The BeO5Max project has just released their first beta of BeOS 5 PE Max Edition V3. Currently the ISO comes in multiple .rar files but a single .zip is expected today. Because of the nature of the BFS filesystem, BeO5Max has a non-standard way of burning ISOs, so make sure you read here & here.
BeOS 5 PE Max Edition V3.1 Beta-1 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I’m glad to see that BeOS is still alive (in a way at least).
hehe Yes i though BeOS was dead but i have wrong
and that is a good sign.
Before i thinked BeOS is gonna be something Big but no!
I have a few questions:
1) how people can develop BeOS Max Ed. if they don’t have the source code ?
2) Will it work on new hardware (Athon XP, Via KT600 chipset, etc) ?
1. They don’t extend the OS itself, but instead they replace some drivers with newer ones, adding new drivers and add new apps. But the underlying OS itself remains the same. BeOSMax can’t be developed further, only enhanced.
2. Yes, that’s the point: adding enough new drivers or even hacks if needed, so newer hardware works with the free version of BeOS.
“1) how people can develop BeOS Max Ed. if they don’t have the source code ?
2) Will it work on new hardware (Athon XP, Via KT600 chipset, etc) ?
”
they hack it as much as they can. you dont need source code to do ugly and sometimes like these necessary hacks
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=243814
The release say it’s a live CD. This should be interesting. Anybody know what the final release schedule looks like??
Has anybody tried to install this on a Mac using Virtual PC?
One of the prior distros of Max did do quite well on VPC for windows and also virtual server. Can’t say if it would work under Mac’s VPC. Since this a live CD one ought to be able to try almost any setup and know if it will work.
All versions of the BeOS DevEd and Max were LiveCDs. You just have to boot them, press ctrl+alt+del, kill the installer, and “restart the desktop”. At least on the DevEd you had to start the Media Server by hand if you booted like this, but it still went faster from a CD than an average Windows 2000 boot from a HD (not even speaking of linux).
I know about all of the BeOS CD’s being live, I was just wondering if this version os BeOS Max threw in anything extra. If you read the release notes it says that it’s a live CD only as of this version, so I was just thinking if there’s more functionality.
Most newer versions of beos could be made to run live sort of. Not all apps worked. I think the Demo R4.5 had a floppy and there was talk of a phos live cd with a virtual drive to get stuff to work. This version was rumored to have that same ram drive to get things that needed write support to work. I will dl it and know for sure tonight.
Uhh… This is an enthusiasts site, you know.
all day, every day, for Work and for play. but, i guess i get lumpped into that crazy catagory, along with Amiga / Next / OS2 / etc users
Every day!
As often as possible. The only OS I truly feel joy in using….
I do. I use it a lot for listening to the music and burning CDs etc. because it boots and loads apps super fast, plus it seems that it handles burning CDs and playing mp3s or whatever _simultaneously_ much better than my Win2000, responsiveness-wise, in Windows other apps become jerky and tend to lag. But that may be just me – shouldn’t that be entirely CD/IDE/motherboard/HW arch. related? Anyways, I also use it a lot for checking some programming ideas in C++ occasionally, mostly because you’ve got both GNU dev-tools and the excellent Metrowerks Codewarrior IDE aka BeIDE. All in all, BeOS is still one of the fastest ways to start doing something meaningful with your PC from the time of powering it up – besides tweaking BIOS and starting at the DOS prompt
, of course…
I use BeOS 99% of my computer time theese days, Mozilla/Firefox is good enough for daily browsing. I use IM_KIT for instantMessaging. CL-amp as a Winamp Replacement, and VLC for Video.
You dont have to use BeIDE, for development. There are plenty of Editors, and you can use make for building your app/toolkit. The only thing I miss for BeOS is a really good OfficeSuite that can open OpenOffice documents, and import .doc without any glitches on the layout. (Openoffice isnt perfect on that either ). So its the same problems with Linux ( even if they have alot more to offer when it comes to office suites, oki better support on a lot of things ).
BeOS ofcourse has its downs, its not a perfect OS. We who uses it likes it, so stop bugging that it is an dead os. If you dont like it then dont use it.
How does BeOS 5PE Max 3.1 compare to Zeta? One is free, I know but for daily use, who will be the best?
Although I wish we had a better browser
(And Enemy Territory.)
I just can’t stand any other OS for desktop use. (Never tried OSX though)
Last time i tried BeOS PE Max I thought it was very unstable if you compared it against for example BeOS Developer Edition.
And I really hope OpenBeOS makes some more progress soon. I think they are in great need of som more kernel-devs if you scout through the cvs you will understand what I mean
well, zeta uses the leaked dano/bone code iirc. plus some enhancements that yellowtab has added. but I, for one, don’t like zeta. Just doesnt feel the same. nor does it run as well. least not on my hardware. plus theres no moving tabs! Gotta have moving tabs.
I use beos for all my daily computing. Only reason I EVER use windows is for the occasional games like AoE or UT.
>Although I wish we had a better browser
Firefox and Mozilla run nice on Beos.
http://www.bebits.com
It runs well on vpc on os x but keyboard is unusable… i hope this release corrects that.
I know, I’m part of the development team
I used it for all of last school year, and still do (for those few hours I get to spend at home while working during the summer.) It’s the only thing that I could be decently productive for the price on old PII 350. I only had to boot to Windows once in awhile, and once people helped me get RDC going under BeOS, I never had to boot over.
“Firefox and Mozilla run nice on Beos.
http://www.bebits.com”
Not on PPC. We are out of luck.
I use BeOS on a daily basis . I ported several Linux Apps , running them full screen with X.
I am currently working on Openoffice . This will likely take months.The next move will be to port Gnome.Then the issue of Office Suite will be laid to rest.
fish,
While your at it please port mozilla to Beos PPC
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.8a…
Firefox and Mozilla run nice on Beos.
http://www.bebits.com
No it doesn’t, really. The BeOS port of Mozilla/Firefox is painfully slow compared to the versions for other OSs.
I find mozilla a pain to use in BeOS, and I really hope they get that native gecko-based browser working soon.
What’s the latest version you’ve tried of Firefox? Seems you havn’t tried them in a long long time.
There have been many changes to improve speed, and I think it’s not only on my machine it runs as well as on other platforms speedwise. I personally think it’s faster.
For instance we’ve changed one of the primitive locking mechanisms (condvar) to a much faster one. Lot’s of improvement to drawing code too.
I’ve just downloaded this and installed on my dual P200 MHz 192 MB ram and I must say I am very impressed. Very fast and responsive GUI even on a box this old and everything works well. Nice apps too. But I can’t get some of the apps to work like ssh2-client, rdesktop etc. and I haven’t figured out what BONE is that they refer to on bebits.com all the time. I think I need a bigginers guide to BeOS or something like that who descripbes the basesystem and stuff like that, any suggestuins? Good IRC-channels for BeOS?
I managed to build a P4 patched BeOS Max 3.1 with the helpful links provided here. The PS2 keyboard and mouse are unresponsive once you get into the desktop. Same deal on VPC for Mac.. sniff.. I want my fast boot times back!
Look at http://www.betips.net for getting your keyboard to work. It might that you don’t have enabled IRQ for USB and VGA in BIOS.
BONE btw is an upgraded network stack.
I second what tqh said, i often use Mozilla for surfing on the net when
i am in BeOS i i do not notice and speed problem, i do however tun BeOS in a P4 2.8 with 1 gb.
Problems i have in BeOS (also Max) are the sync with sound and video, nfs networking works correct but is slow and if mounted BeOS refuses to unmount and hangs when trying to restart, newest Nvidia card was not supported so i installed an older geforce, printing does not want to work, Dockbert is unstable, etc. but mozilla start fast and is very stable.
I still use BeOS a often but almost always just to download/upload quick with BeShare
i do however tun BeOS in a P4 2.8 with 1 gb.
BeOS only works correctly on cpus of 2.2ghz and lower iirc. otherwise you get timing problems which is whats probably messing up your audio and video. also, beos does not always run right on 1gb of ram…
BeOS only works correctly on CPU 2.2Ghz and lower??? How is that??? How can an OS not support faster CPU?
Another weird bug from BeOS… CPU speed and 1gig RAM…
int32 for storing CPU clock speed in kernel – that runs out at 2.1Ghz.
Yes, its a weird bug but theres almost certainly a good reason for it
I get a error when I boot this release. Kerneldump and can’t symlink(‘ /boot’, ‘/’) something. Anyone else get this? I just type continue and it boots normal.
this thing is getting really cool, i’m currently running beos max on a testmachine i had here. its well performing and really fast on a celeron 500
with 512mb ram and a 40gb hdd, the gfx card is a 4mb riva128 card, which also performs really fast here.
bye, good work, murphy