BeOS may be dead, but over a decade after its lamentable demise the open source Haiku project keeps its legacy alive. Haiku is an attempt to build a drop-in, binary compatible replacement for BeOS, as well as extending the defunct OS's functionality and support for modern hardware. At least, that's the short-term goal - eventually, Haiku is intended significantly enhance BeOS while maintaining the same philosophy of simplicity and transparency, and without being weighed down with the legacy code of many other contemporary operating systems. Computerworld Australia recently caught up with Stephan Assmus, who has been a key contributor to the project for seven years for a lengthy chat about BeOS, the current state of Haiku and the project's future plans.
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Member since:2005-07-06
BeOS wasn't really tied that much, architecturally, to any particular hardware. Sure, Be at first made the NeXt-style error of limiting BeOS at its launch (which happened a bit too late vs Windows entrenchment...) only to the buyers of the expensive & uberniche BeBox, and afterwards (definitely too late...) to the "intermediate" like that Powermacs. But, some time later, they didn't seem to have issues with porting it to the PC (waaay too late...), where it ran just as well.
Did I mention it was just too late?*
At my place, one of the most popular PC magazines (at the time, most likely well above 100k in a <40M country) included once the BeOS PE on its CD. That didn't result in much.
OS/2 was similarly essentially given away, back then, with a demo that could be easily (even accidentally) unlocked to be time-unlimited. That OS had an underlying goal of returning to IBM the control over the PC - this is why it failed (of course other OEMs wouldn't play along, preferred Windows), also why it's probably good that it failed.
*Plus, focusing on mostly useless demos (why should we be interested in several videos or GL teacups at the same time?), while Win was perfectly good enough (NVM its software library). And also largely stuck in the past, being single-user, with no security model to speak of, and poor internationalisation (while the favourite pet story of BeOS refugees is how a Japanese line of Win+BeOS PCs, from Hitachi, was meddled with by MS...).
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Member since:
2007-11-11
Really? I think its icons are nicer looking than XP's myself, in fact I used to use icon sets like XPIze when i was on XP just to get rid of those fugly default icons whereas when i ran BeOS back in the day and looking at Haiku now i think it looks quite nice.
Of course the problem with both BeOS and Amiga clones is what made those systems cool was NOT the software, it was the hardware. Back then those OSes were written for the chips which also couldn't really be had on any other machine and that tight connection between hardware and software was what made them multimedia monsters. Back then those machines could do things that other machines simply couldn't touch, serious multitasking, media playback while doing other tasks, it was ahead of its time.
Today frankly any bottom of the line AMD or Intel multicore can do everything you could do then while having so many cycles to spare its just not funny so there really isn't a point in having the OS and hardware tied tightly together like that. the MHz wars left us with such superpowered hardware that even MSFT can't pile enough bloat and bling to slow down even a low end quad and the GPUs that Intel and AMD integrate now can just tear through multimedia.
So while I can see why some would want to play with them, I ran both BeOS and OS/2 Warp back in the day and both kicked the snot out of Win9X and System 7....sigh, maybe we're just spoiled. i know sitting here typing this while transcoding a video and listening to music if you'd have told me then i could do all this without swapping or slowdown I'd have laughed you out the building, now i just take it for granted.