BeGroovy Back Online
Stephen B. - April 8th, 2006
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
|
First reported by HaikuNews and ZetaNews, it looks like BeGroovy have sorted out their server problems and are back online. It’s great to see them and ICO back – there had been a decided lack of both grooviness and sheep in my daily reading of late.
During my recent shameful neglect of this site, BeBits updates continued to come in at a nice and steady pace. For a brief summary of some of the most interesting recent postings, read on.
On the off chance anyone hasn’t seen it already, there’s a great 8-page preview of ZETA 1.2 over at IsComputerOn. It looks like yellowTAB have made quite a few impressive changes in the forthcoming update and I have a strong suspicion that it will be the version which finally persuades me to give yT my money. There’s way too much good stuff in DaaT’s preview to summarize it all, but some of the highlights include: a new “info server” settings panel which gives control over many of the info_popper’s settings, SATA support for the 3 major chipsets, an onscreen display that gives feedback on volume changes/workspace changes/etc, an XviD encoder/deocder for the media kit, and built in settings for keyboard shortcuts (looks handy for those who don’t need all the functionality of SpicyKeys). The preview’s many screenshots also show some aesthetic tweaks to ZETA – the new buttons look much nicer in my opinion.
Kian Duffy over at HaikuNews was the first bring us the news that the Quake III source has been ported to BeOS (and by extension, Haiku and ZETA) by Jens Kalmark. Available for download on BeBits, the port requires Rudolf Cornelissen’s OpenGL drivers, a compatible nVidia GPU, and the data files from the original retail version of Quake3 – although data files from the demo should work as well. The port has a few quirks currently, but none that sound show-stopping, and a version with some bugfixes has been posted since the original release.
OSNews has posted an interview with Sven Jorg, the leader of a new project called BNX which aims to combine the work of the Haiku project with the QNX kernel. The rationale appears to be that it will take too long to recreate the BeOS kernel, and then bring it up to “modern” OS standards. The interview is an interesting read, although it seems to raise more questions than it answers -the obvious one being: If the proejct is licensing a commercial kernel, does that mean they also have commercial aspirations for the OS when it’s completed? We’ll post any new details on this one as they become available.
Spotted over on the BeZilla Blog, tigerdog has posted a link to a new experimental version of the HaikuFox theme. You might ask, “does ‘experimental’ mean this version of HaikuFox is fond of illicit substances and risque activites?” Good question, but no – it’s a version of the theme meant for use with experimental builds of Firefox. The experimental version of HaikuFox implements support for newer features that have recently been added to Firefox – several of which require theme support in order to work properly, like the “places” toolbar. So if you like to live dangerously and play around with experimental Firefox builds, head over and grab the equally experimental theme.
As reported by le_prOSY over at ZetaJournal, ZETA customisation site PimpMyZeta has recently been “reloaded” with a updated layout and an English version of the site. They have quite impressive collection of decors, themes, and wallpaper images for ZETA – and, when I first visited the site, SoundPlay randomly began playing Papa was a Rolling Stone. Coincidence? Or did SoundPlay just know?
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||