Slashdot features an interesting interview with the AtheOS creator, Kurt Skauen. Kurt talks about filesystem attributes, why XFree is not a choice for AtheOS, the GPL and lots of other things. OSAlert also hosted an interview with Kurt just ten days ago, where Kurt talked in length about binary compatibility, Gcc 3, mulithreading etc
Slashdot Interviews AtheOS’ Kurt Skauen
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
In my Opinion AtheOS is the second best free OS out there. (Taking in consideration that BeOS and QNX are free but only for non comercial use).
I think that Athe is right after *nix and I’m looking forward in it. I’m wathing this project since a couple of months and it’s updated frequently… …even his web layout!
Check it out!
Good interview, but the OS News one was much better…
>…even his web layout!
I hope you liked it, as I designed it.
>Good interview, but the OS News one was much better…
Thank you Kevin. Sweet as always.
This my first post ever, I usually just read and keep my opinions to myself. But since I found this website I have to come and check it out daily. So keep up the good work.
Thank you Will.
It was always a good site, but it seemed to have died. Good to see
OSAlert alive again and better than ever.
Perhaps you should post a brief explanation of what happened ?
Here is the deal.
OSAlert had not many updates for the last year. Only about once a month or so (while in the past 4 years OSAlert had been quite successful).
I am an editor at BeNews.com which is very successful and all, but lately, after BeOS not having a clear future and all, we have a _real trouble_ getting new stories in. One-two years ago, I could find BeOS stories even in the desert. These days, nothing exciting really happens at all.
So, I wanted to move on, to something that it is guaranteed to be absolutely interesting to geeks and to people who have the same interests as me (OSes). So, I found OSAlert.com just by typing the URL on the browser to see if it is registered or not. I came across with the old site, but the last update was last April. I thought that I could help bring some life back to the site.
So, I wrote to the editors, asking to join the team or redesign the whole thing.
David Adams, who owns OSAlert, wrote back to me and he suggested to take over the site.
I know what I wanted to do exactly, but I had no previous experience with mySQL and PHP. But because I worked professionally with SQL Server and ASP, my transition to the Unix counterparts, was painless.
Jon Jensen, our admin, set me up on the server, and just one week later, after coding like crazy up to 3 AM in the morning (which eventually resulted me to get to the hospital/ER for 4 hours in the middle of August) OSAlert gone live on August 13th 2001.
For all the past months and for the first 2 days of the “new” OSAlert, we had about 600-700 impressions (individual webpage hits per day).
The third day, I managed to get us our first Slashdotting and people got to know us a bit better. Since then, the only way was up!
In *less than a month*, we are now at about (averaged) 12,000+ pagehits/day. And that is more successful than BeNews currently is. We are quickly evolving to a very important geek/technology web site on the web.
And this is only the start, so hang on over here.
Maybe I’ll post an article on it someday, but it’s not a very exciting story. I just plain got too busy. I started a company called Akopia (open source ecommerce software) and it was a lot of work to keep it going. We were bought out by Red Hat and now I have a lot of responsibilities there. OS News would have stayed in suspended animation if Eugenia hasn’t come along. She’s really grabbed the bull by the horns, redesigned the site, and makes constant updates. Thanks, Eugenia!
Thank you for the opportunity David.
Kudos to Eugenia and others(?) who have brought this site back to life (and boy, what a life!). I used to be regular reader a long time ago, but then this site sort of died out… Eugenia, I think the revival and the story behind it should be put into the main site rather than hidden in the comments of a story.
Keep it up and thanks a lot for a wonderful site on something that interests me a lot. And BTW, the new look and feel is quite nice and much better than the earlier look. The only problem is that the pages don’t fit into a “normal” browser window – I have to maximise the window to be able to read anything. Somewhat irritating…
Ranjit
>Kudos to Eugenia and others(?)
Thank you Matt.
>The only problem is that the pages don’t fit into a “normal” browser window…
The web site was built for the 800×600 resolution. I do not support 640×480 because it represents less than 5% of the users, plus our readers are geek enough to have bigger monitors and not even be in this 5%. 800×600 is about 52% and 1024×768 about 35% of the Internet userbase. The rest percentages is for even higher resolutions. So as you can see, you have to have at least 800×600 to use most of the web anyway, not just this site.
May I say, that I’m very confused by this “designed for 800×600” and similar comments?
What’s the deal? I just don’t get it.
I mean, I run at 1600×1200, but that does in NO WAY mean, that there are 1600×1200 pixels for the website!
I run all websites in windows and the size of them, is entirely based on my current mood. If I want to view a website in a tiny window, I’ll do it… So websites should be flexible all the way, using percentage instead of fixed sizes as much as possible, etc.
But osnews.com is doing quite good. I can shrink it horizontal as much as the title elements allow it (the banner besides the logo) without having to scroll.
So I would really suggest Ranjit to use a larger resolution.
[This thread is getting completely OT, but…]
Dear Eugenia (and Spark),
I AM running at 800×600 at 16bpp. The point is, my browser
windows are not maximised all the time – in fact, I hate having
to maximise windows just to be able to see what’s on a page.
Usually, my browser windows are about 70% as wide as the screen.
I guess this would also be true for most people – don’t tell me
you view all pages in windows that are always maximised!
(Unless you use an Opera-like browser.)
Anyhow, the solution to this “problem” is quite simple really.
For example, I notice from this page’s HTML source that the table
width has been explicitly set to 760 pixels. A cleaner
way would be to specify a width of “100%” (or whatever) that would
ensure that the tables are resized according to the current window
size. Note that this is just a “hint” – the browser will
try its best to honour it, but might go for a bigger size,
if, for example, it is not able to fit stuff into this.
A golden rule of designing “portable” pages (and any UI in general)
is not to hardcode widths, heights, font sizes etc. and to only use
abstract sizes (“100%”, 12 points, etc.).
I do not wish to undermine anything you have done – by all means,
this site is quite nice and with a little effort we can probably
make it MUCH nicer!
Keep up the good work,
Ranjit.
>I AM running at 800×600 at 16bpp.
Yes, I know.
> I notice from this page’s HTML source that the table width has been explicitly set to 760 pixels.
Actually it is 765 for the news stories. It was a design decision from the start, not a “bug”. I do not want OSAlert to be set to 100% width, plus, EVEN if I do that, you would still have to scroll because the first table (the one that holds the buttons, the logo and the ad) will force you to scroll, because putting the logo and the ad together, it will naturally be more than 750 pixels. But if I change that (get the logo and the ad not to be side by side and get rid of the horizontal buttons), just to be compatible with 640×480 res, it means that I will have to completely change the whole design of OSAlert. And this is unacceptable because this is the design I wanted to have.
As I said, this web site is designed for the people with 800×600 resolution (640×480 is less than 6-7% of the users). But you will need to have maximixed your window I am afraid…
Personally, I recommend to buy a cheap new 15″ monitor that can do 1024x768x85Hz. I personally run 1280×1024 or 1600×1200 here, depending on the OS I am under, and enjoying every minute of it.
Yes, I think it’s fine. 100% would look ugly and change nothing, cause as I said (and Eugenia repeated), it really can’t be smaller with the images on top.
I would still say… use a larger resolution.