Bryan Varner has apparantly gotten back in to the Java port and is corresponding with Ian Murdock about this topic. Hopefully it will lead to something interesting. Also it seems that Bryan is looking for co-developers. So if anyone has an idle hand and want to help him out, give him a holler.

More here: 

http://bryan.varnernet.com/2007/06/27/ian-murdock-father-of-debian-opensource-savior-to-sun/ 

and 

http://bryan.varnernet.com/2007/06/29/openjdk-how-open/

Coder and kung-fu fighter extraordinaire François Revol (aka mmu_man), announced today (though he first showed it last night on the #Haiku channel) to the Haiku mailing list, that he has successfully ported OpenSound System to BeOS/Haiku. To quote from its site, OpenSound System is the "first attempt in unifying the digital audio architecture for UNIX".

According to François the port isn't finished yet, but he can hear glorious sound through his speakers, tested with ATI and SIS chipsets. And the goal is to of course, give our platform a wider support for audio devices, while using the Media Kit.

You can read it all for yourself, at the mailing list, and you have two versions to choose from: the long version or the really long version. Great work (once more) François.

Are you one of the many who bought a MacBook or another Intel-based Mac? Then perhaps you are looking for a way to run Haiku on it. This is possible with VMware Fusion. Haiku currently doesn't support EFI motherboards, so you will not be able to dual-boot.

With Fusion you can run Haiku and other PC operating systems alongside Mac OS X, easily and without needing to reboot your computer. Fusion is still in beta, but VMware lets you buy it now for an introduction price of USD $40. Normal price will be USD $80. According to VMware the pre-order program is valid until the product is generally available. VMware currently plans to make VMware Fusion 1.0 generally available prior to the end of August 2007.

Image

As you can see from the screenshot, you will get a working network connection and can download a few working applications with wget. On the other hand, Haiku is running in VESA mode (800x480, 16 Bits) and without audio capabilities.

Haiku user Fernando de Sousa, sent ICO an e-mail letting us know about his experiences with Haiku and its network usage. As you can see from the screenshots below (just follow the links), he's been browsing using ol' Opera for BeOS. Here's what he said about it:

"Using ifconfig and route commands and a /etc/resolv.conf file it's already possible to have some internet experience in Haiku as the system already has basic network support.

I think that the possibility of network in Haiku opens a lot of possibilities to the system especially because is so easy for running, testing, developing, hacking, tunning etc it in virtual machines. If you think that is good idea I would write a "how to" teaching how to have network running in Haiku."

So what do you think? A how-to would be useful for newcomers, no? Well done Fernando.

Screenshots: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

The SkyOS developer Darkness has been working on support for accessing skyfs (and bfs) partitions from within Windows for some time, and now finally has something visually to show us.

As you can see from the pictures that he has published on his website, this windows application is able to read the contents of skyfs and bfs partitions.

Darkness adds that the viewer is still far from finished. Basic functionality for reading directory content and files should be working, but is not thoroughly tested. There is a lot on my TODO list, but due to some other stuff at hand, progress is a little slow at the moment.

Screenshots:

 

What are the chances of having two back-to-back headlines with "OS X" in them... well, good it seems. During an e-mail exchange with Remi Grumeau (thanks for the e-mail Remi), Frans van Nispen told him that Xentronix has stopped working on BeOS/Haiku/ZETA software and has moved solely to Mac OS X, along with the hosting platform they've offered for a while now. According to the e-mail, it was due, mainly, to what happened between Magnussoft and Access, and yellowTAB/ZETA. Also, according to him "Haiku might be a nice BeOS alternative, but it just comes too late for us".

It's too bad, Refraction was no doubt a nice piece of software, good luck to them. Check HaikuNews for more info.

It's not often that we write about MacOS X software, but today we are making an exception!

Daniel Sandler, who used to work at Be Inc., has released a few of the old BeOS screensavers for MacOS X. The screensavers are Message, Foam, Lissart and Buy Now. They are intended not only for BeOS refugees and fanboys (and there are quite few of us that have basically migrated to a Mac these days!), but for anyone who likes clean, beautiful, simple screen effects.

The screensavers are free for your personal use, and released at Toastycode.com.

ICO also had a quick look at Sandler's blog, and learned that the latest version of Google Maps features the Be Man.

Well, this is it. We've reached our 1000th post. And guess what, it's still fun! ICO started on September 1st, 2003, less than 4 years ago, and for a dying OS with a shrinking user base, I don't think that's bad at all, I think. It's been quite a ride so far, with ups and downs, good and bad news and this year alone has been full of events, with for example Haiku entering the GSoC ranks and ZETA going down.

One thousand posts and (I'm very happy for this) it has always been a group effort. I, in total honesty, could NOT have done this without Frank, who's been with ICO since its birth. I couldn't forget Eddy of course, who, while not posting for sometime now, at the beginning and for a while was posting news pieces, and as much if not more enthusiastic than I was. Others have also contributed, like Koki and Judgen (more recently) and I thank them as well. Another aspect I'm quite happy about, is that many of the posts were due to user submitting stories, articles, etc, so thank you all out there.

Thanks to ICO I met a lot of people throughout the world, and made some friendships which has lasted for years now and (I hope) will last for many more. Ok, before I start hearing violins playing in the background, I just want to say it's been fun, I hope it continues to be fun, for us and everyone reading, and here's to another 1000 posts!

TuneTracker Systems has released today the awaited update to their Command Center software, bringing it up to version 3.1. This new version brings several new features and improvements, such as a new interface, segue (segway) markers and ramp countdowns among many others, all of which you can view in their new YouTube hosted video.

Along with CC 3.1, they're also releasing a new line of complete systems, computers ith the entire radio station pre-installed. They're comprised of two "families", he TouchCaster CMX and the ChannelCaster 16. We congratulate TT Systems on their elease and wish them continued success. Way to go Dane & Co!

Click me...

Received an e-mail today, from Karl, about a new website he's been developing, dedicated to Haiku compatible software, and only Haiku compatible software. The name of the site is Haikuware. He resumed working on the site after HaikuBits went down and under and it's now online and available for users to browse. Users who register can then upload their software for others to download and try, and each registered will have a 50MB upload limit, per transfer. The total storage space per user is limited only by the available space for the site, which is about 5GB.

It's always good to see new Haiku sites come up, but I wonder how it'll co-exist with BeBits, which has been the software site for all BeOS related OSes for years and years. Time will tell.

P.S.: Karl is looking for icons to use on the site, Haiku icons of 32x32 in png format and also a new site logo. Any takers contact him.

Update: Haikuware now has, up and running, a brand new Haiku Hardware Compatability Database. As most (all?) of these go, users are invited to help it increase in size, by submitting their own hardware to the list, where they can include their comments on the piece, include a link to its homepage, etc.