OSNews:

Just to point out

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 16:47:00 GMT

Zeta is not a open source project.. As for Gobe Productive, a 3.0 version of any version of Be OS remains to be seen...

so?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 16:57:00 GMT

why would anyone want to use BeOS? seems just be another way to BeDifferent.... If i see some apps come around, AKA compatibility with linux and gtk then ill definately give it a try. But until then wtmfp?

Again?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:05:00 GMT

Almost anyone who reads this website knows EXACTLY what happened to BeOS. Don't get me wrong, I was one of the biggest BeOS advocates around and used it religiously around the time of R4.5 - R5. I'm talking 24/7 for at least a year. But the focus shift really shafted a lot of people and soured many to the whole BeOS experience.

I loved the BeOS just as much as anyone else but I'm starting to get a little tired of these articles that just rehash old memories or talk about another BeOS clone project that is pre-pre-pre Alpha.

Tried it, but...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:13:00 GMT

Yesterday I installed BeOS PE Max Edition 2.1, the install went great, but afterwards when the computer was booting it would freeze right after it listed the IDE devices. I deleted the partition and cleared the MBR using a different computer, and it didn't freeze anymore. I know it was just my computer. Maybe I'll try Be some other time, when I get a new computer or a later version.

Re: rajan r

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:17:00 GMT

Hi!

Yes, you're correct: Zeta is not opensource.

But remember: Don't flame BlueEyedOS yet, because the sources will be avaliable later

Now OpenBeOS, all is there...

Michael Vinícius de Oliveira
BlueEyedOS Webmaster

Installed BeOS PE (the original) a week ago..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:23:00 GMT

on our newest computer. Works like a charm, no configging required, except for the keyboard map - had to choose Finnish Latin.

I tried out the newest version of Sequitur. I composed some new stuff.... oh yes, BeOS just works.

A friend of mine installed PE on a Thinkpad T23. All he needed were the S3 drivers from BeBits, and his laptop was working very well. I'm glad, because my next laptop has to be a thinkpad - I'm too used to the TrackPoint (i.e. the nipple).

BeOS 5 PE Max Edition

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:24:00 GMT

I installed BeOS 5 PE Max Edition and it's easy to use:) very very easy. Try it!!!

Sorry to be cynical...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:30:00 GMT

I hate to be cynical, but I don't know that any of these projects are going to get anywhere. As Eugina once stated, it took Be Inc. 10 years with 50 programmers to get up to what they left off with (R5), and there isn't much of a chance that 10 part-time programmers are going to finish it any time soon. It does look promising, I must admit (I believe that BFS is literally 99.9% done in the OpenBeOS project), however I doubt that it will release R1 (their clone of R5) within the next year or two.

That having been said, I do pray for it every night, I just don't think it'll happen.

BeOS for PPC?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:32:00 GMT

Anybody know where I can get a version of BeOS for my powermac? I remember a few years ago that my powermac (8600) was listed as one of the macs that BeOS can run on.

- Mark

Re: Re: rajan r

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:35:00 GMT

BlueEyedOS - that I'm not sure because the sources are not released yet under the license you guys picked, and you haven't submited the license to the OSI to be certified as a open source license. But for Zeta I'm plenty sure it isn't open source.

yet again

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:35:00 GMT

The actual OS is still around and is being used by many, and I mean many, enthusiasts.

Any hard numbers or are you just out there to generate some hype?

Any why yet another BeOS article while no big new developments are there?

The day a BeOS clone with the functionality of what R6 was said to bring materializes is the day when there are actual news, not just rumourmongering.

Re: Sorry to be cynical...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:37:00 GMT

It took Be 10 years with 50 programmers to *design* and write from scratch Be OS. What OBOS, B.E.OS and Zeta is to clone all or certain parts of it, meaning no time-consuming initial designing stages needs to take place.

Besides, from what I have read, it seems Zeta has some license code, is it true?

.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:42:00 GMT

It took Be 10 years with 50 programmers

you just have to look at syllable and what it is derived from to prove this argument wrong. one man job? by the above logic, it should have taken hundreds of years maybe?

softline.fr

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:47:00 GMT

Beos 5 for about 12 euros?
Anyone tried this?

And do they ship to England? Hmmm?!?!

RE: .

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:48:00 GMT

However it isn't nearly as complete as BeOS. He didn't do the kernel from scratch, the file system from scratch, the GUI from scratch, etc. And I'll bet you that Syllable is not nearly as complete as BeOS R5.

Re: Sorry to be cynical .... [but I'm a believer].

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 17:51:00 GMT

Yes, it took Be a long time to get where they got... but they have already done all the hard work! The architecture has been defined, there are well-documented APIs... the work that truly requires skilled engineering has been done. The kernel has already been written and is based on NewOS, so that huge chunk of work is already taken care of. The OpenBeOS team has a perfect 'roadmap' to follow, and what's more they don't have the "chicken and egg" problem of trying to write an OS without having that OS to develop on. They can write each part, and test it on a real live BeOS system to see if it works as expected. That puts them WAY ahead of any other OS project starting from scratch. Plus, a lot of Be's time was originally spent on creating a hardware platform, then porting it to PPC, then porting it to x86, etc... the OpenBeOS team has a clear goal of recreating an OS that is binary- and source-compatible with BeOS, and they have made very clear progress toward that goal. They don't have to worry about stupid "business" stuff like dealing with impatient investors who just want to turn a quick profit.
I agree that it might be a year or two before we have a truly working version of OpenBeOS... but frankly, I cannot wait until that day. Go OBOS!!!! (And variants thereof...
I too say my little OBOS prayer every night. But I *DO* think it will happen.

About the status of OpenBeOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:10:00 GMT

Now, I don't want to be cynical. It would be great to have OpenBeOS all fired up and ready to play around with. I haven't had any experience with BeOS or really knew anything much about this OS until about now-ish. A "new" OS getting ready? Wow, that's really interesting... So I was really exited when I read this article with the grand title "The Comeback of a Classic OS" only to fell that familiar sinking feeling of "yeah, right..." when I looked at OpenBeOS status chart.

http://open-beos.sourceforge.net/status.php

Out of 13 major segments 3 are in Beta, 3 are in Alpha, 5 are in Pre-Alpha and 2 are in Planning. Yupp, it looks like OpenBeOS is "just around the corner any day now" [insert cynical sneer here]. Wake me when you have got any real OS news to report. Damn, I knew it was too good to be true.

In other news ...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:15:00 GMT

In other news the Commodore 64 makes an amazing comeback. Once thought of as a dead platform the c64 is kept alive by a small but very delusional user community. Here's local c64 enthusiest Jim Beam to comment.

"Well you know, the thing is, I been using the 64 since the beginning of time really. You know, its, its been a part of my daily routine for so many years I'd sure hate to quit it. I get up in the morning, start my email package loading, go have a shower, then a coffee, then brush my teeth, then I check on the status of my email software. Its not usually loaded by then, so I then proceed to go make some tea biscuits. Another thing I really like is the fact that I can save data on cassettes. You just can't do that with modern day pc's, it's really quite a tragedy. If not for the 64 I'd likely be stuck listenning to my wife's celion dion tapes for the rest of eternity."

Jim smunched up his face momentarily then continued on.

"I just told her the radiation from solar flares destroyed them. That's perfectly plausible as far as I'm concerned."

Tune in next week for the live panel discussion about secret Microsoft programmer and pro-terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

RE: About the status of OpenBeOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:16:00 GMT

If you look at the status, you will immediately see three projects in beta. However, upon closer inspection, you realize that they are the file system, printing, and translation. The last two are unimportant, to say the least. I'd say that three of the most important (the file system is important, but not nearly as important as these)--app/interface, kernel, and networking--are not even in alpha. Sure, you can replace the BFS with the [Open]BFS, but that's about the extent of the operating system.

BeOS isn't that much!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:19:00 GMT

I have tried BeOS PE r5, even got my hands on BeOS Dano, but it's performance are pritty lame, true boots quickly but plaing divx is better on my WindowsXP and browsing the internet is much much better! Even with Bone the internet on BeOS SUCKS!
I really tried to like it but with no sucsess.
I hope that the new projects will prove me wrong.

Windows XP Professional fan.

yawn

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:38:00 GMT

so lets be sure to rehash this in another two weeks.

Why not do some more interviews with perhaps, oh say .. the 'tao group' or IBM's head of 'Developer works'?

I like the 'BeOS' as much as the next guy but lets be quite real about something and that is 'to each his own'

Open-beos is taking the step, as small as they may be, but they are doing it, Yellowtab and their 'zeta' is a great addition also.

So i want to key in on what someone wrote earlier. can we have some news other than an optimists view?

and as for linux, it works , after some configuring and tweaking, same with windows and most of the other os's outthere, beos did what _I_ liked hence I use it!

some people may not like it, they use other os's, fine if it works for them.

and as for the people noting that it took 50 engineers to do what became known as beos, note that they were working from null, openbeos will come along when its done.
I still consider that they should work on the kernel a bit more since its the most gargantuan effort they have to face.
almost everything is documented for the reimplementation, but you also have to note that they dont just want it to be a beos clone they want to take it a step further.
(albeit pull the symbols of the kernel and notice some phunky hooks)

but still i cant see the problem some people here have with people doing their own thing, its mostly like the linux and windows crowd has become more... agressive in their 'assimilation' I dont like this sort of thing, its not to the spirit of OpenSource.
Let people do their own thing, period!

like 'linus' did back in the days.

i tried it

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:41:00 GMT

it certainly did boot fast, like 3 seconds or something ridicolous like that......but I thought I was windows 3.1 at first....

i couldn't get my internet connection working, so after a few days of trial and error it's gone...

i'll certainly try openbeos when it gets to closer to beta, but I'm happy with my linux box. it'll take one heck of effort to get me to open up space for it....

good luck to the developers and community though...

Re : BeOS isn't that much!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:42:00 GMT

zhopon said

"I have tried BeOS PE r5, even got my hands on BeOS Dano, but it's performance are pritty lame, true boots quickly but plaing divx is better on my WindowsXP and browsing the internet is much much better! Even with Bone the internet on BeOS SUCKS!
"

You're true, but don't forget that your beOS is not optimised for the new cpu. Nothing was really done for 2 years on BeOS. Comparing BeOS to linux, windowsXP or mac os X isn't really fair today.

The network has always been a strong bad point for BeOS.

But the thing is OpenBFS works, and seems faster than the original file system. And the project is less than one year ! Give the projects some time, and maybe clones of BeOS will be good alternative to some actual OS.

Just one clone?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:44:00 GMT

I know a lot of people said the same thing about other projects, but I can't wonder why all the three projects don't merge into one and split the tasks between them... I'm quite sure all three have different ideas of how to make it, but the final product would be the same, don't it?

To OSNews writers:

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:58:00 GMT

We need more articles about current status of BeOS, anyone can cadidate?

I, for example, want reviews of code that have best funcionality than BeOS. (the network kit of OpenBeOS (in alpha stage) is fastest than BeOS...), etc...

NewOS threading is faster than BeOS?
Linux SMP is faster than BeOS?

Write an article. I could help in fulll of time!

Michael Vinícius de Oliveira

Finally something from the 21st century

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:08:00 GMT

WoW, I love BeOS and use it as often as possible.

It's nice to finally see something which is not bloated *cough* Windows/Linux *cough* and based on modern technology, not outdated stuff as above mentioned.

OpenBeOS status list is definitely out of date and the biggest kits are close to completion with one exception... the kernel..

But I guess people prefer tweaking the OLD Linux kernel rather than the NEW NewOS kernel for some reason... perhaps because it's not cool to be handy with a user friendly OS...

RE: In other news ...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:11:00 GMT

That was pretty funny.

I must say that for me the ZX Spectrum which if my memory serves me correctly had a mammoth 48k main memory as the best.

I remember my Great Uncle loading frogger on it for me as a kid. They just don't make games like that any more.

Sigh......

sick of hearing about BeOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:32:00 GMT

If only they GPLed BeOS 5, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. That is why I support Linux. It ain't gonna go away. BeOS may have been a great OS, but that IP belongs to someone who doesn't want to do anything with it. I say fine, I don't need their IP. We'll make our own.

Give me one good reason to support BeOS or any of its clones. Its just an unfortunate example at how capitalism hurts us all. Technology gone to waste because someone doesn't feel like they made enough money. Too bad. At least I got Linux/BSD.

let me clarify

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:47:00 GMT

Computers and hardware constantly change. Software must keep up. If you can't offer me a lifetime of free updates with your proprietary closed source software, so I know it will support all the hardware I will be using in the next 5/10/20/100 years. That is why I choose open source software. It meets this requirement. Show me ANY commercial package that can compete with this.

"If only they GPLed BeOS 5"

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:48:00 GMT

OK, here's an example:
Why IBM cannot `opensource` their OS/2 ? Theres some Micro$oft Code in there...
Why Palm can't `opensource` BeOS... They'll use its concepts, desines etc. 4 there Palm OS 6...

GO 2 Palm and say: Hey, give us BeOS, we know u paid 4 it 10.000000 $ (az i remember), but lets GPL it...

Why Zeta isn't open source?
They Lisenced some ORIGINAL BeOS codes... There's some Palm/Be.inc. Code in there...

Soo the only way 2 make BeOS `opensorse` iz 2 rewrite it!!!

PS: I'll by a "Zeta" Deluxe BOX when it'll be ready And download OSBOS and compare em

Osbos' [OPEN]BFS will be faster couse Zeta still uses ORIGINAL BFS unless they redesine it....

RE stephen smith

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 20:13:00 GMT

It's getting tired

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 20:14:00 GMT

I like BeOS as much as the next man. But, constant articles on BeOS are getting a little tiring. My enthusiasm for RiscOS is even higher, yet I wouldn't want to see every other submission be an article about RiscOS.

For those who asked...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 20:38:00 GMT

AFAIK, BeOS, the PPC version, is on the same CD with the x86 version.

You may find it yet at softline.fr for 12 euros. They ship it, but it is very expensive.

Re: So

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 20:38:00 GMT

RIP BeOS - get over it

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 21:00:00 GMT

I was a big proponent of BeOS back when it was still PPC-only, and I spent a lot of time evangelizing it to others. I was sure that everyone would see the superiority of the OS, and developers would jump on board and soon I would be running a full suite of Adobe apps, etc. on BeOS. Yeah, right. Although I still have my copy of "The BeOS Bible" by Scott Hacker (once it's biggest cheerleader, now using MacOS X), and still read articles regarding the various "keep BeOS alive" projects here and elsewhere, I would have to say that BeOS has gone the way of the Amiga--a great ahead-of-it's-time OS that has all but died except for the diehards. (Although supposedly Amiga is also making a comeback.) I'm not a programmer or developer, just a power end-user, so without Adobe, Macromedia, and M$ apps, or at least compatibility with same, BeOS is merely a nice toy to play with for me. For those that are programmers/developers, what would the advantage be, realistically, of using BeOS over Linux or MacOS X? I just don't see it happening. Let's get over it and place our resources into the future, not living in the past or pining for what could have been.

Re. devilsplaything

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 21:18:00 GMT

basically, you just called me a diehard, although I use Windows (NT and 98) regularly, as well as Linux. BeOS and Windows at home, Linux and NT at work. I think I'm not infuatuated with BeOS, I am just convinced that it works and that it's very useful.

Be

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 21:27:00 GMT

No a Be user myself, I can still understand the draw to Be, at least from a developer's perspective. I used to be a Windows programmer and now I am a Unix programmer, and - though Unix is a nice change from Windows - it is loaded with cruft that ensures backwards compatability going back 30+ years.

Be was a new, clean development environment. From what I have seen - which isn't too much, but enough to form an initial opinion - the Be APIs were nice and logical.

Too bad that Be is dead.

BeOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 22:59:00 GMT

the joy of realising what the hardware underneath was capable of with well-written software was amazing. RIP BeOS.

Required !!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 23:08:00 GMT

To ensure Success , don't forget to ReWrite:

Microsoft Office for BE.

Yeah, we don't care about fast boot, nice and logical API....no...we just want to finish our work and play game .

couple of comments...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 23:27:00 GMT

re: Freddan303
Only two of the categories are still in the planning stages. And 6 are in Alpha or Beta stages. That sounds like progress to me. Glass half full or half empty...

re: James Frazer (In other news)
Great comparison (BeOS with Commodore 64), and not entirely inaccurate. I wonder how many BeOS users also have a couple of vintage machines laying about? My favorite is a TI99!
Good thing Microsoft never though of putting the OS in ROM! We'd be screwed then...

re: last ananymous post
Absolutely correct. Office is the standard for businesses, and therefore necessary for home users to be compatible. Perhaps OpenOffice could be ported?

Best Wishes,
Bob

Does anyone know where I can buy BeBox?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Dec 2002 23:35:00 GMT

Does anyone know where I can buy an old BeBox from the place? I tried posted in the BeOS forum, but not really get the good answer.

re. bsdrocks

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 01:11:00 GMT

Read www.begroovy.com or www.beosjournal.org - they usually post it when there's a BeBox on Ebay. However, it's a very rare event, and BeBoxen are selling for more and more money, it seems. When Be went bust, priceso of BeBoxen retreated a bit, because suddenly there were more on the market, but they picked up shortly after.

other sites to keep an eye on would be totallybe.com and lebuzz.com.

get over it

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 02:32:00 GMT

I really like BeOS too; I ran it on PowerPC and later Intel hardware. But Jean-Louis blew it big time because he didn't know how to run a company. He came close to destroying Apple, and did ruin Be. I switched to Mac OS X in 2000 and haven't looked back. BeOS is dead. Time to move on.

Actually, big developments are occuring...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 03:13:00 GMT

These projects are making impressive headway. A legal 'R6'-like BeOS named Zeta from yellowTAB will be making a public RC1 appearance very shortly.

This will help bridge gaps for other distros with more ambitious goals, such as OpenBeOS or B.E.OS. The BeOS community is well into the thousands by my estimates (at least as of September when I did a poll of PhOS users via in-built mechanisms.. I receieved 5000-ish responses-duplicated not possible).

Thing is, we have no way to really advertise or market Zeta at this time, we must wait until we can get the product in a near-final stage (very soon, we are at Beta3) and then the reviewers get copies. Eugenia would have received one too, but as far as how that will work out after her publicly disgracing comments, I do not know.

BeOS is slowly making a come back, you can feel the life in the BeShare servers boasting many many more numbers now than at any time when Be, INC was still around. Just look at how much money was raised to buy the BeOS Gobe Productive 3 source code! We hit $10,000 in a mere 3 days!

All in all, this next year is going to be awesome!

An OS agnostic view

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 03:51:00 GMT

Having set up my main lame 600MHz machine to multiboot Win9x, Win2K, Mandrake 9 & BeOS, (QNX RTP will be next) I spend a similar amount of time in the latter 3 and find they each have their merits and faults that keeps me multi booting.

Windows 2K is just a hard habit to break because its got all the apps I want. VC++ MFC was great to develop with but it now seems time to move on. Pet peeve is that mp3/ogg files glitch badly during dialup / disconnect when they are starved of CPU cycles. Even though Lucent Win modems are controller based, the're crappy drivers rob the CPU 100%.

Linux is rock solid and has made great strides in many ways. Its fun to explore all the alternate desktops environments and the huge wealth of apps. Even KDE is not too sluggish for me, however the mp3/ogg playback is unacceptabley glitchy especially when just moving windows & UI widgets. Linux distros are a configurators dream, you can have it any way you like.

BeOS is also rock solid and really lives up to its media OS claim. It still takes my breathe away when I demo it playing multiple mpegs in large overlapping windows plus multiple ogg/mp3 streams with no audio glitches, all while dialing that Winmodem and dragging windows around. BeOS makes my lame & lamer PCs rock but for the chronic app shortage. The posix compliant shell is much appreciated. The file Tracker has nice plugin expandability but its one pane view makes it harder to learn an unfamiliar folder hierarchy, so I prefer the Explorer & Konquerer browsers with separate panes for the folder tree view and file view. Kudos to DarkWyrm for picking up development of the Pioneer explorer now called Seeker. It is improving rapidly and its a must have app.

BeOS like Linux is probably much better appreciated outside of the US even though it's much less internationalised. Much of the world can & does make good use of older PCs and SW developers are plentiful in many countries.
The Linux community is generally consistant about the importance of choice, and OSS / Linux developers enjoy the kudos of contributing code. With the BeOS becoming OSS, I would not be suprised if a small number of OSS / Linux developers become interested in developing for the OBOS variants for curiousity, diversity and that same kudos. Even if OpenBeOS just remains a marginal OS, it still provides another vital OS choice that is much different to anything else and has no inclination to mimic Win98,XP (ignoring that sneaked in window decoration mode BeOS / Mac / Amiga / Win98).

On the subject of boot times, my ranking is Win95, BeOS, WinME, then Linux (4X Win95), and eventually Win2K (6x Win95 when its not discovering HW changes or 10-20x if discovering changes). Actual measurements are too embarrassing compared to current PCs.

OT 1) For those who tried a BeOS install that froze during bootup and want to try evaluating it again, did you know about the safe mode ?. Just as the BIOS gets done with POST, hit the space bar quickly before it has a chance to show the intro purple graphic logo screen. Pick safe mode options, then check relevant boxes. I've only ever checked "Don't call BIOS" and "Use fail-safe video mode" after changing a video card.

OT 2) If you are interested in multibooting 4 or more OSs per drive then XOSL (Extended OS Loader www.xosl.org) is very slick, very configurable and OSS.

OK thats my 2c
Brian

here we go again

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 05:39:00 GMT

For f***s sake, let it rest in peace. Please. Sure, I could have asked and paid for a stuffed version of my dead grandma to keep around, but that is simply disrespectful and selfish. I'd rather have a good memory of something than beating pointlessly on an already dead body. It will only move a few inches because I hit it very hard. Very hard that is...

Chill out people

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 05:57:00 GMT

I can understand people's mistrust of any new BeOS project as so many promises have been broken. But to totally dismiss an alternative operating system, because it doesn't have the backing of a corporation full of engineers and poor marketing staff is insane. Why do you even frequent OSNews, to hear about Windows Longhorn betas?

If you don't like BeOS or you have grown tired of broken promises, then don't use it and don't read about. But to rail on it because it is not as hip as Linux or doesn't have the support of corporation is stupid.

I welcome any progress from BeUnited, OpenBeOS, Yellowtab, all the developers and BeOS enthusiasts out there. So what if it is never the number #1 desktop solution. If someone enjoys creating and using the product or can make a profit from it, all the more power to them.

Just like a tucker

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 07:35:00 GMT

Remember Tucker's Car back in the day? It too was ahead of it's time, and was kept down by the man.. I guess BEOS went the same way.

Lies

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 10:29:00 GMT

"and his laptop was working very well"

Bull. It's crap like this that makes people not listen to BeOS fans. The BeOS never had power management for laptops. It was publicly stated many times by Be that they were not focusing on laptops. My HP laptop, running WinXP, had all sorts of power management features that BeOS fans can only dream about. And don't even get me started on wireless support. So yeah, laptops can work "very well" if you conveniently ignore two of the essential features of modern laptops (I won't even get into things like display management, CPU speed reduction, and so on). The fact is that there are a lot of details in a complete modern OS, and fans seem to overlook them as necessary. What favor are you doing potential users by lying to them?

"Give me one good reason to support BeOS or any of its clones. Its just an unfortunate example at how capitalism hurts us all."

It's because of Capitalism that you had BeOS in the first place. And also that you have Linux and BSD, too (those computers they used when programming the systems weren't built by volunteers, you know). This is certainly not the place for a political argument, but I strongly suggest you do some serious reading/research on the subject of capitalism, socialism, and other systems.

Every time someone posts about the BeOS it's the same old thing. "It's dead! It's not dead; the clones are making impressive progress! I don't see that progress! Well, what do you care about what they do with their time?" I'll tell you why we care. Because the BeOS fans simply won't shut up about their system. On every post about a different OS, some BeOS fan has to say, "ha, my OS did all that back in 99!" or some such remark. It gets pretty annoying, and even more so when no real progress has been demonstrated in years (guys, R5 was just about two years ago, not "about a year").

Look, I used the BeOS for many years (before most people here, I would wager), I'm friends with some former Be employees, and I was fairly involved in the old community. I know enough to know that half of what's said are lies; or, at best, truths stretched far beyond their capacity. The BeOS never played videos well (nearest neighbor doubling as opposed to hardware overlay, for one). Almost no computers will be able to run it fully; something won't work. It might be the printer, maybe the modem, possibly the network card or CompactFlash reader. Something. But you don't hear about that. And most importantly in this day and age, it's an extremely mediocre platform for the internet. Just compare BeZilla to IE or Mozilla on WinXP; there's a world of difference. I could go on and on, but I think you see my point. We BeOS fans have been lied to for years, by Be, by our own hopes, and by countless groups who found it easier to put up a webpage and a hopeful mission statement than to actually make anything (Be3D? BeDTP? Unreal Tournament? Neverwinter Nights? Black & White? Opera [good version]? Gimmick? etc. etc.) It's a great system, but lying about its faults (or conveniently omitting them, as often happens, helps no one).

And let's face it; groups like OpenBeOS have a daunting task. From the engineers I've talked to, Dominic spent two years designing and implementing BFS. It's taken OpenBeOS a little under a year now, and they're almost done. And, I might note, they seem to be one of the most active teams within OpenBeOS. You do the math. It's going to be a long time, if ever. And if that day comes, great! Until then, I urge the fans to dispense with the statements of granduer. It might be all well and good to litter these forums with "you'll see," but I'll remind you that the last time that happened was when H-Kon misinterpreted a typo in a readme file.

So I have a favor to ask of all BeOS fans: I think the majority of us who read this site would be more than happy to let you do your own thing if you just do it without constantly talking about how other OSes are so old and crappy, and how the new BeOS release that's right around the corner is going to rule the world. It's irritating, and it's prevalent. That's a bad combination. If and when the new BeOS releases are ready, and if they're worthy of recognition, they will certainly get it here. Until then, stop with the grandeur and adopt a more objective view of the competitors; to see them as your potential customers will see them--that is, objectively, and without predisposition--will only do you good.

Unix was also capitalistic...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 11:01:00 GMT

Someone said :

"Give me one good reason to support BeOS or any of its clones. Its just an unfortunate example at how capitalism hurts us all. Technology gone to waste because someone doesn't feel like they made enough money. Too bad. At least I got Linux/BSD.
"

When Unix appears in the beginning of the 70ies, it wasn't open source at all. in fact, what OpenBeOS does today seems to me like NetBSD, FreeBSD and other *nix clones did with HP, Sun and other proprietary unix OS.

Let sleeping dogs lie...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 11:01:00 GMT

Sure, BeOS was a nice OS and has sparked offshoot groups to try and 'clone' it... Even if someone finally does one day clone BeOS completly I believe it will be too little, too late, and besides.. What practicle benefits are there to run a new BeOS, and why would people switch from Win32?, even Be Inc. tried giving BeOS away to get a good sized userbase and failed, I just don't see the logic in this at all... It's like trying to clone OS/2 which possibly has alot more apps then BeOS does, it's just not practicle... Maybe people should stop trying to reinvent wheels and just come up with a new style of wheel completly

reinventing the wheel

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 11:13:00 GMT

Maybe people should stop trying to reinvent wheels and just come up with a new style of wheel completly
--------
If operating sytems were wheels, BeOS would be wings.

adam and other people that don't understand.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 11:56:00 GMT

BeOS Was never about ruiling the world it is/was marketed towords Geeks and Multi/media enthusiests

As Projects Linux and BeOS are about the same age, both were started in 1990/91, and with Be's small team of engineers and user base the fact that BeOS the level with the Open Source behemoth that is Linux
is somthing extrodinary. Linux started as a hobby OS based upon
somthing that already existed. Linux used all the GNU stuff
avalible at the time to quickly complete an OS. BeOS started from
the ground up for a Platform that was never intended to be Intel.

Running a alternate OS should not be a flavor or whats cool of the month kinda deal its what gets the job done effciently that counts.

I run BeOS because it runs well boots fast prints web browses
views my email, I like the Gui my hardware works, I have all the
tools to do any office or multimedia job Burn CD's download from my camera. I need and it runs without a hicup no slowdown nothing that indicates i will need a new computer in the next 6 months.

Let me recap, BeOS Runs fast on my computer, it was easy to install.
i had no problems getting my hardware to run. It does every thing i need to do, and it does it quickly and requires almost no maintnece.

Is there is somthing in BeOS you don't find to your likeing
or specifications? By all means the API is there, the opensource
projects are there. It's up to you nobody is out there to hand
feed you.

Why buy another computer, when the one you already own
can do anything you need. it is a waste of money, a waste
of Landfill, completely stupid.

If you switched from BeOS, because it suddenly became
uncool, even though BeOS did what it needed to then you should
be using Windows and not an alternate OS.

Use what you need, if you need heavy graphics get your self a SGI
machine and use Irix, if you want to play games get a Gamecube.
if you like eyecandy and have money to burn get Mac OS/X

In my experience. Linux was slow to boot, hard to configure, bloated, the multiple partitions needed for swap and data are a real pain in the ass. Open Office is slow and takes up to much hard disk. The Login is really unnessesary, having to log into root to change somthing is really anoying.

People in OS news forms talk about how BeOS does not have any killer apps. Show me the apps they say. The basic definition of a Killer app. Somthing that acomplishes a chore quickly so you can move on with your life. The definition of each word provides a context to
the above statement:

Killer: Having impressive or effective power or impact
app: A computer application.

any software you use to do what you need to do quickly, is defined
as a killer app.

Rajan because i know your standard reply to everything I post in here Im a zealot a fanatically commited person dedicated to BeOS.

Zeta

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 12:02:00 GMT

Don't look at open source alternatives only. Consider the closed source ones too like Zeta but if I am not mistaken Zeta is not fully closed source. Only the Palm components licensed by Palm are closed source and they intend to replace those parts with open source equivelents as they become avaialble. I am not sure if that is right but I remember readding it and for some reason I can't find the link. It is in http://www.yellowtab.com

dead

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 12:10:00 GMT

>>Nowadays, all you hear about is Windows, MacOS X, or GNU/Linux. However, what ever happened to the good old BeOS?

It died

A joke..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 12:26:00 GMT

OpenBeOS and similar projects are nothing but bad jokes. It's like ReactOS (http://www.reactos.com). They are working for years and what do they have? Nothing to speak off. Writing a modern desktop/general-purpose operating system is such a huge task that it is by far out of reach for a group of a few dozens of students and bored geeks. The only hope for an alternative to Windows is Linux because while it's still mostly a cheap bastard's server OS and a geek toy it has much of the core stuff any OS needs ready and now cooperations pump in a lot of money to turn it into an OS that is attractive to a broader audience. Dozens of professional programmers are payed to work full-time on Linux and Linux-based solutions now because a lot of cooperations had to realize that Microsoft will kill any competition in the field of computing sooner or later. Sun and IBM know it. They are an endangered species in a Windows-only world. But make no mistake there are no resources left. Everything will concentrate on Linux the other OSes will never be more than hobby projects without any real use. It takes decades, over 10,000 hackers and billions of cooperate money to create what we call an OS today. Zero chance.

Re: a joke

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 12:36:00 GMT

The only hope for an alternative to Windows is Linux

No, Zeta is progressing extremely good.

Check out their screen shots: http://www.yellowtab.com/screenshots.php

They are doing a great job. I see a real hope in YellowTab.

unfair?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 14:42:00 GMT

You're true, but don't forget that your beOS is not optimised for the new cpu. Nothing was really done for 2 years on BeOS. Comparing BeOS to linux, windowsXP or mac os X isn't really fair today.

It is fair. the article touts a comeback of BeOS, so the aforementioned other OS'es *are* the competition and BeOS in whatever incarnation has to live up to what the others offer and has to be compared to those OS'es.
Life ain't fair, deal with it.

Couldn't give a shit what the trolls say

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 15:19:00 GMT

Some very good comments here, mostly the longer ones.

I use BeOS coz I don't want to be an MS/DCMA POW, I don't have the $ for Apple, & I don't have the time for endless Linux distros.

From time to time I do boot into W2K (my absolutley last MS OS), MacOS 8.1 (on Basilisk2, thanks for the memories), & RH to see whats up, but none of them keeps me wanting to stay. I have probably spent as much $ on Linux packages as W2K, so Linux is hardly cheap in $ or hrs.

When you use computers for 20 odd years, you eventually tire of never ending faddish upgrades that don't always give as much back as you lose. If BeOS doesn't radically change for a few yrs, fine by me.

Every few years, Apple screwed me over by forcing me to replace most all my apps, eventually I lost complete interest in Mac fads of the day. And the endless wait for stability, yeck, it took Apple 18yrs to get to a stable system.

MS was sweet for many yrs when I was using NT4,5 & most everyone else was on the 16bit crap, now its all about eye candy and control. But some of the apps are very good, no doubt about that. If W2K could be made to look & feel more like BeOS, I might just accept that, but I won't go to XP registration.

Linux will always be a part of my professional life since someone else will set it up, but I would rather leave it behind, when I go home.

BeOS gives me just enough style, power cmd line, and stability. I will wait and see about Zeta, OBOS.

I could go on but....

BeOS = Good

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 15:27:00 GMT

I like the multitasking performance I get under Linux (Windows multitasking is a joke), it's really smooth but can't compare to BeOS, not even close. BeOS did have some REALLY strong points among all it's other less developed stuff, I hope the clones are able to replicate the good stuff and enhance the poor stuff and you'll have yourself a kickass OS.

If BeOS is dead howz come all the others stink so much worse?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 15:42:00 GMT

I use BeOS5 on a daily basis,and like someone else here said, it does the job for me...I use it for media creation(nothing works better with sound)E-mail,(so far nobody has bothered to write a BeOS virus)internet(who gives a rats ass about java and such).I have hundreds of games for it (native,SDL,and emulated)and even without hardware graphics support most run absolutely great. I can do word processing,IRC,file sharing,some simple graphics work(although Windoze is my platform of choice for this, only because the BeOS apps aren't as sophisticated)and the beauty of all this is the simpicity of installing software,just unzip it and it will run anywhere or open a package and it installs itself!Try this in Linux or BSD, Don't make me laugh!The OS is small crisp and easy to navigate around in and any compatable hardware just works right away,no drivers to load and such.
This is the vision of home computing as it should be,something a person can use without being a rocket scientist,or a computer science major! and my hats off to anyone or group that is trying to keep it alive! Oh and BTW the box i do this on is an old 400 Celeron Pionex and hopefully by the time it finally craps out the new OBOS will be finished with support for more modern stuff,because I have no intention of giving up BeOS as long as I can find hardware that runs it.It is the only OS that's even easier to work with than Windows or MacOS!!

Re: adam and other people that don't understand.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 15:52:00 GMT

adam and other people that don't understand.

We understand perfectly fine :-)

BeOS Was never about ruiling the world it is/was marketed towords Geeks and Multi/media enthusiests

No one said to be successful, BeOS had to be marketed to conquer the whole world. Besides, it seems geeks and multimedia enthusiests weren't all that profitable after all...

As for multimedia - does BeOS do professional audio editing - no, but it has SoundPlay that plays audio fine. Does BeOS do professional image editing (Photoshop) - no, but it does open a lot of image files. Does BeOS do professional video editing? no, again, but it can play 10 (IIRC) Quicktime movies at a same time. Does BeOS do professional 3D editing? - no, they don't even have proper OpenGL support.

So much for the multimedia market.

As Projects Linux and BeOS are about the same age

Actually, BeOS is about two to three years older than Linux. Plus, in the early years of Linux, there weren't much interest in it, unlike now.

Let me recap, BeOS Runs fast on my computer, it was easy to install.
i had no problems getting my hardware to run. It does every thing i need to do, and it does it quickly and requires almost no maintnece.

Great! You form a minority. BeOS couldn't even support a old RealTek NIC card for crying out loud (at least on my machine). Boots fast? So what? I don't mind taking a minute to boot when I can do more with the OS. That's a similar sentiment with other people I know.

Why buy another computer, when the one you already own
can do anything you need.

I want to get a new computer because I find my Duron insufficient in compiling with GCC 3.2 (I'm not really the patient kind of guy. Would BeOS make compiling faster? Another thing I do a lot is play around with Photoshop on Windows, and I wish those filters work faster. Would they be faster on BeOS? In both cases , I doubt it.

If you switched from BeOS, because it suddenly became
uncool, even though BeOS did what it needed to then you should
be using Windows and not an alternate OS.

BeOS can do what I need perfectly fine. But then I have to deal with either a browser that support less pages than Netscape 1.0, or use a browser that is less stable than a hungry agitated rodeo bull. Then there is not good image editing program. So even though I could survive with BeOS< like many others, I much rather just stick with Windows and do a lot more. After all, what's the point of having a quite boot up when you don't have anything to do after it?

Use what you need, if you need heavy graphics get your self a SGI
machine and use Irix, if you want to play games get a Gamecube.

I'm not into PC games, but my younger brother in really into games. Sure, he would call me a saint if I got him a XBOX (oh no, I mustn't, it is from M$!) or a PS2 (he isn't really into Nintendo stuff), but he doubts it would replace the PC. PC gaming is very different from console gaming, and if you think otherwise, certainly you are not a gamer.

In my experience. Linux was slow to boot, hard to configure, bloated, the multiple partitions needed for swap and data are a real pain in the ass.

1) Actually, it can be fast to boot, however none of the major distributions are fast to boot. After a great deal of configuring, I manage to get a clean 20 second boot time, faster than Windows XP.

2) Yeah, it can be hard configuring sometimes, but in my experience, distributions like SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat, Lycoris, perhaps Xandros and Lindows.com (never tried both on my machine, can't say), it is pretty easy to do basic configuring. The biggest problem with configuration is with uncommon hardware - but that's a problem with BeOS anyway (at least there is some hope that you may get it to work on Linux).

May not be as easy to configure as Be OS (couldn't say, never used either side configuration tools in a long long time), but sufficient.

Open Office is slow and takes up to much hard disk.

Of course, if you are comparing with the only office suite on BeOS (to my knowlegde), KOffice is pretty much as feature-heavy (or light :-) as gobeProductive 2.0. And faster to load up (comparing with a evaluation copy of productive 2.0 and a out-of-the-box version of KOffice on Mandrake). Takes a wee more harddisk space, but I doubt you would notice the difference.

The Login is really unnessesary, having to log into root to change somthing is really anoying.

Use Lindows. For me, and a lot of people, login is very very useful. I don't want my brothers to mess up my files, read my mail, or things of that sort. As for root, it would guarentee that my 7-year-old brother wouldn't configure stuff that may be hard to revert later (e.g. fixing the resolution at something the monitor can't accept).

Besides, for Mandrake at least, when you install it, you can opt-in for a chance to have an account automatically log in upon boot time, and everytime you need the root password (e.g. installing a new RPM), it would prompt you for it.

People in OS news forms talk about how BeOS does not have any killer apps. Show me the apps they say. The basic definition of a Killer app.

Lotus 1-2-3 was an example of a killer app that made PC's day. People *need* it, and can't live without it after using it. In BeOS, except for a small unprofitable minority, there isn't a killer app.

For me, Linux's killer "app" is the fact I can configure and optimize everything the way I want it. Why? Because I like doing it.

Rajan because i know your standard reply to everything I post in here Im a zealot a fanatically commited person dedicated to BeOS.

Well, sorry to say, I'm a Linux zealot too. But I'm not blind in that regard. Be Inc. made great software, no doubt. But they weren't at all good at marketing. It doesn't matter how good the product is, with terrible (or in this case, practically no) marketing, the product is doom.

Marketing is a combination of PR, strategy and advertising. Knock one out, and it is no longer marketing. Marketing starts at the product's drawing board, not after.

BeOS is a remarkable OS, sadly I have absolutely no use for it. I had this XP laptop here running for 2 weeks, my Windows 2000 desktop accross the room has been on for more than a week, and my Linux machine is currently off, but I just offed it after 3 weeks (not enough power outlets :-). I don't need fast boot up times. That's about the only thing nice about BeOS.

Re: Re: a joke

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 15:57:00 GMT

Though matter how good Zeta would be, Linux is bound to be the second-biggest player in the market, and would be the only major rival with Microsoft. From what I have seen from the outside (interviews, their website), YellowTab has a business/marketing philosophy similar to Be Inc. Meaning, it probably is bound to doom. But I guess we wouldn't know until they are dead (then only can one study what went wrong).

Have some fun!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 16:09:00 GMT

I pretty much agree with brakes anaysis of the situation. But, we can have fun though. If Zeta actually comes out and is usable, we can really have a good time time playing with it. Like someone said, this is OS News - let's enjoy and indulge ourselves. There is no need to defend our particular favorite OS as if it were a matter of life or death.

Re: BeOS = Good

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 16:17:00 GMT

Re:Beos = Good

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 16:33:00 GMT

Actually, if you try the new latency patch for the Linux kernel (coming right to you in the next major distro release), multitasking is eons away fro BeOS. And with Windows XP, multitasking is NOT a joke. The only apps I see that suffer from it is apps that was made for Windows 9x.
---------
Thank u Rajan, for the comedy. Nothing comes close to multitasking on BeOS, and Windows is terrible, but if Linux with 'latency patch' is as good as you say, I'd sure love some second opinions with people who have actually used BeOS for more than a day and have tried this Linux patch.

Rajan & Linux

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 17:49:00 GMT

RAJAN!

I've been watching your replies on this OSNews forum for quite a while now. I've newer botherered to answer your SILLY comments though..I have ONLY a few words to say about you and your TRASHY LINUX. ---> Why dont you go recompile you kernel and come back in a year or two.

Linux SUX, i've tried it at LEAST 10 times, its STILL bloated and slow.

Yours
BeOS user since 1996

Re: Rajan & Linux

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 18:25:00 GMT

I have been a regular here, why should I leave? Especially since I don't recompile my kernel all that often (only twice, actually), it is other parts I have recompiled (KDE and QT being the most).

As for Linux being bloated, Linux can fit onto a small tiny footprint, or can take gigabytes and gigabytes of storage. Sad to say that most desktop (meaning easy to use) distributions are bloated.

As for slow, Linux is many ways is faster than BeOS, you think BeOS is faster than Linux for one reason only - because its UI is responsive. And the responsiveness of the UI have been improving a lot in the past one year, and set to improve even more in the future. Since I'm on the bleeding egde, I can safely say that Linux for the consumer wouldn't be as slow as it is today in the near future.

Besides, when was your last try with Linux?

I'm not saying Linux is perfect, because if you have been noticing me for a long time, you would know that I think otherwise. However, I don't agree that BeOS is better than Linux. There is one or two areas where BeOS shines, but I'm not going to drop what I have and sacrifice just to have them, especially when they are coming to Linux soon. like UI responsiveness.

If you use and like Be OS, be my guess, USE IT. But if you notice my message, it is mostly on Be being bad in marketing and how it shows in their products.

Re: Re:Beos = Good

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 18:30:00 GMT

Thank u Rajan, for the comedy. Nothing comes close to multitasking on BeOS, and Windows is terrible, but if Linux with 'latency patch' is as good as you say, I'd sure love some second opinions with people who have actually used BeOS for more than a day and have tried this Linux patch.

I have use Be OS far more than a day. My 120mhz Pentium with 32mb of RAM is now a MP3 jukebox with BeOS 5 Personal Edition (installed on Windows 98). I also have BeOS installed on Windows Me on my Duron (which my Linux installations are), and again, I don't see how BeOS multitasking is better.

You feel BeOS multitasking is better because BeOS applications feel responsive. This is because the way the UI is built, not the system. Besides, since you are so smart, have you tried that patch? I'm sure the answer is no (IIRC, there is Mandrake RPMs with that patch, for those who can't take recompiling the kernel).

And we get nowhere:

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 18:37:00 GMT

Comments from Be Users like "Linux suxs!!", or "Linux is bloated!" make Be users look single minded and stubborn. I have used BeOS, yes I like it, but I can't be bothered with it anymore. Yes these new projects have potential, but I wish I could smack the morons who go on about how great these clones are gonna be! I mean they haven't been released, and there is so little documentation about them, it's hard to know why they would be great in the first place.

If you are able to run BeOS on your own home computer with no problems, I respect your decision, and am glad to see you've actually made a decision about the OS you use. But you must face the fact that, BeOS is not amazing, spectacular or ground breaking anymore. And it would be misleading to tell people this.

It surprises me that the OSS community can't put their heads together, make some standards, work with each other share ideas, and make computing better for all. That way whoever packages/integrates an idea the best wins. And all the bickering between projects would stop. The whole OSS community pretty much has the same goal, so why make borders and burn bridges? It only makes it easier for outside competition to pick apart the brittle pieces.

RAJAN & Linix

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 18:46:00 GMT

TO RAJAN:

I tried Linux 5-6 months ago. Slackware actually

You HAVE to be joking. Linux is ULTRAslow compared to BeOS.
- Booting
- unpacking stuff
- starting applications
- browsing ANYTHING on the desktop with a "explorer clone"
- MULTITASKING (linux doesnt even know what this is)
- startx

I could go on.. but why bother..

OK, Rajan, i'll try linux AGAIN. What distro and what patches ???

Yours
BeOS user since 1996

Ehmm

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 18:49:00 GMT

I run 2.5.53 kernel on a fairly bleeding edge ~branch gentoo system, and everything is compiled to perfection especially for my system, and while it's true that comparing XFree and BeOS UI responsivness is like comparing street mopeds with formula 1 cars, I still have to say that BeOS multitasking was something in a class of it's own.

It was after all built from ground up to be a low latency media OS, Linux is good and perhaps a heavily tweaked and altered linux kernel could match it, but I doubt it...

Finally, an honest Linux user

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 18:51:00 GMT

Finally, an honest Linux user

Thanx for beeing honest, most people have a hard time admitting their OS is lacking in certain areas.

Rajan: IF Nick S. can do it, you can :-)

Download site for German speaking BeOS fans

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 19:30:00 GMT

Hi,

there is also a huge download site for German speaking BeOS fans available:

http://bezip.de

Ciao,

Sebastian

Re:Beos = Good

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 19:38:00 GMT

Thank u Rajan, for the comedy. Nothing comes close to multitasking on BeOS, and Windows is terrible, but if Linux with 'latency patch' is as good as you say, I'd sure love some second opinions with people who have actually used BeOS for more than a day and have tried this Linux patch.

The reason BeOS failed so misserably in the market place is that it took multithreading to the extreme. Some might argue this is still cool, but history has shown that forcing multithreading down developers throat isn't the way to go.
And FYI, the low latenchy patches are great!

BTW, if you're so hung up on BeOS, are you interested in purchasing a mint condition BeBox 133? BeOS PPC runs great on it! Boots in 6 seconds (faster than Intel! custom BIOS!). I must warn you though, there are even less applications for PPC than x86, but that shouldn't stop a true BeOS zealot, right?

I'm selling the BeBox because Linux PPC is just too slow (stuck at kernel 2.0.32). Unless someone can give any hints on installing NetBSD?!!

-fooks

jeez...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 20:15:00 GMT

While reading all these posts, its really sad to hear people dissing BeOS. I it doesnt work for you, then fine, either program your own drivers or give up, downt complain on forums. BeOS does wonderfully everything that it was meant to be, and that was to play media, be super fast and stable, and fun to use. It was WAY ahead for its time, not that most of its features have been copied (blatantly) by mac or windows, most people dont really like it. I recently popped in my friends divx of 13 ghosts in it and boom, it played, smoothly and evenly on my 500mhz celeron laptop (IBM thinkpad A20m). I then rebooted, and played it in windows XP, the audio was about a minute behind the video after just 5 minutes. Browsing the internet, while it took me a while to set up, was wonderfull. Mozilla is about 50 times faster. Thats what I use BeOS for, to watch movies and play music, to surf and to work on some coding. Just some opinions, no im not lying about anything, i just think its ridiculous to beat on a one year *dead* operating system as though some 50 hardcore hackers are trying to bring it back. LOTS of people use it, LOTS of people develop for it, and it just works, unlike microshaft windoze.

Here we go again!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 20:39:00 GMT

"It was WAY ahead for its time"

This term always pisses me off, nothing is way ahead of its time. The term doesn't make sense, it's a comment used to over glorify something. It's like a paradox used to exxagerate the truth.

Multi-threading wasn't advanced when BeOS came out, it was a highly unimplemented piece of technology. BeOS is great I'll admit that because I used it for the longest time, and even owned a BeBox133. But we need to face the fact that UI responsiveness and Media capabilities were the optimized parts of that OS. It's hard to do real number crunching, hard drive access was journaled but it didn't have the most amazing transfer rates.

comments

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 20:43:00 GMT

>>>>I recently popped in my friends divx of 13 ghosts in it and boom, it played, smoothly and evenly on my 500mhz celeron laptop (IBM thinkpad A20m). I then rebooted, and played it in windows XP, the audio was about a minute behind the video after just 5 minutes.

That's divx's problem, not XP's. Have you tried ffdshow, it's a much faster divx codec than the official divx.com codec?

Re: rajan r

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 21:11:00 GMT

As for slow, Linux is many ways is faster than BeOS

Oh come on man! Give me a break. Rajan, your replies and comments are always wise but this particular one doesn't make any sense.

As for slow, Linux is many ways is faster than BeOS

Linux faster? Nooo wayyy! Please tell me you were kidding.

BeOS is DEFINATELY faster then Linux. Loading times, app response everything is faster, way faster.

I've tried both operating systems.

2 Rajan & Co.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 21:13:00 GMT

"Pull man! Pull! I think you've got me!"
[The sassy mouth salmon after hooking Johnny Bravo's pants to to Johnny Bravo's fishing line]

:-P

Re: Fooks

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:07:00 GMT

Hey, how much are you selling this BeBox? Have you tried check this link for NetBSD on BeBox? -> http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/bebox/

question

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:08:00 GMT

Okay, BeOS is supposed to be this exceptional multimedia OS. I admit I have used it very little and have researched it even less. Can it play DVDs? Can it rip and encode them into Xvid MPEG-4 ogm streams? What video codecs does it support? Firewire? For DV, SCSI/SBP-2, or TCP/IP? What software is available for video editting and conversion? I have content I would like to manage, let alone use. I have audio in flac, wav, mp3 and ogg formats and video in avi, mpg, mov and ogm streams with MPEG1/2/4, quicktime/sorrenson?, wmv, real media, DV and probably a couple other formats. Currently I use Linux on my network, it gets the job done nicely. But I am very open to alternatives.

I tried linux, Be is better!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:27:00 GMT

I see way too many comments along the lines of "I tried linux, Be is way better!" This has got to be one of the most ridiculous comments I have ever seen. And no, that isn't an insult to BeOS. I haven't used Be (although I have been planning on trying it) but I'm sure that it does what people want well.

The reason the above comment irks me is becaue it is an IGNORANT thing to say. "I tried Linux." Pardon? You are saying you downloaded a kernel, compiled it on your system, hand selected some middleware, device drivers, and basic apps, and compiled them on your system, and it was slow? No you say? You downloaded Redhat 8.0? Well NO FUCKING JOKE? Redhat 8.0 did not come ready made custom to your system? Makes sense to me seeing as redhat is a server solution. If you want to run linux for desktop you need to be willing to configure your system. If you pick and choose what processes you need it can be very fast. Very snappy. You can run linux on damn near anything and it is IGNORANT to call it slow. Slow is relative. If it can run on embedded systems with tiny microcontrollers I am sure your processor can handle it. However, because you are too lazy to configure it to fit you, you knock. If you don't like configuring your own system, there are pleny of OSes from plenty of companies happy to take that problem off of your hands. However, I prefer to have complete control over what runs on my system, the way my window manager looks, etc. Yes, I am a software engineer, so maybe I am more picky with my computer than others. That is why I like linux, it lets me choose and it scales to wherever I need it.

Sure, Linux can be fast.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:54:00 GMT

Look, guys, I'm sitting ten feet away from a media terminal that receives the Dish TV satellite network and acts as a two-tuner PVR to boot, meaning it's doing real-time MPEG2 encoding and decoding--even to the point of having a six-hour "buffer" for what you're watching at the moment while it's recording a separate channel. And it runs Linux. Yes, it's hardware-assisted, before anyone points that out--you think a BeOS media terminal like this wouldn't have been?

Linux is just a kernel. It's not a slow one, either. I preferred FreeBSD when I was working with Unix, but, hey.

There's a basic reality here people are ignoring, I think, in the argument--it's the reality that BeOS was really fighting against to start with. The reality is called Moore's Law. Everybody knows it, but there's an unwritten corollary to it: Elegant software technologies only have a limited amount of time to get a foothold against dominant software technologies, because eventually the hardware will even the playing field. This is something the Amiga faced--it doesn't matter how much wonder you squeeze out of that 50Mhz 68040, the PC world caught up through brute force, and no matter the task, when speeds hit a point where machines are waiting on users more than on their own tasks, you're at a point of diminishing returns.

BeOS could have caught on a few years ago and established enough of a cult foothold in vertical markets to stay there even when PCs objectively caught up, much like the Macintosh did (or arguably SGIs did). User experience does count and I haven't used an OS that I personally think has a better user "feel" than BeOS... and yes, I've used Windows XP and Mac OS X. (In fact, I'm using OS X now, and missing BeOS's responsiveness less with each update.)

Nice Article

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 23:02:00 GMT

I code for BeOS, some of the free time I have are spent on cutting BeOS code and I just couldn't believe how nice the API is, though.

One of the probable reason why BeOS is still dear to many coders can be attributed to the API. Its simplicity and power is truly astounding.

Good work, guys.

Just keep it going, we will eventually get there.

BeOS still RULES!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 23:23:00 GMT

I've spoken to my lecturer in Operating Systems who is a Dr/phD in Computing Science and is a BIG fan of BeOS. I mean when a guy like that with all that knowledge about O/S says BeOS is fantastic, makes you realise how special BeOS is.

To be honest I'm happy with my BeOS on my 200Mhz 32Mb RAM 7Gb hdd, I think I'll use it till the day I die.

Peace.

And another thing

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 23:25:00 GMT

As for slow, Linux is many ways is faster than BeOS
Apart form networking, Linux is NOT faster than beos, what you mean is that linux has *BETTER DRIVERS* than beos.
And to the comment about linux having better threading than beos i can only say:
Go fork(); you!!!!!!!!

:-P

apples and oranges?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Dec 2002 23:48:00 GMT

i think we're sort of comparing apples and oranges. I love BeOS with all my heart and use it at least once a day. Linux is a command line OS.. there is a window manager that runs on top of it. with BeOS its all together for the most part. I think that when people say how slow linux is, they're talking about X... which I'll admit is horribly slow on this K62/300, while BeOS is quite snappy. linux in commandline is fast. perhaps we should define what we're actually talking about?

sigh

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

i feel like every beos article on osnews is just the same paragraph, written over and over.

still, i'm eager to buy zeta, whenever that comes out.

Microsoft Tablet PCs

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 00:27:00 GMT

Now we see why Be, Inc. had to die... Be was years ahead of MS on this one, like most things Be did. Pirate Microsoft to death, people.

Chris

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 01:01:00 GMT

Ya, we get these BeOS arguments all the time but still Linux was never designed to be a fast media machine like BeOS. Unix has to be carefully tweaked to get powerful media results (Like SGI Irix or Mac OS X).

Alternative OS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 01:13:00 GMT

I'm a BeOS user from R3 on both PPC and Intel. I really, really love the BeOS. However, being realistic, the only real tragedy of the BeOS is not even that Be, Inc. went under (although, of course, that was a tragedy for Be employees). The real problem is not that Be isn't Number One or is the greatest OS ever conceived of in the universe. It is just that we can't get our hands on it. To me, that is the only problem. If we could just get access to it under a license and be able to keep it up to date, that would be enough for me. It would never be anything more than an alternative OS and only those who love it would use it and code for it. But, it really is one cool OS. It will be interesting to see what Zeta has to offer, for example. So, there is no need to argue about it. It is an OS that makes computing a joy, for both beginner and expert alike.

heh

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 01:18:00 GMT

I've been watching your replies on this OSNews forum for quite a while now. I've newer botherered to answer your SILLY comments though..I have ONLY a few words to say about you and your TRASHY LINUX. ---> Why dont you go recompile you kernel and come back in a year or two.

Linux SUX, i've tried it at LEAST 10 times, its STILL bloated and slow.

i wonder what blue eyed OS' guillaume maillard would have to say to this. well, not really, because he's written a number of articles about why b.e.os is using a linux kernel, and how it can be tweaked to equal or best beos in the audio latency and responsiveness games. they're all right here in osnews.

and hey, at least you *can* recompile a kernel when you use linux/bsd. as beos is largely a microkernel affair (though BONE makes beos networking monolithic), i suppose it's not a big issue, but i'd like that freedom, anyway.

mind you, i use beos for everything i can get away with; obsessive platform zealotry and ill-conceived mudslinging yields a net gain for no one. the sooner you realize that your computers and operating systems are tools and not lifestyles, the better off we'll all be.

but y'know, i've yet to see anything rock the streaming audio server house like beos + tunetracker does in any other platform: http://radio.vietnambla.com

RE jbett

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 03:22:00 GMT

"It was WAY ahead for its time"

This term always pisses me off, nothing is way ahead of its time. The term doesn't make sense, it's a comment used to over glorify something. It's like a paradox used to exxagerate the truth.

I agree with you. To me, "It was WAY ahead of it's time", is just a polite way to say "It was a complete git and a loser!", or the verbalization of someone's denial.

RE Sandwich Boy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 03:29:00 GMT

Now we see why Be, Inc. had to die... Be was years ahead of MS on this one, like most things Be did. Pirate Microsoft to death, people.

Actually, I firmly believe that piracy is what got Microsoft where they are today. Think about it. Ten years ago, if you hadn't been able to pirate Windows and all those nice programs to run on it, would you be using Windows today?

My one BeOS comment

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 03:38:00 GMT

I was a registered BeOS developer and staunchly used their last three or four releases. I purchased each new release with excitement, and I tried to encourage others to buy it as well. I even talked one of the small software companies near my house into carrying BeOS and GoBE Productive bundles.

Nonetheless, I have stopped using BeOS and developing anything for it because it is currently dead. I don't mean that it can't be reincarnated into OpenBeOS, Zeta, or something else, but it is not actively being maintained and updated today. It is dead today.

I still have by BeOS CDs and could install it at any moment, but with the lack of support and updates to it, I really don't want to waste my time developing something for a stagnant OS.

I really liked BeOS, and I hope one of the BeOS clone projects does well (my preference is one of the open source clones). I would like to use BeOS again once it is maintained, updated, and looks like it might have a future.

Close the thread on this.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 06:40:00 GMT

Well, for an OS that's "dead", you sure get lots of raves on this board. To me, death of an OS is merely a concept. I logged remotly to a PDP-10 today, worked like a champ, new software for it and all.

You people. Some are zealots, and zeal is fine, and anti zeal is also fine. But, think about it a minute. Do you have to run to make a comment "I am a (slashdotter) admin on blah blah blah and I use windows(or linux) and I say there is no support(or no this or that, or the other).

SO? If you're such a big kahuna, join the project somewhere and make a difference. "BeOS" was all about JLG and company saying "I'm doing it for my fans, top that BILL" He used celebrity, his careful selection of the right people, their ideas and invention/innovation that made your industry, to make a product that even STILL, to this day, is more advanced than in ways than anything you'll ever see elsewhere. Journaling? Bleat.

The new projects is an extention of that logic. Follow the path of the phrophets, and if you don't believe- then show us you're as bad as you say you are.

Be Groovy

BeOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 06:54:00 GMT

Well, for an OS that's "dead", you sure get lots of raves on this board

BeOS isn't dead. The Be part might be dead but the OS part is alive and well and it's being updated as you read this. Wait for YellowTab Zeta.

Sure there haven't been updates foe BeOS for a while but what do you expect when a company such as Be goes broke. I look forward at YellowTab's Zeta.

B_Whopper...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 08:38:00 GMT

B_Whopper: I tried Linux 5-6 months ago. Slackware actually

5-6 months ago is a long time. A lot has happen between then and now (like KDE 3.1 finally stablizing and probably be out if weren't for the @^*!% security bug). Besides, Slackware is not for the faint of heart. If you don't want to configure you system, don't use it. Slackware is hard to configure, and their default installation sucks (i didn't used the latest version, but the latest version is just a updated set of packages anyway ).

B_Whopper: You HAVE to be joking. Linux is ULTRAslow compared to BeOS.
- Booting

Booting, I'll have to admit is slower than BeOS. So you loose half a minute, maybe more. The end of the world? (One thing I notice when I tried Slackware was its boot time was rather slow compared with Mandrake with Aurora off).

B_Whopper: - unpacking stuff

Unpacking stuff as in? If compressed archives, for *.zips, *.gzips and *.bzips, Linux is way faster than BeOS in this field. Especially with bigger archives. But still I didn't get what you mean by unpacking stuff.

B_Whopper: - starting applications

Starting KDE applications with the bleeding edge components (read: using the latest kernel, latest Qt, latest unstable KDE release candidate) on KDE is as fast as opening BeOS applications on BeOS. To my experience of course. (On a slower older machine, machines I obviously don't use, obviously BeOS fares better. I don't know why..)

A year, heck maybe half a year ago, starting C++ applications and running them may be slow, but now they are not all that slow.

B_Whopper: - browsing ANYTHING on the desktop with a "explorer clone"

I sure didn't notice any difference. Sure Tracker is nice, but for "browsing", I notice nothing different (by desktop, I think you meant browsing local drives and directories). Speaking on file browsing, I notice Linux is way faster than BeOS is transfering, copying and deleting large files.

B_Whopper: - MULTITASKING (linux doesnt even know what this is)

I once had everything stop responding (mouse, keyboard) while using SoundPlay. So much for multitasking. (Besides, have you even tried Robert Love's patches?)

B_Whopper: OK, Rajan, i'll try linux AGAIN. What distro and what patches ???

I suggest you hold off till 2.6 and till 4.3 stablizes. Wait approx 6 more months.

B_Whopper: Rajan: IF Nick S. can do it, you can :-)

I'm being totally honest with you. To be frank with you, I have absolutely no reason why I should defend Linux. I loath the design of certain key parts of a overall GNU/Linux system (the kernel is fine), I loathe the license, etc.

I can't admit to you that *multitasking* on BeOS is better than on Linux because generally it is *multithreading* that you are talking about. The amount of multithreading used in BeOS is far more than in Linux (plus GNU, KDE, Qt and XFree86). The plus side is that BeOS is incredibly responsive. The downside is that writing large apps for BeOS can and will be a pain in the arse.

Fooks: but history has shown that forcing multithreading down developers throat isn't the way to go.

One of the few times I agree with you.

...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 08:59:00 GMT

Nate: I it doesnt work for you, then fine, either program your own drivers or give up, downt complain on forums.

The reason we are complaining is that a bunch of BeOS zealots think that BeOS is God's answer for OS, and everything else is crap.

Nate: It was WAY ahead for its time

Nothing is way ahead of its time. The best marketers are those who can *create* the need, not supply a need. Be Inc. died because it never grasped the concepts of marketing, not because BeOS was ahead of its time.

Alex (The Original): Oh come on man! Give me a break. Rajan, your replies and comments are always wise but this particular one doesn't make any sense.

Care to tell me why my comment doesn't make any sense? That hard disk transfers for example. Or I/O. Or networking. The list goes on and on. The only nice thing about BeOS I see is the UI.

Alex (The Original): BeOS is DEFINATELY faster then Linux. Loading times, app response everything is faster, way faster.

To the layman, BeOS definately feels faster. Looks can be decieving, however. Remember how KDE guys used to say Konqueror is faster than Nautilus 1? It was mainly how KDE loads directories. Run a benchmark, both are the same. Percieved speed is not what I'm talking here, real speed. Number-cruching speed.

Be OS shines where Be Inc. place importance in. Like how it handles media files, its media low latency (ever heard BeOS skipped a beat?), its responsiveness. Its raw speed, however, is not its advantage.

MonkeyBoy: I've spoken to my lecturer in Operating Systems who is a Dr/phD in Computing Science and is a BIG fan of BeOS.

I have spoken to many professors who are big fans of CP/M. DOes it mean CP/M is better than every single OS out there? Nope.

Hug0: Apart form networking, Linux is NOT faster than beos, what you mean is that linux has *BETTER DRIVERS* than beos.

Well, drivers play a part, but not a huge part. Unless you haven't notice, Linus Torvalds ditch some pretty nice concepts like microkernels not because it was terrible from the technical perspective, but terrible in the speed prespective.

A lot of Linux is optimized for speed, the kernel, the file systems, etc. If it was networking speed I want, I would be using BSD, wouldn't I?

Alex (The Original): BeOS isn't dead. The Be part might be dead but the OS part is alive and well and it's being updated as you read this. Wait for YellowTab Zeta.

The denials. Do you get security and bug fixes for BeOS 5? DO you recieve feature updates? No and no. *BeOS* is a product of *Be Inc.*. What Zeta, OBOX, B.E.OS, etc. is doing is *cloning* it. It may be compatible, it may be not. But BeOS is *dead*.

You can use BeOS, being *dead* doesn't mean *unusable*. If it makes your day, use it. But don't deny that it is dead.

jlg=imcompetent CEO

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 09:57:00 GMT

jean-louise gasse was a bad CEO. he should have sold Be Inc to Apple, and realized that Apple could have and indeed did, purchase steve job's next.

jlg screwed up apple and refused to be believe windows would surpass mac os (it did)

also jlg was offered a position at amiga as CEO, which he turned down. instead of creating be os from scratch, he could have made amiga os more modern, while enjoying a revenue stream!

if i c jlg as ceo of any company, i'll know to sell off shares in that company's stock.

what was Be inc's total revenue?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 10:09:00 GMT

i recall an article "how to make a million bucks on be os"
on be inc's website. ironic since i doubt that be inc's total revenue has ever amounted to a $1 million.

i suspect $100 million was invested in be inc from venture capitalists, and it was sold for $11 million, with $1 million in total sales.

ironic, given that next's failure in the os market did not deter venture capitalists, nor ms's market dominance

Update land

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 10:43:00 GMT

Isn't it strange that all Linux Zeals here tell me to wait 6 months and it will be great, and I've heard that phrase for the last 3 years or so...

Bugfixes and updates every single day....

BeOS is old but really works pretty fine without bleeding edge updates every day...

Is it just me who wants to USE my computer rather than UPDATE my computer???

Let's just face it... Linux will be stuck in serverland being *BSD's little brother while all home users who like surfing the net just gonna have to stick to BeOS or Windows.... 'cause Linux will have 6 months left for the next 6 years....

Zeta you have my bag of money, OpenBeOS my bag of devotion

Rajan replies

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 12:02:00 GMT

suggest you hold off till 2.6 and till 4.3 stablizes. Wait approx 6 more months./>

HOW COME Linux users always tells me to wait ? I can say the same about BeOS. Wait 6 months and check out Zeta. OR i can say, wait 1-1.5 years and check out OpenBeOS or B.E.O.S.

BeOS definately feels faster. Looks can be decieving, however. Remember how KDE guys used to say
Konqueror is faster than Nautilus 1? It was mainly how KDE loads directories.

Isnt that WHAT COUNTS. The "FEEL" of it. You say Linux is actually faster, but BeOS feels faster. Whats WRONG what that sentence?

What distro are you using Rajan ? I'll check it out and compare it to BeOS. To be honest there are a couple of things i'd like from the Linux users. The userbase, all the drivers and some of the applications. :-) But, i'll stick with BeOS.

L8r

.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 14:56:00 GMT

I am a huge BeOS fan, but these frequent and frankly content-less BeOS news items are beginning to sound a bit desperate.

Please only post if there is actual news!

"Isn't it strange that all Linux Zeals here tell me to wait 6 months and it will be great, and I've heard that phrase for the last 3 years or so... "

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 15:49:00 GMT

Glad someone else noticed that.

LinuxRadio use BeOS 5 Pro

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 16:41:00 GMT

http://www.linuxradio.info/

LinuxRadio is comprised of several systems to create the on net presence.

The media-server is an Intel PIII 450 with 256 meg RAM, running BeOS 5 Pro OS.

A voice for Open Source.

BeOS for PPC?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 17:55:00 GMT

You need to buy a copy of the Pro version. The PPC version was never free.

Re: anon & rajan_r

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 21:10:00 GMT

"I am a huge BeOS fan, but these frequent and frankly content-less BeOS news items are beginning to sound a bit desperate."

Well, it is the holiday season and people are spending more time in real life and less with their computers - as it should be. The BeOS people are just trying to keep the noise level up until things begin happening again. Also, (in case you didn't know already) there aren't that many people developing /developing for /using BeOS. Real news will be sparse compared to that of the Windows or Linux crowd.

Rajan_r, your "BeOS is dead" statement is nonsense. Dead by definition means kaput, finished, broken and permanently out of order. BeOS IS unsupported, relatively outdated and is not currently being developed (aside from the opensource initiatives) - at least as a desktop OS. It IS still usable, however. When BeOS isn't used, isn't spoken of except in past tense and is eulogized in every retrospective of computing I'll agree with you- not before.

Iconoclast

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 22:12:00 GMT

Iconoclast wrote: Actually, I firmly believe that piracy is what got Microsoft where they are today. Think about it. Ten years ago, if you hadn't been able to pirate Windows and all those nice programs to run on it, would you be using Windows today?
________________________________________

Actually, 10 years ago, I was happily running Amiga Workbench, which I continued to do until 1996, I believe. I tend to think Microsoft did the same thing to Commodore, but I am rather conspiratorially-minded. When I've completed my research, I might do a book on the matter.

A good place to start looking is the old Playboy interview with Steve Jobs. He talks a bit about espionage in the computer world. Apple even played at the game, for instance, forcing Creative Computers to drop the Amiga line so they could sell Macs.

Most Commodore employees feel the company was intentionally destroyed from the inside, which is a tactic common to John D. Rockefeller and people of his sort.

RE OBeOne

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 23:42:00 GMT

Is it just me who wants to USE my computer rather than UPDATE my computer???

There's no need to update when something works, but there hasn't been a driver update to BeOS since 5 was released. BeOS doesn't work correctly with my video card. Therefore, if I want to run BeOS, I would rather UPDATE my computer than not have it run at all.

Let's just face it... Linux will be stuck in serverland being *BSD's little brother while all home users who like surfing the net just gonna have to stick to BeOS or Windows.... 'cause Linux will have 6 months left for the next 6 years....

I don't know what you're talking about. I have been using Linux as a desktop and "surfing" with it since before Windows 95 came out.

RE Sandwich Boy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 23:45:00 GMT

A good place to start looking is the old Playboy interview with Steve Jobs. He talks a bit about espionage in the computer world. Apple even played at the game, for instance, forcing Creative Computers to drop the Amiga line so they could sell Macs.

Wow! Somebody who actually does read the articles.

BeOS: Dead or Alive

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 23:54:00 GMT

As I said before, I like BeOS a lot. However, I compare it to things like Amiga. Great, but gone. That doesn't mean they can't live again someday.

Sure, I can still go in my closet and boot up my Atari 800. I can still boot up my old Amiga. I can pull out my old slide rule and use it. However, development and support of these things has stopped, the world has progressed, and their usefulness has not kept up with the times. The same is true of BeOS. I can't run it on my new computer. No updates are available. BeOS is at a complete stand still. It is dead, just as a car without gas is dead.

Just as I can boot up and run the old hardware mentioned above, I can get an older computer and run BeOS on it. However, times have swiftly past by BeOS and it is no longer useful to me since it won't run on my new computer.

Just as promises of an Amiga return abound, promises of BeOS's reincarnation abound in products like Zeta, OpenBeOS, etc. Once these things are released and stable, then I will rejoice over the rebirth of a great OS. Until BeOS (or a clone) are actively developed and supported, it is stagnant and it is dead. If you have a different opinion; so be it. This one is mine.

I'm still using it...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 23:59:00 GMT

Albeit not often, I use it. In fact, I'm using it right now. I'm typing this from Mozilla ("Bezilla") 1.0, I have BeAIM running in the background (wow, I never realized how much alike it was to AIM), and it works great. What's best is that only 15 minutes ago I started downloading BeOS PE, Bezilla, and BeAIM, and now I'm using it. It ain't dead yet.

Re: Rajan replies

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 03:09:00 GMT

B_Whopper: HOW COME Linux users always tells me to wait ? I can say the same about BeOS. Wait 6 months and check out Zeta. OR i can say, wait 1-1.5 years and check out OpenBeOS or B.E.O.S.

Zeta.... Zeta. 6 months ago, BeOS users said it should be out by now. Now, 6 months later, they say another 6 months. The same with OBOS. Besides, even they are released, Zeta to me would just be BeOS with a lot more features, and OBOS would just be R5 (not very interesting, is it, I already have R5).

Neither release would solve my qualms - the bigest of all, the lack of a *good* browser. And that's not a problem with me only, but with many others. Right now, the only thing OBOS promises that attracks me is a faster file system; but you know that I can just install it on my R5 installation now, right?

Oh course, you can use Linux now, just don't expect it to be as fast as I told you it would be.
B_Whopper: Isnt that WHAT COUNTS. The "FEEL" of it. You say Linux is actually faster, but BeOS feels faster. Whats WRONG what that sentence?

For example, when a application is busy, though matter how busy it is, the menus always work. But your commands into the app is as slow as on Linux. Things like that. If I don't have a life, I can name a whole list of it.

To you, whether it feels faster or not matters. To me no. I compile a lot, I do a lot of memory intensive work - for me, Linux is way faster. In the future, my Linux machine would be the server of my home's LAN, so networking speed is important to me too.

B_Whopper: What distro are you using Rajan ?

I really can't answer that. I'm using Mandrake, albeit with kernel 2.4.19 with Love's low latency patch (maybe one of these days I would use 2.4.20), XFree 4.2.99.3 (4.3 Preview), Qt 3.1.1, KDE 3.1 RC3, etc. So I would say I'm using something custom.

B_Whopper: The userbase, all the drivers and some of the applications.

Well, I hate some of the userbase (the high and mighty guys).

Ansis5: Rajan_r, your "BeOS is dead" statement is nonsense. Dead by definition means kaput, finished, broken and permanently out of order.

My defination of dead is different from you. Just ask you a question, is Newton dead? Is 486s dead? Is Windows 3.1 dead?
Besides, I don't care if some clone is going to replace BeOS. Because BeOS is its product on its own.

Ansis5: It IS still usable, however.

Same with Newtons, 486s and Windows 3.1, and used by quite a number of people. To me, they are still dead.

Stephen Smith: What's best is that only 15 minutes ago I started downloading BeOS PE, Bezilla, and BeAIM, and now I'm using it. It ain't dead yet.

A few months ago, I have a old 486 running Windows 3.1. I can boot it up, run Netscape 1.0, and use it. It is dead, even though I can use it.

Rajan

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 10:46:00 GMT

Anyway. I love using the BeOS, as you love slowNIX :-) No, seriously. Lets not diss any OS. As long as it get's the job done.

PS: Zeta is due Jan 03. The 6 months thing was kinda of a joke. :-)

PS2: I'll try and get ALL the latest stuff for Linux and check it out for the 11'th time.

Happy New Year EVERYONE.

To Rajan r

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 12:45:00 GMT

Hey you!

You're contributing to Linux codebase?
Because we, BlueEyedOS men, with only low latency and preemptive patches not get the total BeOS performance, sorry, it's sad but true (Metallica!!!).
Now, hacking and modifying the kernel, speed up the xfree (with our new app_server xfree based), adding BeOS APIs, ahhhh, now I can see a kernel that easily compete with BeOS.
Do you want see too?

www.blueeyedos.com/downloads.html
blueos.free.fr/kernel_server1.tar.gz

download, test and see the real BeOS power in your poor and simple Linux.

Ok, I admit. Our kernel is still "Linux", but we can port it to FreeBSD kernel, because the code used is *fully* posix compliant (the adoption of the Linux as our kernel base has been made because of your drivers and have more developers avaliable than FreeBSD, if not bye-bye Linux...).

Now, only miss run OpenTracker, but in few months it will be possible

Happy new year and peace to everybody!

Michael Vinícius de Oliveira
BlueEyedOS Webmaster

If it were working you would not care?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 14:19:00 GMT

Zeta.... Zeta. 6 months ago, BeOS users said it should be out by now. Now, 6 months later, they say another 6 months. The same with OBOS. Besides, even they are released, Zeta to me would just be BeOS with a lot more features, and OBOS would just be R5 (not very interesting, is it, I already have R5).

Neither release would solve my qualms - the bigest of all, the lack of a *good* browser. And that's not a problem with me only, but with many others. Right now, the only thing OBOS promises that attracks me is a faster file system; but you know that I can just install it on my R5 installation now, right?

You must be out of your mind. You're saying that if OpenBeOS, in six months, churned out a 100% open and working clone of BeOS R5 able to run all of R5's applications, you would not care? Something that you don't realize is that all of those programmers who are now working on Zeta, YellowTab, OBOS, etc. could then work on apps. There would be a 100% platform with an increasingly large userbase, not to mention a great operating system. You don't think that somebody would churn out a great browser before you could log into the CVS repository?

And plus, what about BeZilla? Last time I checked, Mozilla 1.2 was the latest for BeOS. That's pretty damn usable. I think what we really need is some native readable fonts. ;-)

OBOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 15:05:00 GMT

1.3a is the latest og Mozilla. I agree, its bloated. Phoenix 0.5 "seems" a bit faster though.

No one said OBOS was 6 months away. I'd say 1.5-2 years. But i could be wrong. Zeta is the thing to watch for now.

To Sum It Up...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 16:47:00 GMT

Lessee...
BeOS is fast/No it's not.
BeOS is dead/No it's not.
BeOS is useful/No it's not.

Wow. I feel so elevated after paging through this discussion. Y'all should call this site OSBitch.

For all you complaining about the existence of story - don't read it, and don't reply to it if you don't want it to be here. If no one pays attention it'll probably stop, yes?

For all the "what's so great about..." BeOS is great. Compared to what it was up against at the time, it kicked the crap outta just about everything. Timing & market forces basically did it in. (yes, along with the company's actions...but to be fair, you should try to steer a boat in a hurricane before you condemn the captain.)

As for XP...it still amazes me that, on a computer with a +1 GHZ processor & a hefty chunk of RAM, I would still wait as long or longer for the computer to DO SOMETHING as on an old PII with 64 MB. It ain't the apps...I'm talking native stuff here: IE, Outlook. Windows is finally pretty stable, but it's still a bloated pile of manure.

IF BeOS were updated to a fairly even keel, it would still kick the crap outta Windows.

Multimedia. Yes, it needs the app support. I myself have gone to OS X to use the bigger audio apps. But you wanna know what the big deal about playing multiple files is? If you have a multitrack recorder, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING. A 32 track digital recorder plays 32 audio track AT THE SAME TIME. If the OS cannot handle it (Win9x...) then it ain't gonna happen.

BeOS could handle it with fairly modest hardware - that's why all the "Big Audio Companies" were interested, until they got turned off by the company management. Most of them turned away because they needed to sell packages, and they did not see it happening with Be Inc, NOT BeOS.

I'm assuming that this story was posted to counter the idiotic piece on OS Opinion recently. For that, I'm glad that someone posted something more accurate. I also hope, though, that the next time I see the BeOS logo on one of these sites that it is about something new, rather than the S.O.S.

Re: If it were working you would not care?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 17:18:00 GMT

You're saying that if OpenBeOS, in six months, churned out a 100% open and working clone of BeOS R5 able to run all of R5's applications, you would not care?

I'm saying that it isn't Linux users that say *wait*. At least I give a better timeframe for B-Whopper to wait, knowing if the releases are released late, it wouldn't be all that late. My point was that the public knows little about Zeta.

In other words, Zeta is vapourware. When Zeta was first unveiled, they said by end on this year. Tommorow is the last day of the year, and they aren't closing in on the final release.

OBOS on the other hand is very different. Some parts is moving very fast, other parts stagnant. But again, many fans said by year end we would have a feature-functional alpha. Do we have it? Nope.

How would we know YellowTab wouldn't bankrupt or YellowTab doesn't decides that a BeOS-clone is not a money-maker and picks a different market? How would we know whether OBOS just looses team or have a developer's crisis.

Neither company/group have ever delivered, and the Linux kernel, xFree86 and KDE have delivered a lot of times.

And plus, what about BeZilla? Last time I checked, Mozilla 1.2 was the latest for BeOS. That's pretty damn usable. I think what we really need is some native readable fonts. ;-)

The last I tried (can't remember the version) BeZilla was 3-4 weeks ago. As stable as a earthquake.

Nope

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 18:02:00 GMT

Rajan: "for me, Linux is way faster."

No No and No, Linux os NOT faster than beos, dont be a stuborn:

Here's an very old benchmark, so old you can only found it on google's cache, but it serves the purpose:
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:Sim25ScspvUC:slashdot.org/arti...

BeRealistic

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 18:12:00 GMT

I use BeOs R5 everyday at work, I'm the chief developer at an ISP.
BeOs is great for multimedia and coding on really old hardware (MMX on x86 with at least 233 Mhz and 64 MB), something that Linux nor MS could ever do.
I use WinXP on PCs over 1 Ghz, but with all spyware daemons/services turned off, it does the job, even though I feel hat I'm selling my soul to Bill Gates.
I use Linux RH8 with W98 through VMWare on a Toshiba Laptop (850 Mhz 512 MB) and a BEOS R5 partition (geek pride).
Dvix movies play better on virtual W98 with media player 6 (very poor on media player 6 under crossover wine on RH) than VLC or XINE on real RH Linux, and movies on old 233 Mhz BeOs R5 pro with nplay.
I think BeOs technology has been certified by MS on several items, integrated multimedia applications, features found in XP (before only in BeOs PE) and in planned future releases (Database filesystem and 64 bit kernel architecture, etc) and so has MacOs X with zillions more CPU/RAM resources.
There is a winner in every facet of OS technology, MS has the big crowd, Linux has superb networking and file transfer, and MacOS X has the eye candy everyone likes. There is no winner, but an OS for every purpouse, BeOs will always be an option for making things easy for newbies and cheap/old hardware, but until it reaches new generation stable OSS releases BeOs will remain only for Geeks (remember the Geek Port on the Bebox?).

Re: Nope

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Dec 2002 20:48:00 GMT

The benchmarks used XFree86 3.3 whom its OpenGL support for even worse than BeOS itself. XFree86 4.x should be used. Besides, the benchmarks itself isn't available anymore (and that Slashdot page can be accessed without Google Cache.

Besides, like you said, the benchmark is old, and times have changed.

And to dod, if you actually checked it out, while WinFS in Longhorn and BeOS's BFS sounds the same, technically they are day and night.

comments

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Dec 2002 22:13:00 GMT

>>>Besides, like you said, the benchmark is old, and times have changed.

I agree with that. You can't compare the good old days with 10 mpegs, quicktime movies and mp3 playing at once. 5 years ago, mp3's were encoded at 96 - 128 kilobits -- now most are 192 kilobits. Same thing for mpegs and quicktime files --- the bitrate is much higher and the codec is much more CPU intensive.

And alot of the problems are related to the apps, not the OS themselves. Take divx movies, if you use ffdshow it is much faster than divx.com's codec.

syllable

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Jan 2003 05:57:00 GMT

i just want to say that things like syllable/atheos, beos, morphos and similar projects is important, if the only OS's around was the ones the masses used, then we would loose a lot! not everybody wants a slow os.. a OS designed for networking as a desktopmachine.. a closedsource OS.. and so on.. ppl want to be different! want to use things that fit for them, windows don't fit me.. linux don't fit me, i use freeBSD, but frankly, that doesen't fit me either:) a mix between beos and freebsd would be genoius:) and atheos/syllable looks good so far!

well, happy new years..

hmm

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Jan 2003 06:03:00 GMT

and to those idiots that think linux is faster than beos, get a fucking grip.. beos IS faster than linux, a lot faster.. X is slow and depricated:) i run the newest X on my primary partition, with the newest graphics-drivers, and i run beos on my secondary partition.. beos boots a LOT faster than my freebsd, and the responsetime in beos virtually knocks Xfree out.. everybody ranting on about linux being fast gui-wise should burn..

ofcourse, if you run waimea, fluxbox.. something like that, you have a pretty fast system, but then, try to start mozilla, galeon, phoenix.. it takes TIME! a lot of time.. and that goes for several apps! linux/unix is nice, but it isn't designed for the desktop, and that one can notice.. better run fresco/berlin or something like that when it becomes more mature!

and still appy newyearseve

2003, A BeOS Oddessy.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Jan 2003 18:01:00 GMT

cue music, maestro!

Yes, it took some major rewriting in assembly, anytime you wanna call something new. BeOS was best known as an OS that wasn't built abour sedimentary design. It was a philosophy that JLG talked about, and something he believed in. It takes more to do that, rather than pop in some update. You can only update or patch enough times before you have to go "back to the drawing board" and for that, BeOS TOPS everyone else.

Is it a geek OS? No, not really, it wasn't meant to be. Sure, geeks appreceate a lot of things in beos, both design and implementation. But it was designed so that an engineer could appreceate it, even if ANYONE can use it.

This is where the beos community is heading, and this will be BeOS's year.

BTW, Midi Kit reaches milestone 1 as of new years eve!

OSNews:

Just to point out

so?

Again?

Tried it, but...

Re: rajan r

Installed BeOS PE (the original) a week ago..

BeOS 5 PE Max Edition

Sorry to be cynical...

BeOS for PPC?

Re: Re: rajan r

yet again

Re: Sorry to be cynical...

.

softline.fr

RE: .

Re: Sorry to be cynical .... [but I'm a believer].

About the status of OpenBeOS

In other news ...

RE: About the status of OpenBeOS

BeOS isn't that much!

*yawn*

i tried it

Re : BeOS isn't that much!

Just one clone?

To OSNews writers:

Finally something from the 21st century

RE: In other news ...

sick of hearing about BeOS

let me clarify

"If only they GPLed BeOS 5"

RE stephen smith

It's getting tired

For those who asked...

Re: So

RIP BeOS - get over it

Re. devilsplaything

Be

BeOS

Required !!

couple of comments...

Does anyone know where I can buy BeBox?

re. bsdrocks

get over it

Actually, big developments are occuring...

An OS agnostic view

here we go again

Chill out people

Just like a tucker

Lies

Unix was also capitalistic...

Let sleeping dogs lie...

reinventing the wheel

adam and other people that don't understand.

Zeta

dead

A joke..

Re: a joke

unfair?

Couldn't give a shit what the trolls say

BeOS = Good

If BeOS is dead howz come all the others stink so much worse?

Re: adam and other people that don't understand.

Re: Re: a joke

Have some fun!

Re: BeOS = Good

Re:Beos = Good

Rajan & Linux

Re: Rajan & Linux

Re: Re:Beos = Good

And we get nowhere:

RAJAN & Linix

Ehmm

Finally, an honest Linux user

Download site for German speaking BeOS fans

Re:Beos = Good

jeez...

Here we go again!

comments

Re: rajan r

yawn