Search Results for: BeOS

BeOS Lives: Haiku Impresses

Back when it was becoming clear that the time of the BeOS had come and gone, enthusiasts immediately set up the OpenBeOS project, an attempt to recreate the Be operating system from scratch, using a MIT-like license. The project faced difficult odds, and numerous times progress seemed quite slow. Still, persistence pays off, and the first alpha release is drawing ever closer. We decided to take a look at where Haiku currently stands.

BeOS’ ProcessController for Windows

It is no secret that us OSNews editors - Eugenia and I, mostly - have fond memories of the BeOS. So, whenever a handy BeOS feature makes its way into other operating systems, I zealously point it out in the articles or comments I write about them. Call it a harmless little compulsion. Anyway, a few days ago, while hanging around in Haiku's irc channel, a link to a screenshot showed an interesting little piece of BeOS legacy which had found its way to Windows.

First Look: Haiku Poetically Resurrects BeOS

And more Haiku news; Ars took a short look at Haiku. "As an open source enthusiast and former BeOS zealot, I'm very excited to see Haiku reach this level of usability. I look forward to the day when it is a viable operating system for day-to-day use, and, when it achieves the requisite level of hardware compatibility, I fully intend to install it on my Eee PC, where Haiku's extreme responsiveness and fast boot time will be of significant value. Although Haiku and its technologies aren't quite as relevant today in the face of more modern and advanced operating systems, many of the traditional advantages of BeOS that are present in Haiku still have value today in some contexts."

GoBE Productive To Buy BeOS?

Does anyone remember GoBE Productive? The BeOS boys and girls among us will certainly do. Well, with money from India, they're back. "Backed by new investors, a new team and deeper pockets, GoBe Productive is now back with a vengeance promising to shake up the Office space. Blue Lotus Software Solutions, the new company founded by a clutch of new investors and with equity participation by GoBe Corporation, has launched the product again from India." They will initially offer a Windows version, but a Mac and Linux version (using Java) are on the horizon. There is a more interesting bit at the end of the article, though: "Blue Lotus is already planning for its next foray and is negotiating to buy out the BEOS operating system from the promoters of BE Inc, which was the original owner of GoBe Productive, but were driven to bankruptcy as they were unable to compete with Microsoft." In fact: "We are in discussions to acquire the BEOS and hope to close the deal soon." Since I ate eggs this morning for breakfast, my jar of salt is still on the kitchen top, and most likely for the better: someone should call these guys and tell them that most likely, no one will answer the phone in Menlo Park. Instant update: More on the re-launch of GoBE Productive. The GoBE website sees no updates. Update II: My remark concerning phone answering in Menlo Park may be off the mark: welcome the corporate promoter, which, in this case, could refer to Access.

From BeOS to Haiku: the Once and Future OS Contender?

"There is a sub-genre of historical fiction one could loosely call 'what-ifs'. The computer industry also has a number of such obvious what if scenarios. What if Bill Gates and Paul Allen hadn't lucked into the IBM contract for DOS, which was the basis for Microsoft's eventual hegemony? What if the UNIX operating system hadn't split into several minor variants, but gone on to become what Linux later became, only a decade or two before? What if BeOS had gone on to succeed on the desktop...?"

BeOS Max Edition v4 Beta Released

After a short period of development, today Vasper released a first beta of BeOS Max 4. Max is a 'distribution' of the free personal edition of BeOS R5, originally released 6 years ago by Be Inc. Vasper started working on BeOS Max long before Zeta came to life and in the years after Be closed down it was of the two actively developed systems, to other being Developer edition also based on PE. Get BeOS 5 PE Max V4 beta 1 here, a development report is viewable here.

BeOS 5 PE Max Edition v4 Announced

Vasper has breathed life into his BeOS Max project. "Well, as you might have seen on BeOS News sites, I have posted info on the haikumax.org site on an upcoming version of BeOS Max. It will be Version 4 to be exact. So to answer the major question. Why? Although Zeta is being developed, Magnussoft is not doing its best to keep it alive. I find it quite annoying that I have to return the product I purchased from Yellowtab, to get an upgrade. This for me is a show stopper. I don't want to wait in line at a post office, to send a package back to a company whose products I order from the Internet."

Haiku Gets New Tracker/Deskbar, More BeOS News

Lots of Haiku and Zeta news this weekend. Firstly, the latest Haiku image is now making use of the new, improved Deskbar and Tracker with support for scalable vector graphics. Also Stephan Assmus' award winning icon set, Stippi, has been included. Secondly, better support for Japanese is now available on Zeta. Thirdly, there is now a driver for Intel Extreme chipsets for both Zeta and Haiku. Lastly, BeOSNews.com has a guide on using Aspell on BeOS.

NTFS Read, Write for BeOS

3dEyes**, of NaviTracker and Romashka fame, who also did recent ports of SAMBA to BeOS, has released a highly experimental NTFS driver for BeOS. This driver both reads from and writes to NTFS file systems. Currently, it can read files, folders, and symlinks; write to files, create new directories, files and symlinks, deleting files/directories, renaming and moving files, editing of volume labels and free space detection.

Stable Cairo on BeOS; Haiku Gets NE2000 Driver

A few days ago we reported on the release of Cairo 1.2.0-- as it turns out, this also happens to be the first stable Cairo release with support for BeOS. Haiku's app_server uses a different 2D graphics library, Anti-Grain Geometry. Also, Haiku now has a driver for NE2000 compatible network cards. This means developers can now test the networking stack with QEMU, which emulates an NE2000 compatible card.

BeOS Boot Floppy/CD Collection Site Launched

"Over the past month, community member 'mmadia' has been re-working the site for his extensive BeOS Boot Floppy/CD Collection. The goal of the site is to provide every combination of necessary boot-time patches, such as the AMD Athlon XP patch, RAM Limiter, IDE replacement drivers, and so forth. The site allows you to choose various options and then it creates a downloadable file with which you can burn onto a CD or write to a floppy diskette."

Progress Report on OOo for Zeta; More BeOS/Zeta News

A selection of BeOS/Zeta news today. First off, here's a progress report on YellowTAB's attempt at porting OpenOffice.org to Zeta: "We have now succeeded in porting 50 of the total of 200 packages of OpenOffice to yellowTAB ZETA. This includes one of the most complex components namely the SAL (System Abstraction Layer)." Secondly, IsComputerOn points out that screenshots of the BeMediaCenter have been published, while an update to BeeF is almost finished. And last but not least, Cola-coder is working on a front-end to IM_Kit (ICO has a download link).

Cairo Ported to BeOS

The Cairo vector-based graphics library now has a BeOS port, courtesy of Christian 'biesi' Biesinger. The Cairo library is used in Gecko 1.8 - the engine behind Firefox 1.5 and Seamonkey 1.0 - for SVG and CANVAS tag support, although future plans involve it receiving heavier use for general rendering, and is also receiving increasing use within GTK+, with 2.8 having inital support for it. The availability of this library on BeOS should aid the native porting of GTK+ in the future as well as ensuring that Mozilla products have a future on the platform, and its almost certain to see wider adoption in the future.