ZevenOS & Haiku-DD-Installer

Working on buying a modern i7 based PC this year and would love for it to be Haiku compatible. But, if it ends up no being able to run Haiku, would at least like to run a BeOS/Haiku like OS. I found this ZevenOS to be interesting. Even though it is not Haiku or BeOS and is actual Linux, it still looks kind of cool. So, as a backup if Haiku does not work, I would not mind trying this ZevenOS.

This ZevenOS has this Haiku-DD-Installer. I found that interesting that this ZevenOS kind of pushes Haiku use. Kind of neat.

Anyone here run ZevenOS. What are your thoughts on it? Does it seem like you are running BeOS or Haiku while using it? Have you tried this Haiku-DD-Installer and what does it do exactly.

Thanks

tj

IIRC ZevenOs is a linux kernel with a BEOS decorator and some other weird emulation charecteristics. If you want the real haik experience, install haiku and have fun.

take a look at this to find a compatible machine: http://haikuware.com/hardware/

ZevenOS sought to bring the best features of the BEOS to Linux.

Its NOT a replacement for Haiku but rather a stand-in until Haiku is mature enough for everyday computing use.

Build around XFCE, it uses the Sawfish theme manager and makes changes to enable the deskbar to be run.

All the links can be edited through the MAGI2 control center with which its shipped.
The old Zeebar has now been deprecated and replaced by Docky which is easier to use and more flexible. Like in MacOSX, all the icons you use frequently can be dragged and dropped there.

Its really fun to use and helps you to understand BEOS even though its not really BEOS. But BEOS fans will enjoy ZevenOS!

[quote=NormanF]ZevenOS sought to bring the best features of the BEOS to Linux.

Its NOT a replacement for Haiku but rather a stand-in until Haiku is mature enough for everyday computing use.

Build around XFCE, it uses the Sawfish theme manager and makes changes to enable the deskbar to be run.

All the links can be edited through the MAGI2 control center with which its shipped.
The old Zeebar has now been deprecated and replaced by Docky which is easier to use and more flexible. Like in MacOSX, all the icons you use frequently can be dragged and dropped there.

Its really fun to use and helps you to understand BEOS even though its not really BEOS. But BEOS fans will enjoy ZevenOS![/quote]

its poorly developed, it doesn’t have a good resposnive kernel and in general sours the apetite of the user towards the difference haiku and beos offer. things like tight integrations, messaging, drag and drop UI functionality etc etc etc.

Zevenos is esseintially like putting lipstick and a dress on a pig, its still pig.

JLG originally used this metaphor - in his case, the idea that his grandmother wouldn’t “get lucky” at a night club even if you put her in lipstick and a leather skirt - about Windows (specifically Windows 98 I think), explaining that it wouldn’t get any traction for multimedia work. Of course it utterly demolished his “BeOS” in the market and JLG was soon out of business

Michael Phipps made the pig joke about Linux at one of the failed and now largely forgotten “WalterCon” events. It was already a pretty hollow joke at that point, when Haiku was supposed to ship in a year or two.

The problem is that it’s not funny to sneer at people who are working harder and achieving more. At best it looks like envy. The reformulation of Haiku as just a hobby project for some people who liked BeOS is a healthy thing.

Forums appear poorly maintained also. Joined 3 weeks ago, said I would get an email confirming I joined so I could join the forums, still have not received that email. Joined again in-case my 1st join had issues, used new email addy, same thing, no confirm email and I can’t do anything in the forums. Emailed them, no messages back. Like no one exists over there that maintains the forums or gets messages saying hey, I can’t join.

So far this Haiku forum has been much nicer than the ZevenOS. I think I will not bother with it anymore.

Although, the Haiku spam filter stinks . I have been locked out multiple times that the system thinks my IP is spamming yet all I am doing is sending my few emails you all see. Frustrates when you type out a nice message and it does not get through.

Anyway, other than that, I am enjoying playing with Haiku so far.

tj

[quote=NoHaikuForMe]

JLG originally used this metaphor - in his case, the idea that his grandmother wouldn’t “get lucky” at a night club even if you put her in lipstick and a leather skirt - about Windows (specifically Windows 98 I think), explaining that it wouldn’t get any traction for multimedia work. Of course it utterly demolished his “BeOS” in the market and JLG was soon out of business. [/quote]

 Well, its not a citation JLG invented. BEOS failed becuase it didn't have a good enough marketing department. Flatly. 

[quote=NoHaikuForMe] Michael Phipps made the pig joke about Linux at one of the failed and now largely forgotten “WalterCon” events. It was already a pretty hollow joke at that point, when Haiku was supposed to ship in a year or two
. [/quote]

LOL, well i don’t use the term becuase of micheal phipps. Behold I have used it to talk about a great many things and most of them before linux was a shit stain in Linux Torvalds unemployed underwear drawer.

envy first requires having something I would want, or anyone else for that matter. Linux has nothing I want. I have a job and I have money and I can afford to buy the things I like. Like new hardware and a new copy of a functional OS that actually lets me get work done. I could even afford a Mac if I choose to. I enjoy using haiku and its giving me a good oppurtunity to learn c and c++ programming.

I think before a linux shill starts carrying on about envy, the shill should realize that envy is a two way street.

Why are linux users always so bitter about windows and Mac, must be envy.

[quote=macsociety]Forums appear poorly maintained also. Joined 3 weeks ago, said I would get an email confirming I joined so I could join the forums, still have not received that email. Joined again in-case my 1st join had issues, used new email addy, same thing, no confirm email and I can’t do anything in the forums. Emailed them, no messages back. Like no one exists over there that maintains the forums or gets messages saying hey, I can’t join.

So far this Haiku forum has been much nicer than the ZevenOS. I think I will not bother with it anymore.

Although, the Haiku spam filter stinks . I have been locked out multiple times that the system thinks my IP is spamming yet all I am doing is sending my few emails you all see. Frustrates when you type out a nice message and it does not get through.

Anyway, other than that, I am enjoying playing with Haiku so far.

tj[/quote]

theres alot of stuff that should be coellescing at the same time over the next 18 months is my geuss. things that should really boost the useability.

BTW welcome to Haiku’s forums. Join in and have a good time.

“BEOS failed becuase it didn’t have a good enough marketing department. Flatly.”

I would like to point out that Microsoft was convicted of anticompetitive trade practices against BeOS and paid $23M to settle the lawsuit. Microsoft threatened PC hardware manufacturers not to bundle BeOS. This also was a big factor.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Microsoft+Pays+$23m+to+Settle+BeOS+Antitrust+Suit.-a0107384535

[quote=AndrewZ]
I would like to point out that Microsoft was convicted of anticompetitive trade practices against BeOS and paid $23M to settle the lawsuit. Microsoft threatened PC hardware manufacturers not to bundle BeOS. This also was a big factor.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Microsoft+Pays+$23m+to+Settle+BeOS+Antitrust+Suit.-a0107384535[/quote]

This was a civil lawsuit, therefore nobody is “convicted” of anything.

Microsoft settled, removing an uncertainty from its balance sheet - but admitted to no wrongdoing. Be’s shareholders received a little bit of money from the settlement, and the whole thing went away.

[quote=AndrewZ]“BEOS failed becuase it didn’t have a good enough marketing department. Flatly.”

I would like to point out that Microsoft was convicted of anticompetitive trade practices against BeOS and paid $23M to settle the lawsuit. Microsoft threatened PC hardware manufacturers not to bundle BeOS. This also was a big factor.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Microsoft+Pays+$23m+to+Settle+BeOS+Antitrust+Suit.-a0107384535[/quote]

they should have changed strategys and gotten aggresive in dealing with that issue. Radio spots, a tv commercial. There are ways to market products. Essentially thats what BE failed to do.

While I agree in principals that Microsoft did alot to keep BE out. Be should have been looking for alternative veneues.

Computing expos, tv ads, radio ads, etc.

The fact of the matter is that Be didn’t do enough to get its name out there. If you randomly ask 10,000 people who BE computing was. They’d likely have no freaking idea. If you ask 10,000 people if they know what windows is. You’ll get a much different answer.

this is a crux of the problem, even for linux. Name Recognition.

[quote=NoHaikuForMe][quote=AndrewZ]
I would like to point out that Microsoft was convicted of anticompetitive trade practices against BeOS and paid $23M to settle the lawsuit. Microsoft threatened PC hardware manufacturers not to bundle BeOS. This also was a big factor.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Microsoft+Pays+$23m+to+Settle+BeOS+Antitrust+Suit.-a0107384535[/quote]

This was a civil lawsuit, therefore nobody is “convicted” of anything.

Microsoft settled, removing an uncertainty from its balance sheet - but admitted to no wrongdoing. Be’s shareholders received a little bit of money from the settlement, and the whole thing went away.[/quote]

Ohh blah, microsoft has pretty much stomped on everyone with its monopolistic behavior that it can. but thats just smart bussiness.

Better to ask for forgivness then beg for permission.

No one is saying its Haiku. It will never be. But it does offer a preview of the features a mature Haiku system would have: an editable Deskbar, a package manager, a drag and drop dock aka Mac OSX… I think that would be useful to have in Haiku in the future and and a GUI network setup that consists of an Advanced Drivers GUI database and a GUI Network menu for setting up wired and wireless connections.

The latest Haiku builds still lack these features. And on the Haiku wishlist are things like installing standard browsers, HTML5 and Flash support and Libre Office.

The Linux kernel has come a long way in the last twenty years and now includes advanced hardware support including driver support. For example, in Ubuntu and PCLOS, one no longer needs to fuss around with ndiswrapper… its just a matter of connecting to your wireless network with supplying the required information.

For Haiku fans, the real problem isn’t that Linux doesn’t do a very good job of supporting hardware - it does - the real problem with it is more that the way every thing is put together on top of the Linux kernel beginning with the X-Window manager system and various desktop environments - which while they all work the same, look and feel different and there is something inelegant about it.

Linux has a lot of good features that are being ported to Haiku, simply because they work well and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. But there is a desire to avoid the way Linux has been built, to produce something simpler and more efficient.

Haiku would have everything ZevenOS is already doing without the underlying Linux complexity and one day it will be there. But showing how the best aspects of BEOS works under Linux is still an inspired accomplishment.

I’d guess ZevenOS has better printing support than Haiku. Ive yet to find out how to get printing to work. Its like BONE was; they improved the networking and neglected to fix printing.

The forum is activly maintained and registration works perfectly. If you encounter problems please e-mail us.
To be clear no e-mail was received from you yet. I also checked back the spam folder which does not show anything. So where did you send the mail to ?

[quote]
…
its poorly developed, it doesn’t have a good resposnive kernel and in general sours the apetite of the user towards the difference haiku and beos offer. things like tight integrations, messaging, drag and drop UI functionality etc etc etc. [/quote]

The development size & quality is limited due to the contributors. Haiku has definitely more contributors.
But that does not stop us to try bringing a BeOS/Haiku experience to the desktop.
The Response of the Kernel is pretty fast indeed I would make the claim it is currently faster than haikus especially when you look at the network stack and even audio & video. (video mainly because we have more graphiccard drivers).
Tight integration of applications is hard to achieve for already existing applications that use different libraries and were written in different times.
All our ZevenOS Tools have tight integration with Magi-Kit and Magi-Kit-Install. It isn’t perfect yet but its a start and working right now.
Drag’ n Drop support is working pretty fine for > 95 % of the apps we ship.
UI and functionality are constantly improved from version to version.

That depends on how you see it. But in fact this is what every linux distribution does one way or another. But we try to be more than just a theme for a ubuntu based distro. We want to offer good, fast and easy to use applications and want to offer the best BeOS/Haiku experience that you can get ontop of a linux distribution.

Haiku has excellent printer support, but you need to download it:

  • http://www.osnews.com/story/24162/Porting_Gutenprint-based_Printer_Drivers_to_Haiku

The forum is activly maintained and registration works perfectly. If you encounter problems please e-mail us.
To be clear no e-mail was received from you yet. I also checked back the spam folder which does not show anything. So where did you send the mail to ?[/quote]

Well, I am afraid it is not. I signed up multiple times and both times it says an email will be sent to me and once that was confirmed, then I would be able to logon. Those emails never arrived so unless they both were lost out in Internet land, it failed both times to even send me an email. Not in my junk folder, nothing.

I sent emails 3 times with zero responses. 1st sent on Feb 1st to alexsoffice@gmail.com. That is the email at your site. 2nd email on Feb 2nd but this time to alex@zebuntu.com, another email I acquired from your site. 3rd email sent on Feb 11 to alexsoffice@gmail.com. All explaining I am signing up but no email is being sent to approve me in. The most I can do is log on but can’t post because I have not been approved by your admin.

I have copies of all 3 emails if you wish.

So, after 3 times of trying, I called it quits.

tj

The forum is activly maintained and registration works perfectly. If you encounter problems please e-mail us.
To be clear no e-mail was received from you yet. I also checked back the spam folder which does not show anything. So where did you send the mail to ?[/quote]

I have 3 emails to your web site admin that prove otherwise. All started back on Feb 1. Tried multiple times to join but no email is sent by your system to approve that I joined. So, something is not working right. Non of my emails were ever responded to not did I get something from your system that I joined and to confirm my email.

tj