“The BeOS obsession is still an unsolved mystery to me. I threw open the crypt and ventured inside, but I left without revelation. Once I got ZETA to boot, yes, it ran reasonably fast, but whatever bug infects people with love for this OS didn’t bite.”
This is a nice juicy bit of flamebait. Except no one in the BeOS community is sensitive enough to care. One more reason BeOS rocked.
I’m a BeOS person, I had the bug. But BeOS is dead now, unless Walter or OpenBeOS or Haiku or whatever it’s called now can pull off a miracle I don’t believe it’s going to happen. And from everything I’ve heard about Zeta, it’s buggy and it’s doomed.
I miss the original BeOS. If only Apple had chosen BeOS rather than NeXt. Of course Apple still would’ve been doomed without Jobs.
Now I’m gunna be all depressed that All Hardware Sucks, All Software Sucks.
Edited 2005-10-31 22:22
Yea I really wish they bought both NeXT (for Jobs and other advantages) along with BeOS. I would love OS X soo much more! Oh well – I’m still a Mac user and I will still always love BeOS.
Apple did try to buy Be Inc (for BeOS), but Be Inc got greedy and demanded far too much money. Ended up selling to Palm for a fraction of what Apple offered.
Anyway BeOS is dead. But I believe it provided some inspiration to Mac OS X, and some features (like Spotlight) remind me of how cool BeOS was. Was. Pity though. Haiku is the best chance for a “BeOS” revival, but I don’t expect too much.
I confess, after my ZETA Live CD experience, I find myself inexplicably more curious about these ideas; sometimes I catch myself thinking about them on my way to work, or else I glimpse a ZETA logo out of the corner of my eye. Lately I’ve been waking in the middle of the night, wondering if the ZETA Live CD has inched a little closer my direction. Maybe I should purchase the full Deluxe Edition, I think, maybe I should…
Sounds to me the author did get infected…
I’ve tried zeta and I really wasn’t that fond of it, may I ask why so many love BeOS?
I have nothing against it but I really don’t understand the phenomenon. Anybody?
What are the features that draw people to BeOS? Is it the speed and feel of the GUI?
What are the features that draw people to BeOS?
BeOS feels as if it has a soul. That is probably the best way to put it– BeOS felt personal, where other operating systems feel cold, technical and distant. BeOS’ community is aso very open and friendly (it’s such a #%#@% shame that the community is now all $%#$%!@ up because of the divide between Zeta and Haiku… Such a waste).
As for features: BeFS, speed, responsiveness, easy app install, *best* UI behaviour *ever* (I still cannot work with operating systems that do not allow me to re-create (at least partially) BeOS’ UI behaviour), and… TABS.
thanks Thom
I’d agree. BeOS was the closest thing to a Happy Mac feeling that I’d ever seen on a PC.
Well, next to running MacOS 7.1 in Fusion under DOS, anyway. 🙂
Remember, BeOS’s heyday was before there was a consumer version of Windows NT. BeOS’s competition was OS 8 and Windows 98. Imagine Zeta, deuglified, more stable, and in the mid/late 1990s. It had stability and speed that just wasn’t matched by its contemporaries. That’s why people loved BeOS.
One could argue that OS/2 was still decent competition from a technical perspective, but it was on its way out (and overpriced) at the time that BeOS was coming into focus in the x86 world, so the two didn’t really overlap all that much.
I think I’ll reinstall BeOS 5 Pro on one of my boxes and see if I can make it a permanent addition to my LAN once again…
Thom_Holwerda said:
As for features: BeFS, speed, responsiveness, easy app install, *best* UI behaviour *ever* (I still cannot work with operating systems that do not allow me to re-create (at least partially) BeOS’ UI behaviour), and… TABS.
Agreed, including it’s modularity, it’s microkernel and servers, it’s filesystem, the feel of control and overview of the OS running, it’s folder structure, the fact that i can copy files from one BeFS partition to another to change partition without having to reinstall, the fact that the install CD is a live CD, the fact that beos doesn’t install from CD – copy files to the partition, so on, so on..
Silly? Maybe, but BeOS is great.
I’ve tried zeta and I really wasn’t that fond of it, may I ask why so many love BeOS?
Zeta is not BeOS anymore! Keep that in mind when saying that these two are the same!
“Love BeOS != Love Zeta” and vice versa
I don’t like Zeta, but I *do* love BeOS.
Edited 2005-11-01 11:41
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=223&slide=1
Reminds me of the Amiga OS, likewise the BeOS was a cool years back but now?
Who wants to spend there time in the past, but I guess some will always hark back to the good ole days.
Of course it runs quick, there’s not much decent full featured software around to install on it..
Still I guess to quick boot to use firefox is okay for some.
BeOS was considered the “modern” AmigaOS. The inheritor of the speed, coolness and integration of AmigaOS.
It sure seemed that way to those of us who adopted it.
My Homemade AMD K6-500 “BeBox” is still working. Sitting in the corner, just waiting for me to boot it.
10 years later (originally a P200mmx), it works great!
For those who want a consise version of the article, here goes:
He had trouble burning the .bin/.cue files.
He had hardware issues.
He didn’t like the fact it defaults to German.
He liked the interface but didn’t have enough media to effectively test audio/video capabilities.
He still doesn’t see why people like Zeta.
yes, the GUI plays a large part in my BeOS bug.
however that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
In addition to the pure GUI (speed, feel, etc.) BeOS’s shell, Tracker and Deskbar (particularly the .NewFS fork) is wonderful. Automatic queueing of file transfers. Ability to pause, restart, and stop file transfers. Ability to choose one of several possible actions in special cases (file with the same name being copied, copying symlinks[hard or soft] across partitions, etc)
most programs are designed with intelligence; no installing shortcuts to ump-teen different locations, good system defaults and (usually) not requiring the user to tinker with options and preferences. they perform a specific function instead of trying to be an all-in-one swiss army knife.
another aspect is the interconnectedness of programs.
for example, maging software relies upon system wide image translators for its file format support. So what’s that do for me? In short, every program can use any of the image translators installed on your system, regardless of whether the translator was previously installed or not.
and there’s more. file attributes and the resulting search queries based on file attributes or other data, right clicking program borders to “send to back”, polite and warming community, small hardware footprint (memory, cpu useage, and ram useage*1)
*1 BeOS loves caches. so it’ll try to use all your ram if possible. though it can run very comfortably in 192mb or less.
Yes. BeOS does have it’s limitations. Hardware support, less software to choose from than the top 3 OS’s, and what not.
Is BeOS worth the trade-offs for me personally? yes.
–mmadia
I hadn’t realised until I saw this article that the live CD was available for download already… needless to say I grabbed it straight away and it booted first time with no issues.
I went to set up my networking and thought the choice of only 3 drivers was a bit limited – then I realied that they were the drivers for the three different NICs I’ve got in my machine
Basically those new to BeOS will probably find the same old issues with not having the software they want etc., but if you’re like me and you know you can do what you want to do with it, this really is a huge step in the right direction! Don’t think I’ll be taking this CD out of my drive for a while yet. It’s found and mounted all my ext3/ntfs partitions with no problems at all and it supports all my hardware!
Go yT – you’ll have a new customer very soon – as soon as I’ve scraped some cash together
Top 10 Windows Freeware tools for 2005: http://windows.czweb.org/show_article.php?id_article=222
Personally I think Zeta have butchered BeOS, I hope that the Haiku project do not do this as well. Booting into Zeta after only using the original BeOS I too was quite disappointed, Zeta had better pull their finger out.
I was an OS/2 programmer at the time I got bit by the BE BUG. Being young and idealistic, I sought out the mysteries of why BeOS could run rings around both Windows 95 and OS/2 Warp.
How was it that I could take a spinning cube and drag and drop movie files on each surface and have all the cubes filled and all running at the same time without any hiccups? I still haven’t seen that reproduced at the clock rate I experienced with my old packard bell machine.
You wanna know some reasons why folks got all excited?
1. Microsoft didn’t own it!
2. IBM didn’t own it!
3. It wasn’t UNIX, although it did include a command line version of the bsh shell?(I’m working from memory) that came close to gov standards.
4. It was the fastest thing around.
5. You could make it look like just about any other OS as far as the desktop was concerned.
6. I could put it along side my Windows & OS/2 partitions and it could see and copy files (sometimes more).
7. There was an evangelist, I forget his name, who was forever introducing me to hidden features.
8. There was a built in programming language much like REXX in OS/2 and plenty of programs exploiting it.
9. It amazed my friends.
10. There was a whole world of community support from people who didn’t work for corporations but just wanted to help because the cared!
I came up with these reasons off the top of my head without giving much thought. I’m sure I could give many more, if I put my mind to it.
BeOS is a Once in a lifetime opporunity to break the shackels and proceed into the future. The dream remains…
Mike
it did include a command line version of the bsh shell?
The shell is the GNU Bourne Again SHell (bash), which works on BeOS because the system is mostly POSIX compatible (I’ve seen numbers like 95%). Alot of other GNU command line tools are included as well (grep, less, etc), and users have ported even more stuff over, such as vim and apache. The fact that the main compiler is GCC just shows that unix people shouldn’t feel particularily lost when it comes to the CLI. They would probably discover, however, that the urge to open a terminal emulator for regular file management isn’t nearly as strong as they’re used to, thanks to the brilliant Tracker and the overall Be atmosphere.
7. There was an evangelist, I forget his name, who was forever introducing me to hidden features.
You’re probably thinking of Scot Hacker who wrote the BeOS Bible and had a BeTips website for a while. He also wrote a series of great articles on BeOS for Byte, if I recall corrctly.
Amen Mike! I used to read the several page long email’s we recieved of tips, tricks, and even code on the bus trips to work everyday and the only programming I knew was Apple BASIC from the ’80s yet I still got a lot out of that information.
Last week I installed Solaris express and it wrote over my mbr. I do not care what mbr i use but it needs to see all my partitions (4) and this one only saw solaris and XP, no BeOS or FreeBSD. I corrected this by slapping in my BeOS install CD and holding down the space bar was given the option to boot into the BeOS. Once in BeOS, i run bootman and all is well.
later I wanted to reinstall Solaris from scratch and this was not possible untill I booted into BeOS, ran the drive setup app and reinitialized the partition solaris was installed on,
I rarely run it but all my base belongs to BeOS.
…Zeta I get all watery-eyed.
I am a Mac user now and I soooooo badly miss my BeOS. If I could do all I need to do with it for work I would be using it now.
Don’t get me wrong, OS X is quite good. BeOS was just, well, special. Still is. Got my 5.0.3 pro CD just waiting for it’s moment again.
I sure do hope Haiku pulls through. Man, if they are able to cough up a Beta this Spring I will be ecstatic!!!
Mike
I tried the Zeta LiveCD myself. The one thing I noticed right away was how fast the User Interface (UI) was. Of course booting was slow, because it was from a CD. But once it was booted, everything was extremely responsive. Very low latency. I’m intrigued by Zeta, and if there were a $19 “hobby” version, I’d check it out. But I’m not willing to pay $100 for, what to me would just be, a toy OS.
I use Gentoo Linux primarily. Though I’m aware of, and I’m a fan of, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I run OpenBSD on one of my Soekris net4801 embedded boxes, and I run FreeBSD on the other. (And I would be running FreeBSD on my Sony laptop if all the hardware was supported.) I also own an iBook. So, I’m familiar with Mac OSX and Apple hardware was well.
My only complaint with the Unix-like systems is that Xorg is ssssllllloooowwwww. Major latency issues. I’m not talking about the time it takes Firefox to startup, that’s a disk access and memory issue. I’m talking about the slow response time when scrolling menus, or the amount of lag there is when resizing/moving windows. Windows 95/98/2K/XP blow away Xorg in that regard. And so does Zeta, from what I’ve seen.
I’m a bit of an Open Source fanatic. (Though I don’t think I’m a zealot about it. I don’t make up excuses for Open Source in areas where it clearly sucks. i.e. Xorg)
Zeta appealed to me because it had the one thing that I think is a major problem with Unix-like systems. (A fast UI.) But it wasn’t enough to make me want to “switch”.
from what i understand, the responsiveness “problem” of xorg may well be more related to the libs used by the diffrent apps then by the underlying xorg system.
hell, even on windows firefox is a bit on the slow side…
still, there is continual work being done to the rendering speed and similar of xorg. and better drivers allso help. there are allso a whole lot of other factors at work, but yes, xorg can be a bit laggy. still, its better then the xfree its based on, right?
in the end i think it all boils down to philosophy. xorg and similar is just another program running on top of the kernel. under windows the kernel is doing the rendering, and i would belive that zeta is doing the same thing.
allso, wasnt beos heavy threaded? something like that can help on the responsiveness of the gui. that is if zeta have inherited this
still, im glad to see that there is yet another os out there. maybe if we se more opendocument support then people can select a diffrent os that dont have to run msoffice. alltho i dont think we will ever see dell or similar ship anything other then windows on anything other then the very low end of platforms. gameing is still god, and god pushes the hardware…
Nope. In BeOS the rendering is done by an X-like service called the app_server.
ok, but is it running in kernel space or user space? ie, can it be trown the hell out if the kernel needs some work time (less of a problem now that the linux kernel is packing pre-emptive multitasking but still).
all servers are running in user space.
only little parts of modular drivers do run in kernel space, and part of network stack is implemented as set of kernel-space modules.
ah, a microkernel. should have figured. then it truely is impressive that it have the speed it have.
still, can beos display the gui from a app running on a diffrent system across the network?
i still have a feel that there is more then the xorg or whatever thats to blame for the appearant laggyness of *nix guis…
It’s no mystery how a microkernal OS can be so responsive. The answer is simply that the GUI was their number one priority.
And the app-server guy and the kernel guy had adjacent cubes. That helped.
If you really want the OS to be responsive you can make it happen, if you start from scratch. But once the event model is settled it’s harder to optimize a GUI. Example: back in 1998 I wrote BeOS software that used a TV tuner card, and set up a DMA program to *bampf* the video straight from the tuner to the video card. This was a supported feature in most TV tuner cards.
The problem was that every time the TV window was resized, or another window passed over the TV window, the DMA program had to be revised. On BeOS this was not an issue: you just reset the program the moment the window received an event.
On WinNT, however, this was impossible—it just couldn’t track its own UI events fast enough. It could take a huge fraction of a second for your app to get the opportunity to reset the DMA after a window was moved. So the video card came with a demo TV viewer program for WinNT, where the video lagged along behind the window when you dragged it. Plus the window was always-on-top to avoid having to figure out clipping regions. The event model simply didn’t allow the hardware to be updated fast enough.
You can still see this today in XP. Just play a WMV file and drag the window around. At least it’s clipped, but you’ll still see the video sit still as the window moves out of the way.
Caj
If you weed out all the Halloween crap in this article you are left with about 5 actual lines of review on this OS, which is not very informative. Still I have to agree with the little that was presented as I remember trying out BeOS about six months before they sold to Palm and thinking the same things. It was nice to look at, ran very smoothly, but there just wasn’t anything available for it in the way of software. So it quickly went back on the shelf. If they had open sourced it maybe it would have given Linux a run for it’s money.
I must agree. I run BeOS max usually without any problems whatsoever, hardware is recognised ect. I installed zeta v1.0 when released on the same machine and hardly anything was recognised or worked. I mean, come on yt an audigy 2 sound card is hardly obscure hardware is it? Needless to say zeta got scrapped and beos max was put back on the partition! Yt had better do a lot better than this!
I am still a R5 user. What I really like about BeOS is first of all that it is a “pure breed” desktop only OS – it is not some creature from the server closet gone user-friendly. In a sense it continues the idea of now extinct home computers. No covering of all bases – this is *your* machine you’ve got here!
Also, it is a very simple OS – there is so much less of everything, yet it is quite powerful. It really delivers on the KISS principle. This is especially evident when developing apps. For instance, just browsing the BeBook (the Developers Guide) it is quite clear that Be Kits are downright Zen, compared for let’s say MFC (which was in development in about the same era). And finally, I like the Be’s choice of non-conventional features, like file attributes, MIME filetypes, the whole architecture. I have great respect for anybody that decides not to emulate the mainstream just “because people are used to it” and just do it one better. As we say here: it is not hard to get used to the good stuff quickly!
In a sense it continues the idea of now extinct home computers. No covering of all bases – this is *your* machine you’ve got here!
I have a feeling that this statement has to do with BeOS being a single user system. There’s one serious problem with that – you can’t use it for public computers in schools, libraries, etc, because the user would be able to screw around with the system in any way he wanted.
just browsing the BeBook (the Developers Guide) it is quite clear that Be Kits are downright Zen
Not to mention that it’s been prepared to take advantage of multiple processors right from the start. I can’t help thinking that BeOS might rise from the ashes (in the form of Haiku) at the same time that multi-core and SMP systems finally become widespread in the home user market. What if Haiku ends up being the best performing system under these new conditions?
I like the Be’s choice of non-conventional features, like file attributes, MIME filetypes, the whole architecture.
I second that! To me, the Be Way just seems to be the Right Way.
Sounds like just another OS religion to me. Zealotry gives me the pip.
That’s why I like BeOS and Haiku.
ALso why I like Syllable, MenuetOS, SkyOS and such.
It’s good to have the possibility of choosing. Especially if it’s means chosing something more than what skin will be on Gnome and what installer to use… hehe…
Its important Haiku is developed for the future to move forward and adapt, the modularity of Haiku/BeOS makes that possible, yet the way things are going such as web applications (.net) means that Haiku must be adaptive to these new technologies. Is mono being ported? Is mono even worth porting?
The problem is the lack of develoipment tools at present such as Java, Apache and the mySQL (postgreSQL is not as popular)but also the limited number of available drivers.
In regards to games BeOS is by far the better choice in terms of its system abilities but the lack of tools and errr users makes it unviable.
I dont believe Zeta will ever become a sufficient sustitute in the long tern as Yellowtab have not focused on building a strong foundation. Instead they to simply add a series of unecessary apps when they should have been developing drivers and making a fully usable system.
I intend to give my development efforts towards BeOS because I believe it is still the best choice modern operating system out there when compared to windows, most certainly linux and even OSX, although OSX may just catch up sooner rather than later. Plus I just simply like it.
Honestly, if there was propper support for my system, I would be using Zeta, or at least R5.
Problem is, the Geforce drivers lock up the system, there is no support for my network devices, no support for my SATA controller, and what sound support there is, is crappy.
I tried beos way back. I had to see what all the fuss was about.
First I tried the free version, I was completely dissapointed. then I bought R5, and I was even more dissaointed.
It’s been a few years, but as I remember, I had to have windows installed for beos to install, and beos added no additional functionallity, or speed.
The installation was awkward at best. I had to keep making floppies and rebooting; primitive even for it’s day.
When I completed the installation, it seemed like I had a slower, less functional, version of windows.
I could never understand all the gushing praise. Still can’t.
All JMHO.
If you were “forever making floppies”, that wasn’t BeOS, then.
Are you sure you were running BeOS? The installer couldn’t be simpler – and the speed difference back in the day was unmissable.
Zeta is a disgrace to BeOS. It’s sad that people are paying YellowTab for a product they threw a few patches on to.
Don’t get me wrong; BeOS was great back in the day, but look at this Zeta.. it’s ludacris.
The price, $100. For BeOS with a bunch of patches. Wow. YellowTab is sitting back making some serious cash for doing almost absolutely nothing.
The real killer is the fact that the same people who praise Zeta complain about the fact that they have have to pay $30 to get a beta of SkyOS. Meanwhile, the people behind SkyOS are actually constructing their own OS and not patching an old one.
When BeOS “died” (technically, was actually “killed off” by Be, Inc.) and Be, Inc. died from a self-inflicted, mortal wound, known as “Corporate Stupidity”), yT grabbed the reins. The problem is that yT doesn’t understand what BeOS really is/was. They think they do and TRY, but they don’t know how to get it right.
Where BeOS was a living OS, Zeta is a zombie. It has the appearance of life, but it’s a dead corpse shambling around in the clothes of the formerly living OS. Why?
They just don’t understand the difference between what BeOS was and what they’re trying to do. Language differences. Driver issues. Software versions. The whole kit ‘n kaboodle. They’re not approaching it from where it came from and slowly making sure everything progresses correctly from that point.. They’re trying to do too much, too soon, in too many directions and screwing it all up! “Pile more apps on to make ’em happy!” they yell. Yeah, and a ton of those apps are so outdated and useless, your “new” Zeta experience feels more like some old ancient version of BeOS DR.
And we’re all standing around going… “What the (!!!) are they doing?”
And then they have the audacity to charge $100 for this? P’ah! A *proprietary* pile of bat guano is still a pile of bat guano.
Meanwhile, “Team Haiku” is slowly getting it right, step-by-step, day-by-day… and yT is simply likely going to just let bits of Haiku fix the mess that yT made of BeOS.
yT’s motto is probably: “If you can’t do it right, wait til someone can, and then take their work and fix your mistakes.”
In the end, Zeta will be more Haiku than Zeta. This, I foresee, as inevitable. Because no one, in their right mind, is gonna buy Zeta in it’s current “corpse condition”.
I have 100% respect for Haiku and what it respresents. I have 0% respect for Zeta. It’s just the way things are are being done by both sides.
Latre!
Luposian
The guy is right in one thing, burning the image on Linux is difficult, I haven’t been able to do it with K3B nor Gnomebaker – “errors in the cue file”. If they want people to try their OS it would be better to use a (much easier to use) ISO file, especially as many people trying their OS will be people on linux right now. They tend to be less afraid to experiment. I haven’t got Nero so I guess I won’t be trying Zeta.
Their website contains a page that says “We’re back, stay tuned…” Is this an old announcement, or are they really working on the project again?
I’ve never had more fun just using an OS than I have with BeOS (R5). I’ve never been able to completely abandon Windows, but that’s due largely to the limited apps–the potential of BeOS was never fully utilized.
I applaud YellowTab and their efforts, but I’m hesitant to purchase Zeta and replace my R5 version.
I do think that Haiku can recapture the potential that BeOS had, and with its modularity, multi-threading, stability, object-orientation, filetypes, filesystem, etc., and the added advantage of being open source instead of proprietary, there’s no telling how far it could go once they get past that first hurdle of recreating BeOS R5. The most obvious problem, other than recreating the features of the OS itself, is the necessity of continually updating the software to deal with new hardware.
BeOS is actually useable without resorting to a command line shell. It is minimilist while offering a rich user experience which is a pretty hard thing to do.
It is as if WindowMaker offered all the features of gnome or KDE without all the klunky garbage those gross environments are shackled with.
Or as if XP wasnt crammed full of wizards and had a start button to shut down. Not an easy experience to recapture.
Microsoft and Apple ought to buy a copy for their dev teams and try and understand why LESS is MORE …
I haven’t used BeOS for 2 years, when I bought a new windows box that wasn’t supported. I installed Max edition to make sure, but no sound, no network. I can probably get it working, but it’s no longer my research machine so I spend no time on it.
That’s a shame. I booted to that partition yesterday looking for files. After using a PowerBook for a year, I was shocked at the difference in responsiveness. In BeOS apps just pop open instantly, dragging feels different (windows feel lighter I guess,) things happen very quickly right when I tell them to. Then I shutdown from the bash shell and blink-blink-blink-OFF.
Normally we are inclined to feel smug that our favorite OS can do something powerful and unique. However, I am upset that after all these years, all OSs aren’t at least that responsive as this one was when I first started using it in 1997.
The other day I was watching a DVD on a Powerbook and a browser was open to Gmail.com. The video would occasionally jitter on the auto refresh. Sometimes I have music skip when the OS hiccups. When something like that happens, I just can’t believe it.
Caj
So they bought the other one. As a result, Apple needed an infusion of cash from [gasp] Microsoft to stay in business. They coulda played hardball!
Mike
Its more bad halloween puns than review.