Slashdot Mirror

"come off crisp and play up to the cynic
clean and schooled right down to the minute"

Some of the Slashdot discussion speculated that RedHat might be interested in buying Be. Others noted legal difficulties in opening the BeOS source, but the company recently registered some thought provoking domain names, so they may be planning to try it anyway.

A very interesting comment noted that BeOS and Linux complement each other nicely, with BeOS a great desktop system for end users while Linux works best as a server. It's a good point. We may be expecting a lot of an OS to make it do well on everything from high end mainframes & servers to desktop PCs & handheld PDAs & even small embedded controllers. While it's impressive that Linux can do all this, maybe allowing complementary systems to have complementary roles might be a better idea.

As the head of RedHat (chief hat wearer? ;), what do you think of such speculation? Do you think that Linux could stand to gain by using BeOS technology? Would it be worthwhile to purchase Be &/or get involved in opening their software? If Sony's BeIA driven eVilla internet appliance catches on, having a stake in that contract could be very lucrative, but of course that's a gamble at this point.

Or do you feel that, as much as things may seem superficially similar, that there is too much dissonance between the Linux & BeOS worlds to make a merger worthwhile? Do you disagree that having separate systems for desktop & server could be a good idea? If you feel that there should be "one OS to rule them all," could (indeed, should)Linux take a lesson from Be about how to make a really good, easy, slick desktop frontend for the existing excellent but arcane back end that Linux provides?

In short, should these two be wedded and can such a marriage work?

Some of the Slashdot discussion speculated that RedHat might be interested in buying Be. Others noted legal difficulties in opening the BeOS source, but the company recently registered some thought provoking domain names, so they may be planning to try it anyway.

A very interesting comment noted that BeOS and Linux complement each other nicely, with BeOS a great desktop system for end users while Linux works best as a server. It's a good point. We may be expecting a lot of an OS to make it do well on everything from high end mainframes & servers to desktop PCs & handheld PDAs & even small embedded controllers. While it's impressive that Linux can do all this, maybe allowing complementary systems to have complementary roles might be a better idea.

As the head of RedHat (chief hat wearer? ;), what do you think of such speculation? Do you think that Linux could stand to gain by using BeOS technology? Would it be worthwhile to purchase Be &/or get involved in opening their software? If Sony's BeIA driven eVilla internet appliance catches on, having a stake in that contract could be very lucrative, but of course that's a gamble at this point.

Or do you feel that, as much as things may seem superficially similar, that there is too much dissonance between the Linux & BeOS worlds to make a merger worthwhile? Do you disagree that having separate systems for desktop & server could be a good idea? If you feel that there should be "one OS to rule them all," could (indeed, should)Linux take a lesson from Be about how to make a really good, easy, slick desktop frontend for the existing excellent but arcane back end that Linux provides?

In short, should these two be wedded and can such a marriage work?

Some of the Slashdot discussion speculated that RedHat might be interested in buying Be. Others noted legal difficulties in opening the BeOS source, but the company recently registered some thought provoking domain names, so they may be planning to try it anyway.

A very interesting comment noted that BeOS and Linux complement each other nicely, with BeOS a great desktop system for end users while Linux works best as a server. It's a good point. We may be expecting a lot of an OS to make it do well on everything from high end mainframes & servers to desktop PCs & handheld PDAs & even small embedded controllers. While it's impressive that Linux can do all this, maybe allowing complementary systems to have complementary roles might be a better idea.

As the head of RedHat (chief hat wearer? ;), what do you think of such speculation? Do you think that Linux could stand to gain by using BeOS technology? Would it be worthwhile to purchase Be &/or get involved in opening their software? If Sony's BeIA driven eVilla internet appliance catches on, having a stake in that contract could be very lucrative, but of course that's a gamble at this point.

Or do you feel that, as much as things may seem superficially similar, that there is too much dissonance between the Linux & BeOS worlds to make a merger worthwhile? Do you disagree that having separate systems for desktop & server could be a good idea? If you feel that there should be "one OS to rule them all," could (indeed, should)Linux take a lesson from Be about how to make a really good, easy, slick desktop frontend for the existing excellent but arcane back end that Linux provides?

In short, should these two be wedded and can such a marriage work?

Some of the Slashdot discussion speculated that RedHat might be interested in buying Be. Others noted legal difficulties in opening the BeOS source, but the company recently registered some thought provoking domain names, so they may be planning to try it anyway.

A very interesting comment noted that BeOS and Linux complement each other nicely, with BeOS a great desktop system for end users while Linux works best as a server. It's a good point. We may be expecting a lot of an OS to make it do well on everything from high end mainframes & servers to desktop PCs & handheld PDAs & even small embedded controllers. While it's impressive that Linux can do all this, maybe allowing complementary systems to have complementary roles might be a better idea.

As the head of RedHat (chief hat wearer? ;), what do you think of such speculation? Do you think that Linux could stand to gain by using BeOS technology? Would it be worthwhile to purchase Be &/or get involved in opening their software? If Sony's BeIA driven eVilla internet appliance catches on, having a stake in that contract could be very lucrative, but of course that's a gamble at this point.

Or do you feel that, as much as things may seem superficially similar, that there is too much dissonance between the Linux & BeOS worlds to make a merger worthwhile? Do you disagree that having separate systems for desktop & server could be a good idea? If you feel that there should be "one OS to rule them all," could (indeed, should)Linux take a lesson from Be about how to make a really good, easy, slick desktop frontend for the existing excellent but arcane back end that Linux provides?

In short, should these two be wedded and can such a marriage work?

Microsoft is not the only vendor that wants to sell out consumers' rights in order to distribute controlled media.

They are in company with Be, Inc.

Their CEO, Jean-Louis Gassée desperately wants the BeOS to be used as an internet appliance, and he is trying to sell his internet appliance as the perfect platfrom for content-controlled media.

JLG calls this mis-feature a "secure digital music" platform, but a computer does not know the difference between a music file, a movie file or a text file. So Be, Inc. is attempting to become the favored distributor of all content controlled media.

Perhaps it is best that they go out of business now, so we only have one OS vendor to worry about: MS.

they have the logo that looks like an alien (even though it is supposed to be an eye and an ear).

[Side Note: check out the Register for their April Fools edition of the website. It's a good poke in the eye with a sharp stick to some of our favorite people]

In any case, with that inflow of $$ from Sony, I do not think that the company is going to go under all that quickly, unless it is bleeding green really bad. The news story might not be be giving all of the details, unless it is one of those things of "well everyone is being careful with their money".

Sort of like saying to a man in the water "well rope is scarce, and we got to be careful on who we hand it out to"

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Lessee, when did I lose my respect for Be, Inc. ? It must have been right when I read this:

Why shouldn't I use open source software for my appliance project? If time to market is a critical consideration for an Internet appliance project, BeIA makes far more sense than using open source software. Also note that open source licensing conditions often require the release of improvements to the community as a whole-in other words, to one's competitors.

Yep, that was pretty much it.

BeOS is a pretty sleek, well-executed OS. It got everything right that could be gotten right. Be, Inc is MSFT without the market cap.

BIOS? Well, BeOS does this. There are two handy functions in the BeOS API:

• int32 is_computer_on(void)
  Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn't on, the value returned by this function is undefined.
• double is_computer_on_fire(void)
  Returns the temperature of the motherboard if the computer is currently on fire. If the computer isn't on fire, the function returns some other value.

You'll find the functions in the Be Book.

I'm interested in hearing more about the issued you had porting Streamripper to BeOS. The link to the BeOS binary from BeBits seems to be broken. I'll cvs it and take a look at it tonight. Any major brokes, besides the panics while debugging?

, but the GUI was beyond me. all of the same code i could find wouldn't even compile. Also i got constant kernel panics when debugging threads. real shame...

Well, Be's native gui is unique. In other words: BeAPI != win32API != gtk/qt/motif/whatever. The BeBook is available online, if anyone's interested in the API. Programming for BeOS is a great way to learn C++, IMHO.

Since BeOS is based upon UNIX principles, has a journalling filesystem with built-in database-like features and comes with a really cute and well-thought GUI, it is the most likely re-invention of computing that might happen if people had to start from scratch.

Sting (the musician) sued over a web site using his name (www.sting.com). He lost because "sting" is a common English word. Diablo has been used for hundreds of years and Lamborghini needs to sue Blizzard Entertainment if B.E. wins this idiotic lawsuit.

You obviously don't understand how trademarks work. Trademarks are made for words or groups of words or logos in regards to a specific area, e.g. "movies" or "cars."

Whether or not it's a "common" word has nothing to do with trademark infringement, or whether you are granted a trademark. For example, the word "be" is very common, and yet Be Inc. has a trademark for that word, but only as it relates to computer software and services, and only when used in certain ways .

Likewise, Blizzard has a trademark on the word Diablo as it relates to movie titles. Therefore, they won't be sued by Lamborghini, and they will probably win against New Line.

It has to work on Windows...

Apple has announced it has no plans to support a JVM later than 1.1.8 on the classic Mac OS so you can't use all those great collection classes in Java 1.2 and be cross platform! (See Apple's Java Developer page and scroll down to where it says "Mac OS Classic Java".)

Use a cross-platform application framework. That way you can program on Linux, Mac, BeOS, Windows or maybe even QNX and deliver for all those schoolkids running Windows ME on their parents' PC.

One such framework, for C++, is ZooLib. There are many others, as you can see from The GUI Toolkit, Framework Page.

Read about why it's important to write cross-platform code.

I'm most familiar with ZooLib, because I've been working with it on the products I write for my clients, and I helped ZooLib author Andy Green prepare it for open source release late last year under the MIT License.

ZooLib offers all of the following implemented as C++ classes:

• Multithreading, with cross-platform C++ thread classes and various kinds of locks (simple mutexes, reader/writer locks) - multithreading is important for something like a servent. For systems like the Mac OS that don't have preemptive threads it has a handrolled thread scheduler.
• GUI, with a uniquely flexible layout method. The widgets are rendered by platform appropriate renderers, and you can make custom widgets. There's a renderer that will call through to the Appearance Manager on the Mac OS, if it's running.
• platform-independent TCP networking, it's implemented in terms of sockets on Linux, WinSock on Windows, sockets on BeOS and MacTCP on Mac OS. I think Open Transport may be working too on the Mac, I'm not sure - but on all platforms you use the same C++ classes for your networking with no platform-specific client code needed.
• Thread-safe reference counted smart pointers, for quick, efficient memory management that's free of leaks.
• Extensive debugging support - assertions in core components and a debugging memory manager, handy macros for assertions and the like
• Single-file database format with C++ interface. Create ZDatabase objects with ZTables in them. Much zippier than SQL and more pleasing to the object-oriented soul.
• File objects - you instantiate a ZFile object from a ZFileRef object, then use its Open, Close, Read and Write methods
• Platform-specific file open and save dialogs with an API that's consistent with the rest of ZooLib. Filter by filetype on the Mac or filename three letter extension on windows. While ZooLib is cross-platform, it breaks out into platform specific code in cases like this where it's appropriate, in a way that's considered entirely sacreligious by the Java community.
• Streams that can be chained to provide filtering, somewhat like the iostreams classes in the C++ standard library but more appropriate for use with binary data. This is how you typically read or write to a file or network connection.
• Handy preprocessor macros to deal with platform specific code or selecting options like debug builds.
• Offscreen graphics buffers that may be manipulated directly via pointers or accessed in a manner that is transparent to the bit depth via GetPixel and SetPixel calls. All platforms have the same API that provide a wrapper around platform bitmap buffers. I believe there's a purely homegrown in-memory implementation, plus platform implementations bounds to the native GUI layer like GWorlds on the Mac OS.

ZooLib 0.81 is known to build with MetroWerks CodeWarrior on Windows and Mac OS, gcc on Linux, and gcc on BeOS for Pentium.

If you use CodeWarrior you can cross-compile and cross-debug; check out Thursby Software for some filesharing solutions that work well for this. (Tip - on Windows, select the "MacBinarize" post-linker in the target linker prefs when building a Mac target - you also need to derez all your resource files and include them as Rez text source).

While it should ultimately work, there are known build problems with BSD, CodeWarrior for BeOS PowerPC and Visual C++ on Windows. These are all being worked on and full support for all these platforms is expected before long.

Other cross-platform frameworks I'd like to note are:

• The Adaptive Communications Environment for cross-platform networking
• GTK - yes, that's right, GTK! but you must forgo using XLib calls and POSIX calls that are not in the ANSI C Standard Library
• The Netscape Portable Runtime for the non-GUI aspects of cross-platform development
• The Mozilla XPToolkit for cross-platform GUI
• Mozilla Netlib for network and file stream access
• Mozilla XPInstall for cross-platform installation, packaging and updating.
• Also check out AbiWord, a great cross-platform WYSIWYG word processor that's open source, with an open file format. As far as I know the only product coded in AbiWord's XP framework is AbiWord itself, but it's worth looking into for another look at how people architect these things.

People often mistake these problems for valid arguments that one should not do cross-platform development, or perhaps not render your own widgets when doing so but depend on platform specific ones (like AWT vs. Swing), but I think the lightweight, well architected, efficient and easy to use ZooLib answers those arguments very eloquently.

Help me teach the Free Software community to write quality code.

Mike

Undoubtedly Sony will be using the new up and coming system from Be, Inc known as BeIA for controlling these devices. It kinda makes sense due to the advanced technology and especially real-time technology that a venture like this would require. Great to see that companies like Be making comebacks like this.

Better yet, why not combine the elegance and consistency of the Mac GUI with the Unix shell?

We could all wait for MacOS X, and buy some new hardware to run it, but why bother? BeOS is already out!

I'd like you to understand why cross-platform code is incredibly important (note that this page quotes Judge Jackson of the MS vs. DOJ case as to why Microsoft felt it was so important to put a stop to cross-platform code as to break the law.)

But I think what we have lost sight of is maintaining both the usefulness of our code and our independence as programmers by not remembering how to write cross-platform code.

What Sun got wrong was not making Java cross-platform, but trying to bind us all into proprietary platform of Java while sweetly singing into our ears that it was platform independent. Sun did this and continues with it to serve its own marketing and political purposes, purposes which may not serve the interests of either the public or the independent developer.

You too can write cross-platform code, in almost any compiled language. Check out the ZooLib cross-platform application framework for C++, as well as the Boost C++ Libraries.

Jon Watte of Be, Inc. told me "Portable, to some people, means it builds on at least two linux distributions with several flavors of GCC".

Here's a list of a bunch of application frameworks, many of which are cross-platform, and many of which are open source - so there's more than just ZooLib to pick from.

Get off your duff and ship your executables for all platforms in common use - and not just ones with POSIX system call APIs!

And here's a hint for making your code buildable cross-platform - ever try to run "./configure" on a computer that doesn't have a command shell? Pretty hard. Makes folks like me struggle to write all the makefile's and config.h's by hand. But look at how many platforms the Independent JPEG Group's JPEG codec library builds on - DOS, MacOS, Cray, you name it, and it builds with both ANSI-C and old K&R c compilers (using macros for the function interfaces).

Kids these days... damn it makes me mad.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

I'm pretty perplexed why Linus should think that thread programming is harder. This makes me wonder whether he's ever really tried in a serious way - a lot of programs are much easier to write when you use threads.

Just ask anyone who's had to write their own task scheduler for private use within one program, as I have when writing my Raindrops screensaver for the Mac, or when I wrote a test tool for MacTCP, that enables up to 64 TCP streams and UDP pseudo-streams between any combinations of a Mac on a network - I wrote that in 1990 at Apple, well before threads were available on the Mac OS and it was a pain.

But personally I don't see the point of having threads not implemented in the kernel. It means all your threads block if any of them do. That's the point of kernel threads. I think solaris threads work the way they do because the solaris schedular isn't so efficient, so it's more efficient to multitask some of your threads in user space.

This also relates to why multithreaded programs are more efficient and responsive than single threaded ones, even on uniprocessor machines. If your process blocks to await a resource in a single threaded program, you get to wait while time is wasted. This is OK for servers where avergage efficiency is the main concern but is not appropriate for interactive or near-real-time use.

With a multithreaded program, if one thread blocks for a resource, another thread can run, and if it's another thread in the same program your program's utilization of the CPU will be greater. This is especially the case if the kernel is preemptible and multithreaded, as it is on the BeOS and can be with experimental patches on the Linux kernel.

For an experiment, using the same machine, compare the interactice responsiveness of Windows, the BeOS and Linux, and I can assure you that even for uniprocessor machines the BeOS will be much more efficient, because all native BeOS programs are multithreaded. Threading is available on Linux and Windows but are not yet that widely used.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

Be's press release - Be Announces Development of BeIA Client Software for Sony's New e Villa Network Entertainment Center

Sony's press release - SONY SIMPLIFIES -- AND MAXIMIZES -- THE INTERNET WITH NEW e Villa(TM) NETWORK ENTERTAINMENT CENTER

CNET - Sony trots out Web-browsing eVilla with Be OS

BeNews - Sony's eVilla "Network Entertainment Center" Uses BeIA

It's just Sony's entry into the IA market, and it used BeIA. But then, Sony are just a little company after all.... :P

Beos Specs.. scroll down.. basically (as anyone thats used beos knows) file information is basically stored in file attributes. ie: Email is just a text document with a sender,recipient,date,etc attribute with the body as the info in the txt document. This is really usefull for mp3's every bit of an id3 tag can be given its own attribute and then you can search based on the attributes and such..

I still think that, designed correctly, you would look at the PC. BeOS used to come on a platform with two processors. As a cool trick, there were lights on the front, like the equalizer indicators on a stereo, that indicated the load on each of the processors. These were popular enough that, when the BeOS was ported to other platforms, users created alternative displays for the new systems. You may even have a visual resource meter somewhere on your desktop, for the same effect.

Did it add a little cost? Yes. Was it cool? Yes. Did the users like it? Enough to port it to new systems, and enough that Microsoft uses a similar concept for their resource meter. You know something is successful when Microsoft steals it.

I think, for only a slight cost, some kind of cool addition could be made to the case. I like blinking lights, especially when they convey information, and when they are programable. Why do I have to look to the back of my computer to see if the network is on?

My car is a tool as well. I shop first for reliability, fuel efficiency, and value. But, when find a model I like, I can choose some extras, such as color. Fire-engine green is said to be the safest color (cars in that color have proportionally fewer accidents), so if I was being a pragmatist, my car would be that color. Instead, I choose one which better suits my taste. My brother, against advice, picked bright red. He gets pulled over for speeding a bit more, but the girls seem to like it.

As long as they are ugly, design will tend toward making cases smaller, easier to tuck away and forget about them. Cool cases will make statements, make them part of the home. Power users still pick the ugly ones, for practical reasons, but what if the case was the same on the outside, but for a little more (or even the same cost), you could get a custom color?

Can it happen? Well, users complained about how hard it was to get into the cases to add cards, etc, and now my Gateway is dead-easy to get into. There are two thumb screws, and the side pops right off. The only hard part is that I have to disconnect all the cords, and take the box out of its cabinet, because its too ugly to always be out in the open.

Would Microsoft 2.0 with a more stable OS gather the same type of evil as MS 1.0? The answer to this Mary Jo Foley type question will go a long way towards your feelings on MS potential actions.

The developers were out their shipping many fine, supported commercial products that worked very well - Gobe, Steinberg was onboard developing audio applications, Thomas Dolby spoke at the developer conference about supporting Be with his audio software (he was wildly enthusiastic).

No, the incompetence was not the developers. It was Be's press relations and marketing (or to be more precise, the lack thereof). Be's technical staff is highly competent, and they produced a fine product, something Linux developers would do well to study because of it's ease of installation, smooth and trouble-free performance, and clean integration. It's also a joy to program.

My wonderfully positive experiences with using the BeOS and my sadness at having to leave the platform behind in order to have currently supported hardware and software is another component of what motivates my effort to improve the quality of Linux and Free Software in general.

But Be's business management was always, and still is, incompetent. There was never any effort made to convince people to make the move to the BeOS - they were always waiting for more applications to appear, even when there were plenty of applications for the average user to do almost all their daily work.

Even though almost anyone who ever laid eyes on the system became an instant convert - and many of those became evangelists, such as I especially after I got it running on my laptop, Gassee never felt it was ready for the mass market and kept holding it back from the people who could have done him the most good - the public who was eager to try something better if only they knew it existed and where to get it.

For example, I never once saw a banner ad on a website that was run on a non-Be related site directing the user to Be's website or BeDepot (Be's now-defunct eCommerce site).

And speaking of BeDepot - Gassee very early on spoke repeatedly about the problem of penetrating software channels for new developers, especially developers for new platforms like the BeOS, and how Be was going to be very advanced in its thinking by offerring software for sale via download at BeDepot.

And we all have seen what has become of eCommerce in general - it's the only way you can get many products for mainstream platforms - but BeDepot was one of the most ineptly run operations I have ever seen.

BeDepot's ineptitude was murder to developers for whom it was the only sales channel - so you've got a newly released product? What do you do when it takes three months to appear on the website because they're either too understaffed to deal with it or too incompetent to just upload the damn file? I've heard lots of complaints from developers who had to wait months to receive their contract from Be that would enable them to sell on BeDepot.

It's not like it's so hard to run a good online Be software site, as demonstrated by the folks who founded BeBits, in part to make up for BeDepot's and BeWare's inadequacies. (BeWare was for free downloads).

If you won't listen to me because of Be's lack of character, listen to me because of Be's demonstrated incompetence, and know that if they couldn't keep an eCommerce site with a few dozen titles running efficiently, how are they going to provide adequate support for a bunch of disparate embedded hardware vendors?

By the way, you should note that many of Be's most prominent engineers left when Be made the decision to drop the desktop and move to Internet Appliances, folks like Dominic who wrote the BFS Journaled Filesystem (with indexed file attributes - there's a read-only version of BFS you can get for Linux, that I'd like to make read-write, and would make a great addition to the system).

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

This lack of integrity goes to the heart of Be's corporate culture, and is in particular exemplified by the attitudes and practices of Be's CEO, Jean Louis Gassee.

Read about the experience of one of Be's formerly most-loyal and most enthusiastic business partners in:

• The Valley is a Harsh Mistress

I have no doubt that BeIA has tremendous technical advantages. See what this once-ardent BeOS developer is doing to harden the competition for Be Inc. at The Linux Quality Database and Freeing the Developer from OS Vendor Shackles.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

BeOS has been running on desktop and laptop machines for years. Go to http://free.be.com for your free copy today.

In fact, I can't think of a single OS which would catch something as drastic as a motherboard change without at least a partial reinstall (like Win2K allows you to do. Don't know if you have that option in Linux). Try BeOS. You can change pretty much any hardware to another supported piece of hardware without having to mess with the OS. Everything just works.

I fully realize that the non-NT line of Windows runs on top of (and therefore requires) DOS. My point was that DOS as a separate product ceased to have any sale value because people didn't want to use a command-line character based interface on their PC - they wanted to use Windows. From the prospective of most users (and Microsoft), there simply wasn't any reason to continue to sell DOS and Windows as separate products. For the die-hard command-line junkies, well they could have continued to buy DR DOS.

I also realize that "bundled" and "integrated" aren't the same thing. But this leads to some interesting questions... what if Microsoft had bundled IE on the Windows CD but not required that it be installed? Would this still be happening? Of course it would, and not just because most OEMs would have installed it on the pre-installs of Windows anyway. The anti-trust case would still be happening because the discussion of whether or not IE can be uninstalled or is really "integrated" has just been a sideshow - the root of this whole thing (at least in the court) has always been that once Microsoft dropped IE in people's laps they wouldn't/didn't go to the extra effort of acquiring Netscape's browser.

You say that Microsoft should be able to combine it's products "Unless harm can be demonstrated to others as a result". Well, I suppose if the combination of Windows and IE somehow caused cancer you'd have a point. But if you're talking about the "harm" that was done to Netscape... my heart bleeds. Is Apple "harming" Logitec by providing a mouse as standard equipment on Macs?

What you rabid libertarian types always seem to forget is that others besides the government can wield force, and there's more types of force than law or physical threats

The law can't be avoided. Microsoft can be. Someone physically threatening you isn't a mutually agreed-upon situation. OEMs that entering into stupid and foolish contractual agreements with Microsoft have nobody to blame but themselves. They were so fixated on lowering their costs to compete with each other that they signed their lives away to DOS/Windows. They could have (and should have) done their own unbundling of Microsoft's operating systems and their own hardware. List the hardware price without M$ and the additional charge of the OS. Then people would know just how much Microsoft was costing them and could choose whether or not they wanted it. They should have told Microsoft "we don't care how much of a discount you're offering us on your stuff, we aren't going to sign anything that says we have to pay you even for systems we ship without your software". They did themselves and their customers a great disservice.

So... Why exactly is it that BeOS was ignored by the rest of the industry? Isn't it simply because MS has the monopoly power to preven/make it not worthwhile to look at other OS's? Isn't BeOS a perfect example of the fact that your claim is, in fact, completely untrue?

It's an cart-and-horse problem that favors Microsoft, no doubt about it. People won't use an OS that doesn't have gobs of software available, software vendors won't write for an OS that doesn't have gobs of users. OEMs won't pre-install their boxes with an OS that doesn't have gobs of users and software. This can be overcome, but it takes OEMs, software vendors, and users who are willing to start with a small base and grow it over time. Which is just what the Linux community is doing. BTW, BeOS is a fine operating system. I encourage everyone to check it out. It's painfully easy to install BeOS right along side of Windows. Be is even giving the thing away for free.

Microsoft's market position can be overcome. But it will take people standing up and saying "I want more viable choices" and the industry giving them those choices. It doesn't matter how many pieces Microsoft is broken up into, or how its software is bundled/integrated/combined, if PC users don't break out of their self-imposed Microsoft cage, it ain't gonna happen. I sincerely hope it does. I'd love to see Microsoft scrambling to offer Office for Linux and Office for Be. I'd love to see IIS supporting non-Microsoft directories for authentication. I'd love to see Gateway and Dell give me the choice of three or four operating systems for each box in their catalog. But we don't need bad law to do it.

Amigori

-----------
Wishing BeOS was used more.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable. All I want is an OS that is easy to use and works the way I want it to, without my having to go under the hood all the time. The fact that I know how to edit the Windows Registry and the Macintosh extensions manager doesn't mean I like doing it.

So, Linux vendors, hear this: If you really want to give Windows the boot, your OS has to be slick, quick, and slim. Because, after all, too much is...just too much.

Well, gee. There is an operating system out there that's slick, slim, capable, easy-to-use, easy-to-configure, and "just works" without editing configuration files, if your hardware is supported. Drumroll please.... it's the BeOS!. So why didn't he try BeOS? Perhaps because nobody pays attention to it? Tell ya what. Next time you complain about Linux, try BeOS. It'll make your life easier, and happier.

Hahaha! WHile you bastards were rushing to bash and defend BeOS, you all neglected to get FP, so I do posthumously declare First Post.
However, since I am in no hurry to compose this particular first post...

Desktop Linux is UNRESPONSIVE. It's great on the server end, because it neglects the end user. BeOS caters and pampers the end user.
"Power users" tend to eventually sift into two camps: those who desire convenience, and those who desire power. BeOS is the ideal nexus of UNIX command line and silky Mac GUI, but with thread handling that puts everything else to shame.

I think Linux d00ds don't like BeOS because they can't run seven different incompatible desktops on it. Most of the people who bleat about Open Source (tm) don't seem to actually write code themselves. Or are there really that many kernal hackers around here? If you think *you* can debug BeOS, give them a call. JLG will put you on in a heartbeat. I don't really see any mention given to how much more difficult it is to program for Linux than it is for BeOS.

There are a few very interesting projects underway right now, including an effort to acquire the rights to do a Black and White port, which seems to have fallen through with the former coders.

Six months from now, Linux is going to look really weak next to BeOS...
It already does, to some of us.

BeOS - Free, Open, Better
OpenTracker

Maybe it turns out that BeOS is remarkably scalable, and fits well in the embedded world. This will of course change the prospects of Linux making it into embedded electronics.

Be is already putting a lot of effort into the embedded market (perhaps more than developing BeOS itself for the PC). Ever heard of BeIA?

You do not need to see the source code to the BeOS kernel to write drivers for it. In fact, our device driver API is dirt simple. You can read about it here.

In fact, you can find programming documentation for all of BeOS on the Web site.

Schwab

You do not need to see the source code to the BeOS kernel to write drivers for it. In fact, our device driver API is dirt simple. You can read about it here.

In fact, you can find programming documentation for all of BeOS on the Web site.

Schwab

http://bebugs.be.com

Pretty public rug there, eh?

Linux is only free if your time is of no value

Doh, thats what I get for not checking my links.

NOT OFFTOPIC, just a correction.

I at least would sure like to see how they did that movie cube thing.

http://www.htc.net/~nbehnken/freemware.html would lead me to beleive that BeOS works as a host platform as well, or is at least underway. I think that'd be a good thing, as Be's a pretty darned nice workstation OS with stuff that Just Works (not that it'll be replacing my linux server boxes anytime soon)...

Most likely a driver issue. The 24 channel support is (for the present) limited to Pro-level cards that actually support that many *seperate* (not mixed) streams. Of course, the game_audio kit is being released (as in they have sample source on their website), which should allow these new "prosumer" cards to use their multi-channel capabilities. Check out game audio and 24 channel support here.

A web-based version of the classic citadel BBS software has been created by one of the people responsible for Ed's Room, one of the largest BBS's in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for many years. It's over at www.edsroom.com.

Another attempt to bring a web-based cit to the 'net is also being developed (independantly of the above) over at the Death Cookie, http://www.endeneu.com/funstuff/cookie/.

And, of course, there's the obvious chance to plug my own efforts to bring a citadel-style board to the 'net. Mine, however, is telnetable (rather than a web-based pseudo citadel interface), and is fairly true to the original cit. The fun part is that it's written for BeOS, completely from scratch in C++. It's fairly similar to CitUX in that it supports multiple concurrent users, the main difference being that BeBS supports door games. ,)

8088online, the test bed for BeBS, is available at http://www.bebs.net. The site's undergoing a redesign right now, and the new website should be up by the 15th. Be aware that there's a java telnet client on the front page, so it may load slowly for you. There are links on the page for those who prefer to telnet.

Now, if only I could get the source code for BRE, SRE, LORD, Trade Wars, and all the other classics...

They're going to need a 64-bit journaling file system for that one... (BeOS)

I'm typing this from my workstation at my client's office, a web application company (I've clocked out). I'm using whatever Netscape came from the Debian site when I updated my software on Monday when I started.

Read about my laptop which was my main development machine for most of the last year. It boots NT, Slackware and BeOS.

You can read my resume - note the long list of products I've shipped, and keep in mind I haven't been keeping that list up to date. See the long list of projects I've done in the two and a half years I've been a consultant.

Note that among the jobs I've held was Senior Engineer at A Big Fruit Company where I held the role of "Debug Meister" - I did low-level debugging and in fact performance tuning of the Mac operating system.

When a tester found that an application would crash under a new system build and they didn't understand what component was at fault, it came to my team (Traditional OS Integration, formerly known as the Blue Meanies). We would track down the bug and assign it to the right engineer or fix it ourselves.

Note that sometimes, probably half the time, the bug was due to a third-party app bug, and we determined this purely by running MacsBug, an assembly level debugger, inside the app and system software. We had the entire Mac OS source code at our disposal but this wasn't usually readily available when you were visiting a crashed Mac at a tester's cube so you just had to know your MacBug.

I use and contribute to open source. My latest effort was aiding the author of the ZooLib cross-platform application framework in releasing his library under the MIT License; I worked with Andy Green for a year to test his code by developing a product with it and led a beta test of developers who also developed products with it.

I found ZooLib to be an incredibly enlightening example of well-architected, efficient and compact code for what it does. Just using it and reading the source code increased my own abilities as a programmer and architect tremendously.

You can read some of my thoughts on the business and technique of programming at GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tips

Linux is better than most as far as efficiency is concerned, but don't get me started about reliability and ease of use.

As for what I think is a well engineered OS, try the BeOS but you don't want to get involved with the company.

Read why I think developers need to take back control of their lives from operating systems vendors and how I think they ought to do it. If you really want the full-bore opinion, read The Cross-Platform Manifesto

So yes, I am in fact a developer, thank you. It's just that I maintain high standards and I like to encourage others to do so as well.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

still couldn't match the power of GORTICIAN.

Despite IBMs reticence, and this setback, Crusoe chips continue to be very compelling. The dopest web tablet at Comdex was in Be's suite: a wireless, color, touchscreen web browser that weighed less than two pounds, with a battery life of six hours. It was powered by a Transmeta Crusoe, and was running BeIA. BeIA, of course, is the nicest embedded OS for web devices, packing complete WWW functionality in only 6 meg of memory...

It works pretty well software-wise, but two basic problems. NT4 doesn understand hard drives larger than 8 GB when you run its installer CD, with the unfortunate result that it ate my windows 98 installation that came preinstalled. Had I to do over again, I would have done a Norton Ghost backup image before trying anything.

NT4 does work with the large hard disk once you install the service pack and you can resize the partition with System Commander, but then the Emergency Repair disk process won't work. Someone in a newsgroup told me how to deal with this but I didn't understand it and would like to know how to do an emergency repair while booting of a CD that has already had the service pack applied, and that will install files with the service pack applied also.

I got the accellerated X server to work at first but lost my XF86Config after the hard drive consumption.

The happy news is that the BeOS recovered most of my windows data files.

The other issue is that the hardware has been unreliable. There is a fragile ribbon cable in the DVD drive that gets creased when you push the tray back in and jams it; sometimes it sticks the drive shut and you have to pry it open with a paper clip.

Also sometimes some random key will refuse to type for a few days and you have to keep banging on it to get it to type.

Finally, the connection between the power adapter and the socket on the laptop became unreliable so it wouldn't reliably charge. At first it would work if you fiddled with it and then left it sitting in one position during use, but this prevented you from using it for long on your lap.

Eventually it failed entirely and I needed to send it in for repair. But I was on an extended visit to Canada and even though Compaq has a Canadian subsidiary with Canadian service, this was a U.S. model purchased in the U.S and they wouldn't service it in Canada. They also wouldn't send the shipping container to Canada, or ship it back to Canada.

The end result was, because this was my main development machine and my business ground to a halt when the laptop failed, I ended up buying a custom built desktop machine from all standard OEM components.

I specifically wanted the ability to replace any failed part in the desktop myself from parts I could readily get at a computer store - you can usually do this with PC's bought at a "screwdriver shop" but not necessarily a name brand desktop PC, not just because you might void the warranty but because they use nonstandard parts that don't allow for OEM replacements that will fit.

I got compaq to send a replacement power adapter to my dad in Washington state and he expressed it to me in Canada - at about the cost of buying a brand new adapter - and with this, if I had my wife adjust it (with her steadier hands) we could get it to charge. This allowed me to recover my work from the laptop so I could install whatever files weren't backed up on my new desktop machine.

Then I waited about two months to fly home to the United states for Thanksgiving, where I arranged for compaq to send a shipping box so I could express the laptop in for warranty repair. I think they said they'd install a new system board, although they could just solder on a new plug.

They promised 7-day turnaround on the repair and free express shipping both ways. I flew to another state for some contract work so when my parents get the laptop back they'll have to forward it to me at our expense.

Thanks Compaq!

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

I wrote a web page a long time ago about why I quit Mac programming and took up the BeOS instead

But after too many years of too many broken promises from Be, Inc. I spoke up one too many times on BeDevTalk and got forcibly unsubscribed after being one of Be's most loyal developers, and winning an award for shipping one of the few actual commercial BeOS applications.

I haven't had any first-hand experience with Microsoft but I have heard many horror stories that didn't make it into the Microsoft/DoJ antitrust trial. Remember that one of DoJ's problems was getting executives to testify publicly - but there's no shortage of developers willing to confide privataly about how Microsoft has screwed them.

One very public example is Stacker Software. They invented filesystem compression. Microsoft offerred to purchase Stacker, and examined their source code under nondisclosure while doing due diligence. Then they canceled the acquisition and came out with their own implementation of filesystem compression. Stacker sued and won over $100 million.

For the past year I have been working with the ZooLib cross-platform application framework. It allows you to write a single set of C++ sources and build native executables for Mac OS, Windows, BeOS and POSIX flavors that provide XWindows (such as Linux).

I believe ZooLib represents one important part of a strategy for freeing ourselves from these broken promises.

Please read why I think ZooLib is good for the community

Note that I include quotes from Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who presided over the antitrust trial, one how Microsoft felt that it was so important to put a stop to cross-platform API's that it broke the law to interfere with their widespread use.

Jackson makes the same observation in his rulings that I have noticed in the past, that API and OS vendors work very hard to get developers to code to the native API rather than using a portability layer, as doing so locks the developer into the platform.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

-------------
He who doesn't evolve, dies.

I agree, that CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM helps everyone. Since NO gui is perfect (they all have their cool little features and quirks) discussing what makes a good GUI great, helps to design more user-friendly UI's. I don't have time to invest X hours learning a specific GUI, and most people also don't have that kind of spare time -- I have better things to do, like writing game code :)

> This article notes many features present in Windows Whistler (such as an advanced taskbar, ... )

BeOS has had this feature for while. It is very slick. Let's say you open up 10 copies of your web browser (NetPositive) you DON'T see 10 huge buttons spread across the task bar (Deskbar, or the Twitcher), only one. All instances of the same program are listed vertical. IMHO, this is making more efficient use of limited screen real estate.

Which brings me to my next point:

The stupid application title bars DON'T extend across the WHOLE top, in BeOS. All that space between the application name, and the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons are simply WASTED in most GUIs. Not so, in BeOS. Even more cooler (usefull!) in BeOS, is that you can SHIFT-DRAG any title bar (Be calls this the window tab) along the top of the window! (The direct link to "A Look at the BeOS Windows" doesn't work for some reason) Makes it extremely easy to switch among visible apps.

Seems like everyone, Be, etc, includes virtual desktops/workspaces by default, EXCEPT Microsoft!

And who can forget Be is FREE!

... now only if Be would open source BeOS, and make it true multi-user, it would last "forever" and have a chance of becoming a popular OS. :) This is the one strength that Linux has, TONS of developers working world-wide. Of course Linux's "main fault" is lack of consistent vision, and a lot of redundant work. i.e. Browse sourceforge, and ask yourself do we REALLY NEED Yet-Another-Text-Editor?

Well, I've probably come off as a BeOS zealot. Far from it, I LIKE and use: Win2K, BeOS, Linux, and BSD. Use the respective tool for the proper job, since when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, something Linux may fall into, if it's not carefull. :)

Cheers

I agree, that CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM helps everyone. Since NO gui is perfect (they all have their cool little features and quirks) discussing what makes a good GUI great, helps to design more user-friendly UI's. I don't have time to invest X hours learning a specific GUI, and most people also don't have that kind of spare time -- I have better things to do, like writing game code :)

> This article notes many features present in Windows Whistler (such as an advanced taskbar, ... )

BeOS has had this feature for while. It is very slick. Let's say you open up 10 copies of your web browser (NetPositive) you DON'T see 10 huge buttons spread across the task bar (Deskbar, or the Twitcher), only one. All instances of the same program are listed vertical. IMHO, this is making more efficient use of limited screen real estate.

Which brings me to my next point:

The stupid application title bars DON'T extend across the WHOLE top, in BeOS. All that space between the application name, and the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons are simply WASTED in most GUIs. Not so, in BeOS. Even more cooler (usefull!) in BeOS, is that you can SHIFT-DRAG any title bar (Be calls this the window tab) along the top of the window! (The direct link to "A Look at the BeOS Windows" doesn't work for some reason) Makes it extremely easy to switch among visible apps.

Seems like everyone, Be, etc, includes virtual desktops/workspaces by default, EXCEPT Microsoft!

And who can forget Be is FREE!

... now only if Be would open source BeOS, and make it true multi-user, it would last "forever" and have a chance of becoming a popular OS. :) This is the one strength that Linux has, TONS of developers working world-wide. Of course Linux's "main fault" is lack of consistent vision, and a lot of redundant work. i.e. Browse sourceforge, and ask yourself do we REALLY NEED Yet-Another-Text-Editor?

Well, I've probably come off as a BeOS zealot. Far from it, I LIKE and use: Win2K, BeOS, Linux, and BSD. Use the respective tool for the proper job, since when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, something Linux may fall into, if it's not carefull. :)

Cheers

I agree, that CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM helps everyone. Since NO gui is perfect (they all have their cool little features and quirks) discussing what makes a good GUI great, helps to design more user-friendly UI's. I don't have time to invest X hours learning a specific GUI, and most people also don't have that kind of spare time -- I have better things to do, like writing game code :)

> This article notes many features present in Windows Whistler (such as an advanced taskbar, ... )

BeOS has had this feature for while. It is very slick. Let's say you open up 10 copies of your web browser (NetPositive) you DON'T see 10 huge buttons spread across the task bar (Deskbar, or the Twitcher), only one. All instances of the same program are listed vertical. IMHO, this is making more efficient use of limited screen real estate.

Which brings me to my next point:

The stupid application title bars DON'T extend across the WHOLE top, in BeOS. All that space between the application name, and the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons are simply WASTED in most GUIs. Not so, in BeOS. Even more cooler (usefull!) in BeOS, is that you can SHIFT-DRAG any title bar (Be calls this the window tab) along the top of the window! (The direct link to "A Look at the BeOS Windows" doesn't work for some reason) Makes it extremely easy to switch among visible apps.

Seems like everyone, Be, etc, includes virtual desktops/workspaces by default, EXCEPT Microsoft!

And who can forget Be is FREE!

... now only if Be would open source BeOS, and make it true multi-user, it would last "forever" and have a chance of becoming a popular OS. :) This is the one strength that Linux has, TONS of developers working world-wide. Of course Linux's "main fault" is lack of consistent vision, and a lot of redundant work. i.e. Browse sourceforge, and ask yourself do we REALLY NEED Yet-Another-Text-Editor?

Well, I've probably come off as a BeOS zealot. Far from it, I LIKE and use: Win2K, BeOS, Linux, and BSD. Use the respective tool for the proper job, since when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, something Linux may fall into, if it's not carefull. :)

Cheers

I agree, that CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM helps everyone. Since NO gui is perfect (they all have their cool little features and quirks) discussing what makes a good GUI great, helps to design more user-friendly UI's. I don't have time to invest X hours learning a specific GUI, and most people also don't have that kind of spare time -- I have better things to do, like writing game code :)

> This article notes many features present in Windows Whistler (such as an advanced taskbar, ... )

BeOS has had this feature for while. It is very slick. Let's say you open up 10 copies of your web browser (NetPositive) you DON'T see 10 huge buttons spread across the task bar (Deskbar, or the Twitcher), only one. All instances of the same program are listed vertical. IMHO, this is making more efficient use of limited screen real estate.

Which brings me to my next point:

The stupid application title bars DON'T extend across the WHOLE top, in BeOS. All that space between the application name, and the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons are simply WASTED in most GUIs. Not so, in BeOS. Even more cooler (usefull!) in BeOS, is that you can SHIFT-DRAG any title bar (Be calls this the window tab) along the top of the window! (The direct link to "A Look at the BeOS Windows" doesn't work for some reason) Makes it extremely easy to switch among visible apps.

Seems like everyone, Be, etc, includes virtual desktops/workspaces by default, EXCEPT Microsoft!

And who can forget Be is FREE!

... now only if Be would open source BeOS, and make it true multi-user, it would last "forever" and have a chance of becoming a popular OS. :) This is the one strength that Linux has, TONS of developers working world-wide. Of course Linux's "main fault" is lack of consistent vision, and a lot of redundant work. i.e. Browse sourceforge, and ask yourself do we REALLY NEED Yet-Another-Text-Editor?

Well, I've probably come off as a BeOS zealot. Far from it, I LIKE and use: Win2K, BeOS, Linux, and BSD. Use the respective tool for the proper job, since when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, something Linux may fall into, if it's not carefull. :)

Cheers

Um how about this instead.