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... and this time it is for Gobe Productive 2.0. Well, that is, for BeOS users.

The two BeOS users tic and mmu_man got their shock today when opening their office package and getting the message "this pre-release of Gobe Productive has expired". The message only appear once, as it looks to be self-destructive. The application is then trashed.

The 2.0.1 version was later reported to work fine in R5.

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Rudolf has today (well, yesterday technically) posted an update to his 3D blog. In this update, he discusses an issue he recently found, while trying two new apps with his drivers (until now he had only ran GLTeapot and Quake2), which is the fact that those two applications aren't in "direct mode".

Rudofl then proceeds to explain the difference between both processes, BDirectWindow and BWindow. Unfortunately (in a way), this will delay for a bit his Alpha release, but worry not, Rudolf's working hard on it as usual. Read it all right here.

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Michael Phipps, leader of Haiku, announced a couple of days ago, on the mailing list, WalterCon 2005, which moves from the East to the West coast, from Ohio to sparkling Las Vegas.

Michael would like this years WC to be more informal, more to the style of BeGeistert (it showed that he enjoyed it) and being in Vegas, there's a lot of places to hang out. Prices will most likely range from $30 to $110, just for the entrance to the entrance plus hotel room, respectively. The day for now is the first weekend of August, but can be changed. So if you're interested contact Michael at: waltercon - at - haiku-os - dot - org.

And remembers, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

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Last night I had a small chat with yellowTAB's Bernd Korz, where we discussed, among other things, the resellers issue, which had been mentioned already during the BeGeistert interview. As you can see here, yT has already 14 shops selling Zeta, not counting the online retailers. Their objective, naturally, is to have more in the near future, and to expand beyond Germany.

What follows below is an edited version of what Bernd told me about this issue, altered only to facilitate reading.

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Jerome Duval wrote on the Haiku site that daily source snapshops are now available to anyone interested. They are kept for 30 days in the repository. You can get them right here.

Not only that, but quite soon, daily updates of only the changed files (since the last day) will be made available in this directory. Another step in making it easily available to everyone, though at this time, mainly devs.

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Rudolf Cornelissen has once again updated his 3D blog (after a huge gap of 5 days!!!) and once again he gives us good news: the first alpha release should happen with a week!

He posts more info about this first alpha release:
  • Release in a week
  • based on Mesa 3.2
  • only a single openGL app at a time is supported
  • only double buffered contexts supported
  • only basic functions (as described earlier along the way)
  • only 16 and 32 bit modes (although 15 bit works partly as well: but is not completed yet)
  • Only older nVidia cards will work (NV04 upto/including the (slow performing) NV18
  • Set 2D driver for PIO mode
  • You'll have to install nVidia driver version 0.42 along with the 3D driver/mesa. The 2D driver has been updated in SVN, but yet has to be released on BeBits
Good stuff coming from Rudolf as always. Stay tuned as we bring you updates as they happen.

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BeGroovy has published a newsupdate reporting that the developer J?rome has published a first beta of his Echo driver. He can only test the drivers with his Echo Gina3G, and is therefore looking for beta testers.

Head over to BeGroovy to read the full newsupdate.

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Soulseek, a P2P program for sharing music (and other files) has been my favorite for many years. It was a big reason for me to use Windows. Being fed up with Windows I was interested in a Linux or even better, a BeOS version of Soulseek. After browsing some I found two clients for Linux; Nicotine which is written in Python and Museek in C++.

I've talked with the developer of both versions (who is Dutch, like our famous Soundplay guy Marco Nelissen) and he told me that the Python version, Nicotine, requires PyGTK which shouldn't be available for BeOS or the lib could be in bad shape (read outdated / unstable). The newer but more beta C++ version, Museek, should be quite easy to port for an experienced C++ developer.

So my question to you is, who knows Soulseek and thinks it'll be a good program to have on the BeOS?

Links: http://nicotine.thegraveyard.org/

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Michael Davidson (slaad) has finally picked up working on InfoPopper.

Gnome users that have had Mono installed might have tried MonkeyPop. One of it's last features has now also been implemented in InfoPopper, as Michael implements showing what's playing in SoundPlay. Well, this not quite right, it means SoundPlay has a new plugin: The InfoPopper gateway. A less perceptive man may then ask "What does that do?". Well... it takes information from SoundPlay and sends it to InfoPopper.


Great work Michael, but how about replacing that MP3-icon with the album cover if that is stored on your disk?

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Rudolf updated his blog today:

Woehoe!! Quake2 and teapot run accelerated!!!!!

(very!) preliminary benchmarks (with triangles now added to accelerated func's, tested with NV11/GeForce2MX @P4 2.8Ghz, FSB 533Mhz, AGP4x+FW):

Quake 2, default openGL, all textures up and running, no rendering faults:
  • 640x480@16bits: 10.3 fps
  • 640x480@32bits: 10.2 fps
GLteapot, no rendering faults AFAIK:
  • @16bits: 90-95fps
  • @32bits: 90-95fps

Read the rest of his long blog update.

Thank you for your great work :-)

Update: Rudolf did some more benchmarking today and it turns out the slow results are mainly due to a slow card, the GeForce4MX440. As his new benchmarks show, running for example the TNT2 or GF2 MX400 gives much better results. Check the results:

Card under test:

GLteapot @ 16bit:

GLteapot @ 32bit:

Quake2 @ 16bit:

Quake2 @ 32bit:
TNT2, original, 32Mb (NV05)
195-205 fps
175-185 fps
40.4 fps
31.4 fps
TNT2 M64, 32Mb (NV05M64)
175-185 fps
135-145 fps
30.9 fps
20.7 fps
GeForce2 MX400, 32Mb (NV11)
200-220 fps
190-210 fps
38.2 fps
25.5 fps
GeForce4 MX440, 64Mb (NV18)
90-100 fps
90-100 fps
10.5 fps
10.4 fps
GeForce4 MX4000, 128Mb (NV18)
90-100 fps
90-95 fps
10.3 fps
10.2 fps