AtomicPC posted a 7-page history of BeOS article and an interview with YellowTAB’s Bernd Korz.
The life of BeOS
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
BEFS as the filesystem, Haiku nothing more than a ‘beta filesystem’, Mozilla unusable, unable to serve FTP safely….
Did they write this article in 2000 and hold it back until now or what?
>Mozilla unusable, unable to serve FTP safely…
That’s true. The Mozilla/Firefox port under BeOS sucks hard. And networking or security was never a very strong point of BeOS. BeOS was created to be a media workstastion of the time, rather than to be secure or have good net performance.
As for Haiku, they are pre-alpha. Not beta.
Well, I for one am pretty happy with Zeta, I use a MacOS X mac at home and a Pentium with Zeta installed, everyday I fell more and more at home with Zeta.
everytime I am forced to use linux, I wonder, why the hell is this made so complicated. It need not be like this. Zeta is a wonderfull relief from the microsoft vs linux world. It’s elegant, it’s fast and it’s serving me pretty well.
I just bought my copy of programming the Be Operating System on a used book store and am strating to port my apps. I see a positive future for Zeta, people should give it a try before shouting about how blessed linux is and how evil M$ is, they might be amazed…
> why the hell is this made so complicated
Two reasons:
1. It’s a unix at heart (with all its baggage).
2. Too many cooks.
The BeOS was created by a very small team who had access to each other’s office at any time to discuss face-to-face how to create a *consistent and coherant* OS. That’s why it felt so fast and it was so easy to use. Linux and any other net-oriented project does not have this luxury.
Andre, just wondering how is Zeta truly? What are the specs on the box you run it on? I am curious because I am considering getting Zeta.
<2 cents>
It’s nice to see that maybe BeOS might just have
another chance to live again. (as long as the same misteaks are not made).
</2cents>
Eugenia – have you USED any components of Haiku recently? Indeed, have you used BeOS *at all* recently?
I wouldn’t call the media kit “pre alpha”. I wouldn’t call the printing kit “pre alpha”, etc. No matter whats missing, they still have a hell of a lot more done than a filesystem, which is what the article claims
Also, the Mozilla/Firefox releases on BeOS are becoming faster, more stable, and getting closer to running natively. With some nasty library reordering that breaks SSL you can have Firefox run without any script hand-holding, letting it be used as the native HTML handler. The download manager supports grabbing icons from files, etc. Recent FF builds on BONE crash less often for me than FF1.0 does on Windows XP.
And you know yourself that FTP serving support was possibly safely even in the R4 days. There are third-party ftpd’s for that. Be’s own one sucked, but thats what BeBits is for…
“everytime I am forced to use linux, I wonder, why the hell is this made so complicated.”
You obviously haven’t tried LinSpire. Or at least not lately.
>mozilla, http://ftp...
Please, don’t make me laugh.
Thats the response of someone who hasn’t actually used the software in question in an extremely long time.
Sure, in 2002 Mozilla on BeOS was virtually unusable. If you wanted a browser that died every ten minutes and left crap all over the html view, it could be used… but now, its a completely different story. And as you haven’t used it, you can’t accept that.
Harper,
you’ll be amazed to know that this is a AMD K6-2 500 with 128 RAM and 10 gig HD, my graphics card is a GeForce 2 with 32 megs. The net adapter is a plain simple Realtek based one.
The machine is a very cheap one, I am now saving to buy a REAL pc… I use mostly macs, but I am indeed moving towards Zeta. I live in Brazil so prices here are a little different.
and even with this simple setup, it’s very confortable, I notice no speed issues. I was using Cobind Linux Desktop before that, I am fond of that distro but Zeta brings back the fun to the x86 platform.
>Thats the response of someone who hasn’t actually
>used the software in question in an extremely long time.
I was under BeOS 5 days ago. I DO follow BeOS. Not much has changed. Mozilla sucks under my dual Celeron 533. And the FTP of BeOS 5 was NEVER good. I am able to crash it on demand pretty much.
Great info there, learned something about BeOS this around.
Thanks osnews
I know the BUILT IN FTP server was useless. Just aim Nessus at an R5 box and bam, its gone.
However, I said that *when you used third party products* it was fine. Stegemann’s tool (Diner?) was pretty good
Also, the Mozilla and Firefox builds on BeBits are disgustingly poor. Get a recent one from http://livejournal.com/community/bezilla
Eugenia,
My firefox is 0.8.0+ and it’s running fine under Zeta… it seldon crash, it crashes as much as the 1.0 on my MacOS X, it’s slow sometimes, yes, but I think this must be because Firefox/Mozila was not written for BeOS in the first place so it does not take advantage of cool BeOS techs.
Does this makes sense?
More recent Firefox builds on BeOS use benaphores rather than semaphores and native BeOS threading, making it a LOT more responsive in general. 0.80+ is VERY VERY old compared to whats available now.
yeah i would like to know when the article is dated too. Must be from 2000 ;-p even the yellowtab doesn’t have a date for then they posted the link to the interview.
Yikes! YellowTab costs almost as much as XP Home.
Wouldnt they get more people trying it out for $30? I did that for SkyOS.
Haiku isn’t just a kernel or clones of the apps, servers and libraries of the BeOS. It’s all of it. It’s all being worked on in parallel. And there are one heck of a lot more parts available than OpenBFS.
Haiku has genious:
http://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=33869
Haiku has free and unencumbered source:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/open-beos
Haiku has replacements for a lot of BeOS components:
http://209.15.19.223/haiku/factory/
The current “distro”:
http://209.15.19.223/haiku/factory/Haiku-Distro-x86.tgz
(This build is a month old. The “factory” is being moved.)
Mailinglists:
http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/search?search=openbeos
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=671
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=7704
Haiku can be installed to a partition and booted:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=6477136&foru…
(the GUI server isn’t operational enough so it’s shell only for now)
FAQ
http://haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=faq_normal
BeOS R5 Personal Edition and dev tools:
http://www.bebits.com/app/2680
IRC:
irc.freenode.net #haiku
Either way you want to bake it, Haiku is soft and gooshy at best, and Zeta is old and stale with frosting done up to make it look better than the molding underpinnings. When either of these very similar technologies can do 1/2 of what I can do on OSX without even being concerned about drivers, hardware support or what-have-you-this-week, I’ll consider reviewing it for installation of very very old hardware. I used BeOS for 8 years, 5 of that on x86 archaic hardware. If you want a nice limited OS experience, its perfect for just about doing nothing productive in the real world, and great for tinkering.
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=223&slide=1
The first time I am fighting the desire to shoot someone who made the layout of that australian site. The article is very interesting but my eyes DO hurt. Luckily OSNews is much better.
I booted BeOS for the first time a few weeks ago. Wow! Absolutely amazing. BeOS beats all other hobbyist OS’s hands down.
What was a the last version of BeOS that ran on a Mac? I have a PowerMac 120 that has extra disk space. I could triple boot with Mac OS7, YellowDog, and BeOS. How cool would that be??
– A
Suprised no one’s taken the author to task for mentioning you can only choose from Linux and Windows. Apparently he’s never heard of OSX or the BSDs.
I was under BeOS 5 days ago. I DO follow BeOS. Not much has changed. Mozilla sucks under my dual Celeron 533. And the FTP of BeOS 5 was NEVER good. I am able to crash it on demand pretty much.
Well, duh. If you’re still using BeOS 5 then of course nothing has changed. Try Zeta and get with 2005.
I knew a little about BeOS’s history (mostly from Neal Stephenson’s In the Beginning was the Command Line, but this article summarize the grandeur and tragedy of the OS very well, IMO.
However, I do have one nitpick with the article. Actually, it’s with something YellowTAB’s Bernd Korz says:
“We don’t want to kick Linux or Windows from the market, we just want to close the space between them. Not every company is very accepting of GPL (which I completely understand) partly because anything they develop must be open source for that operating system.”
Of course, that is completely false. You can develop proprietary apps for Linux without any problems. The fact that the OS itself is GPLed doesn’t mean you need to GPL the apps…
I wish Zeta well, and hope that the various projects to keep the memory of BeOS succeed. I even understand if the Zeta guys take a couple of jabs at Linux and Windows – that’s only natural. However, it surprises me that someone would say such a thing in an interview…it seems Mr. Korz was misinformed about the scope of the GPL.
Doing nothing productive again,putting an old obsolete server back to life as a BeOS box,Granted things are a little old and stale here,but what’s my alternative here?I don’t see my old buddy SDO shelling out a free OSX box to me but i do have this old twin 466 laying around,and before all the linux camp starts giving me their sermons ,it DOES have 2 Linux partitions on it as well,but for media work the BeOS side is almost impossible to live without unless I would want to run Windows on it,and the linux media stuff is abslolutely horrible with thew possible exception of gimp.A good fer instance is …say I want to tale a clip out of a photo,like your head out of a group of people,I just right click, go to the open with dialog ,choose showimage,select my clip,right click on it,drag to file,choose what format I want it saved as in the resulting dialog and i’m done.The gimp is probably still in the splash screen at this point.I keep a fat32 partition for swapping and storing files on everything i have even if there is no windows involved there ,for the simple reason that all these alt OS’s seem ro be able to read and write to FAT32,so it streamlines moving files back and forth as you need it,So while some may miss those big klunky photoshop sized apps using BeOS,I equally miss those lightnig fast ‘one trick ponies’like showimage,image pro,bambam,3DmiX,soundrecorder,mediaplayer(which enables you to grab and drop still photos from movies)when using other OS’s
BeOS still does have a lot of uses as long as you use it for what it was originally intended to be used for.
the hobbit bebox did not have a geekport.
—
http://www.bebox.nu
Well he is right about Mozilla. Right now this app sucks, not very integrated, it has many bugs and quirks – but I need it.
Mozilla may be buggy on dual cpu’s but almost nobody reports bugs on those issues and the devs that I know of don’t have one.
So Eugenia if you know a lot of bugs that we’re not aware of please report them. We’re not miracle workers.
I played with BeOS in the early part of this decade. I remember burning a dvd rented from blockbuster and sharing it with beshare.
I did e-mail and browsing.
Everything but streaming multimedia, that is the BeOS downfall, because Grandpa wants to watch the newshour, even if it just a once a week use of mplayer. the kids want the flashplayer,etc.
BUT if you Only want to do e-mail and read web pages and manipulate pictures, Beos (with comaptable hardware), STILL, is a viable alternative to windows. If you find Bebits.
And only recently has Linux made itself available to Mom/Pop whereas Beos always was, especially if they could handle bebits.
Hell, BeOS, still is my boot manager. I like the way I can go into limbo and reinstall the boot manager if needed. I like the way BeOS finds whatever partition I have created, always. I like the way it will overwrite any hardrive. (I only use PCs) I value my BeOS installation CD.
I really hate the misinformation within some of the comments here. Any one with brains and used BeOS should know he had a jewel.
If possible, why not squeeze in a comment about Linux…
The article is about Zeta, why do you have to even bring up Linux every chance you get. Stop putting out comments which is of no interest…
So what if Bernd is “misinformed” about the GPL. Most people are, especially about it’s history, it’s scope, what it’s aim is for and about Stallmans motives…
Thanks for the link posted above:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=223&slide=1
It was very useful to see so many screenshots of Zeta (117). I seems quite complete, actually.
Argh! Those screenshots of preferences apps. Everything looks so much less streamlined and elegant as with Be’s BeOS… First, what was wrong with separate preference apps? They are listed in a separate menu anyways. And those image logos for each pref category – please.
It is slightly annoying to click through to the screenshots; here’s the direct link:
http://www.yellowtab.com/products/screenshots.php
The Whole BeOS community in a nutshell,SDO ranting,Obelix raving on about it,and sasquatch666 babbling on about something totally off topic and useless.To that we stir in the 25 or so twits that hang out on beshare exchanging niceties and generally getting nothing done in a hell of a hurry.
This is your consumer base Bernd,I just hope you don’t spend all that money thats gonna come rolling in in one place.Plus if this Haiku crap ever gets off the ground and becomes usable these 20 or 30 cheapskates are going to desert yellowtab like rats from a bernding ship.Let us call it Shiitake the OS for those that like to be kept in the dark and fed shit
Funny, I think the same way about Linux, especially with the cheapskates…
I remember something called Final Scratch, a revolution in DJ software, it used special records that would produce signal recognized by the software running on a laptop. The signals could be linked to any soundfile effectively making the the records control playback of these files, realtime. The sound was then sent back to the mixer. The whole setup allowed the DJ to use the same two records while playing his entire collection, as well as having the possibility to play early studio demos or one-time remixes. It was fast enought to be able to scratch the record and ‘scratch’ the file playback at the same time!
Guess what system? BeOS. I knew an early adopter who had a Vaio preloaded with BeOS, that was the package you got when you ordered Final Scratch. He didn’t use BeOS, hardly knew what it was, but it worked great (2000).
However, it has since been ported to Mac OSX, which makes it easier to deploy (and sell, no extra OS needed). But it showed me that BeOS is indeed a lean and mean OS, very capable, and recognized as such by real professionals (the makers of Final Scratch).
XP home doesn’t inlcude Office or Works. Zeta comes with an office suite, proper CD burning tools, video endoding software etc.
The article is about Zeta, why do you have to even bring up Linux every chance you get.
Actually, the article is mostly about BeOS. The last two pages are about Haiku and Zeta. Now, I didn’t “bring Linux” into it, the Zeta guy did. Sorry, but my comment was on-topic.
That said, the BeBox was one impressive-looking machine. Does anyone here still have one? I’m sure it will be a valuable museum piece one day…
“The whole package was unfortunately always designed as a ‘single user’ system. There wasn’t much in the way of OS level permissions, or any way to administer users or privileges. That was a gaping flaw – one which Windows and Linux have since overcome.”
when exactly was linux not multi-user?
As an old BeOS user I went and bought Zeta when it was first released. The main problem I had was drivers, which is no surprise. I finally got a NIC that was compatable with Zeta and fired it up yesterday. It was the first time in years that I have been “online” with “BeOS/Zeta” and I finally sat down and played with it.
I still love this OS. For the most part I like the changed YT have made. Even the prefs app. Well, except that scrolling through that left pannel is not very intuitive, maybe that was just me.
The biggest problem is that same as it has always been. Apps/drivers. There are a number of ported open source apps and a few native ones. The apps work, for the most part, but don’t feel complete or intrigated at all.
In short I would use Zeta…if it had better apps. If I am going to pay for an OS then using nothing but ported open source apps kind of defeats the poupose….
Nice OS, lousy apps.
Will be all about how Haiku reinject the community with energy and is brilliant… make that happen Axel =)
I do hope we see the new IDE driver in place and a GUI boot soon =)
here are some more screenshots for the curious
http://haikunews.org/gallery/
enjoy.
The authoritative source of BeBox information:
http://www.bebox.nu/
Because one processor per person isn’t enough!
What a nauseous waste of time.
“Those that forget history are bound to repeat it.”
– Woodrow Wilson
Needless to say, I completely disagree with you. I found the article to be fascinating.
Please report to the world when an OS is available that can out perform MSFT and use all of the existing apps out their without having to share drive space with MSFT OS.
Uh, Windows can’t use all the existing apps out there. For instance, I can’t (yet) run Mplayer in Windows…
However, this made me wonder: is there a plan to port Wine to Zeta and/or Haiku? The capability to run Windows software in the OS would surely be of interest to those who want to use it despite the lack of native apps.
A nun, he moos:
There is an alpha version of MPlayer for windows. It’s not as good as the one on linux, macos x but it do works.. At least for what I have tried.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html
there was a wine project for beos, however since 5 did not have the required map()functions and 6 was supposed to, It was frozen waiting on that. A commercial version of 6 was never released and the wine port was never finished.
There were some workarounds and I think some people had talked about working on it, but general I believe most people decided to help Haiku out first. It is supposed to have the required kernel functions.
Okay, so I picked the wrong example… 🙂
BeOS used to be my desktop OS of choice until 4.5 when I upgraded my hardware and BeOS wouldn’t boot on it.
But the article is dead wrong when it talks about choice on x86 systems. See, I won’t touch Windows or Linux with a 10 foot pole. My desktop OS is FreeBSD, but I could be using SkyOS or Syllable or any of the other BSDs. There’s more than Linux and Windows.
It was never my desktop of choice, but I thought it was much better (at the time) than the desktops Linux offered, and it was slicker in some ways than the OS/2 desktop I was using (and still use).
Don’t forget that Solaris is an option for x86 users, also!
Uh, Windows can’t use all the existing apps out there. For instance, I can’t (yet) run Mplayer in Windows…
MPlayer (mplayerhq.hu) got ported to Windows long time ago already. From what i’ve heard it works quite well.
http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=mplayer+windows+port
Btw WINE ran on BeOS (‘BeWine’).
Prof.flemming didnt get modded down? They reviewed his post and left it? wtf? I get modded down for less flametory stuff all the time!
It ‘ran’ but it was last updated about 2001 – http://bebits.com/app/2388 is the last public patches they had to make it compile under X11.
Howdy,
I picked up a BeBox and I read the article, hoping to find a reference to what the latest version of the BeOS was that supported the BeBox. No luck. Does anyone here know?
you should check out http://www.bebox.nu/
if it is not posted on the site, just email them. They will definatly know.