http://www.osnews.com/story/852/AtheOS_Fork_Breathes_Life_to_BeOS Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 24 May 2013 11:22:58 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Obviously, as we can't use it right now, we have no idea how complete/functional it is at this moment.. but if he has been working on it for 6 months, its likely not too shabby.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this baby (and giving it a testrun) Sounds very interesting, and to have all the features/drivers of linux now in an atheos-like way is very neat. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 20:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? than OBOS Tue, 26 Mar 2002 20:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Here's the official NewOS website:

http://newos.sourceforge.net/ Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Another BeOS replacement? Kudos to Mr Hayden for I couldnt do what he has.. but I must ask.. does the now 3-way split of OBOS, BlueOS and Atheos-BeOS risk endangering the ability of all of those projects to attract sufficient developers and users? Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? OK.. I forgot newos.... Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yeah, they've posted some screenshots. But it looks like Mr. Hayden has progressed futher than they'll ever be. I think BeOS on top of Linux will come faster through Bill Hayden's fork of AtheOS than anything else.

Of course with the AtheOS GUI running on top of Linux, wouldn't that make it more Linux than AtheOS? Oh, my head's starting to hurt... Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? hopefully if this is far enough along and somewhat useable, it will attract developers now. besides which, its atheos compatible largely too, so it could attract all those atheos developers who are stuck while kurt is on break.

besides which, this can unite us with our PPC brothers, who have been apart for oh so very long now. that propect in itself is very cool..

if you want, you can just look at this as linux sans X .. that is also a very appealing prospect. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >OK.. I forgot newos...

NewOS was _never_ meant as a replacement for BeOS. It was the pet project ('searching for knowledge' kind of thing) by Travis, who just happened to be an ex-Be kernel engineer. We shared a house with Travis for more than 6 months last year, so I know NewOS and 'its story' a bit better than you do.

As for the AtheOS/BeOS fork, I believe it is a great idea, and I could not understand why no one did it earlier. It makes perfect sence and I even had a "teaser" article about it last year on BeNews... AtheOS and BeOS have more similarities than have differences. And AtheOS is GPL. So, obviously... Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ....Merging the simplicity and elegance of the BeOS and Atheos API's with the complexity and monolithic kernel of Linux... Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This may be a better approach to greater Linux adoption as it brings the best of two worlds. The stable Linux kernal meets a new OS which is its only real problem right now. X11 and unix cloneliness are nice, but most end users could care less, they just want something that works. Keep the kernel and start over with the rest!
Hopefully this will get more Linux types on board as well as the Open BeOs people. Generally forking is bad, but in this case it could bring a lot of groups together rather than split one up. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? largely a myth and nicely covered here in a post by Bill Hayden Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? That should read : "...with the complexity of the monolithic kernel of Linux..."

Man, if I'm going to post flame bait, I had better make sure my t's are dotted and my i's are crossed. I don't want to get called out on poor grammar.

BTW - I don't think that this is necessarily a bad idea, I just think that we should throw our support behind OpenBeOS, and not make our beloved OS ride along the coattails of Linux. In the short term, it does help things out - driver support would sure be nice - but in the long term it takes away from what BeOS is/was supposed to be - free of legacy code, which is inheirent by nature in the Linux kernel. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? now all thoseEarly Linux adopters who did it becasue it was new will come over to this to do the same. this time though, we will have a diffrent window server. well, if you ask me, I think that would be great!!! I wonder what he picked. berlin? what else is there? did he pick AtheOSs window server? what about video drivers? does Xf86 release specs that they have for hardware so that others can impliment a driver for the same hardware on another windowing system?

perhaps gobe will come back over!! what about File Systems? are they developing a BFS-ish one? or are they goign to stick with Reiser as it moves toward that goal?

wooo I can't wait to ge this on my PC!!!even is the windowing system does not work right away we still have all the great GNU tools to use in the comand prompt!!! Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Of course the lead (and only?) developer of a project would defend his decisions so vicariously. I'm not inclined to agree that using a monolithic kernel was the best choice of kernel. Why not use Darwin, which is *mostly* a microkernel - or one of the *BSD's, though not microkernel are much more robust than Linux?

It's fairly obvious to me that the decision to use Linux was based in part on driver and networking support, and not for any other clear advantage. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? but!!!!!!

as we all know, good enough with lots of support wins the market

Cough*Microsoft*Cough Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think something has to be said for getting the interest through using linux. maybe there are better alternatives (in fact, there are) than linux... but linux will likely attract more interest than anything else.

the network and driver support are pretty compelling reasons mind you.

linux is inheritly legacy how? because its not a "microkernel" (defining a microkernel is like trying to define jazz) ... this argument will really only show through in benchmarking and difficulty in coding new drivers ... the proof is in the pudding.. is it more difficult to code drivers for something like linux than beos? okay.. so linux may need some improvement here, but isn't there a driver framework overall in process right now? Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? At one time the Open-Be movement was going three ways, OBOS, BlueOS and BeUnited's revival of BeOS. When BeUnited failed it bothered me as I see competition as good, it keeps people on thier toes. In contrast, BlueOS and OBOS were diffirent enought they can diverge too far apart to compete. This new version of BeOS sits right in the middle between the two and should hopefully light a fire in the delevopment of these two. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I was waiting so long for somebody to slam a proper API on top of the Linux kernel. No more X11 crap. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Great... a version of AtheOS based on the Linux kernel... why are people obssesd with Linux anyway? What makes it's kernel soo much better than the AtheOS or NewOS kernel? Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ...Hey, now.......W2K rocks... Tue, 26 Mar 2002 22:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >>linux is inheritly legacy how? Tue, 26 Mar 2002 22:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > What makes it's kernel soo much better than the AtheOS or NewOS kernel?
Drivers? Available on x86, PPC, 68k, MIPS, ...? Tue, 26 Mar 2002 22:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Frankenstein the Operating System?
The Unnamed Horror v1.0?
AbortheOS?
TransvestOS?



....hee hee hee.... Tue, 26 Mar 2002 22:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Most people championing micro-kernels probably have NO idea what a freaking micro-kernel is anyway. The BeOS kernel
IS NOT a micro-kernel, the Atheos kernel IS NOT a microkernel.
If you want a micro-kernel for the sake of using a micro-kernel go use QNX, or Minix Tue, 26 Mar 2002 22:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Somebody actually trashing X for good.

Now, Hayden should get in touch with the BlueOS folks and joint coding to make real advances there. Aren't New Atheos and BlueOS projects really going after the same thing? Tue, 26 Mar 2002 22:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? " Why not use Darwin, which is *mostly* a microkernel - or one of the *BSD's, though not microkernel are much more robust than Linux? "

Darwin runs on limited hardware at the moment (intel only!), but another bsd could be the better option. This would keep the door open for commercially exploiting the OS and it would make corporations less nervous about contributing. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 23:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Knocking the X out of linux.

Now Thats worthwhile. Have been chuntering on about doing that for ages.. everyone ignores me.... Tue, 26 Mar 2002 23:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? atheos is one wacky open source project. normally open source projects are collaborative or at least the maintainer is somewhat responsive to patches submitted.

i still don't understand why kurt used the gpl when he wanted to be the only one to make changes to his pet project (and take sabaticals).

even more intriguing is that no one else has tried to fork sooner. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 23:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yes, Linux is a good idea. It is good because it is moving, it has lots of support, and lots of developement, so you don't have to worry about supported hardware and platforms. Also in the 2.5 series I hear that they are working on cleaning it up a lot and removing as much cruft as they can.

On the other hand, Darwin is based on Mach and FreeBSD, so that adds _2_ layers, and Mach isn't that great, both are old with lots of legacy stuff. Mach might've been good in its day, but really its not a good choice anymore, except that Apple wanted to keep compatibility with NeXTStep, so they had to keep it. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 23:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Those people complaining about Linux really need to take a good look at the system. Why did people like BeOS? It was because of the great userspace. While the kernel itself enabled all the niftyness up in userspace, there was not much that was so special about it. Back then, the BeOS kernel was the only thing that could get the kind of speed the BeOS userspace experience needed. In the last year, Linux has gotten several great journaling filesystems, low-latency support that is very competitive with BeOS's, a VM that is fast and full of features, and the networking and device support advantages its always had. Even multi-threading, while underutilized by most Linux programs, is extremely well implemented in the kernel itself. Sure, Linux isn't the cleanest thing in the world. There are lots of things that smack 70's UNIX legacy. Yet, that doesn't seem to hurt the performance of the kernel. As for POSIX, it can't get old. POSIX is read(), write(), exec(), etc. In the 30 years since UNIX was invented, these are still the basic API primitives on which all user-spaces are built. Also, remember, that while the principles behind Linux are old, the implementation certainly isn't. Major parts of the system are constantly being rewritten and improved. Between 2.4 and 2.5, it got a new VM, new block-I/O layer, new scheduler, new driver interface, new page-cache data structure (radix-trees vs hash tables), etc. Linus is extremely good about looking at what needs work and accepting the best fixes for it. There is no danger of the kernel becoming static any time soon. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 23:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So I come back from cinema and find my mailbox _full_.
After skipping over the atheos list uproar for 30 minutes, I go to BeBits, and finally find this. Respect.

So my 2 eurocent:
Good idea. As a mac user, I like the PPC compatability. Since NewOS is obviously far from completion, this could be an interesting platform for a new BeOS/AtheOS experience.

Oh, and to the guy who wrote that Darwin runs on _Intel_ only: you on crack? Darwin is what powers OS X. Tue, 26 Mar 2002 23:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux has needed to ditch X for long time. If this new amalgam OS can give Linux a kick'n Be/AtheOS like GUI AND the enough Stallmanites/Slasdotties embrace it, it could lead to a first time Linux distro thats suitable for the desktop.

I fail to realize what this does for BeOS, besides detract from OpenBeOS. One of MANY reasons why BeOS is so cool, is that you never have to dick with the kernel, the way BeOS handles drivers is WAY better than Linux. Using Linux while gaining a lot of headway in drivers, will inherently make this amalgam OS very un-BeOS like. Linux (kernel) for anything other than a Linux distro is just a bad idea; its been being used now for about a decade, and the most elegant thing to come from its use is Lycoris, which is a slow unruly pig compared to BeOS. Will dumping X make the difference??? We'll see.

Of course it COULD be the best thing that ever happened to OpenBeOS. If all the Stallman drones support it over OBOS, due to the different licensing, this could keep a lot of crappy GPL developers away from OBOS. Another bad part is; the GPL, but thats another rant. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 00:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So let's see...if he gets this working, I can start running my beloved BeOS programs again (my new machine has a video card and onboard network that are unsupported under BeOS 5.0.3).

Then I can go back to dual-booting between Windows and "New AtheOS", as happy as I was when I dual-booted between Windows and BeOS. Currently, I'm dual-booting between Windows and Lycoris Desktop/LX, which is actually really good, but I miss many of my BeOS programs.

Maybe (REALLY BIG MAYBE) some folks in the Linux community who wouldn't support BeOS decide that this is a good move for extending the Linux kernel to the desktop, and get behind it. Maybe they even start writing for it. (Like I said, REALLY BIG MAYBE).

Then, a while later, OpenBeOS (or one of the others) gets usable, and all of these programs that run on "New AtheOS" can compile and run.

Ah, I can dream, can't I? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 00:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia, I belive someone created tried it, there is a (dead) SF project.

Hmm, this could be good, the BeOS API's as the posix for "moden" features (Node watching, GUI, etc).

mlk, back to OBOS. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 00:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This sounds cool, and it seems wise. I think that this will help since Linux has high driver availability. Plus, you have the option of using several different journaled file systems.

As for those who are mad about the fork of Atheos, three words: Get Over It. Atheos is available via the GPL and this allows (and encourages) derivative works. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 00:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? if the API will look like BeOS (will it be just look alike or fully source compatible?) it will make it easier to port some stuff to BeOS.

And, like all those old movie, the hero always train the villager before going to strike the evil king.

As for Linux, i don't like the kernel choice, but it's a good stopgap choice that work today (OBOS stopgap today is the R5 BeOS until NewOS). After all it's the API that is the hardest thing to change, the programmer don't really see the kernel usually.

I don't know how this will fit with GE... Wed, 27 Mar 2002 00:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, I don't like this.
I don't lie monolithic kernels (OK, AtheOS has no micro real kernel).
I don't like the GPL-fetishist-mentality behind Linux.

It's a nice experiment, but nothing more (at least to me).

My 0.02 €... Wed, 27 Mar 2002 01:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > (OK, AtheOS has no micro real kernel)

Oops, it should be:
"(OK, AtheOS has no real micro kernel)"

Sorry. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 01:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I was going through the mail list and found this Hayden's reply:

>>
> Everyone agrees that XWindows needs to die, but no one has put forth a
>worthy replacement... yet. :-)
>
>
>Um, yeah. It's called Qube.
>
>http://qubeos.com/
>
It does look very slick. However, it has one fatal flaw: it's not
open-source. If I just wanted "pretty", I would use MacOS X or QNX.

Bill Hayden
>>

Osnews has three stories about Qube:
Qube Launches Developer's Web Site, 2001-11-24
Qube 2p Released With DOS and Windows Support, 2001-10-07
Enter the Qube, a New Graphics Environment for CLI OSes, 2001-08-30

Available for Linux, I remember trying it sometime ago and thinking it needed more time, gonna' try it again:
This is the Qubeos End User Version for Linux, 865 KB

These are the install instrucctions:
>>
1.) Copy the whole direcory QubeLin to your root
directory / in Linux operating system.

2.) Set the resolotion in file /QubeLin/system/regs/xsystem.reg
in section [screen]. This resolution must be the same as your
XWindow system has. For this settings are neccesarry to set
values for width, height and depth.

3.) Copy file libXxf86dga.so.1.0 from directory /QubeLin/lib to your /usr/lib
directory in your Linux. Create the link to directory /usr/lib
@libXxf86dga.so.1 that will link to file libXxf86dga.so.1.0
at the same directory previously copied there.

4.) Then you can run XWindow mode by using xinit call application
linqube.
>>

Qube under Linux doesn't look to me like an X independent graphical enviroment, it uses X. But I wouldn't contradict Bill Hayden on this, anyone? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 01:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? well if it is an experiment, I think someone needs to tell the computer industry :-) Wed, 27 Mar 2002 01:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Atheos is available via the GPL and this allows (and encourages) derivative works."

While thats true the creator of atheos asked that certain parts of the project be left alone, and I think his request should be honored. He prolly shouldn't have used the gpl since he feels that way, but even if he changes liscenses now his work is being used in another project. Of course this is all speculation, he might not even care. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 02:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I found something that might not be entirely true (imo), in the replies from Bill Hayden to Pablo M.

-fast booting

If Atheos supported all the features of Linux, the boot time would besimilar.

BeOS supported most of the features of Linux, but had a boot time at ~20 s on my box, while my current Mandrake system boots in > 1 minute. I don't know, but that sort of hints that AtheOS also could boot a *lot* faster than Linux.

Please correct me if I am wrong. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 02:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, I have to agree to a certain degree, with Hiddenbottom and KAMiKAZOW. The Linux kernel does not have a good approach to installing drivers, from the point of view of a desktop OS. Expecially when we speak of a media-oriented OS, where new hardware (heck, even new TYPE of hardware) with closed-cource drivers appear often and regularly. Now, can you imagine this scenario: company X (for example, MOTU) releases a new MIDI controller. Well, how does Linux support the device? It doesn't. Oh, of course, the next kernel will have support for it, provided that MOTU wants to open up some of the specs, provides a few header files... OK, so the next Linux kernel. Fine. WHo will want to install a new kernel? Not many musicians, I dare say. And what about recompiling it, so that it supports the symbols needed by the driver shiiped as a dynamically loadable kernel module? Because, I am afraid, this will be the next comment of a Linux evangelist: "you idiot/moron/ignorant, don't you know that Linux supports modules that don't need to be compiled into the kernel". Well, I know, but I also know that the kernel has to "know" in advance about the module. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 02:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, the kernel doesn't have to "know" in advance about the module. It's just that the kernel->module interface changes so often that its hard for modules to work on older kernels. Whether this is good or bad is debatable. It allows kernel developers a great deal more flexibility, and stupid decisions in the interface don't stay in there for long. However, it does make binary-only drivers more complex. Since most Linux drivers are OSS and part of the kernel tree, so simply doing apt-get install kernel-package will update the driver. Binary-only drivers are bad bad things, and only have a few legitimate uses (NVIDIA's for example, where releasing the whole driver would give away an entire OpenGL implementation). For most stuff, like MIDI hardware, the developers are seriously full of themselves if they think that they're really giving something away by making the interface open. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 02:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >>WHo will want to install a new kernel? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 02:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Well, the kernel doesn't have to "know" in advance about the module. It's just that the kernel->module interface changes so often that its hard for modules to work on older kernels. Whether this is good or bad is debatable." It's bad.
"However, it does make binary-only drivers more complex." For all intents and purposes, virtually impossible.

"Binary-only drivers are bad bad things, and only have a few legitimate uses (NVIDIA's for example, where releasing the whole driver would give away an entire OpenGL implementation)." First you say bad-bad, but instead of supporting your claim, you point a counter-example.

"For most stuff, like MIDI hardware, the developers are seriously full of themselves if they think that they're really giving something away by making the interface open." My oh my, aren't you presumptuous! This is what happens when a Linux zealot hits a wall: no real arguments to support Linux --> attack your perceived enemies on totally unrelated grounds. I really hope there is someone intelligent enough to recognize your disingenuous slandering.

Thank you very much for providing me the arguments why the Linux kernel is NOT the way to go for a desktop OS! Wed, 27 Mar 2002 03:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, all you Linux naysayers... if you don't like linux, what do you suggest? Linux works now, it is portable,it has relatively good hardware support and its almost as quick as BeOS; can you really tell if latencies in the kernel are 30 microseconds better, or 30 milliseconds for that matter? Lots of the lag in a desktop distro are from X and the rest of the UI.

As for boot time, I've heard linux can boot in 30 secondes or less if built to do so, but apparently Mandrake, etc. build everything in and run all sorts of stuff that can be removed.

While linux is far from perfect, you do know that its developement will continue for quite a while.

Now help me understand this: what this does is give you a BeOS-AtheOS like API with the AtheOS display server? And linux runs underneath, but there's no X? This sounds like more than a new distro, but less than a completely new OS.

Good luck too Bill Hayden, and I'll probably give this a try when my current round or papers/projects is finished. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 03:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? To the Atheos fork: Great Work. Very likely this will merge three streams necessary to get an open source alternative that will be able to compete with windows...

You have got the right idea, but try to understand why this fork is significant.

MS has incredible strength in the market place not because it is big & bad & can do what it likes, but rather it has forged a strong standard that developers can adhere to and get things to work. Admittedly, their APIs have problems, but they are standardardized. They are also standardized on a BINARY level which means that a developer can produce an app/driver or whatever without having to open up their software.

Now people in the open source movement say this is a bad thing because you can't see what's under the hood & fix it if it goes wrong. Not everyone agrees with this though, and there are many important commercial reasons why closed source is necessary. The side effect of closed source is that for the closed source to be useful, strict ABIs need to be defined and adhered to, and this is what MS has done. ABI's also imply a strong level of backward compatibility. Source level API's are far too flexible, are also subject to the whims of compilers and other tools, and indiscrimante changes by developers. The problem with open source is that it's very strength becomes its weakness at the same time. If the open source movement were much more strict about the standards of its APIs *AND* ABIs they would have a stronger chance of wrestling the desktop away from MS.

MS takes this a step further by using programs like the win95 logo etc. Here they standardize the look & feel of applications so that the end user can have a more consistent experience. Apple do much the same, and that is to their advantage too.

What I see from this latest announcement is that they've stumbled on what has been perceived to be a standard and adhered to it. Be designed yet another standard and it lives on regardless of the company going under. The BeOS experience is more than just an OS and a desktop - there are plenty of those already - it includes also the look & feel and other more esoteric features. If you all realize this and can stick to the standards, you will have a very strong chance of making an impact in the desktop world. Get that BeOS standard nailed down, and developers will flock. Whether it's Linux, Atheos or NewOS underneath is irrelevant, the standard that the app developer sees is much more important.

P Wed, 27 Mar 2002 04:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? As for boot time, I've heard linux can boot in 30 secondes or less if built to do so, but apparently Mandrake, etc. build everything in and run all sorts of stuff that can be removed.

Ah, but would it then have all the features and drivers of the Linux system? I still have to see a Linux system (with graphical enviroment) that boots as fast as BeOS, hell, most of them take longer time to boot than Windows. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 04:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In our dead little OS, eh? Can you imagine if we had three Amiga clones a year after the OS died?

Guess I need to polish up the ole' sandwich cart. Them boys'll be hungry.

Map propz ta all BeOS c0d3rz. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 04:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Bill Hayden ported the AtheOS app_server/windowing system to Linux. With a bit more work, the app_server can be ported to NewOS/OBOS. DarkWyrm, are you liasing with Bill?

We might have the core of OBOS ready sooner than we thought ;-) Wed, 27 Mar 2002 05:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? AtheOS is GPLed, OpenBeOS is under the MIT license. Thus, we cannot include code from AtheOS in OBOS. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 05:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? OBOS is mit license. AtheOS is GPL. Are they compatible? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 05:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Sorry. Didn't see your post. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 05:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? What I can see in Hayden's post is balancing on the border of rationalism and alibism ... If you want, you can always backup your opinion switch (kernel switch) :-)

-pekr- Wed, 27 Mar 2002 05:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "AtheOS is GPLed, OpenBeOS is under the MIT license. Thus, we cannot include code from AtheOS in OBOS."

GPL strikes again. Source contamination by the GPL is precisely why I don't even bother to take a look at such systems despite how good they might look.

P Wed, 27 Mar 2002 05:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? why the linux kernel? why not use another kernel. I really do not see the advantages of using linux vs another free kernel. plus it being GPL you would just be doing a different linux distro not an OS. take a look at NetBSD (it is truly free and multi-platform, has a great driver system). and can I prsume you'll be using kernel 2.4?(the most unstable linux kernel) speaking of VM : http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/kernel/uvm.html Wed, 27 Mar 2002 06:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I must to check it out.

Time will tell.

ciao
yc Wed, 27 Mar 2002 06:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Amiga OS never died. After Commodore died, Escom released the last major revision to the OS (3.1) and had the next revision ready for release (3.2) when it folded. I know a few folks with 3.2 ROMs and workbenches, all beta-testers for Escom. The OS didn't die until Gateway allowed Hagge and Partner to make 3.5, which ruined the integration between ROM and desktop. 3.2 was an excellent design. Pity the world will never know. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 06:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Just because he's using the Linux kernel now doesn't mean that he won't switch to another at a later date, but the kernel is linux's only problem. The way linux executes high level code is poor and that can be taken care of without replacing the kernel (to a point). Using Darwin or the BSDs might pose a licencing issue. Are you able to impliment non-GPL code into a GPL program? (AtheOS is GPL'd). Someone brought up a command line without a graphical interface: AtheOS can't do that (only a terminal app), but his project might. I wouldn't be suprised if you couldn't shut off the interface though. I'm a fan of the Mach kernel from Darwin and would love to see it used here, but it doesn't have the hardware support of linux. Again Apple's public source licence might prevent them from using it. If anyone has info about using BSD or other licenced code in a GPL program please email me. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 06:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? simple. it has the most driver support. it has accomplished a lot already. it has the widest developer base (relative to your BSD alternatives), the most commercial support and all. and i think it's complementary. linux needs a very good desktop engine right now, else it will stay forever in server space. hype is one thing, assessing what is true, and practical is another. taking everything at face value is the lazy way out, same as taking everything as hype. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 07:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >> If the open source movement were much more strict about the standards of its APIs *AND* ABIs they would have a stronger chance of wrestling the desktop away from MS.

How about the DirectX? It is from Microsoft and it is not backward compatible. I dont know what happened to this then. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 07:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "How about the DirectX? It is from Microsoft and it is not backward compatible."

What do you mean by that ? I'm not an expert in this field, but I play with DirectX for years, and never witnessed backward incompatibility ... Wed, 27 Mar 2002 07:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hello!

The boot-Time of Linux depends a lot of
- the Distro (Debian starts al lot faster than Mandrake)
- the Services are started

In mandrake, you can choose., which services should start. The more services, the longer the boot-time.

But: BeOS starts a lot faster than ervery Linux-Distro I choosed _without_ starting X-Windows ;-)

Poldi123 Wed, 27 Mar 2002 07:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Ah, but would it then have all the features and drivers of >the Linux system? I still have to see a Linux system (with >graphical enviroment) that boots as fast as BeOS, hell, most >of them take longer time to boot than Windows.

Linux boots in about 15 s on my PII 300 (2.4.18-preempt, low latency patch, nvidia driver, ReiserFS). How long it takes to boot with X is irrelevant in this case, since X isn't going to be used anyway. But with regards to the size of the AtheOS GUI, it probably will boot very fast!.


Regarding the "poor way" linux handles driver - it wouldn't be very hard to wrap the module management graphically and ie linking a System/Drivers folder on the desktop to /lib/modules/kernel... and have a drag-n-drop operation perform the necessary commands to load the driver. (actually this would be a 10 min hack)

Another thought is that the BlueOS probably/hopefully will be happy to co-operate with this nameless project.

Exciting times... //ealm Wed, 27 Mar 2002 08:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? i wrote : "Darwin only runs on Intel". Ooops must be getting tired i meant : the x86-port of darwin etc... Wed, 27 Mar 2002 09:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? People, I always have found it to be a nice feature that BeOS is quick booting, but this discussion is absolutely meaningless. What do you guys and gals do all day that you have this obsession with boot time? Well, once you start the machine and it takes 80 sec instead of 30 - so what?! Once it is running, who cares? It is not very smart to shut the system down every 5 minutes, anyway.
If it boots quick, then fine... if it doesn't, get over it. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 09:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So many comments! So much anticipation! When do we get to see it? What can we do to help it along? Is the basic idea here to run BeOS programs on top of Linux the way Windows 95 runs on top of DOS? Or is it a way to run Linux programs without X? Or will it run both? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 09:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Actually I don't really see Bill's project as an AtheOS fork. It's more or less a new Linux distro.

Using AtheOS for some month now, I was a little "shocked" about a fork this early in it's development. But after some time reading the AtheOS developer ML I calmed down. Seems that a lot of people who are into AtheOS are in there for the right reason. The just want a nice well designed OS to play around as a hobby. They (and me) are in there for the fun mostly, and not for creating a Windows killer. And as AtheOS is GPL'ed a fork was to come sometime. It was discussed before Bill's announcement a few times IIRC.

As for Bill's project, I guess it has it's ups and downs for AtheOS itself. No need to discuss them here, mostly all of them were mentioned on the ML yesterday. Personnaly, I couldn't care less. I got interessted in AtheOS because of it's design and kernel, so I'll stick with it. I knew about Kurt's attitude when I started using it and never bothered. It's just something fun to play with in my free time.

Whatever Bill wishes to achieve with his "fork" I wish him good luck as long as he is in there for the fun. I think it's more interessting to the Linux/BeOS folks than to the people actually interessted in AtheOS.

I don't really need an desktop replacement, I use both Windows XP (mostly gaming) and Debian and both to their job well for me. AtheOS and Free Software in general is something I do for fun (hm, looks like I get repetetive ;-). Seems like a lot of people these days are more in there to create the "best-OS-of-all-time". But for me it's just no fun to flame about kernel X does task Y better dann kernel Z (as long as everybody uses VIM, of course ;-).

So use whatever you please, don't flame other's for using what they like (even Windwos ;-) and start having some fun.

Just my 2 Cents,
citizen428 Wed, 27 Mar 2002 09:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Cool now BeOS users also have the pleasure ;-( to recompile kernels.

Although I admire the work Bill is doing I believe he better used his knowledge to help out OBOS. This is totally against the philosophy of BEOS. BEOS is not legacy based.

Ok so now we have:

OBOS: http://open-beos.sourceforge.net
BlueOS: http://blueos.free.fr
Leonardo: http://leonardo.intuiware.com
New Atheos:..........

And a couple of updated BeOS 5.03 and an illegal Dano-release.

Who said the BeOS community was dying? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 10:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? agree 1000% My citizen428 Wed, 27 Mar 2002 10:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So now there are three 'BeNUX' projects
+ Leonardo - no binary compatibily with BeOS5
+ BlueOS - aims to be binary compatible with Linux and BeOS5
+ New AtheOS - no binary compatibily with BeOS5 - porting and antiporting of BeOS apps to the new API currently going on (a 6 months old fork waiting to finish porting OpenTracker and Deskbar)

One NewOS project
+ OBOS - aims to be binary compatible with BeOS5

And four legacy distros around
+ BeOS5Pro
+ BeOS5PE
+ BeOSonline developer edition 1.0
+ BeOS Dano

Right now, it really doesn't matter what is illegal and what is not with some of the above ones. Dano is an illegal leak, but so is illegal the BeOSonline developer edition recently released, the BeOSPE license doesn't authorize them to modify and distribute it in such a manner. I'm currently running the BeOSonline developer edition, great job done there, but illegal. Thanksfuly David Nagel is too busy making Palm dissapear and he couldn't care less ("It is a final decision").

An OS is a long and enourmous task, so it's kind of fustrating seeing how three almost identical projects are double coding now to have a BeOS like API in Linux, but that's the history of Opensource, the cathedral and the bazaar and all that. Being the code open, no one cares about other's code, never ending story (Limahl).

All in all, everything is going right so far. We have:
+ illegal but very nice working BeOS5 updates that we all can benefit from (for a personal use)
+ a real cloning BeOS5 and beyond proyect like OBOS
+ a myriad of new and dissipated Linux projects that will bring something good to Linux, the AtheOS GUI in Hayden's case is quite a milestone, yet to be seen. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 10:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I feel that all support should goto OpenBeOS (open-beos.sf.net). At fist I thought it would never make it, but I have changed my mind. OBEOS now has 180+ members and its doing quite well and progresing nicly, but I understand that many ppl dont want to wait for that. All I ask (request) of people on the various groups is to work together. There is no reason that the two or three best BeOS variants cant work side by side. For example, linux based BeOS for people needing good, mature networking and drivers or the newOS variant (OpenBeOS) for legacy free os from ground up. Anyone know if people from various groups are working together? If you are a programer pls join a group and help! We all want a fun fast os! BTW I use winxp primary OS Wed, 27 Mar 2002 11:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Many commenting about boot time. My AMD-K6 400MHz boot linux with full GUI in 32s. The system was built from srcatch and using my own boot script. However it only have network, apache and mysql services. MySQL takes around 3s. Now I'm posting using the system.

My comment on the fork of AtheOS is that it is good. Maybe one way of innovation. Those who keep bashing Bill for using Linux should think again, why bashing him for doing what he likes to do? You yourself could do it if you want AtheOS GUI works on *BSD or whatever your lovely OS.

I still got an idea that XFree86 still can be improved, but I put my thumb up for Bill. I've tried AtheOS and it is a good works but not to say it will replace Window$. Window$ is good and very usable but for me I don't like it. If there are other OS that can do what Window$ can do, it doesn't have to kill it, maybe just share the market with it.

The should be opportunity for every OS if the developer work for it. We don't have to flame, bashing and "killing' each other just to say our beloved OS is the best. Original BeOS maybe dead but it still got a lot of follower that will keep looking for replacement as what happened to Amiga lover. There are also a lot of new OS such as AdaOs, Hurd, MenuetOS, MarteOS, Rome, *Dos etc that seeking for followers and have their own lover.

But one sure thing is that, although some say GPL is the problem for Linux, it still hold the title the most known OSS OS in the world. Maybe *BSD, OBOS, NewOS and others can claim the title in the future. Who knows? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 11:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hey Alex, it's called OBOS, not OBEOS. That OBOS name is even better than OpenBeOS (the one the project is currently using alltogether with OBOS), for future legal issues concerning anything BE related. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 11:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "People, I always have found it to be a nice feature that BeOS is quick booting, but this discussion is absolutely meaningless. What do you guys and gals do all day that you have this obsession with boot time? Well, once you start the machine and it takes 80 sec instead of 30 - so what?! Once it is running, who cares? It is not very smart to shut the system down every 5 minutes, anyway.
If it boots quick, then fine... if it doesn't, get over it."

Maybe there are a few people out there who care for environment and nature - not wasting energy. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 12:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Leonardo is a great name for any OS, if their developers can't finish it, perhaps they can give it to NewAtheos or even OBOS. Great minds creating great software for great users. A vastly better name than windows which MS has little hold on & speaks little of it's quality. Ok when I am using windows, I find myself looking out the window to see when I can get out of this thing.

I would hope that all the 4 OS's will be vmware friendly, & that the 3 linuxy distros would be able to run gtk/gnome apps as well, even if it means using xwindows, but not use that for BeOS appserver.

Just having a blast again with MacOS on PC with Basilisk2, since it also runs on win & lin & BeOS (badly), I can see 4 OSs running on one pc at one time sooner or later. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 12:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The 'AtheOS Fork Breathes Life to BeOS'is an OSNews.com story.

Yet on http://headliner.net/linux/ you can only see the Slashdot link titled 'AtheOS Fork Brings BeOS on Top of Linux ', the only thing they did at Slashdot was changing the title, then they quote&link OSNews.

Eugenia, you should comment on this to headliner.net, I don't find it appropiate to steal news in that fashion, if its OSNews's, it should be linked first. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 12:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think aslong as all these clones can try to keep mostly source compatable, they won't be hurting each other. They will most likly all bring in a different crowd to write apps in the Be API, and if this is standard accross all clones, then the apps will work on all platforms, this will be great. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 13:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? That OBOS name is even better than OpenBeOS (the one the project is currently using alltogether with OBOS), for future legal issues concerning anything BE related.

OBOS is a trademarked name in the US... not sure what the trademark applies to though. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 14:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Will this NewAtheos have JAVA support? A JAVA based Palmpilot desktop would be very nice to have available for this new project. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 14:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >>OBOS is a trademarked name in the US... not sure what the trademark applies to though.

Kevin, trademarks do not cover everything, only the goods and/or services for which the trademark has been succesfully registered.

Please let us know those goods and/or services if related to an Operating System.

The OBOS trademarks I know that maybe (just maybe, for I haven't done an study about them) could be a problem are:

Largest Nordic cooperative building association (Norway)
http://www.obos.no/

Independent belgian opticians group (Belgium)
http://www.obos.be/

You obviously don't have the slightest idea about trademarks, but again, if you remember that american one, please be so kind to report it to Beunited.org or to the Openbeos team.

Right? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 15:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It's bad.
>>>>>>
Leave it to a simpleton to take all the subtlety out of a complex, two-sided arguement...

For all intents and purposes, virtually impossible.
>>>>>>>>
Keyword: Virtually. If a developer is going to do the customer enough of a disservice to provide only binary drivers, then he should have to work at it. The key question is: Is good support for binary only drivers worth the hassle to kernel developers? Since there's not many binary-only drivers out-there, and Linux has been pretty successful in getting companies to open their specs (Matrox, 3dfx, ATI) I'd argue that it isn't worth it to support binary-only drivers well.

First you say bad-bad, but instead of supporting your claim, you point a counter-example.
>>>>>>>>
No, I say its bad, but can be legitimate in certain cases, such as NVIDIA's. If you want examples of why its bad, I'll oblige you. You pay for hardware. You own it. Companies (through proprietory drivers) should not control how you use that hardware. Microsoft made me upgrade to Win98 just so I could use their stupid USB joystick. On Linux, people just backported the USB code to the older OS (kernel 2.2) so people could use USB devices without upgrading. The key idea is that people don't need to be slaves to the driver support of the company whose hardware they use. Second example. Drivers often have bugs that take a long time for companies to fix. It reassuring to be able to fix those bugs yourself instead of waiting for patches from the company. And yes, I have done this. The BeOS USB driver didn't work properly with my Precision Pro joystick. I went in and fixed it myself in a couple of minutes. It took more than a month for an update to be released that worked properly. Open standards are the way of the future. Just look at USB. It's very well documented, and an entire class of devices (HID, which includes joysticks, keyboard, etc) are based on an open spec. Without these specs, you'd only be able to use these devices on Windows.

My oh my, aren't you presumptuous!
>>>>>>>
Nope, just practical. If ATI and Matrox didn't lose by making their graphics card specs open, if Intel didn't lose by making UHCI and EHCI open, if the dozens of companies that provide open specs for their hardware (http://www.linux.org/hardware/components.html) don't lose anything by making these specs open, why would the developers of a MIDI device lose anything?

Thank you very much for providing me the arguments why the Linux kernel is NOT the way to go for a desktop OS!
>>>>>>
The Linux kernel is just a piece of technology. On a windows machine, you have no contact with the windows kernel. On a BeOS machine, you have no contact with the BeOS kernel. All the stuff that people don't like about Linux (GUI, configuration, complexity) is entirely in userspace. Using the Linux kernel doesn't do anything but base an OS on a proven, open piece of code. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 16:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm curious about the 'forker' who has carried out such a great simple idea, Bill Hayden.

I know he is a MacOS developer that used to work for Teacher Support Software, I think now he runs his own company, Haydentech

He looks to me like a talented professional, so the new project seems very promising, a MacOS guy coding a BeOS like API for Linux. I have to see his Opentracker. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 16:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "if you want, you can just look at this as linux sans X .. that is also a very appealing prospect."

Dumb question #1:
A lot of people are saying this is great. I fail to see why. I ran BeOS on an old machine I had (versions 4 and 5), and while there were things I liked about it, like a fast boot time and its power, there were bigger things that I hated about it. Here they are:
1) No apps
2) An ugly interface
3) No apps
4) An ugly interface

I don't see the point of an OS unless it has a lot of useful applications.
I also don't see the point of the tab-like titlebars (especially in that eye-wrenching yellow) that never seemed to be even remotely convenient. Also, why did the old MacOS and BeOS think that the Fisher Price interface was a good one? Why not go for sleek, stylish and extremely functional (I think OSX has this) instead of kiddie?

Dumb question #2:
Why would I want to get rid of X? Sure, X can be a pain to configure at first, but after a while it becomes quite easy.

What I want in a GUI is stability, endless configuration options so I can fit my computer to my taste, and speed. To me, X offers all of these things.

If I don't like KDE or Gnome, that's okay, I can switch to WindowMaker or Fluxbox without any problems. If I don't like a theme, that's okay too, there are thousands to choose from. If I'm running Debian, then my menus will remain consistant across different window managers so all my apps will always be in the same place and under the same groups.

I have run X on a Linux box for two years before without having to restart it (or the machine) even once. X seems faster to me than any other GUI environment I've used. Another plus is I can use X remotely! What more could I possibly ask for?

Final dumb question:
If I were to switch over and use this BeOS-ish thing under Linux, what would I do with all my X apps? I like them and don't want to throw them away. I also don't want to be constantly switching GUIs either.

The only cool application I ever used on BeOS was GoBe Productive, but they are working on a Linux version right now, which if it's anything the new Windows version will be far better than the 2.0 version I used on BeOS.

Everyone seems to think this news is so wonderful. I don't get it. I like AtheOS and hope it progresses well. Once it is a little more mature, I will probably use it. However, I still can't see what compelling reason exists for me to drop X for this new AtheOS GUI on Linux?

Anybody care to enlighten me? Wed, 27 Mar 2002 16:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If you *like* X for all its disadvantages and advantages, which it sounds like you do; keep using what ever distro your using, this OS ain't for you.

Some people (like me) thinks that X is keeping Linux from reaching its full potential, and HATE using it and/or find any available window manager either slow as hell, lacking features or both.

I'll be using BeOS until a replacement arrives (and the current Linux lineup doesn't even come close). OBOS, BlueOS, or this AtheOS/Be/Linux hybrid; I don't give fat babies ass which one, as long as its as good as the original. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 17:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? with X.

BakaSmack, you really don't need to be enlightened, nobody is forcing you to abandone all your beloved X apps, so just forget about this project.

The rest of us who dislike X, are very interested on this fork as you have already noticed with great astonishment. Stay away from 'Fisher Price interfaces' and bear with those X 'Techno Nerd interfaces', those ugly&chaotic&slow&bloated GUIs over X, incapable of displaying antialiased fonts properly in the year 2002.

I couldn't agree more with Jef Raskin on his thoughts about your 'sleek and stylish' OSX:
>>When I see the color aqua, I do not want to put a skin on it, but think more in terms of hiding it with six feet of earth. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 18:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Kevin, trademarks do not cover everything, only the goods and/or services for which the trademark has been succesfully registered.

Yeah, that's why I said I didn't know what the trademark applied to.

Please let us know those goods and/or services if related to an Operating System.

I'll do that, I'm checking the USPTO database right now.

You obviously don't have the slightest idea about trademarks, but again, if you remember that american one, please be so kind to report it to Beunited.org or to the Openbeos team.

You obviously misinterpreted my message. I said OBOS is a trademarked name in the US... not sure what the trademark applies to though.

Meaning, the name is trademarked but I'm not sure if it will be a problem or not. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 18:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? oops. forgot to close the italic tag somewhere... probley after registered Wed, 27 Mar 2002 18:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So, Eugenia, when are you going to interview this guy? I'm really interested in where this is going, and from the sounds of it so is just about everyone else.

I had just last week decided to completely give up on BeOS, and not look at OS's 'till I was looking to buy a new system in ~2 years. Then I caught this on /. and WOW! Wed, 27 Mar 2002 18:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Atheos's windowing system only supports a few video cards. Does that mean that this new OS will be shy on video support? Or will it be possible to port the X drivers to the Atheos video?

What will happen with Nvidia's drivers? They will have to write new ones for this Windowing system right?

Will there be hardware accelerated drivers and OpenGL support?

This is exciting. Linux has the forward motion and is a buzzword in IT. Using it as a kernel will assure up-to-date and copious hardware support. (I know BSD would too, but it isn't quite the media and IT darling that is Linux). Atheos and Be's GUI will give us a nice, anti-aliased UI.

Oh. More questions...

Will the filesystem use XFS or ReiserFS (future attribute version?)

Will there be a simple application installer?

Will the system be multi-user? (Please, please, please!) Wed, 27 Mar 2002 21:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Does that mean that this new OS will be shy on video support?

Yes.

>Or will it be possible to port the X drivers to the Atheos video?

Difficult.

>What will happen with Nvidia's drivers? They will have to write new ones for this Windowing system right?

Yes. But do not forget that AtheOS already has support for GeForce cards. There is some source available for the 2D drivers for nVidia, so no problem to port them over.

>Will there be hardware accelerated drivers and OpenGL support?

Surely not. Not at this point at least.

>Will the filesystem use XFS or ReiserFS (future attribute version?)

I think Bill uses ReiserFS. My personal favorite is indeed XFS.

>Will there be a simple application installer?

Who knows?

>Will the system be multi-user? (Please, please, please!)

AtheOS is already multiuser and Linux is too. It will be a huge oversight if it won't be. Wed, 27 Mar 2002 22:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, Symlink did put up a 'Name the OS' poll (somewhat reassembling Hiddenbottoms idea Thu, 28 Mar 2002 09:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How we should name these funny namers?

Armchairs
The Noclues
CabbagePatchKids
Nocodes
Syms Limited
OTRE (On The Room Edge) Thu, 28 Mar 2002 11:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? What about
SAT/HUF - Still Able To Have Unlimited Fun ? Thu, 28 Mar 2002 13:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Wow! My insanity (or is it inanity) is appreciated by Germans!!

To quote the great John F. Kennedy :

"Today, I am a jelly doughnut!"
(Heute, Ich bin ein Berliner!) Thu, 28 Mar 2002 15:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I've been spending the past hour reading this thread on OSNews. After all that listening I feel the need to respond with my 2cents. Waiver: I am not a 'real' geek, merely a hobbyist with some experience coding in Perl and now Ruby.

Overall I think the fork/linux merge is an excellent and realistic choice. As I see it the two main obstacles for a new OS are not technologically-related, but rather human-related:

1) Will enough people get to play with it?

and 2) Will enough people develop for it?

The answer to the first question ties closely with the issue of device drivers. Reading this discussion thread it appears the current state of having software relate to all the diverging types of hardware is a real mess to say the least.
If Mr.Hayden (aka Bill) feels the best way around this hurdle at this point is to go with Linux, then I say "great!" I do hope, however, that this gives us serious pause for dreaming up new models whereby hardware and software interact that is somewhat more elegant than the current state of affairs.

The answer to the second question, I feel, ties closely with the issue of a standardized API. It appears that Bill has chosen to go with the BeOS API which I feel is an excellent choice as well. I admit I don't know how much this means software developers can sit back and say 'OK, we have a standard API, so regardless of the underlying kernel, file system, etc, we can happily develop apps.' I'm hoping it means at least there will be only minimal changes to apps to get them working properly.

All in all, in the short term we at least have a linux distro (in the works) that's finally free of X (yeeee haaaaaa!) In the slightly longer term, I hope the open source community will take another serious look at the above 2 human-related points that bear addressing. Thu, 28 Mar 2002 17:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ....and we hit a hundred posts in this thread...

...which has probably gone on much longer than it should have.... Thu, 28 Mar 2002 17:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, I can help with one of those.

I just wanted to comment on a couple of things. First of all this statement regarding X:

"...incapable of displaying antialiased fonts properly in the year 2002."

I can display antialiased fonts, but I hardly think that's a good measuring stick of an OS.

Finally, I have only used BeOS a couple of times. I have to agree with BakaSmack though, it has one of the ugliest interfaces available. QNX is similar, but much better in my opinion.

I also found the same thing that BakaSmack found with BeOS; no apps.

I think he/she asked some good questions. There was an obvious liking for X, and some negative feeling towards BeOS, but he/she did ask for information. Since the posters after that just jumped down BakaSmack's throat with, "stick with X then you bastard! You'll never understand this!", and, "Linux sucks!", I would like to ask the more sane people of this group, for my sake, to explain to me why this is so cool.

I mean, BeOS supposedly had an awesome threading model and a killer filesystem. If you simply plug a BeOS-ish windowing system on top of Linux (which a lot of you think sucks apparently), and there are no apps for it, then why on Earth is that so great? Thu, 28 Mar 2002 18:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? *100* Thu, 28 Mar 2002 18:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Even though you think the BeOS GUI is ugly drawn, it doesn't mean it's a bad GUI code-wise - graphically re-design it is a minor.

What is so good with the BeOS GUI is that it's small, fast, responsive and its parts are working thightly together (also it got threads in kernel space)

The BeOS kernel is another story... Performance wise Linux easily outperforms BeOS on most tasks. So sticking this nice BeOS GUI and, last but not least, the oustanding API on/in (not on top like X) is a damn good idea IMO.

This way you get 1. drivers 2. Nice kernel with ALOT of developers 3. Compatiblity (BeOS, Linux, dunno about AtheOS in the long run - but what AtheOS apps can't we live without? ) Thu, 28 Mar 2002 19:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ""AtheOS is GPLed, OpenBeOS is under the MIT license. Thus, we cannot include code from AtheOS in OBOS.""

"GPL strikes again. Source contamination by the GPL is precisely why I don't even bother to take a look at such systems despite how good they might look."

I'd laugh, but I really don't think this issue is that funny. In fact, I think it's sad that OpenBeOS has locked itself out of the ability to use GPL'd code by not choosing the GPL as a license. Were there any real advantage to OpenBeOS not using the GPL, it would be a different story. But, IMO, the real reason the GPL is not used for it is a political one, rather than a practical one with regard to the characteristics of the license. Is there any reason that the OpenBeOS code needs to be licensed in a way that allows outside developers to take some or all of that code, close it and charge money for it? From all evidence that I have seen, the BSD-ish licenses are just glorified versions of the public domain. The reason that the GPL was created is that selfish people take advantage of public domain software, because compilation and binary distribution allow them to pull an embrace and extend. The only licenses that prevent that are the GPL-compatible licenses. I think it's sad that the OpenBeOS developers have chosen to open themselves up to being taken advantage of while simultaneously depriving themselves of the opportunity to save time by reusing code that has been entrusted to the community for that very purpose. But what do I know.. Thu, 28 Mar 2002 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hear, Hear! I am sick and tired of the anti-GPL whiners, especially on Slashdot, where I am migrating from. In my opinion, the GPL is the ONLY reason Linux (GNU/Linux) is where it is today, ahead of the other open source projects in popularity, use, and mindshare (and obviously ahead of superior closed source projects, such as BeOS and AmigaOS). I like BSD, I think TECHNICALLY it's better than Linux, but the anarchistic freedom of their licensing prevents me from writing for it, since what I freely give to the community will likely end up in Microsoft's product, fuelling their monopoly. That's the reason Microsoft is pro-BSD and anti-Linux; Linux, due to the GPL, can't be embraced, extended, and extinguished. I agree 100% with you. Good post. Thu, 28 Mar 2002 20:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Felonius Hiddenbottom wrote:
>>Why not use Darwin, which is *mostly* a microkernel - or one of the *BSD's, though not microkernel are much more robust than Linux? Fri, 29 Mar 2002 04:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It may be political, but the contagious nature of the GPL is what worries developers who have to earn a living from their code. That's why BSDish licenses are much better - use the code, no questions asked. If you're that worried about you code being ripped off, then you really don't understand the altruistic basis to open source. While it is fine to wave the GPL flag it ultimately prevents the software being used in ways which could improve its overall quality.

For example, I could download atheos, make a lot of suggestions and patches based on my experience and submit these to make a better OS. I can't however do so because I am in the process of building an OS of my own, and if I started poking through the code, this would likely violate the clean room principles which I'm trying to adhere to. With a BSD license, I don't face such a risk.

The GPL suits developers who haven't got much to start with. It really doesn't suit skilled developers who have much to risk from code contamination.

Given these arguments, projects under the GPL may be unlikely to attract highly skilled developers, such projects are likely to fall into mediocrity with regard to quality.

I am sure you can blow my argument apart, but could this be one reason why GPL'ed projects take longer to reach the standard that closed or BSDish projects reach?

So I add this... GPL is a selfish license, BSD is a selfless license. Since the founding principle of open source is supposedly sharing source in an unselfish manner, the GPL would then seem to be somewhat of an anomaly, almost hypocritical.

I personally would be much happier to contribute to a BSDish project than a GPLish project for these reasons. Go think about it.

P Fri, 29 Mar 2002 12:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Thanks. Sat, 30 Mar 2002 08:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I would benture to say that this project is not a mere linux distribution. Just because a product uses the linux kernel does not make it the same as 'running a BEos like GUI on top of Linux' or the like. Darwin is the core of OS X, but is OSX simply considered Darwin? Of course not. What makes the linux distros as they are(perhaps better referred to as GNU linux)is the myriad software running on top of the kernel...ie X11, shells, daemons, etc. The kernel itself is a really tiny element of the system and just holds things together. This is not to say that the kernel isn't a major or important element, but on the contrary it is quite important, and I applaud this project for choosing the Linux kernel as a base because it is getting really solid. Sat, 30 Mar 2002 22:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am very very interested in how the project is coming along. Bill, if you are out there and reading this post, would it be at all possible to feed our curiosity with a screenshot or two? I think a lot of us would really love to see what is going on, even if it isn't up for release yet.

Pretty please


-drfc Sat, 30 Mar 2002 22:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree. Waiting with baited breath. Sat, 30 Mar 2002 22:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments