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Dutch man Thom Holwerda from OSNews posted yesterday his review of Magnussoft's latest ZETA 1.5, the update which introduced for example multi-user. In his two page review, he covers several topics, from installation to new applications bundled with the release, from hardware recognition to the mentioned above new multi-user environment. He's pleased with the effort though recognizes that it still needs some work.

Overall he seems pleased with this latest ZETA release: "Slowly but surely, it feels as if Zeta is coming together. With each release, it is getting better, with better drivers and improved stability. Magnussoft and Bernd Korz are obviously listening to user feedback (the Communicator and multiuser being the prime examples of this), and on top of that, they are finetuning the amount of applications installed by default." 

Head over and read it all. 

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This just in (insert telegraph noise): Haiku has been accepted has a mentor organization for the upcoming Google Summer of Code 2007! Now any student wanting to work in one of the Haiku projects has until the 24th to apply, using the GSoC Web App for Student Applicants. If you're interested in applying, you can check the Project List page and a very useful how-to, to get you started.

Congratulations to Haiku and everyone involved in achieving this important goal for the project. 

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ImageTigerdog, of the Bezilla team, has made available three flavoured builds of the upcoming (real soon now) Firefox 2.0.0.3. The three flavours are R5, BONE and of course Zeta (Tigerdog will soon update the BeBits page). The upcoming build, due to the low version jump, "only" has some security fixes I'm guessing, so don't forget to update. And of course, as usual, don't forget to provide the Bezilla team with feedback on your Firefox experience, good or bad. If it works, tell them so, if it crashes, tell them so and if possible, provide them the crash stack crawl.

Good work guys, keep it up. 

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Though still in pre-alpha status, Haiku has seen its first distro it the light of day, courtesy of Pingwinek, all the way from Poland, in the form of GNU/Haiku. Along with Haiku itself, it comes packed with 40 GNU packages, ranging from SDL games to ncurses. You get GNU/Haiku in three flavours, images for QEMU and VMWare and also a LiveCD. Be aware that, with new Haiku builds coming out daily, GNU/Haiku is an already dated, but interesting idea and project all the same. You can get it right at their download page.

On another note, the BeDrivers site seems to be "absent without leave". When trying to visit the site, you're now treated to a... guide named "Pointers for Providing Comfort in Instruction for Students". Ok... comfort is nice, I like comfort, but if you don't mind, could we have BeDrivers back? Thanks. If anyone has some information about this, please drop us a line.

Update: Scottmc replied to an e-mail I sent him and the site was definitely hacked, someone replaced several index* and *.php files. As you can see now, their working on getting it back to working order (the forums are).

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Magnussoft launched this week their new online hardware database, which is open to everyone using ZETA to add their own workinig (or not) piece of hardware to the database. They also hope it'll be a valuable tool and resource for anyone wanting to try ZETA out on their machines, but aren't sure if their equipment (hey, I could have said "tool") will work on ZETA or not.

You can browse the database by category or manufacturer and you can, of course, do a search for that specific piece of hardware that you want to get more info on. So head over, take a look, and if you're running ZETA, why not add your hardware? Even if it's not working (or not as good as it should), it's important information to Magnussoft.

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Two days ago OsDrawer finally opened their website for the public. ICO has been following the development of this new site basically for a month now, and we are very happy to be among the first ones to announce it.

According to the people behind OsDrawer, the project aims to be a meeting point both for developers and for the whole BeOS/Haiku/ZETA community. The site hosts a system for the development of opensource projects, and offers them management of their source, a bug tracker, mailing lists, and a software repository that will become a meeting place for the community, worldwide. OsDrawer is pretty much the same as BeClan was a year or two ago, and perhaps the few projects that got registered there should consider moving their projects over to OsDrawer as well. Hopefully OsDrawer also could set up an aggregator/planet for developers/users blogging about BeOS/Haiku/ZETA?

The people behind OsDrawer unveil that they are planning to start the development of a program for an automatic management of the packages in the repository. Something that sounds pretty much like a SoftwareValet for Haiku, not that ZETA has gotten it's own in v1.5. ICO hopes that the Haiku management group and OsDrawer can work something out together regarding Google Summer of Code, as a SoftwareValet was one of the listed ideas for a project.

Their goal is to offer developers valid tools for their work, and for endusers a simple and intuitive system to manage their installed software, while trying to keep the Be style: simple, nice and cool!

The OsDrawer team consists of three members:

  • Andrea: He keeps track of the relations with the Italian BeOS community. He is, for most of us, known as the admin of the Italian Beos User Group website (www.itbug.org). And, as for ITbug, he will be taking care of the graphics and the management of the projects.
  • Enrico: He is an expert sysadmin of IBM AIX, with a growing interest for Haiku's opensource world. Thanks to his knowledge he installed the server and had some night-long works to ensure a good working site.
  • Francesca: She's the project's translator and interpreter, and will be taking s care of public relations.

OsDrawer is a 100% non-profit project, all the expenses for the creation and the developing of the project are totally up to the ones taking part in the project, so all kinds of help and donations are welcomed and highly appreciated.

OsDrawer is very much needed for the Haiku platform, and we hope that will give the development of applications a real boost.

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I was checking the Bezilla blog and saw that they now have, available for everyone to test, new builds of the open-source e-mail client Thunderbird, version 2.0b2 (the latest). Version 1.5 is available from BeBits, but this is your chance to try the latest and greatest, and while you're doing just that, don't forget to provide them with feedback (even if just a comment to say thanks), so they can improve it and make it ready and in shape for the upcoming 2.0 release. There are three builds available: R5, Bone and ZETA.

One thing worth mentioning is that this Thunderbird build has Print Preview available, as well as the initial print settings box. Maybe it's a hint of what's to come? Good work guys.

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ICO's reader Kor (aka Cedric) shot us an e-mail, letting us know about the upcoming first edition of Numerica's Art Party (initiated by A.D.A.N., the Association for Development of Digital Art), which will be held at Montbéliard, France, on the 9th, 10th and 11th of March. From 19h00 to 20h00 on the 10th, a Saturday, Haiku's own David Carradine, François Revol will host a Haiku Conference, during which he'll show the attendants the current status of the project. The conference will be viewable around the globe, since it will be broadcasted live via DTV's WebTV.

If you're in the area and were thinking of checking the Art Party out, now it's a definite must, and you have no reason not to go. So go, really, or else...

Check the Art Party webpage for all the information about the event.

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Studio-33 has published the first mini-review of ZETA 1.5.

All in all a positive review, where the author tells that upgrading went flawlessly and that adding users to the system was done easily. He has included several screenshots in the article, including screenshots of Pixel, MediaFire, AudioTagger and the new Communicator Preferences (IM kit, Vision and MDR).

Head over to Studio-33 to read the review.

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Haiku is preparing their submission to this year's Google Summer of Code and it won't be long till they have to submit it, it could even be today! To improve their chances of making the cut this time, they started a Google SoC drive, in which anyone can participate. And how can you help? For example, by becoming a mentor, such as Axel or Phipps have done. A mentor will help the student working for Haiku, assisting them with coding, etc.

There is a list of GSoC ideas/projects that the project's core devs came up with, which involved to name a couple, USB OHCI support and Firewire stack creation. But there are several more which you can check here.

So what do you say? Google Summer of Code is important for Haiku not only because it would mean someone working full (or almost) time on Haiku but also recognition by Google of the importance of this project. So head over, read their page and see if you can help.