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Please go to BeNews and read the explanation for these two BlueOS screenshots. The second shot uses a "dummy" content for its windows.

Also, click here to read the Interview with the BlueOS project leader at OSNews.

I like BeOS. I wish that everyone would have used BeOS. I like to read Be News. BeOS is fun.

For those who are interested in the possibility of the BeOS being continued, check out BeUnited.org. Originally "a place to find and support teams for the development of high quality BeOS software", they are now "leading an initiative concerned with the licensing of the BeOS from Palm, Inc. and its subsequent upgrading, development and professional marketing on a global scale".

If they can be successful in licensing the OS from Palm, then the BeOS can continue. They currently have 136 new products or projects in their developer survey. Head over to the site to see how you can help!

Also, for those that don't know, there are several other really good sites dedicated to the BeOS:

The "sourceForge" of the BeOS: BeBits.com.

News and a discussion forum: BeGroovy.com.

Another news site: BeNews.com.

And, of course, the site that sells BeOS 5 Pro, and the Office Suite (available for Windows, too!) that goes along with it: Gobe.com.

So this stuff doesn't actually exist?

Neither does AppleScript?

And BeOS can't really be scripted.

Also, Framemaker scripting is just a figment of my imagination.

As for piping information, you've obviously never used Cortex.

Your comments are totally devoid of any basis in reality. Its just like saying "CLI apps are automatically hard!"

• Though people ask for it continually, people in the know, such as _BeOS Bible_ author Scot Hacker, have repeatedly said that an open source version of BeOS will basically never happen. The system depends on licensed code that Be apparently couldn't give away even if they wanted to. I'd like to see this happen as much as everyone else, but don't count on it ever happening.
• New math department: according to The Register, Be's recent financial reports indicate that revenues are up over 600 percent. Thus proving that 600% of nothing is still, well, nothing.
• Supposedly, somewhere on beosradio.com, a ready to ship copy of BeOS r6 has been presented to CEO Jean Louis Gasseee. Various interesting takes on this one. Supposedly development on the desktop OS had basically halted, with all effort going into the IA version, so it would seem that there isn't enough code to be worth releasing a new version of the desktop OS. This is a shame, because a couple of useful components -- BONE networking, OpenGL graphics, etc -- were apparently under development before the switch to the IA focus, and it isn't clear if these components were then or are now ready for prime time. It could be a move to just get out one last version in whatever state it may be in, or there could actually be some new developments that haven't been publicized.
• Discussion at BeGroovy suggests that, among other things, this Palm press release would indicate that they're the likely buyed, while another commenter suggests, supposedly on good authority, that Sony is the likely buyer and they're already feeling out where they would want to go with Be & its technology. Then again, a a followup to that said that, at least as far as releasing BeOS6, he was full of it, and that the only developer working on BONE has been on an extended vacation anyway. Finally, one commenter noted that the final issue of BeDope ["Be's own Onion" --me.] had anticipated all of this months ago. Hrm....
• Over at BeNews, there was yet another link to the Reg article and a whole lot of discussion, generally going nowhere as these forums are wont to do, throwing out speculation that the buyer -- if there even is one, don't forget that this is still just a rumor -- could be any of Palm (they seem to like that idea; I'm not sure I see it but hey whatever), Gobe (developer of Be software -- seen as unlikely as they probably don't have much more cash than Be does), AOL, Compaq, Sun (now *that* would be a nice Network Computer...), Symbian, QNX (why?), Apple (doubt it), Microsoft (pretty sure that was a joke...) (too bad...), Amiga (ok that was definitely a joke), IBM, Hitachi, Samsung, Nokia, Transmeta, Intel, Red Hat (we're pretty safely into wild speculation territory at this point), SGI (see? completely off the wall, these people have no idea what they're talking about), QSSL (bonkers), DoCoMo (two unprofitable ideas that lose money together!), Wind River (who?), Ericsson, etc. Mostly this is all silliness. Towards the end of the conversation, a commenter notes that over on Yahoo's forums, the rumor has been confirmed (by who?), that the stock price is expected to shoot up (whoa, a whole dollar! golly!), and there will be an after hours announcement. Keep in mind however that, not so long ago, a 15 year old kid had such financial forums in the palm of his hand with his "expert" advice, so take that with the appropriate amount of salt. Still, something to watch for anyway.
• Meanwhile, *checks* yes, Be's own press page hasn't been updated since May 17. No help there...

Hopefully all those links work, if not I apologize. I'm just summarizing the various pages that I've skimmed over the course of today. If there's any truth to the Yahoo rumors, there could be confirmation of this as soon as tonight. Though it would be sad to see the company shut down or swallowed whole, a lot of people have seen this coming for a long time, and it would be nice to have some resolution of the situation. BeOS is some great consumer computing technology, and I hope very much that it has a future. Perhaps we're about to find out if that is the case...

• Though people ask for it continually, people in the know, such as _BeOS Bible_ author Scot Hacker, have repeatedly said that an open source version of BeOS will basically never happen. The system depends on licensed code that Be apparently couldn't give away even if they wanted to. I'd like to see this happen as much as everyone else, but don't count on it ever happening.
• New math department: according to The Register, Be's recent financial reports indicate that revenues are up over 600 percent. Thus proving that 600% of nothing is still, well, nothing.
• Supposedly, somewhere on beosradio.com, a ready to ship copy of BeOS r6 has been presented to CEO Jean Louis Gasseee. Various interesting takes on this one. Supposedly development on the desktop OS had basically halted, with all effort going into the IA version, so it would seem that there isn't enough code to be worth releasing a new version of the desktop OS. This is a shame, because a couple of useful components -- BONE networking, OpenGL graphics, etc -- were apparently under development before the switch to the IA focus, and it isn't clear if these components were then or are now ready for prime time. It could be a move to just get out one last version in whatever state it may be in, or there could actually be some new developments that haven't been publicized.
• Discussion at BeGroovy suggests that, among other things, this Palm press release would indicate that they're the likely buyed, while another commenter suggests, supposedly on good authority, that Sony is the likely buyer and they're already feeling out where they would want to go with Be & its technology. Then again, a a followup to that said that, at least as far as releasing BeOS6, he was full of it, and that the only developer working on BONE has been on an extended vacation anyway. Finally, one commenter noted that the final issue of BeDope ["Be's own Onion" --me.] had anticipated all of this months ago. Hrm....
• Over at BeNews, there was yet another link to the Reg article and a whole lot of discussion, generally going nowhere as these forums are wont to do, throwing out speculation that the buyer -- if there even is one, don't forget that this is still just a rumor -- could be any of Palm (they seem to like that idea; I'm not sure I see it but hey whatever), Gobe (developer of Be software -- seen as unlikely as they probably don't have much more cash than Be does), AOL, Compaq, Sun (now *that* would be a nice Network Computer...), Symbian, QNX (why?), Apple (doubt it), Microsoft (pretty sure that was a joke...) (too bad...), Amiga (ok that was definitely a joke), IBM, Hitachi, Samsung, Nokia, Transmeta, Intel, Red Hat (we're pretty safely into wild speculation territory at this point), SGI (see? completely off the wall, these people have no idea what they're talking about), QSSL (bonkers), DoCoMo (two unprofitable ideas that lose money together!), Wind River (who?), Ericsson, etc. Mostly this is all silliness. Towards the end of the conversation, a commenter notes that over on Yahoo's forums, the rumor has been confirmed (by who?), that the stock price is expected to shoot up (whoa, a whole dollar! golly!), and there will be an after hours announcement. Keep in mind however that, not so long ago, a 15 year old kid had such financial forums in the palm of his hand with his "expert" advice, so take that with the appropriate amount of salt. Still, something to watch for anyway.
• Meanwhile, *checks* yes, Be's own press page hasn't been updated since May 17. No help there...

Hopefully all those links work, if not I apologize. I'm just summarizing the various pages that I've skimmed over the course of today. If there's any truth to the Yahoo rumors, there could be confirmation of this as soon as tonight. Though it would be sad to see the company shut down or swallowed whole, a lot of people have seen this coming for a long time, and it would be nice to have some resolution of the situation. BeOS is some great consumer computing technology, and I hope very much that it has a future. Perhaps we're about to find out if that is the case...

• Though people ask for it continually, people in the know, such as _BeOS Bible_ author Scot Hacker, have repeatedly said that an open source version of BeOS will basically never happen. The system depends on licensed code that Be apparently couldn't give away even if they wanted to. I'd like to see this happen as much as everyone else, but don't count on it ever happening.
• New math department: according to The Register, Be's recent financial reports indicate that revenues are up over 600 percent. Thus proving that 600% of nothing is still, well, nothing.
• Supposedly, somewhere on beosradio.com, a ready to ship copy of BeOS r6 has been presented to CEO Jean Louis Gasseee. Various interesting takes on this one. Supposedly development on the desktop OS had basically halted, with all effort going into the IA version, so it would seem that there isn't enough code to be worth releasing a new version of the desktop OS. This is a shame, because a couple of useful components -- BONE networking, OpenGL graphics, etc -- were apparently under development before the switch to the IA focus, and it isn't clear if these components were then or are now ready for prime time. It could be a move to just get out one last version in whatever state it may be in, or there could actually be some new developments that haven't been publicized.
• Discussion at BeGroovy suggests that, among other things, this Palm press release would indicate that they're the likely buyed, while another commenter suggests, supposedly on good authority, that Sony is the likely buyer and they're already feeling out where they would want to go with Be & its technology. Then again, a a followup to that said that, at least as far as releasing BeOS6, he was full of it, and that the only developer working on BONE has been on an extended vacation anyway. Finally, one commenter noted that the final issue of BeDope ["Be's own Onion" --me.] had anticipated all of this months ago. Hrm....
• Over at BeNews, there was yet another link to the Reg article and a whole lot of discussion, generally going nowhere as these forums are wont to do, throwing out speculation that the buyer -- if there even is one, don't forget that this is still just a rumor -- could be any of Palm (they seem to like that idea; I'm not sure I see it but hey whatever), Gobe (developer of Be software -- seen as unlikely as they probably don't have much more cash than Be does), AOL, Compaq, Sun (now *that* would be a nice Network Computer...), Symbian, QNX (why?), Apple (doubt it), Microsoft (pretty sure that was a joke...) (too bad...), Amiga (ok that was definitely a joke), IBM, Hitachi, Samsung, Nokia, Transmeta, Intel, Red Hat (we're pretty safely into wild speculation territory at this point), SGI (see? completely off the wall, these people have no idea what they're talking about), QSSL (bonkers), DoCoMo (two unprofitable ideas that lose money together!), Wind River (who?), Ericsson, etc. Mostly this is all silliness. Towards the end of the conversation, a commenter notes that over on Yahoo's forums, the rumor has been confirmed (by who?), that the stock price is expected to shoot up (whoa, a whole dollar! golly!), and there will be an after hours announcement. Keep in mind however that, not so long ago, a 15 year old kid had such financial forums in the palm of his hand with his "expert" advice, so take that with the appropriate amount of salt. Still, something to watch for anyway.
• Meanwhile, *checks* yes, Be's own press page hasn't been updated since May 17. No help there...

Hopefully all those links work, if not I apologize. I'm just summarizing the various pages that I've skimmed over the course of today. If there's any truth to the Yahoo rumors, there could be confirmation of this as soon as tonight. Though it would be sad to see the company shut down or swallowed whole, a lot of people have seen this coming for a long time, and it would be nice to have some resolution of the situation. BeOS is some great consumer computing technology, and I hope very much that it has a future. Perhaps we're about to find out if that is the case...

Speculation on the Be-related forums is running rampant. FYI, here is a list of the companies people have speculated about:

AOL - compete for the internet w/ MS
Sony - continued support for the eVilla
Palm - compete w/ WinCE for the PDA market
IBM - no idea what IBM would want w/ BeOS
Nokia - multimedia cell phones
EPOC/Symbian - same as above
Compaq - something to run on alpha???
QNX - add more multimedia capabilities
Sun - compete for the desktop w/ MS
Microsoft - final nail in a competitor's coffin
Gobe - compete w/ MS for the office suite market
Amiga - bring AmigaOS back to life

As you can see, people are letting their imagination run away with them. Some of the above speculation is pretty interesting, though. You can check out BeNews for the latest.

Absolutely right. In fact, Microsoft has already declared the XBOX as an integral part of their .NET strategy. I think Sony knows it too, and that's why they're trying beat MS to the punch. Why else do you think that they're announcing the Hard Drive (with NIC, according to some reports), keyboard, and mouse at the same time?

It's a known fact that Sony hates Microsoft. Ken Kutaragi, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment has been trash talking about the XBOX for a while now and Nobuyuki Idei, the big boss himself, has done all but declare open warfare. They've probably got a good idea of what Microsoft is up to, and want to nip it in the bud.

Here's another fact to chew on. Be has been trying to remake themselves into an imbedded OS provider. Rumour has it that there's been a lot of hush-hush discussion between Be and Sony, and Sony has already released a BeOS device. Maybe I'm smoking crack, but combine all those facts together and it's not a big leap of logic to predict a BeIA based web client for the PS2 this fall. The XBOX might have some real competition on it's hands.

This could be a killer device, though the referenced device sounds nice, too. Wonder what the final cost will be to consumers, provided it actually makes it to consumers in quantity...

BeOS R5 is one of the three operating systems I have installed on my machine, and that I use on a semi-regular basis (others are RH7, which I'm still trying to patch to some semblance of stability, and Windows 2000 Professional, which isn't great, but a hell of a lot better than any previous MS offering). I boot into Be whenever I need something quick. Just need to check my email, or want to read UF before I leave the house? BeOS. Nine second boot on this machine (500mHz P3, 640mB RAM, although it booted just as fast w/128mB), including a bunch of weird scripts I run at startup. OpenGL - the spinning teapot - isn't too great, this is true. However, Be has been working hard at getting a fully accelerated OpenGL library out the door, and benchmarks have proven that what's already been developed is quite speedy. I haven't been able to grab Gobe yet, but what I've seen looks pretty impressive.

My favorite feature is definitely the API. Yes, it might not beat NeXT, but it's probably the best C++ toolkit I've ever seen. No scary macros like MFC, weird Loop classes that you have to construct to run your events, no half-assed OOP like GTK+ or Qt (and I like them both too!). It's just beauteous, plain and simple. I can write an app in Be on a napkin in a restaurant because it's so easy.

I will be very sad to se Be go, if that happens. I'd even put up some money...anyone for Cosource?

Isn't the /. crowd the one so obsessed with diversity? Besides, BeOS isn't based on *NIX either.

PS> Yea, I know BeOS isn't major, but does RedHat have a contract with Sony?

this is a copy of a post i made at benews. go here to read the follow-up posts.

For a long time I have been unable to use BeOS. My computer would mysteriously and randomly completely lock up. I say randomly because I started to keep a log, but there wasn't any pattern at all.

I looked all over the web for help, and since I had a graphics card that some people had reported to have problems, I replaced it. This did not solve my problem.

Next, I thought something might be the matter with BeOS. This seemed to be true for a while because it got to the point where I needed to reinstall and the reinstall kept crashing. Linux was still working at this point.

But it got worse. Linux would crash periodically and sometimes my ext2 partition would be too mangled for fsck and I would try to reinstall. It got to the point where my distribution would not install (Gentus). I tried a few other distributions and Debian Installed but kept giving me these IDE time-out and restart warnings.

I actually like Debian and would have never tried it out if it hadn't been for this problem, but my problem got worse. Debian started having the same problems as the rest of the distributions.

A friend suggested we try installing Windows 2000 just to eliminate the possibility that software was the problem. We tried a couple of times and Win2k's best was 76% completed and then crashed.

Since I had gotten some error messages with Debian about my IDE I thought it might be my IDE controller. I found a few people on the web who said that they also had problems with their Abit BP6 motherboard's IDE controllers. So I started the process of choosing another motherboard.

I finally selected an EPoX KP6-BS with slotkets. (I have two 500Mhz Celerons).

I am glad that I finally found the proplem. I have not had a single crash since I installed the new motherboard and I have done everything that made it crash before. Installed BeOS and Debian GNU/Linux, compiled my kernel 3 times, forced an fsck, Used Net+ (Net+ crashed once, but BeOS caught it), etc.

I really enjoy using BeOS and really missed it during the several months it took me to finally find the problem.

I am posting this here for anyone else who may be having similar problems. I hope this helps.


one thing to keep in mind. as a single piece of hardware becomes more complex, the chances of a single manufacturing error rendering the part useless go up.

this is a copy of a post i made at benews. go here to read the follow-up posts.

For a long time I have been unable to use BeOS. My computer would mysteriously and randomly completely lock up. I say randomly because I started to keep a log, but there wasn't any pattern at all.

I looked all over the web for help, and since I had a graphics card that some people had reported to have problems, I replaced it. This did not solve my problem.

Next, I thought something might be the matter with BeOS. This seemed to be true for a while because it got to the point where I needed to reinstall and the reinstall kept crashing. Linux was still working at this point.

But it got worse. Linux would crash periodically and sometimes my ext2 partition would be too mangled for fsck and I would try to reinstall. It got to the point where my distribution would not install (Gentus). I tried a few other distributions and Debian Installed but kept giving me these IDE time-out and restart warnings.

I actually like Debian and would have never tried it out if it hadn't been for this problem, but my problem got worse. Debian started having the same problems as the rest of the distributions.

A friend suggested we try installing Windows 2000 just to eliminate the possibility that software was the problem. We tried a couple of times and Win2k's best was 76% completed and then crashed.

Since I had gotten some error messages with Debian about my IDE I thought it might be my IDE controller. I found a few people on the web who said that they also had problems with their Abit BP6 motherboard's IDE controllers. So I started the process of choosing another motherboard.

I finally selected an EPoX KP6-BS with slotkets. (I have two 500Mhz Celerons).

I am glad that I finally found the proplem. I have not had a single crash since I installed the new motherboard and I have done everything that made it crash before. Installed BeOS and Debian GNU/Linux, compiled my kernel 3 times, forced an fsck, Used Net+ (Net+ crashed once, but BeOS caught it), etc.

I really enjoy using BeOS and really missed it during the several months it took me to finally find the problem.

I am posting this here for anyone else who may be having similar problems. I hope this helps.


one thing to keep in mind. as a single piece of hardware becomes more complex, the chances of a single manufacturing error rendering the part useless go up.

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

Sorry. I missed the announcement of Sony's Linux-based IA. Since Sony is using this very dead OS in its eVilla IA I'm sure it has one based on the very not-dead LinuxOS, right?

Speaking of OSs in movies, BeIA is in Ahhnold's new movie. From BeNews,

"... The fridge was shown twice during the movie, once in the beginning where Arnie tried to get some milk off the fridge and then he just
clicked some buttons on the touch screen and once near the end, when the "bad guys" went there to find Arnie, but they couldn't find him around. BUT, the IA
'betrayed' Arnie, because it was written on it his "Schedule of the Day", so they knew where to find him..."

Get the article here from BeNews

Yea, you don't care. Go ahead and -1 Offtopic it, see if I care ;)

NWN will probably be a good test of which OS has the fastest OpenGL. I'd guess it would be BeOS judging from the benchmarks here
----

Oh yeah, I know. We posted it on BeNews a few days ago. I don't know about the other BeNews editors, but I certianly feel special that we're important enough to have Slashdot gather content from us :-) I could go on and on about how most of you have completely missed the point, but it'd fall on deaf linux zealotrous ears :)

http://www.byte.com/column/B e_V iew/BYT20001031S0001

http://www.benews.com/c gi- bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?id=13857

Check the preview on BeNews here. They have screenshots and everything.
BTW, BeOS is better than QNX. Seriously.

Why bother with Star Office? Its almost as bloated and slow as MS Office. I've been using Gobe Productive for the last while and its been great. Reads/Writes Word and Excel documents as well.

Be, Inc. has also not been spending all their resources on BeIA. They are actively developing BONE (BeOS Networking Environment) which is a complete rewrite of the Networking stack. Early benchmarks indicate, IIRC, about 2000% speed increase over the current stack. Seeing that it has been under development for a bit, we are anticipating a release somewhat soon.
They are also completely rewriting the hardware OpenGL implementation, an early look at it indicates that it completely wipes the floor with both Windows and Linux.

-Gandalf Greyhame

P.S. Kuro5hin is coming back soon! Yay!!!!

Linux is only Free if your time is worth Nothing

Why bother with Star Office? Its almost as bloated and slow as MS Office. I've been using Gobe Productive for the last while and its been great. Reads/Writes Word and Excel documents as well.

Be, Inc. has also not been spending all their resources on BeIA. They are actively developing BONE (BeOS Networking Environment) which is a complete rewrite of the Networking stack. Early benchmarks indicate, IIRC, about 2000% speed increase over the current stack. Seeing that it has been under development for a bit, we are anticipating a release somewhat soon.
They are also completely rewriting the hardware OpenGL implementation, an early look at it indicates that it completely wipes the floor with both Windows and Linux.

-Gandalf Greyhame

P.S. Kuro5hin is coming back soon! Yay!!!!

Linux is only Free if your time is worth Nothing

BeNews has reported that official, Be-maintained GeForce drivers for BeOS are on their way, courtesy of BeBits. They're just 2D*, but that's still a damn sight better than VESA or greyscale modes.

*: Which stands to reason, since accelerated OpenGL is still in the Real Soon Now stage.

Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel/Facing down the future coming fast - Rush

I personally like the mwForum moderation system, as used by BeNews - no anonymous posting, no continual karma number, etc. And guess what? It works just fine!

A lot of people like kuro5hin. I hate it personally - I'd rather an editor took care of stories and we did the posting. Once again, BeNews is a good example - now there aren't many trolls (with the execption of one guy named "Robbie"), but the stories get good comments. If you want to post a story yourself, it's a whole forum system. Go make a post.

If you've got the bandwidth, give it a try. (BTW the href for mwForum is here.)

The port of X11R6.4 is avail here on the bebits.com website. There's also an article about running X services under BeOS over on BeNews.

Sadly, it hasn't fixed the poor OpenGL framerate on my TNT2 Ultra; this was apparently broken in 5.0 - 4.5 was apparently much faster.

Yeah - and I see a sun SparcStation in this image too...

http://inside.benews.com/img/914.mounted.jpg

I got a neat error for benews.com!




Database Connection Error
The database appears to have died or is experiencing critical loads, please reload this page in a few minutes (it will auto-reload in 2 minutes).


We are sorry for any inconvienience this may cause.
BeNews Team

Image included in page: (funny) http://inside.benews.com/img/914.mounted.jpg
Free Porn! or Laugh

"That's what I never understood about BeOS, charging $100 for an OS that you can't really use for anything 'cept browsing the web to see if anything *really* useful has come out yet!"

...but you don't HAVE to pay for BeOS. You can get the fully operable BeOS R5 for download at free.be.com. You can easily circumvent the artificial partition limits by using instructions at BeNews.

here's the link that dissapeared misteriously from the above comment
http://www.benews.com/story/3108.1.html
--
BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite free!

Was that responsible reporting?

If you look at the article from the standpoint of spreading inaccuracies, then no, it is not responsible reporting. However, if you look at it as trying to squash a rumor before it can get started, then yes, it is responsible reporting.

I called Be Europe this morning to confirm this, and it's just not true.

I think that pretty much summarizes my argument: a published report came in, the editor researched the evidence, and made a report. How much more responsible is he supposed to get?

(And if you're really interested in blasting someone for irresponsible reporting, try the folks over at BeNews who ran the story in the first place -- despite their own admission that they were unable to get a complete English translation of the interview in question or make contact with Be(Europe)!)

OK, so the cat's out of the bag and it looks bad, right? Well, not exactly. A response from a Be engineer can be found on BeNews here.

So it seems that the library in question is part of the BeOS distribution (both Personal Edition and Pro), but the library in question is never actually used.

IANAL, but it seems to me if you accidetnally include something like that but never use it, are you still violating the license? Perhaps the law could be twisted either way, but I say look at the root of the matter. What were Be's intentions? What damage has been done to the holder of the license?

http://www.benews.com/story/3073.1.html

Says BeNews last week, Be Posts R5 GNU Sources. Including a link to the location with the updates.

I think you should better go to BeNews or the BeGroovy fora. Or, there is alt.os.beos.

You can ask there, I am certain someone will know. Expecially on BeNews there are quite a few video anthusiasts hanging around.

If anyone actually can download BeOS, you'll probably want to find out more about it. I'm not affiliated with this site but www.benews.com is the place to find out the latest info about BeOS. It's inspired by slashdot and its a lot more useful than the www.be.com site.

DVD: I think there are some licensing issues Be is struggling with. Be would probably get themselves sued hard if they decided to support DVD media the same way they support CD media (ripper built in to CD Player, CD Burner designed for audio, etc.) Of course, Xing isn't getting sued for leaving their keys lying about where any Scandinavian hacker could find them, but that's a whole 'nother rant.

GL Hardware Accel.: Still in development. BeNews had a couple of articles (OpenGL Status in Release 5 and R. Jason Sams Talks About the OpenGL on BeOS) on this last month. Sams goes into the guts of the new OpenGL subsystem. They're using some neat tricks to optimize the performance, so when it (finally) arrives, it should be lickety-split quick.

Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast - Rush

DVD: I think there are some licensing issues Be is struggling with. Be would probably get themselves sued hard if they decided to support DVD media the same way they support CD media (ripper built in to CD Player, CD Burner designed for audio, etc.) Of course, Xing isn't getting sued for leaving their keys lying about where any Scandinavian hacker could find them, but that's a whole 'nother rant.

GL Hardware Accel.: Still in development. BeNews had a couple of articles (OpenGL Status in Release 5 and R. Jason Sams Talks About the OpenGL on BeOS) on this last month. Sams goes into the guts of the new OpenGL subsystem. They're using some neat tricks to optimize the performance, so when it (finally) arrives, it should be lickety-split quick.

Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast - Rush

• You aren't limited to 500 megs! Yes, the Be-in-a-file can only be that big, but if you set aside a partition (say, 1.5 megs) and format it as BeFS using the Partition Magic version that came with R4, you can install onto that directly using the "Installer" program that comes with FreeBe 5. I'll bet you could format partitions as BeFS using the DriveSetup utility that comes with FreeBe5 too... Check BeNews for details
• You're not limited to one processor! This is a problem only if you launch BeOS 5 directly from Windows, as the second processor is disabled in hardware during the Windows boot sequence. Make a boot floppy and start from there, or install the BeOS Boot manager by running "bootman" in the BeOS shell (Be Menu -> Applications -> Terminal ... Bash, whee)

This article on BeNews describes how to work around the "limitations" of the FreeBe package. I haven't yet looked to see if the CD image has been posted yet, but if you install from that, you can create a full-fledged BFS partition, without size limitations. And if you boot from it, or from a boot floppy, SMP will be enabled. It's only disabled in the Win9x-based bootloader. <sarcasm>Thanks, Microsoft, for disabling that "extraneous" processor!</sarcasm>

I've read through BeNews' preview, and the only thing that really stands out among missing features (compared to the boxed version) is the MP3 codec, because of licensing issues, naturally. Other than that, everything works. It just takes more work if you won't or can't run things from Win9x.

Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast - Rush

This article on BeNews describes how to work around the "limitations" of the FreeBe package. I haven't yet looked to see if the CD image has been posted yet, but if you install from that, you can create a full-fledged BFS partition, without size limitations. And if you boot from it, or from a boot floppy, SMP will be enabled. It's only disabled in the Win9x-based bootloader. <sarcasm>Thanks, Microsoft, for disabling that "extraneous" processor!</sarcasm>

I've read through BeNews' preview, and the only thing that really stands out among missing features (compared to the boxed version) is the MP3 codec, because of licensing issues, naturally. Other than that, everything works. It just takes more work if you won't or can't run things from Win9x.

Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast - Rush

This article on BeNews describes how to work around the "limitations" of the FreeBe package. I haven't yet looked to see if the CD image has been posted yet, but if you install from that, you can create a full-fledged BFS partition, without size limitations. And if you boot from it, or from a boot floppy, SMP will be enabled. It's only disabled in the Win9x-based bootloader. <sarcasm>Thanks, Microsoft, for disabling that "extraneous" processor!</sarcasm>

I've read through BeNews' preview, and the only thing that really stands out among missing features (compared to the boxed version) is the MP3 codec, because of licensing issues, naturally. Other than that, everything works. It just takes more work if you won't or can't run things from Win9x.

Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast - Rush

BeOSCentral is kinda only half-there these days.
BeGroovy has more-or-less taken over the niche of funky, chatty news site.

BeNews has a full review of R5 Pro and Free up now.

Yabel (Yet Another BeOS Link) has a nice RDF index of the top news from most of the major BeOS sites.

Scot Hacker, author of The BeOS Bible, had an article over at BeNews about a possible way around this. Worth investigating once the free version is actually available.

Don't forget BeOS..

This has been known for awhile now.

It is my personal belief that BioWare rocks!

According to the Free Be FAQ, yes you will need Windows:

Q: Will I be able to install BeOS 5 Free Version within operating systems other than Windows?

A:Not at this time.

For more info, check out this story from BeNews.

Your guess would be correct :) BeOS has already been seen running on Crusoe. Here's the article on BeNews.

Linux made this possible, Be could not have.

Wrong.

And X is not a well-designed or integrated system. Compared to every other major OS, Linux GUIs do very poorly. Different widget sets all over the place, no design guidelines, etc contribute to the problem, IMO.

-lx

Obviously this story is of very limited general interest. This isn't news. What we have
is a truth that dare not speak its name -- the ongoing decline of Freebsd. You know it's not
politically correct to say so. We all must pretend that the Freebsd isn't in a tailspin. In stark
contrast, check out the success stories at Linux Today or BeNews.

What is it that we notice? We notice a surge of interest and third party support for both BeOS
and Linux. But look at Freebsd news -- it is not news at all but self-generated press releases
and vanity stories. Contrast that with ascending systems like Linux. More real independent
news appears in one day about Linux than appears in a year about all the BSDs combined.
That is indisputable fact.

We should all recognize that Nik Clayton who posted this story is really not an impartial
observer. Clayton is not even a journalist. He is a member of the Freebsd organization who only
posts Freebsd press releases. But he won't tell you that. Even when burdened with his known
reputation for dishonesty he wants you to believe that the press releases are "news". You can
write to Clayton at his real mail address: nik@freebsd.org. He's not fooling anyone, this master
of deceit.

It's high time that journalistic integrity is restored to Slashdot. The blatant dishonesty
and conflict of interest as epitomized by Nik Clayton would not be tolerated in any legitimate
media organization. When we read Slashdot, we no longer can assume what we read was selected
for its news value, or whether it is a press release charade crafted by those pandering to some
fringe element.