First look PC/OS 10

Here we will look at the first rollout of PC/OS 10.  Revamped GUI with a ton more features which wont be explored in full today.  Once again, Cris and team did a fantastic job with it and please remember this is not definitive of what the final release will look like.  This is extreme Alpha quality and not ready to be used as your main OS in its current form.

So lets get started

This first image is of the main desktop.  You will notice it looks dramatically different.  What we did was took GUI ideas from previous versions and fished out what we thought were good, threw out what we thought was bad and just threw what we thought were good ideas in.

As you can see we have a two bar system.  We have the bottom bar which is our system dock and we have the App bar which holds all your user defined applications. We are working on a method to add apps to the app bar by drag and drop.

The second screenshot shows what happens when you open applications, PC/OS is very visual and this clearly enhances it.  Instead of a buch of text, you have the application icon and yes, some applications will show thumbnails of what you are working on

PC/OS 10 also has a new Menu structure.  Instead of clicking on the logo, which is now completely cosmetic, you right click anywhere on your desktop and the menu is brought up.

With this method yes a little retraining is necessary but its not as much as you would have with say, Mac OS X or Windows.  So I look forward to everyones feedback and we will take it from there.

PC/OS 10, Open64 and more

We are hard at work for PC/OS 10, Open64 and PC/OpenSuite for Windows.  There are no delays expected with PC/OpenSuite for Windows scheduled for an April 15th release.  So far testing is going great and we are even considering a theme to replace the default Windows theme with ine that shows the PC/OS logo.  We are working with an updated GUI for PC/OS 10 and Open64.   Will it be the final?  probably, but probably not.

PC/OS OpenServer System 8.4 Released

Today the PC/OS development team is pleased to announce the release of PC/OS OpenServer System 8.4. This release is the fourth installment of the PC/OS OpenServer System 8.x line and brings several enhancements and improvements to the system.

Along with all security updates we also have some new features.

In this release the following applications are included

Mythbuntu Diskless Server utilities
Dovecott Mail Server
Apache 2
Gadmin tools
Red Hat cluster management suite
Red Hat kickstart utility
Webmin
Likewise Open Edition
Dell DKMS

We have released the ISO on the website and it will be available for purchase from on-disk.com by the end of the week.

PC/OS 2009v2a Released

PC/OS 2009v2a has been released for the general public. This release fixes many of the application stability issues that users had with PC/OS 2009v2. With this release we went ahead and and installed all updates so all security updates since PC/OS 2009v2 has been released have been applied. The changes to PC/OS 2009v2a application wise are common across all releases except one application inclusion and one removal.

Asunder 1.6.2

Audacity 1.3.7

Brasero 0.8.4

Gimp 2.6.5

Gufw 0.20.7

Pidgin 2.5.5

Murrine Engine 0.60.1 SVN143

Wine 1.1.16

Fluid Murrine theme

Opera 9.64

The one change happened in OpenWorkstation. PC/OS 2009v2a OpenWorkstation no longer has the QT designer application or QT developer tools. It now includes the QT SDK with QT Creator 1.0.

This release has been tested and all known issues resolved.

You can download the release from here

Available for download are PC/OS OpenDesktop, PC/OS OpenWorkstation, PC/OS Webstation 1.0a. PC/OS OpenWorkstation with the multimedia pack is available through on-disk.com for $29.99

PC/OS 2009v2a release

Im uploading the new OpenDesktop right now, webstation was uploaded last night.  We are working on including the new QT SDK with OpenWorkstation so the latest release will be on Monday at the latest.

Why are we shipping the newest QT SDK?  QT is a widely accepted platform for Mobile, so it only makes sense to do so.

Did I say no PC/OS 2009v3?

We will be doing a release on April 1st 2009.  Its not PC/OS 2009v3, more like 2009v2a.  This release will contain many more updated packages for PC/OS 2009v2.  Some of these are important and are complicated to upgrade.  We will be providing updated ISO's for our users.  None of them affect security, they all impact functionality and yes, the new theme will be installed by default.

PC/OS 10.0, PC/OS 2009 and PC/OS Open64

We are formally announcing details for PC/OS 10.0 and PC/OS Open64.

PC/OS 10.0 will be based on Ubuntu 9.04 and released August 1st 2009.  This is up from the November release schedule and the reason for that is simple.  Its almost done.  We are just waiting for the Ubuntu 9.04 final and we will go through the testing and it will be released.

The only GUI change is that we now use the Fluid themes which look dynamite.

Opera 10 hopefully will be released by that time and will be the default browser.  There are calls to bring back Firefox 3 but we are currently looking at those calls.

People still ask me about Chrome and as I have said, when Chrome comes out we will evaluate it and see if it fits into the PC/OS mold.  If not the default browser it will definately be included into the feature pack.

The most changes take place under the hood.  Better compatibility with Netbooks and hardware, persistent USB install and most importantly PC/OS4WIN.  PC/OS4WIN allows you to install PC/OS similar to the way Wubi installs Ubuntu, like an application under Windows.  As with Wubi, performance may suffer a little and the OS wont run at maximum speeds but if all you want to do is test under Linux it will be great for that function.  PC/OS 10.1 will still be released January 1st and will be based on Ubuntu 9.10.

PC/OS 2009 will no longer recieve updated ISO's.  After talking to my customers, partners and insiders Maintenance Packs will suffice.  Thus Maintenance Pack 2 will be available  Sept 10th.  This will also act as an offline repository.

PC/OS Open64 also will be based on Ubuntu 9.04.  From the Alpha work its already extremely stable.  This will not affect the official release date.  Anyone who has gotten the Open64 beta whether through a partner or the insider program will get a free upgrade.

So more changes will take place under the hood and the GUI that has been widely accepted wont be touched much at all.