SkyOS

We (Alpha Team) are currently testing Beta10 Development Snapshot 2.

The Bug Tracker is bursting with activity lately. We report bugs, Robert fixes most of them in a jiffy. Like clockwork.

However, we've stumbled upon a serious bug that needs to be eliminated before the release, that's why Robert is currently implementing kernel GDB support to seek&destroy the bastard. Also, the built-in VMware Tools service isn't operational. Oh, and screensavers are crashing, taking panel.app to the grave as well. All mentioned issues should be fixed before Robert releases beta10 final.

If you ever had doubts about visiting our IRC channel (#skyos on chat.freenode.net) then you should know that every now and then very interesting links come up. Today Peter "Darknesss" Speybrouck has linked us to a page with an incredible video of a multi-touch screen demonstration. Isn't this simply amazing? Jaw dropped here at least. Come and visit us, share your links and exchange opinions on the #skyos IRC channel!

I've been doing some maintenance work at my dad's company (which isn't as easy as it sounds. I had to fix the internal monitoring system, that included some hardware and software tinkering and took over 3 hours). I've made a nice little discovery. Two Realtek 8139D NIC cards.

I think I'll install SkyOS natively on a separate hard drive during the weekend and put it to an ultimate networking test with not one, not two, but three Realtek 8139 cards. I'll put all three (I already have one, a 8139C, thanks again for it Thom Holwerda!) and see how SkyOS handles multiple network interfaces.

RobertSz: memory leaks should now be fixed. Where ./configure required 950MB before it now has enough with 3MB :)

Hurrah! Can't wait for beta10dev2 :)

We're currently having an interesting discussion on IRC about what needs to be done to finalise SkyOS. This is what we came up with:

- USB2.0 stack
- Printing Framework
- Scanning Framework
- CD/DVD Recording
- Perl Port
- libgphoto2 Port (digital camera support)
- Mono Port
- Python Port
- better GTK+ port
- Graphical User Interface improvements (New Viewer, Installer, etc)
- Swap file
- Office Suite
- IM client
- IRC client
- more drivers

Update: I was informed by Robert that both Mono and GTK+ might not get into the final version.