Search Results for: BeOS

I went on and wrote a review about MacOSX 10.0.4 a month ago, but it was never finished as I had to fly to France for my own wedding. I came back and MacOSX 10.1 had been released. I scrapped completely the old text, as 10.1 brings some more speed and new features to the system, and restarted writting the review from scratch.

The release of WindowsXP does not seem to discourage the coders around the world to code the operating system of their dreams. Lots of new, simple and complex, embedded and desktop OSes grow like mushrooms very often these days. Not all of the OSes we found by searching the web are active, but we will link to the ones with more activity.

This commentary on ZDNews talks about the need of the Linux development community to build something new and revolutionary, something that Microsoft has not offered to its customers, instead of trying to recreate Ms Office as the main "killer application" that Linux needs in order to go mainstream. One day after the above commentary went live, there is already an answer to it made by the C|Net News.com editorial stuff here. Both editorials are a good read. Our Take: I wrote a similar editorial once, called "The Killer Application Concept", about what BeOS needs to make it through and become mainstream, and I still stand in this opinion and I believe it applies for the Linux situation as well. To summarize: The OS doors are closed, except you do create a real (r)evolution.

VMWare today announced the availability of a Beta release of VMware Workstation 3.0, the latest generation of its award-winning desktop software for technical professionals. Workstation 3.0 delivers significant performance and usability improvements over previous releases, the company says. Workstation 3.0 provides support for the latest operating systems including WindowsXP and the latest Linux distributions, supports additional peripheral devices, and provides significant enhancements in networking and better overall performance. VMware will ship Workstation 3.0 in the fourth quarter of 2001. New features include: Host and guest OS support for WindowsXP Pro and Home Edition, USB device support, DVD-ROM support, CD-R/RW support, CD-ROM ISO image support, generic SCSI device support -- makes devices available directly to the guest OS, large virtual disk support, now up to 128 GB per IDE virtual disk and 256 GB per SCSI virtual disk, improved CPU, networking, disk and interactive performance, completely new Windows style user interface (Windows host version), built-in NAT for easy connection to networks, more flexible and easier to configure virtual networking, improved support for laptops and more. Our Take: No word for BeOS support as a Guest OS. Update: I downloaded the latest beta version and BeOS loads this time, without crashing. While it is loading very fast in the beginning, when it is going to graphics mode, because the VMWare virtual graphics device does not expose the VESA standard, the performance falls so much that hits the disk pretty hard. Normal BeOS boot time is 12 seconds when launched natively, under VMWare it takes up to 5 minutes on a dual Celeron 533 under Win2000 and of course it is so slow (please remember that all this slowness is just because of the unsuported gfx subsystem that makes the rest of the launching process and the OS to be unresponsive) that it is completely unusable. Screenshot here.

Qube is a multiplatform Desktop Environment with support for networking protocols such as TCP/IP, PPP, SMTP, HTTP etc. developed from scratch by Interactive Studio. The Qube environment was designed for a wide variety of console operating systems and it's designed to be easily portable. It supports multitasking even on non-multitasking operating systems, such as DOS. The basic installation occupies less than 4MB of disk space (download the DOS package) and it looks very attractive (check for screenshots inside) with GUI elements coming from the MacOS (buttons, launch bar), BeOS (icons), Windows (desktop's context menu style) and even Java (scrollbars). Today, we host an interview with the mastermind behind Qube, Michal Stencl.

The new AMD CPUs won't be specified by its clock speed anymore. Future Athlons will be specified by 'MODEL' numbers not by Mhz. For instance, a Palomino-Athlon that runs at 1.4 GHz will be MODEL 1600, because AMD considers Palomino 1.4 GHz to be at least as fast as a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz. The printing on the chip will be 'A1600 .....', even though its a 1400 MHz part only, Tom's Hardware is reporting.
An interesting interview with the Sun developers who are working on Gnome for Solaris 9, can be found here.
A new version of KDE's Office, KOffice ver 1.1, was made available for download yesterday.
And speaking about office suites, Gobe Software today announced Gobe Productive 3 for the Windows and Linux OSes, and that it will be available this fall. The app will be selling for $124.95 USD, while existing BeOS users will be able to upgrade for less than $40. Gobe will also be introducing the Family License scheme, allowing owners to install Gobe Productive on every computer in their home, as well on one computer where they work.
In the meantime, Apacabar emailed us with more information about their BeOS sellout: "This offer is exclusively available from the retailers called SoftLine in France for everybody interested in the world. As our webmaster is on holidays, the web site has not been updated with new prices. Meanwhile, we suggest you to order quickly by email, by contacting Mr Sylvain Todeschini who's in charge of International Sales".
An interesting clarification (Editor's note: and also an affirmation of my personal opinion as to why Palm purchased Be's IP) is now clear: Palm bought Be for the (brilliant indeed) engineering force and not so much for the BeOS/BeIA technology (some elements from the Be technology may appear in the new PalmOS though). The interview is with the David Nagel, the CEO of the new software subsidiary that Palm will be creating after the Be engineers join them (and where Steve Sakoman will be the CTO).
Also, a very interesting chat topic regarding multithreading being BeOS' sore spot (a result from BeOS messaging system) has popped up. If you are a BeOS developer, it is a must read.

In his latest (and final) BeView column for Byte.com, Scot Hacker takes a harsh look at the way Microsoft's Windows Licensing Agreement has affected Be's business with Hitachi and other PC vendors, as well the entire OEM hardware landscape. While the Hitachi relationship was no secret, this is the first time Be has divulged way in which Microsoft's sinister bootloader license kept BeOS from shipping on dual-boot machines from Hitachi, Dell, Compaq, and Micron. Be, Inc. nearly had deals with other major OEMs, and this is the first time JLG has told the complete story of Be's involvement with the DOJ case against Microsoft. Hacker adds: "I had a final column farewell attached to the end of the piece, but Byte removed it for some reason. So, quickly: It's been a great ride with Byte, and I'd like to thank all of the readers who have supported the column over the past 2.5 years. There is still life beyond Windows!"

AtheOS is a modern, free (GPLed) Operating System written from scratch in C++. A big chunk of the OS is POSIX compliant, supports multiprocessing and it is GUI-oriented (fully OOP). Today we are hosting an interesting interview with the AtheOS creator, Kurt Skauen. Kurt is talking about his views on binary compatibility in future versions, multithreading and the future of his OS in general.