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Seems to me that there are already two solutions that will handle exactly what you describe. They are both low cost, intuitive and user-friendly. Arguably, once you've used either product, you may fuind it difficult to manage without them (at least, I know I do ;->). The products are:

1) "The Brain" by Natrificial. You can check it out at thebrain.com
A relational File-manager for Windows.

2) BeOS

Clearly the solution is here. The question is: will enough people adopt it to make it work?

I think you'll find, d00d that it is in fact the BeOS OS which ru13z. Whats with that dumb penguin anyway might as well have a Tellytubbie or Barney.

4nd u sh0u1d 13rn 2 5p31.

I don't know if this was mentioned on /. before, but there's an interesting article by Jean-Louis Gassée talking about how Microsoft has made it quite difficult to get PC OEMs to install alternative OS's that are bootable out of the box. This article is available at http://www-classic.be.com/aboutbe/benewsletter/vol ume_III/Issue8.html#Gassee
--
"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" -- Homer Simpson

Now that Be is concentrating on the Internet, what about the JDK promised here? This press release says:

The Java 2 platform and PersonalJava technology are currently being ported to BeOS. Beta versions of the software are expected to be available before the end of the year.

The year being 1999. Does anyone know more?

here

as stated in the FAQ it runs in windows and does not need repartitioning... what's this?
--
BeRoute

Yeah, and the obsession with Linux to the exclusion of other cool operating systems such as BeOS is very boring.

What BeOS needs is more good programs and a better networking environment. FYI, Be is already re-writing their networking stack. They're looking for more TCP/IP gurus to help with this; check out http://www-classic.be.com /aboutbe/jobs/NetworkingEng.html. The "more good programs" will only take time.

• List of commercial software
• List of freeware
• Apparently there is more stuff at http://www.be.com/beware but their web server doesn't feel too responsive.

BeOS. duh.

I use Windows becuase it's easy to install a program, becuase it's easy to see what im doing, where im going and how to get there. I use it because when i want an mp3 dbasing util, i can download a single package, and install it with a mouse click. I don't need to hunt for an obscure library file, i don't need to make sure that it will run with the Window Manager i want to use, i don't need to decode version numbers of updates to work out what i need and don't need. This may sound lazy, but i don't have the time to do this, i don't have the energy to do this, i don't have the knowledge to do this. Most of the market that Linux needs to reach out and grab is like me, the computer techs are sold, the geeks and nerds are sold, the average user ? not yet, they will, but not yet.

Please don't get me wrong, i love the concept of linux, open-sourced, free, community built and driven, and i would switch back in minutes given the chance, but linux really needs that single element that MS still has, Gloss and simplicity.

Linux is definitely worse from a simplicity stand-point and I think the people who consider it a non-techie desktop replacement are getting way ahead of themselves. I use linux on servers and my desktop, but I'm also not going to be scared about using installing the latest Netscape (or compiling it for that matter). The reason why I consider Linux a win over Windows is that, although it may not be as simple, it's much more predictable. I've never had a Linux system where an application magically corrupts itself to the point where you need a fresh reinstall of the operating system.

What I've been eyeing as a potential desktop OS replacement is BeOS. It's got a very slick and polished GUI and, unlike Linux, the user never needs to go near a command prompt if they don't want to; if they do, they'll find a well equipped command prompt with all the usual Unix software (lots of ported OpenSource stuff). They just aren't forced to use it. It's got very solid multitasking and handles a heavy load much better than Windows (it's a tossup between BeOS and Linux on my machine as far as scalability goes) with very well developed multimedia support, too.

The best part, however, is the speed. Installing it took something like 15 minutes, which consisted of telling it which partition to use and most of the time was spent copying files off of the CD. A 5 second reboot later, everything was up and running - no plug and pray, no hardware configuration dialogs. The only config I had to do was providing my IP address to the network driver. Everything else was auto-detected without more than a second's delay.

The bottom line: BeOS is fast, extremely stable and it's got a very easy GUI. My mother could install this and use it without training even though it's also got enough neat technology that I find it interesting as well.

(A few weeks ago, I summarized my experiences installing stuff on my new PC.)

Perhaps I'm blind. I could find nothing at http://www.be.com/ that gives details about Stinger. Could you provide a specific URL?

As you might expect, www.be.com has some information. Basically, Stinger is the BeOS trimmed down for internet appliances. They've demoed it on NatSemi's webpads using Opera at a couple shows.

1. IMO, The Star Wars Crap Made Out of Legos is clearly some of the most interesting and best made of the new generation of Star Wars Crap.
   
2. The mark of a good operating system is not "tight code" but "tight design." What follows is a list of design points, with OSes having interesting solutions in parentheses where relevant.
   
   • Does the kernel manage system resources properly? [Win9x and MacOS What security model does the kernel present? [EROS]
     
   • Does the kernel manage time well? N.B. "Time" means both "latencies" as well as "handing events and doing work over time." [BeOS]
     
   • What namespace abstraction is presented to software in a system and/or to a user of a system? [Plan 9, Lifestreams]
     
   
   And the list goes on... but this should get the idea across. While this system may be free, what does it offer that the community needs?
   

Cheers,
Justin.

The #1 item on my Christmas wish list is the Psion Series 7. I think the Series 7 is a great gift for any college student due to its full-size keyboard, instant-on, and great battery life.
I would also love a dual AMD K6-II 400 to run BeOS on :-) BeOS is a great OS for any geek, and having a dual processor system to run it on would be awesome!!

• 1. Crashed a few times.
• 
  Duh, its a beta.. and BeOS has not proven to be the most stable OS.
  (Though, crashes no
  LESS stable than Netscape..)
  

Did you get VC funding from a VC company or friends, family etc. The reason I ask is that most VC firms have relationships with PR and marketing companies to help with this sort of thing.

If you do engage in some sort of banner campaign, do not expect to generate many sales that way. The real utility of banners is brand awareness. You really need to get your product reviewed or mention in print or one of the computing shows like cnet or zdtv. Remember that print reviews generally have a lead time of 2-3 months and time your campaigns to converge.

Make sure that you plan your marketing efforts. Have you identified your market? Have you found your apps utility for this target market? Have you identified competing products and disected their marketing efforts? Have you written a press release?

In the developer area of Be's website take a look at the articles on marketing. They will help. There are also resources online which help with press releases and contacts. Make sure you send your info to specific people and not a department or company.

Good luck.

Keynote speaker Thomas "She Blinded Me with Science" Dolby took stage in a black beret to discuss the relationship between Be and his company, Beatnik. Beatnik was formerly known as HeadSpace, and provided the original software synthesizer in BeOS.

Dolby also showed off a fully interactive Javascript/RMF mixer Beatnik had built for David Bowie's site, which lets users remix Bowie's hit "Fame" to their heart's content directly in browserspace. It was not entirely clear what the exact nature of Beatnik's relationship with Be is, but it's enough to know they're working together on making RMF a native component of BeOS. Hopefully we can get more details on this in a future report.

Sure, but we don't want people going and batch-converting hundreds of GIF's with the broken translator for BAG-Day. Yes, it'll be fixed and distributed hopefully soon, but not that soon. There is an older translator by Simon Clarke, which is probably based on libpng, and which writes files correctly.

Be careful with PNG and BeOS! The PNG translator that ships with current versions of BeOS can create corrupt PNG files. Applications which use libpng are typically unable to read/display these damaged files.

I wrote Apple a complaint about their lack of Linux support a while back and they sent me a stupid, form-generated "yeah whatever" reply. I think that Linux competes with OS X or something. At any rate, they are pretty ambivilant (sp) about it.

If you want to see some antics that don't require Quicktime 4.0 click here. The site was created by a former employee of SGI who had way too much time on his hands.

Take care,

Steve

You can get wide-format monitors from SGI as part of the Octane package, I believe.

You can get wide-format monitors with the SGI name on them from a variety of places; Number Nine sells (at least in the US; their online store only sells in the US) the Digital Flat Panel Solution Pack for PC's (and I think they had a package for Macs as well), which includes a Revolution IV-FP video card and the SGI monitor. It's probably available from various distributors as well. It comes with drivers for operating systems from Redmond; Accelerated-X also includes drivers, as does, I think, the latest XFree86. (I see nothing in the graphics card section of the BeOS Ready List for Intel about it, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there's no OS/2 drivers for it, either, alas, as, when I get a second disk for my home machine, I'd be tempted to install those on it as well, just to see what they're like....)

They are really nice, but heavy as hell,

The ones you installed are presumably CRTs; this one is an LCD, and thus presumably not so heavy (or bulky)...

We set them up to run 1600x1024 at 75Hz.

...and give you 1600x1024 as well.

The price on Number Nine's online store is about USD 2800, but I got mine for about USD 2200, at least several months ago - I seem to remember the list price being less than USD 2800 when I bought it, so maybe it's gone up; I don't know what the price would be outside the US.

I run BeOS as my primary desktop OS and unfortunately it does not support playback of encoded DVD movies. This support may appear in R5

Details may be found here.

my acceptance of that statement waits until there's enough proof to prop it up

You mean besides the BeOS FAQ? And when they strangled the cloners? How about when they opted out of CHRP/PREP, their biggest chance to open up the platform?

http://www.be.com/developers/ -- The Be Book (all public APIs), example code, drivers, newsletter articles, whathaveyou. All available online, as they have been for years and will be for the forseeable future. No need to be a registered developer to get at the information. The headers, docs, and samples also ship with the OS.

--Brian

They've got years of work and many millions invested in the PowerPC, and honestly the PowerPC is just a superior microprocessor.

They can sell in the x86 market because they can write for a few common motherboard standards and expect them to work on millions of machines. Suppose they did ship a product with G4 support, that wasn't for Apple? Who'd they sell to?

Mostly people like me, who want to upgrade their PowerPC systems but don't want to buy a new mac because the BeOS won't run on it.

Because PowerPC users are a very small fraction of the installed base, they wouldn't sell many at all.

But if somebody sold a supported system, that was BeOS only, or dual booted into Linux or BeOS - bingo!

So if you want to see BeOS supported on PowerPC in the future, call up your linux hardware vendors and ask them to offer the BeOS as an option on their systems, x86 systems to start, they'll get around to PowerPC eventually.

People who want to resell the BeOS can obtain a free eval copy and a videotape by faxing their resale license to Be (Americas only; other countries have other arrangements). Find out about this at:

http://www-classic.be.com/resellers/

I've been told by a Be executive that the BeOS bundle pricing is "very aggressive". So someone selling a machine with the OS installed would find it easy to profit on it.

And I've used the BeOS for years now, and I'm very happy with it. It's a dream to install and configure, unlike Linux, which rendered my disk unbootable the last time I tried to install and upgrade, and which took me two weeks to figure out how to change the resolution and refresh rate of my X server.

For those who don't know, LinuxPPC and BeOS won't run natively on Macs or Mac clones. I installed LinuxPPC on my Blue G3 and had to make it a dual-boot between MacOS and Linux. Why? Because the damn machine won't boot into anything except MacOS! LinuxPPC waits until the MacOS starts to boot the computer up, then hijacks the system. The sameannoying setup applied when I installed BeOS on my PowerComputing clone.

Now I love my MacOS and all, but I'd like to be able to run BeOS and Linux without having MacOS hiding underneath somewhere. If these PowerPC boards actually make it to the shelves, I'll be first in line.

Can you really stand up and claim that the companies that sell intellectual property are making too little money
today???

Microsoft? The record companies? Book publishers? These are the most bloated and rich companies in the world.
Why? Becase we are giving them ridiculously much power through current IP laws.


Yes, I can stand up and say that companies that sell software are making too little money. Microsoft is really the exception when it comes to making gobs of money in the software industry. There are a lot of great companies putting out great products ( Be, for example) that would be out of business immediately if it weren't for copyright laws that allow them to keep people from giving away their stuff for free. Sure, microsoft may be "the big bad evil company" but we as a society shouldn't just throw out all of the laws that allow programmers to get paid just because one "evil" company depends on those laws. Microsoft isn't the only company you're hurting by illegally copying software. You're also hurting a lot of companies that really busted their asses to write good software. If you don't think that's fair, then don't use their software. It's very simple.

The BeOS provides a number of "supposedly easy" APIs (InterfaceKit, ApplicationKit, StorageKit, etc). The docs are available online. Other useful information is in the developer library.

Enjoy.

Brian

The BeOS provides a number of "supposedly easy" APIs (InterfaceKit, ApplicationKit, StorageKit, etc). The docs are available online. Other useful information is in the developer library.

Enjoy.

Brian

BeOS hasn't been able to run on G3s, to this day. But with this "open" setup here, can Be make BeOS work on better PPC hardware? I think the question isn't so much whether Linux will become more prominent on PPC than x86, but whether Be will become more dominant on x86 due to information apple wasn't giving them.

Be's explanation of why BeOS doesn't run on G3s.

-G.

Does this mean that we'll be seeing BeOS on G3's and G4's, too? Be was complaining that they didn't have access to the hardware specs, but this should open it up, shouldn't it?

drool, drool!

It's called BeOS.

In Japan, Linux is the leading non-MS OS. After Linux, BeOS is coming on strong. Check out BeOS Japan. A couple years ago there was some interest in BSD but BSD is now way way back of BeOS. Interest in BSD has slipped dramatically; BeOS may be the next "big thing" in Japan.

The Be people do acknowledge that reverse-engineering the latest Apple systems would work, with or without cribbing from LinuxPPC. However, they feel that they would be on shaky legal ground if they took that route. Apple hasn't lashed out at the free software people, but they do have a history of litigation and hard-headedness when it comes to other companies.

Relevant Be FAQ

I like PC hardware anyway. Might not be the best quality, but it's cheap and modular. (:

Tim

On the surface, the Be engineers appear like the good guys, being victimized by Microsoft and Apple. The truth, however, is that they're a bunch of pompous asses with quite an attitude. Witness their FAQ about installing on a logical partition: http://www-classic.be.c om/support/qandas/faqs/faq-0462.html. In it, they say that because only Linux and OS/2 support installation on an extended partition, that they don't need to support it because the only successful OS (Windows) doesn't support it. What they don't want to admit is that if they expect people to use BeOS along side other OS's, then you damn better support logical parititions otherwise some people might not be able to add BeOS.
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address

I want things on that CD that will do for me, a Linux developer, what MFC does for the Windows guys.

there are APIs like that now. GTK and Qt are two good examples. If you really want to see a cool application framework, check out the BeOS API online. It's very very sweet.

VNC for BeOS (currently only the client) is in BeWare. Seems to work alright...I use it to talk to several windows boxen on my internal network.

Check out the official BeOS compatibility list

check out the old Be web site Its still available and things like BeWare are still being updated. The worst thing about BeOS is all the terrible puns :P

What gave ICANN the right to steal NSI's Domain name? They are Nazi's... I sent them 2 emails today saying so, and they both bounced!

In my opinion, this is a hook to help government :

• spy on us
• tax the internet

Agreed, NSI's system of FORM-EMAIL-RESPONSE was goofy, but what did they do to deserve having their domain stolen? It's like BEOS going to congress and having them redirect www.microsoft.com.

....look kinda like the old BeBox!)

Everyone says that about colored cases these days. The simple fact is, I have yet to see any case that looks as cool as the BeBoxen did. Besides, the BeBox wasn't just about the look of the case... It was about what was in it. Check out the specs on those beasties sometime... www.be.com

If you have a pic, post a link. Otherwise, I'll believe it when I see it. And if you meant the Mac cases, you should be beaten mercilessly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.

Some are saying that be does not like open source and linux, and so on. There is overwhelming evidence to the contrary (be has denied this many times and said that they like linux (see their FAQ). However, in the June 16 1999 issue of their newslette rthey have an article that seems to me to show be's ideas on linux, and also their great sense of humor (hilarious bits are scattered throughout their newsletters -- look up "The Cow Piano"). Also, this issue of the newsletter contains stuff about BeOS kernel programming, for those intersted.

X116.3 server for BeOS. Wasn't very hard to find (Be.com-Products-3rd Party Apps-All-X)

Umm, that isn't a priveledge they bestow upon their users; they are required to include the source of the 250+ GNU command-line utilities that they bundle with Be

• Overview
• Device Drivers
• Modules
• Bus Managers
• ...

Umm, that isn't a priveledge they bestow upon their users; they are required to include the source of the 250+ GNU command-line utilities that they bundle with Be

• Overview
• Device Drivers
• Modules
• Bus Managers
• ...

Umm, that isn't a priveledge they bestow upon their users; they are required to include the source of the 250+ GNU command-line utilities that they bundle with Be

• Overview
• Device Drivers
• Modules
• Bus Managers
• ...