The Open-BeOS (OBOS) networking team managed to re-create the BeOS networking stack, net_server, and even achieve binary compatibility. TCP support has now been added, and now NetPositive can retrieve web pages. You can see a screenshot of NetPositive, the BeOS native web browser, at David Reid’s web site (David is the developer who ported Apache 1.x/2.x to BeOS). Still, the infant stack is pretty unstable, but it’s a huge step forward.
OpenBeOS Achieves Binary Compatibility With Net_Server
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The various teams that make up the OpenBeOS group are all making excellent progress. It won’t be long before the other teams are able to announce similar claims.
Am I the only one who is amazed at the pace at which the OBOS teams are moving? Keep up the great work everyone.
Regards,
Maverick
No, Maverick, you’re not alone.
Congrats to the OBOS teams! Go OBOS!
Take care
lichtgestalt
Considering how technically capable the targeted goal is, and the number of full-time, professional programmers who originally worked on BeOS, it’s absolutely phenominal how much progress the OBOS (all flavors included
teams are making.
Dave
I want to get my hands on new net-server!!!
Since we can use OBOS components on R5, we don’t have to wait for OBOS to be completed. Very good thing.
When you consider how many people that are volunteering for this project it is nice to see that they are beginning to produce some code that hints towards a true standalone version of OBOS. Good luck to the everyone on the OBOS project and I hope to see more major news in the coming months.
It’s great that so many have shown support for this project. I wonder how new hardware will be managed. Hopefully drivers and such will be released in force as well…
cheers!!
Keep it up guys, its excellent work
good stuff!
I heard that something is moving on the other OBOS modules
Gread Job guys!!
Any idea when we can expect a release (don’t think I saw a date on the site)?
All kudos to David, Axel, Bruno and Phillipe. You guys are my idols.
The way the OBOS network stack is progressing, you can be assured that OBOS will have the best stack in the industry. Facts:
– the server can be either a kernel module or a userland module, simply by changing a parameter and recompiling.
– as a kernel module, the stack can be unloaded at any time. Download an update with support for a new protocol, restart networking (no reboot) and your machine can process incoming packets using the new protocol. Dont need networking at all – unload it from the kernel and free up some memory for some other CPU task. Unix/Windows, eat your hearts out.
– its faster than stock R5.03 networking by several magnitutes, and there is still a lot of tweaking to go. Who needs BONE?
– it supports select(), and sockets are file descriptors. Thousands of Unix apps previously unavailable for BeOS (except with BONE) are now able to be ported.
– it works right now with stock R5.03. No need to wait for OBOS R1.
– its open source. You all know the pro’s, and in this instance I dont know of any con’s.
I still cannot get over the fact that networking can be unloaded and loaded with ease – the benefits of a micro-kernel approach vs monolithic kernel approaches. Why use anything else (*cough*)
W A Y T O G O ! ! ! ! ! !
was that photo a picture of the new net server running in beos? or on some sort of new framework for open beos?
Well- Multimedia – it’s on our focus, isn’t it?
A rocksolid ass-kicking-fast Mediakit with blazing-fast & fresh codeces. That what we want.
A BeOS-ccda-fs type DVD-fs Mounting mechanism (2 Folders 1 w/vob, 1 with mpg’s) is on the scratch…
Good Luck Marcus O.!
Best thing I have heard in a while. I am very greatfull to all the people working on OpenBeOS for there is a future in PC’s Operating Systems. Can’t wait for the whole thing (-:
Yes, in R5. All the sections (“kits”) will be able to run on R5, this way we can develop OBOS on BeOS.
Cool, way to go guys!
>>Still, the infant stack is pretty unstable<<
Sounds like a pretty good reproduction of the real deal
Does it have a restart button? I know i used it a few times a day.
Was the reason for going with remaking net_server cause it was simpler and gave a starting point for the first release, plus made for a good test of if the theroy behind what they are doing will work? Is this a warm up to redoing BONE?
Well good job guys keap the good work up!
keep up the good work!
Sigan asi muchachos!
well done
> > Still, the infant stack is pretty unstable
>
> Sounds like a pretty good reproduction of the real deal
Heh, I will take that (in behalf of the networking team) as a compliment.
> Does it have a restart button? I know i used it a few times a day.
Hmmmm… No.
> Was the reason for going with remaking net_server cause it was
> simpler and gave a starting point for the first release,
> plus made for a good test of if the theroy behind what they are
> doing will work?
Let me set some stuff straight. It is *NOT* a userland implementation. It is a kernelland implementation that can also be compiled as a userland app (makes the debugging process easier).
> Is this a warm up to redoing BONE?
That’s exactly what we are doing right now.
> Well good job guys keap the good work up!
We will. Or, to be honest, David will.
-Bruno
And of course, we’ll be all here, waiting for developments, rooting for the best of the best to come out of the OpenBeOS factory :o)
OpenBeOS is gonna ROCK!!
A lot of great progress being made. Keep up the great work!
keep up the great work guys, we’re all rooting for you.
graig, yes, it runs in BeOS. That is a picture of BeOS with the replaced Net_Server working in place of the standard BeOS net server.
The OBOS team are rebuilding each component of BeOS peice by peice. You will be able to replace the BeOS R5 net_server with OBOS net_server, and then the BFS with the OBOS version, and then eventually the app_server and interfacekit, all the way up to someday replacing the BeOS R5 kernel with the OBOS kernel (NewOS kernel). After each and every component is replaced, you have a new OS, OBOS.
Sorry about that… didn’t realize there was another page of comments, so the above reply is to something a long time ago – that was replied to already.
🙂
Yes that was a complement!
I’ll take no restart button as meaning it doesn’t need one.
good luck with BONE, I’m guessing you can get that done quicker than the few years the original bone to get to beta or whatever it got to, (side note, what level did BONE ever reach?).
On another note I like the fact two of the guys working on it are named Axel and Bruno, this sounds like one tough group of coders! Sorry for those with names I don’t know or just don’t sound tough
to format my windows partition!
Hi,
some German BeOS fans have build up a BeOS distribution based on the freely available BeOS Personal Edition. The BeOS Developer Edition comes with many new drivers, tools, apps and recompiled software.
http://bezip.de/app/1194/
Ciao,
Sebastian
Here’s the thing:
1. I’m a programming newbie
2. I’m a BeOS user
3. I want to learn to program in BeOS (!)
now what?
Interesting link on OpenBeos website:
http://www.flipcode.com/tutorials/tut_beos.shtml“
We’ve heard, and I can’t speak for anyone else but I was going to try it but a driver for my nic doesn’t exist so I guess I’m sol (its just no fun to boot into an os I can’t go online with). I really hope a driver comes out for obos when its ready, its not like its that uncommon either, its the cheapest linksys on the market so you know they’ve sold a few.
Great news and lots of respect to the whole OBOS team.
Keep up with this tempo (:
yes, great progress, can’t wait to get it installed. on a side note, can any of the team comment on how far along, if at allm CHAP authentication is coming? along with modem compatibility, this has always been a real gripe for me and beos connectivity, dunno why, but a lot of UK ISPs seem to favour this method. freeserve had PAP for a bit, but then shifted over to CHAP. but anyway, kudos all the same
Great work you guys (and gals). Keep it up!
So I understand this new stack is compatible with Old BeOS apps. Is it also compatible with bone apps?
I have been amazed simply at BeOS’s following
– ie its community… looks like ill have to try OpenBeOS if its anything like The BeOS!!!
Plus, if its anything like The BeOS i would have to say, its got a chance of downing MS!!! – That is, if OpenBeOS can get the OS to run as fast/effiecently and as responsive as BeOS was, with all the BeOS features such as their groovey file system and other kits, it’ll easy be able to compete with MS. Because you’ll have a create underlying OS, with nice GUI which is extreamly fast and very user friendly!
I believe this will also attract commercial developers like macromedia adobe and all the others that linux has failed to attract. Well, they have failed to some degree.. I believe OpenBeOS could succed at this if they get a product close to The BeOS
… Well, i hope so 
Where can I make my PayPal donation?
Great job!!!
Got to put my plans for buying a Mac on hold now, with the hope I will be running OBOS again on my PC.
Thanks
Hello –
I guess the subject says it all. Is there any version of the BeOS out there that supports the P4? I’ve heard that the regular distribution doesn’t handle it…
Thanks in Advance, Chad
Hmm, isn’t that technicly illegal to modify personal edition and redistribute it?
Ok, this is just to answer some questions.
1 – CHAP support. Before even thinking about doing CHAP we must forst have a PPP/PPPoE implementation. The problem is that TCP/IP is not done yet and that’s the priority right now.
2 – BONE Compatibility. No, it is not and won’t be BONE compatible. Remember BONE was never finished. It doesn’t matter much anyway, as most apps compiled for BONE are opensource and all you will have to do to get them running is recompile them.
3 – PayPal donation. If it is a large sum of money, you can just send it to my private bank account.
-Bruno
> So I understand this new stack is compatible with Old BeOS > apps. Is it also compatible with bone apps?
We are targetting both, yes.
> can any of the team comment on how far along,
> if at all CHAP authentication is coming?
Good question. There is at this time no dialup network support yet.
Robert (see http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeosnetteam/04-2002/msg00066….) join the team and want to work on
PPP. I guess it include PAP and CHAP support too.
Oh, btw, thanks everyone for your faithfull support!
Philippe.
Bruno wrote:
> 2 – BONE Compatibility. No, […]
As Bruno and I seem to have two different answers to same question, I want to make my net_kit (unofficial 🙂 ) team member opinion on this point:
We’ll TRY to target both R5 and BONE compatibility.
But Bruno is right when saying that the main target
is plain R5…
He’s also clever about PayPal donations… 🙂
Philippe.
But if the OBOS networking stack is as good as we’re being told, then why didn’t Be take the same approach? Perhaps it’s a reaction to being burned by being optimistic re: BeOS stuff in the past, but I can’t help but expect there to be some big caveat lurking.
>>I guess the subject says it all. Is there any version of the BeOS out there that supports the P4? I’ve heard that the regular distribution doesn’t handle it…<<
Chad,
Hello. I actually called Intel on this myself last year and they said that as long as BeOS can run on a PIII, it will have no troubles on the P4 other than not taking advantage of the extensions on the P4’s new instruction set. So you wont get any performance advantage, which means it will run just like a PIII in BeOS’s case!
> why didn’t Be take the same approach?
They did, and it is/was called BONE. But it can’t be finish in time before… you know all the story.
Our OBOS kernel network stack design follow the BONE one,
not the net_server one.
Currently the code could also compile as a single userland
app, for debugging purpose, but even if the userland
app name is “net_server”, it doesn’t act as R5 net_server, and will never, I’ll bet.
Read latest OBOS newsletter
(http://open-beos.sourceforge.net/nsl.php?15#1) to have
a better insign of OBOS net stack design history.
Philippe
You Rock!!! (How many times has it been said?Donno? Not enough tho
)
“… you ALL know the story.”
“to have a bette INSIGHT of OBOS net stack design history.”
Both will be source compatable then?
but only net_server will be binary compatable yes?
BONE was never finished. We will have a BSD-like interface, so you will need only minor modifications (if any at all). Burt we won’t expend any effort to be sure it is compatible. That would not make sense at all.
-Bruno
expensivelesbian, you just have to go with the smaller isp’s. THere’s one called Interalpha (uk coverage, based in Southampton, 11.75 a month or something a bit less quarterly, http://www.interalpha.co.uk) that have always used PAP. I’ve used them for about 5 or 6 years. Been conneting with BeOS up until a few days ago when I got ICS working so that I could use my Mac/PC’s running BeOS over one connection.
Just curious why BeOS Open source? Don’t get me wrong, I tried BeOS, and thought it was a great OS. Compact, fast, able to handle many tasks at once smoothly. I would have liked to see it stay around as a competitor to windows.
Still, it was incomplete, and now the company is gone. I am surprised the open source has been such a sucess. I would have expect BeOS people to moved on to Linux, Mac OS X, the new Amiga OS, maybe even QNX or the like?
Just curious why you stayed?
Roger
Well many people don’t like linux, few people own macs, though a big percentage of former beos users do. Amiga OS does not exsist yet. Running QNX wouldn’t be much differant than running beos far as what is avalible.
I went to WinXP and like it very much, beos will be back on my computer soon and i like the progress of the OpenBeOS people. I think many beos users still dabble with other OS’s I just don’t have time.
My BeOS R5 is still working perfectly in both my home machine and my machine at work. There is absolutelly nothing that I need that I can’t find in BeOS.
Also, your error is to compare BeOS to operating systems… BeOS is more than that, it is a way of life.
-Bruno
Roger M.
The BeOS community wants to recreate the BeOS so that we can finish what Be Inc. started. We will recreate BeOS and then expand it and finish those things that were left unpolished or unimplemented. It is going to be a wild and crazy ride, but one that is well worth the wait.
Regards,
Jason “Maverick” VanDerMark
Proud BeOS/OBOS User