I must apologize to you poor Lynx users who are stuck actually looking at these stupid links. These are just SpamBait and are invisible to all us GUI bastards. The idea is that robots trawling web sites for email addresses will get hung up trying to follow all these WPoison links. Sorry. -robin
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5Sight Logo "Men are unemployed, not because there is no useful work to do, but because a profit cannot at the moment be made from that work. There is always a job to do in a community just as there is always a job to do in the home."
- Tom Brown, Syndicalism

ReOS is a mechanism for replacing the old closed-source BeOS system, now owned by Palm Inc., with Open Source replacement components as they are developed. By providing an easy mechanism to track, install (and if necessary, uninstall, safely) new components as they are developed, we hope to encourage the development and adoptation of the replacement parts being developed by avid users worldwide.

As new and replacement components are developed, ReOS will grow into a full (Linux-style) distribution of the new child-of-BeOS. As a bonus, though, you can now use it to manage the software on your BeOS system now. ;-)

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ReOS Project Overview

ReOS is intended to be installed into a functioning BeOS system (preferably 5.0.3, so update your BeOS first). The System team is developing an install built from BeOS Personal Edition (with Open Source and other additions) which will be installable from a CD, but that's not available yet.

The ReOS Manager uses a directory of package description files (updated via CVS through an SSH tunnel) which describe software packages and how to install and uninstall them. To install a package, it calls a set of Perl scripts, which use Wget to download the actual software package from its home site, and then installs it. For installing the ReOS system itself, as Perl cannot be depended to exist on a stock BeOS install, we use sh scripts to install: the /boot/reos directory, WGet, CVS, Perl, SSH and the ReOS Manager.

Developers teams

There are currently four teams in the ReOS Development group; as the ReOS project is brand-spanking new, the only participating Developer is Robin (who designed and proposed ReOS):

  • Install : responsible for the initial installer
    • Robin Bandy
  • System : responsible for building an installable system based on the BeOS Personal Edition, the Open Source replacement components developend by OpenBeOS and other software as desired
    • Robin Bandy
  • Manager : responsible for theReOS package Manager application
    • Robin Bandy
  • Packages : responsible for creating and maintaining the packages CVS repository and expanding the list of software packages that can be managed by the ReOS Manager program
    • Robin Bandy
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5Sight is a collective venture; a collaboration between users and developers. All material produced by 5Sight Developers for the Collective is copyright by 5Sight Development Collective; please see the relevant LICENSE file for more information. These documents are © 2002.

last modified 2002-02-26