We are happy to announce the availability of eyeos 2.0 technology preview for developers. We are presenting today something totally new, made from scratch, to bring the cloud computing concept together with open source in an all-in-one platform.
Please note that today’s release is thought for examination purposes, and to start developing new applications. End users will not find anything except an unfinished desktop and two example applications. The release for end users will be eyeos 2.0 final on January. From now to 1st of January developers can try and experiment with what we did in more than one year now: The new eyeos 2.0 kernel base, services and toolkit. Download it from www.eyeos.org/en/20techpreview. Please note that eyeos uses MySQL as back-end now and you will need to import two SQL files located in the extras directory inside eyeos and configure the file “settings.php” with your database information.
But… What’s new in eyeos 2.0 tech preview?
eyeos 2.0 has been rewritten from scratch and the only thing we used from eyeos 1.x is our experience!
The kernel is a 100% service-based micro-kernel and a singleton architecture, the qooxdoo framework is used for the graphical back-end and we developed libraries to communicate between qooxdoo and eyeos in a transparent way. We want to thank the qooxdoo team from this post for the great work they are doing.
eyeos 2.0 will be faster then 1.x. There is a rebuilt communication system between server and client (that’s between JavaScript and PHP), which allows eyeos 2.0 to save about 95% of all requests. And for the client-server communication it does not use XML any longer, but JSON, which is much faster on the browser-side.
The new File System Interface (FSI) has a complete OOP structure and replaces the old Virtual File System (VFS). FSI is much more consistent, it supports mount points, local and remote files transparently, URL wrappers and much more.
I’m a developer: Why is eyeos 2.0 better than 1.x?
There are a lot of reasons. For example, the GUI (Graphical User interface) is completely done with JavaScript, the system is based on OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) and each part can be extended or modified by extending classes and overwriting or adding methods, the new UM (Users Management) is much more modular: You can change the users to an Oracle data base or ActiveDirectory without the need of developing a new UM module, since you simply need to implement some parts of it.
And there are more reasons: The new GenericDao library allows you to save and recover data from data bases transparently: It’s not necessary to know the SQL syntax at all. Creating RIA (Rich Internet Applications) is easy and fast, because we dropped out our old PHP framework: Now eyeos itself is a framework, which combines JavaScript and PHP. There is no faster and easier way to create a new RIA now.
Developers know, that they have lots of things while developing a local application, but starting a RIA from scratch is different… You feel helpless and you have to be concerned about a lot of details: user control, security, data transmission, formats… But eyeos just works like a local OS (Operating System): It makes your developer life easier! Of course, we know there are lots of other frameworks to develop RIA, but you may know that eyeos is the only one 100% focused on create RIA in PHP to create desktop-like applications. The great majority of all the other frameworks are focused on conventional web only – maybe with a little bit of AJAX.
I want to help. What can I do?
Now the eyeos project needs you! From now until the 1st of January 2010 you have to play, enjoy, try, test and debug the technology preview. It is necessary to search for bugs and problems so they can be fixed before eyeos 2.0 releases. If you find a problem, please, send us your feedback in the eyeos forums.
But there are more possibilities! If you want to develop new applications for eyeos 2.0 you can do so. You got a good idea? Developing on eyeos 2.0 is easy! We have a TODO list, waiting for you! Write us an Email to team@eyeos.org and we will give you a proposal.
Where can I download it?
This version is a technology preview and it’s not available on SourceForge.net. You can download it from this page.
I’m no developer but… I need info!
We have scheduled all the process, which will bring us to eyeos 2.0. Since the 1st of October we are presenting you our new base applications (like eyeCalendar 2, eyeDocs 2), which will be implemented in the final version and we will continue with this during the next weeks. December will be dedicated to translating eyeos 2.0, and the final release will be presented on the 1st of January 2010. The official announcement will be done a few days later and at the same moment eyeos.info will be updated and the websites will announce eyeos 2.0.
Stay tuned!
Thanks!
Can someone please indicate where on http://wiki.eyeos.org/Developers (or: where else) things specific to 2.0 should be discussed?
This is a first developer preview of eyeos 2.0.
@Nicu: Since everything is modularized it should be quite easy to adapt a new file system module for that kind of servers. (I like to use the real fs, too
!)
@Arjan: Please do not use our wiki for discussions. Simply register in our forums and write a new post in http://forums.eyeos.org/index.php/board,43.0.html .
PS: No need of using MySkyTop. The only differences: Four new iFrame applications (xD), a new theme and a changed about window…
I’ll do an extensive testing and code reading before taking any decision, but I can say that I don’t like what I’ve read on this post.
@lars, those differences are in the first version, Skytop’s goal is to continue eyeos 1.x. You can be sure that there will be more improvements in the next release
@Nicu: The current version uses MySQL that’s true. But as Lars said, almost everything in the system is modular. For practical reasons we chose to use develop and use MySQL modules for some parts (mainly the users management), because it’s faster to design and it’s faster to execute.
Globally the “providers” (as we call them) are totally replaceable. In the current version we’re using: MySQL, SQLite and XML for different parts of the system. It will be 100% possible to use XML only, or SQLite only, or MySQL only. But it’s not possible at the moment because we didn’t have time to code all possible combinations. So for each system part we chose the fastest, but without neglecting the fact that there could be some more in a near future.
I hope my answer will put your mind at rest about this little misunderstanding. Don’t worry, we’re all going to make our best to produce a generic enough eyeos to run only with XML, or SQLite
But that will simply not be the fastest to run, that’s all.
Stay tuned!
Congrats to the whole eyeOS team !
It is so great to see people trying to do always better and always ready to reinvent things !
(So much better than people just changing names and themes and unable to invent…).
eyeOS 2.0 is the future !
@Daniel Sousa: eyeOS belongs to the eyeOS community. Only the eyeOS community can “continue eyeos 1.x”. Skytop goals seems to be selling hosting plans…
@Alex: afaik Skytop doesn’t even sell anything, they are just trying to continue the eyeos 1.x branch
I didn’t realize that 2.0 would be a complete re-write. In just the last few months, I’ve started moving forward with plans to implement eyeOS in my own business and I hope I don’t have to start all over now with 2.0.
Also, I really hope its not too difficult to work with DBs other the MySQL (not my first choice) as well backwards compatibility with the old FS as has been stated in these replies.
@Alex: yes it is very nice to see such grand innovation in a new major build, unlike most companies who just replace a few icons and claim 300% improvement.
Very much looking forward to eyeOS in 2010.
Good luck to everyone from the eyeOS Team ^_^
S.
So long time I was waiting for such scalable platform !
I read the post again and again , and I’m really impress of the solidness of your technological choices.
1.x was a nice , a very nice version , but time has changing a lot since 2007 and we are not any more in a time for a “proof o concept”. With all the challenge of the Cloud Computing, we are now in business time, where big organisations need stonger platform, in particular with :
- deeper admin part,
- especially the UM part which was so basic in 1.x
- more ability to share stuff between user,
- a kernel though as a modular part, to be able to tune it, improve it easly
I forgot more points , I know, but I focuss on those 4 witch are the 4 big lacks of the 1.x, making it “out of the game” for many big project. Like all other solutions we’ve studied, especially the OSS ones, I must reconize : eyeOS was always the best choice, but not the perfect solution.
I have to admit than the continuing improve of the of 1.x series is really impressiv : what you reach, guys, with 1.8.7 is quit amazing, thinging what was the 1.0 version ! do you remember it ?
I think you can keep 1.x working, it do a great stuff for simple needs, and it very stable, even under many parallel requests. You will then have 2 range of products for building Clouds :
-one basic and easy to install (1.x),
-and a stronger one, more complex to set up but adapted to wide clouds projects (2.x)
anyway I don’t have to give you advice, you’re doing it so well in only 2 years !
we’ll test it this week, deeply and will report bugs.
congratulations to the dev’team !!
What are the login and the password????
To be honest 1.x seemed alot more desktop-like, the underlying advancements in 2.x are great, just needs some work on the experience/look imo.
@Hugo: There are two registered users by default on the system: root and john, with passwords root and john respectively. But you have to be sure of two main things before proceeding:
- You must give correct permissions to the eyeos files for your server (basically, chmod -R 777), otherwise the server won’t be able to read the configuration files necessary to login,
- You must fill the right login passwords to your MySQL database in the settings.php, and of course import both scripts to initialize it.
@Skilly: Our objective is to avoid locking eyeos 2.0 into any restrictive definition. The current preview with its configuration doesn’t look like the desktop of eyeos 1.x. But it will possible to change that by configuration in the future. You’ll be able to get your desktop, icons and everything back again from your old web-desktop
VERY IMPORTANT REMARK: The current version is almost NOT STYLED AT ALL. Only a few items have what should be the “final skin”. For the rest, it’s just the default appearance from Qooxdoo, but it will be replaced progressively.
@Lars, it’s fine with me to do everything in the forums, but: wouldn’t one also need a place in the wiki to get the documentation started? A place where people could copy existing 1.x pages as a starting point for new 2.x pages? Somewhere hidden from the regular users who are at 1.x?
(Simple examples: “2.0 faq”, “how to install”, “how to upgrade”, “known issues”, …?)
I have a error message after login:
Unable to list files in folder home:///~john/ (or parent).
What is wrong?
@William, try changing all the permissions, go to the main folder of your eyeos installation and execute “chmod -R 777 .”
Got the developer preview installed on my own box! I’m sure loads of great applications will be developed for eyeOS 2.0 soon! were looking forward to setting up an eyeOS 2 public server as soon as its ‘ready’ for public use.
Please put your feedback and question on the Forums, because it’s easier to track and reply: http://forums.eyeos.org/index.php/board,43.0.html