http://www.osnews.com/story/14088/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:13:45 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?107319 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107319 A charming eccentricity of this site is its editors' joint obsession with Haiku, BeOS and all the rest of the derivatives. I'm sure many will write asking what the point of it all is, but personally, I find it charming and diverting, and don't care if it has or hasn't a point or a future. Keep going with it!

And Amiga as well! Thu, 23 Mar 2006 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (alcibiades) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107320 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107320 The link for given for BNX is http://sourceforge.net/projects/bnx/ but that project declares itself to be "ActiveX library for Win32". Thu, 23 Mar 2006 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KenJackson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107323 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107323 Another project had the BNX name already, but since it was inactive, we took it over. Unfortunately that process takes about two or three weeks to complete. So we have our page, we're just waiting for it to activate.

Ah! They put this at the very end. Thu, 23 Mar 2006 20:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KenJackson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107325 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107325 Remember that the company behind QNX has been sold to another company a little time back...

The advantage of having an open source kernel is that there is control if the parent company dies.

Anyway, this seems like an interesting project. I wonder what the Haiku developers have to say about this? Any comments from them?Edited 2006-03-23 20:47 Thu, 23 Mar 2006 20:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Abdullah) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107326 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107326 Wondering what will Be next incredible wheel invention.
BeOS over Sony PS?
Over Simbian?
Over pure NT5 kernel?

Looks like people don't know how to kill their free time. Thu, 23 Mar 2006 20:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fyysik) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107333 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107333 It would have been a great stop gap a couple of years back. All we need now is a rival outfit using vxworks. hehe

Can we have QNX's web browser too? Thu, 23 Mar 2006 20:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (euank) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107339 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107339 Looks like people don't know how to kill their free time.

Well you can always make stupid pointless posts on internet forums.

Please stop making these silly "they're wasting time" or "wheel re-invention" posts. They're tiring. Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107341 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107341 QSSL was sold to Harman International (manufacturer of expensive Harman Kardon and JBL audio equipment) in 2004 (http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_1121_1.html) but somehow I don't think there's any chance of it disappearing any time soon Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (digitaldisaster) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107345 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107345 as long time BeOS user and developer, I'm really sad about
1)Wasted time - how much such projects disappeared in Letha already.
2)OS News readers, who were reading sometime very misterious BeOS stories, like super-puper QuickFox browser, or (at least it seems that for me) this BNX project which even lack homepage/

Thom, where you found those guys? How you get acknowledged about this project? What is background of project members?

I wish to know that. Without some background it all looks like interview with Mr. Nobody From Nowhere. Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fyysik) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107348 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107348 fyysik wrote:
"Looks like people don't know how to kill their free time."

au contrare, they obviously know exactly what they want to spend their free time on. I never understood how people can bash developers for working on what they _want _ to work on, it's their free time, not yours.

this 'I'm not interested in this, so I must comment on it being a waste of time' attitude is becoming so tired.

personally I have next to no interest in a qnx based beos implementation, so I simply move along.

if the developers end up satisfying noone but themselves, then it's still time well spent for them. Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Valhalla) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107352 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107352 Aside from from Sven's attitude (Linux sucks), I find this very interesting. He's right that we're right on the verge of video-on-demand being ubiquitous and the web has become richer and more complex. I love Linux, but I still want to see what they come up with.

The thing that concerns me a little is the specially-licensed kernel. Sven isn't even allowed to comment on it. With the heavy multimedia orientation, I wonder if they will succumb to the inevitable pressure to implement DRM. That would make it much less interesting. Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KenJackson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107358 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107358 Developing kits for NT might make more sense than QNX Neutrino if one's intention really is to focus on developing the kits rather than the kernel. A "media OS" without much support for PC hardware isn't necessarily useful. Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Get a Life) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107359 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107359 Better modern hardware support.
This is questionable.
Idea of QNX is to provide basis for companies whose can build with it specifical system using their proprietary hardware. It doesn't meant that every such company will provide drivers for wide public. I suspect that generic hardware support for QNX may be worse than for linux. At least considering freely available drivers for commodity
hardware. Things like Radar multitrack recoder ot TiVo setups is different story.

Design goals and specific of BeOS and QNX.
Real-time system and heavily multithreaded systems have some contradiction in essence.
While RT systems like very nice QNX are designed to guarantee with very high reliability certain time quantas for certain task or set of tasks, BeOS in idea
was designed rather for providing smooth and equal transparent time-share access for each thread/process.
Thus that very specific BeOS feeling we all know.

API. Ok. Be API is nice, and I will be glad to see it everywhere, but IMHO, QNX has its own very weel suited
for its nature API. I like Photon as much as I like Be API. And i doubt I will use Be API in QNX.
My experience with QNX isn't as rich as with BeOS, only time i got in touch with it was episode when two my students made their bachelor diplomas using QNX under my control, but at least i got some imagination about it. Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fyysik) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107377 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107377 I'm missing what they intend to do with it. If they 'licensed' QNX, that means they paid to use some bits of QNX. Does this imply they're going to sell their version of BNX, or does this mean it's a one-time fee they had to pay for themselves and they'll distribute it freely anyway? Thu, 23 Mar 2006 22:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ronald Vos) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107391 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107391 Well, it seems this group at least put their money where their mouth is by licensing QNX. Shows committment.

As far as spare time, it's good hobby project to keep your brain sharp, if nothing else.

As far as a media-OS though, I really think they have to consider creating a modern "media-OS" entails.

Really. When they say BeOS was a media OS, we have an idea of what it did in 1999. But what about now? PCs are big media jukeboxes now. Media aggregaton is the #1 use for most people. Content managers, editors and creators. What do they want to do with it now? I think Vista and the OS X are way more "media OS" than BeOS ever was.

What benefits does the old Be have over what's available? What about it is still relevant? The FS implementation still has many ideas that are only now really being worked out in Windows, OS X, and OSS Beagle. What else? File system inegrity is pretty good across most systems nowadays.

The wonderful thing about Be was that it was built from the ground up as a completely modern OS with very little legacy crap bloating it out. These new projects seem to be, as the BNX guy pointed out, trying to create an OS from 10 years ago in 2010. What will the BNX guys offer in this regard? QNX is pretty streamlined.

Pervasive multithreading. I don't know QNX well enough to understand how well it supports this or if it can even play 10 movies with no frame drops and still have responsive menus. I don't believe yellowTab will be able to do this.

Ease of install. We'll see. Be was the easiest OS to ever install. Switch out a video card, reboot and keep humming. Changing ANY (supported) hardware did not even present a speed bump.

Networking - hope they really improve on that. Be was designed like Windows was - single user environment not really thought out in regards to security and operating in a connected environment.

GUI - Nice for the time, but needs a serious refresh. Why recreate it? Thu, 23 Mar 2006 22:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hae-Yu) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107402 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107402 Pardon my tone if it sounds more than a little annoyed, but I find it interesting that people comment on Haiku as recreating an OS from 10 years ago (never mind any improvements) as being a bad thing, yet no one complains about *BSD / Linux (from the 1970s IIRC) or the ReactOS guys working on one from the 1980s.

Then again, if it weren't for Haiku, there wouldn't likely *be* a BNX project.

$ rantmode on

Then again, Haiku would be so slow if there weren't a slew of people that say "hey, I want to help code!" and then disappear, never to be heard from again.

Don't complain about development speed unless you're willing and able to do something to change it.

$ exit Thu, 23 Mar 2006 23:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (darkwyrm) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107416 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107416 Aside from from Sven's attitude (Linux sucks)

I love linux too. But from his point of view I have full sympathy with that statement. Linux builds on concepts that's >50 years old. It's amaizing what has been done with it, but if you are developing a new system you'll need fresh code, using modern concepts. Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (John Nilsson) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107428 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107428 For the companies that have embedded BeOS in their products (such as the video mixer, audio desk, and the Radio Station TuneTracker which I can never remember the company names of...). The option to say that the BeOS media system has the option of running on a tried and tested mission critical system will go a long way. Bearing in mind that Microsoft give away embedded licenses for Windows CE for a few dollars, if the QNX kernel costs BNX even 10USD it is more than a worthwhile investment for your typical embedded product that wants the BeOS API. As long as the Haiku Kernel and QNX kernel where easily interchangeable and furthered the development of the server packages, it can only be a good thing.

It also makes the possibilty of running beos on my PDA much easier... Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (euank) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107444 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107444 In light of euank's post - I was curious about the "furthered development of the server packages" concept also -- I didn't see a question or statement from the interview that specifically mentioned if they intended to give anything back to the Haiku source tree or if they were completely branching it.

It would be exceptionally gracious of them to develop out the Haiku servers/kits and contribute back to the Haiku tree so that Haiku can benefit from fixes and enhancements. Fri, 24 Mar 2006 02:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (umccullough) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107452 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107452 Concepts more than 50 years old would put UNIX in the 1950s timeframe. UNIX is a product of the 1970s, so its more like 30 years. On the other hand, the concepts behind QNX are 1980s stuff, so this new project still isn't modern --- it's based off 20 year old ideas.

Stuff like single address-space OSs and trusted language runtimes are 1980s-1990s stuff, so projects like Singularity are based on more recent ideas. However, "modern" OS research has tended in the direction of security and verifiability. CoyoteOS or EROS are probably the direction you'd look at for an OS based on "modern concepts". Fri, 24 Mar 2006 02:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rayiner) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107467 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107467 Linux and BSD are evolving, so today they have more features than they did 10 years ago; e.g. X11 now has a fully composited desktop and GStreamer provides modular multimedia pipelines. But my impression (correct me if I'm wrong here) is that Haiku is cloning BeOS as it existed years ago and not tracking the state of the art. Fri, 24 Mar 2006 03:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Wes Felter) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107537 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107537 The sign of the times that you all crave something "new". Don't forget that the principles of the hardware you're running today were coined by a certain Neumann 61 years ago, and the foundation that the architecture rests on was defined a century earlier. Linux being "50 years old technology" wouldn't really matter, even if it were true:

The piano keyboard (really, the organ- /harpsichord- /virginal- /clavichord- /synth- /etc.- keyboard) has remained unchanged for more than 5 centuries precisely because it is an almost perfect concept which is hard to best.

I am thus not arguing that Linux represents the ultimate in kernel design, but saying that a kernel which supports more hardware than any other out of the box, is a viable enough platform for millions and millions of people to use for their everyday tasks, and provides me with lower latency audio than my tuned Windows XP installation, is not up to the task today because its roots lie further back in history is just plain stupid.Edited 2006-03-24 08:34 Fri, 24 Mar 2006 08:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PrimalDK) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107573 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107573 I would like to see something radically different, for a change, in the domain of operating systems: a system where every line of code written for it is statically proven to work within requirements, and proof of safety, correctness and security is a compile-time job, instead of a run-time job.

Before someone says "halting problem", I would like to point out that proving an algorithm that works within requirements is different than proving that it terminates: we do not want to prove a statement about numbers theory (which is what the halting problem is about), but to prove if an algorithm works within specifications.

I imagine an O/S running fully in kernel mode, where each new piece of code introduced to it is accompanied by the relevant proof: top performance, top security, top safety.

That would be something groundbreaking! Fri, 24 Mar 2006 12:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (axilmar) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107614 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107614 Hi darkwyrm I want to code for Haiku bling bling! : ) may I may I? ; ))

Nah seriously I'm learning the beginnings of C anyway I have to take a look at the website.

Uh oh, I haven't even finished your Mr. Peeps translation, oops % )

nutela athere women-at-work dothere org Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nutela) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107617 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107617 "It also makes the possibilty of running beos on my PDA much easier..."

I hope Palm Source doesn't here it, you're right, what a joke! Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nutela) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107618 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107618 "...and provides me with lower latency audio than my tuned Windows XP installation..."

Can you give me more details about this, I am very interested about this, thanks in advance; nutela athere women-at-work dothere org Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nutela) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107624 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107624 It's not a bad thing to recreate something that has done before. It may seem like a waste of time to those who are not working on it, but there are usually reasons for doing so that aren't very visible. I will always have a love for BeOS, and despite it's obvious age problem it still has features that have only made it to other platforms in recent years.

I remember the "QNX on a floppy" download - it completely blew my mind, and I never thought so much could be squeezed into 1.4M (even today it's hard for me to believe what I saw). That being said, it was not really meant for desktop use, and as a proprietary platform probably wouldn't have been very successful. I don't think it will ever get the recognition it deserves for efficiency and capabilities, and while it's far from perfect (name one 'perfect' piece of software?) it has a clean and simple approach that I wish had been better marketed. I sure hope they reach usability within two years (one year just seems a bit ambitious).

Taking these two projects and merging them is an admirable intention - recycling (or reverse-engineering) code is often misinterpreted as re-inventing the wheel.

My car doesn't use wooden-spoked wheels, so I guess somebody must have 'wasted their time re-inventing' them... right? Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JacobMunoz) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107818 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107818 but I find it interesting that people comment on Haiku as recreating an OS from 10 years ago (never mind any improvements) as being a bad thing, yet no one complains about *BSD / Linux (from the 1970s IIRC) or the ReactOS guys working on one from the 1980s.
The original developers of UNIX went back to the drawing boards a few years ago and came up with Plan9. It has been discussed here a few times. It has some very interesting features and escapes a lot of legacy of the existing UNIXs. Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AndrewZ) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107830 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107830 Check out http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html

UNIX started it's expansion in the early 1970's when it was rewritten into C, but many of the ideas that were it's foundations would have come from the late 1960's. Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Earl Colby pottinger) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107836 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107836 I just find it a bit odd that it is pointed out that Haiku takes so long to be finished, while the BNX project will actuall depend on most of the userland parts of Haiku (at least so it sounds). If there would not have been five years of Haiku development already, they would have to invest those five years themselves for BNX it seems. It would seem that this fact should make them sound more thankful and respectful.

Regards,
-stippi Fri, 24 Mar 2006 23:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stippi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?107957 http://www.osnews.com/thread?107957 I wonder if they know about the BeOS-inspired
http://www.hexazen.com/Products/SDK/Zinzala/

and if Jean-Louis Villecroze (of HexaZen)
knows about or is involved with BNX.

A relevant yet missing interview question. Sat, 25 Mar 2006 16:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jonas.kirilla) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?108058 http://www.osnews.com/thread?108058 Are they going to use QNX' Photon, Haiku's app_server, or both? Sun, 26 Mar 2006 00:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jonas.kirilla) Comments