Haiku Archive

OpenBeOS Supports BeOS Executables

Bruno G. Albuquerque was the first to submit the big news on OpenBeOS. According to the OpenBeOS website, "With the latest round of changes made to the runtime linker, the startup code, and libroot.so, we are now finally able to load and run native BeOS applications. Of course, only simple one will work right now (since we only have (most of the) parts of libroot.so implemented), but I was able to run the same application under BeOS and OpenBeOS simultaneously. We can now make our first tests to prove binary and functional compatibility between both operating systems."

OpenBeOS Translation Kit Reaches Beta 1

"The OpenBeOS Translation Kit BETA 1 is now available. It contains the Translation Kit library, BMP translator, StyledEdit files translator, TGA translator and the source and project files for all of the above. Also, the BMP and TGA translators should have more capabilities than the BMP and TGA translators that came with BeOS R5." You can download the beta at the OpenBeOS website.

BeOS Newsbits

Here's some recent news from the BeOS world. The OpenBeOS MIDI Kit team has reached Milestone 1! They now have their own now have their own midi_server and libmidi2.so.Work on the BeOS-native video editor, PostMagic, is moving along well. A new screenshot was posted on the 1st. PostMagic version 1.0 is expected to be released around mid July. LeBuzz reports that Marcus Overhagen is writing a new Audio Card Driver API. The new API will get rid of some of the multi-source, multi-channel limitations inherent in older BeOS APIs.

BeOS Max Edition 2.1 Released

BeOS 5 PE Max Edition is based on the original BeOS 5 PE with an additional number of drivers, add-ons, AthlonXP/Pentium4 patches and more software. It includes new development tools from the OpenBeOS team but you will also be able to select the old tools. This is an ideal way to install BeOS 5 off a bootable CD image, for all those who wanted to try out BeOS but they were unable to do so because of the bugs/drivers and patches BeOS 5 PE needs to have applied into it before it successfully run on or support most modern PCs.

Updates for BlueEyedOS and Cosmoe

BlueEyedOS has made some progress in the past few months, and here are two brand new screenshots showing the progress. In the meantime, the DirectFB-based Cosmoe 0.6 is expected to be released around Christmas, but Bill Hayden has already released a developer release. Update: More BeOS-related news today: Unconfirmed rumors want OpenBeOS to have been renamed to "Walter Operating System", while OpenBFS 1.0 Beta3 is posted for testing.

Meet BeOS 5 PE Max Edition

There are a few BeOS 5 PE "spin-offs" available (three or four), created by BeOS enthusiasts who want to see more of BeOS in the future. Usually, these distros are loaded with lots of patches, additional drivers and third party applications. Vassilis "Vasper" Perantzakis sent us some information on his BeOS 5 PE distro, named "BeOS 5 PE Max Edition", explaining how it got it all started, where it is today and where it is heading to in the future.

Ex-BeOS/OpenBeOS Developer Explains Departure

BeGroovy reports that David Reid, a very respected BeOS third party developer (ported Apache among others) and ex-OpenBeOS networking developer published a statement explaining his departure from the OpenBeOS project. David cited lack of direction, management in the project and even lack of engineering knowledge among the OpenBeOS developers. Update: Another important BeOS dev and friend of mine (as also in the case of David :), Frans van Nispen cited similar problems with the project. UPDATE 2: The OpenBeOS leader, Michael Phipps, sent us in his response to the issue.