language,
which BTW is a reduced form of PPL, their all powerful programming language...
Except that the web page says PPL is not really a language but an IDE for
several other languages. Nevertheless, this PPL can take code relying on say
Applescript and compile it for Solaris. It can compile DDE calls for Solaris as well.
They make an organizer which automatically arranges meetings for you, from negotiating
convinient meeting time, to automatically planning your trip. They also have their own
file system, but according to the web page it "is not a real product". Did I mention
a spreadsheet that can open files with vba scripts in Linux. Macros too.
The Iwin - Uloose corporation seems to believe that Microsoft invented HTML help.
Their paperless office suite page says so.
I am still laughing about FidelGastro, their hotel/restaurant suite, whose
standard selling version includes five (count'em five) client licenses.
They also advertise "ready-set-go" concept, which applies to some of their products.
In gist, it seems that it translates into: install and 95% of the time you are ready
to go. The other 5% are not mentioned.
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