Magnussoft ZETA - Versions

The operating system ZETA was published before the appearance of the final version 1,0 as Release Candidates (RC). The release began with RC1, and the following RC2 showed clear development progress since BeOS R5 was on the market. Among other things new hardware was supported, as well as USB devices. Starting from June 9, 2004 the third release Candidate of the system was available.

On 15 October 2004 the fourth release candidate appeared under the name Neo. This brought among other things a better hardware support by more drivers and a new Media Player.

ZETA 1.0 became the final version of the operating system and presented at CeBIT (10. - 16. March 2005 in Hanover). ZETA has, like Windows XP, for the first time, a product activation. One gets a registration key by post and must afterwards enter these and the CD serial number in a window under ZETA, so that one may use it further.

Starting from 24 June ZETA 1.0 was in the distribution; on the company-owned Website the spreading of the version 1.0 was officially confirmed on 1 July 2005.

On 17 October 2005 a substantial update was released, bumping the version number to 1.1. With this new version it is possible to boot ZETA from a USB drive as well as a normal hard drive install. This release of ZETA also supports dual core processors.

Briefly after the publication of the insolvency request from April 2006, the manufacturer released version 1.2. On 22 April, RTL Shop became a selling partner. This version brings some innovations, such as full SATA support and a Yahoo! Messenger is available.

Based on the product information from magnussoft, ZETA 1.21 a minor upgrade to ZETA 1.2. This is also the first version of the product to be labeled "magnussoft ZETA" and to be sold by magnussoft.

Since September 7, 2006, magnussoft is taking pre-orders of ZETA 1.21; on September 25, 2006 a downloadable Live CD of ZETA 1.21 was released. Existing ZETA users are able to upgrade by ordering an upgrade CD for 10 euros. It is not known whether magnussoft will provide updates to 1.21 via software download.

According to an interview with Rene Weinert of magnussoft, magnussoft owns only the rights to sell ZETA, and development is being done by an independent developing team which includes Mr. Bernd Korz (the former CEO of the now bankrupt yellowTAB). This confirms that, contrary to the widespread belief, prior to this interview, ZETA is not being developed by magnussoft, but by an independent development team, of which little is known so far.

The version included Samba-Client / WilmaCon, AudioTagger, PeopleEditor, multi-user support, Intel Extreme x9xx support and other drivers and fixes.

It was announced an upgrade to R1.21 only, and began shipping February 28, 2007. On April 5, 2007 distribution was discontinued.