Faction Equinox

Equinox is the name of a Desktop Environment or Virtual Operating System from Faction Software Solutions currently under development.
Equinox classifies itself as a "Virtual Operating System" and currently has a Alpha Testing team to assess the
production of the system. Equinox first commenced production in September 2007 and has since been delayed
from November to Early December; from Early December to Late December - then cancelled and recently
re-greenlighted and is expected to debut on time for it's official pre-release date of April 26th, 2008.

Development
Equinox was first proposed under the name "Neon" under the developer team name of "Silisys", but was quickly
renamed to Equinox. The commencement of production was first publicized in Mid-September 2007 and was
proposed to debut in November. Equinox was further delayed to Early December 2007 when it had already established
an Alpha Testing Program (ATP) of approximately 30 people. After being delayed to early December, the release was
even further pushed back to December 23rd in hopes that a remaining week could assist with production.

In late December 2007, Faction declared cancellation on the project due to "constant funding restraints" as well as
other, un-disclosed obstacles. They continued to report that Alpha members that signed up in December could
obtain an open-source version of the program, which was written in Visual Basic. The code to this failed version
was released in late January.

After total silence from Faction for about a month, the team re-opened their website and reported a new project
named iGadget, although it was quickly scrapped because workers on Equinox had regained funding from another
mother software company. In mid-February 2008, Faction announced that they were rebuilding the project
entirely from scratch. Furthermore, they announced a much closer pre-release date of April 26th 2008.

There have been numerous inside developer blogs sent from Faction's team through email to ATP testers as
well as recent confirmations in there presence in the program. From there original re-commence date of
Mid-February, Faction has not yet delayed Equinox what-so-ever for the past month and a half.

Features
Faction has disclosed many features of the system, both publicly and in developer blogs. Some features
have been already developed and others are extremely probable ideas for the future. While it is early
in their development timeline, some features have already popped-up:

*Startwheel Equinox features a quick-launch device that swivels icons of various applications in a wheel format. This feature, similar to that predicted in Windows 7, has already been integrated into development. It is hidden but icons appear when a Start "orb" is clicked.

*Console An array of icons with informative text next to them to serve as widgets which display information such as time, new messages, weather, etc. This feature has already been integrated and can be hidden if found undesirable.

*Advanced Applications Equinox features a family of advanced applications within the system. This include Equinox Web, Mail, Galleria, and Tenor. There have been talk of Equinox chat client, but this application probably wont show up in the Alpha release.

*Computer Mentor Hands-on virtual tutor designed to teach the user about computers as you go. Has been mentioned previously and has been listed as a definite feature but will not be appearing in this milestone.

*MethodSense Technology An idea not yet included where the convenience of using a computer is enhanced by automatically detecting repeated actions the user carries out and having the computer implement them automatically. For example, a user pastes a picture directly 20 pixels below a previously pasted picture, he then pastes the next picture 20 pixels below the last. Equinox automatically senses the coincidence between the actions and pastes the next picture on the users clipboard 20 pixels below the last picture so the user doesn't have to manually replace it. This feature is rumored to appear around Beta 2.

Timeline
Faction has recently released a timeline of their expected progression and releases. The company exclaims that it is highly subject to change.

Equinox currently describes its state as Milestone 1 and that it's first pre-release will be an Alpha version. It continues to say that there will be an Alpha 2 in Milestone 2, then there will be two betas, one being public. Faction developers will have two expected release candidates and one final RTM or Version 1.

It will take a little over a year to complete the project which had restarted in February 2008.

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