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Hmm, where to start?

As far as soft real time? Back in the day I ran Be on a P2 350 2xx Megs ram. I could easily play 10-20 mp3s at one time with all playing smoothly while I ran several other programs. Sure there was no reason to do that, but it looked cool. Same goes for video. I remember the cool thing at one time was to play 50 or so copies of the Phantom Menace trailor.
You really could run the full system to 100% and still have damn good GUI responce. There's still no system (that I've found) that runs as smooth as Be did in 1998.

The great thing about programming was that the threading was to embedded in the system that you didn't know you where even using it. Take some time to browse the BeBook. It was a great api.

Note that this has already happened for the Blender3D toolkit. Not under the O-STEP license, of course, but using a similar scheme -- raising enough funds, then open-sourcing the product.

There was also an abortive attempt for a while to open source the GoBe Productivity suite. That cost a bit too much to purchase though, apparently.

*shrug* So it can work sometimes...

The "Developer Edition" and "Max Edition" are hacked together from the Personal Edition that Be, Inc. released. They are in violation of the EULA that comes with the Personal Edition, but, since they are not making the people distributing them any money, i imagine Palm, or the remnants of Be, Inc. couldn't care less.
For open-source replacements of BeOS check out the following:
OpenBeOS
BlueEyed OS
also look at the following:
beunited
yellowTab's Zeta

The guy writing the review is a horrible representative of BeOS users, i think. it's my main OS at home, and I have had little teouble with it, ever (the only time i went into Kernel Debug land was when I managed to crash snes9x with a corrupted ROM).

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that the "Save BeOS" campaign thinks there is still hope. If the next 11 quarters (starting Friday, January 10 on the Palm Channel) pull the right numbers). According to this interview with David Kemper:"If we were to use NetPositive, straight across the Palm site, for these eleven quarters, I would be expecting to have phone conversations with people immediately..." Of course that is pretty unlikely- but my household won't miss a chance to resurrect BeOS. To bad the cats can't point and click ;)

I don't think it's to get a BeOS only license. I may be wrong though. And so far it's only to see how many people would be interested in donating. I think the number of people willing to do so will decide wether there won't be a donation fund, a BeOS only one OR a full fledged open sourcing. So please go /. Beunited

Of course, pe was first generation, and pepper is 2nd generation, so it's a lot like comparing minix to linux :)

They sound like they should be taking notes from beunited.org

The BeOSJournal recently spent over 2 hours in the second part of an ongoing interview that outlined the future direction of the non-profit organization.

BeOS may be dead, but openBeOS is alive and well, and with the help of beunited.org, will start to achieve many great things.

It would be great if both groups started a relationship that would surely benefit everyone involved. It's through open communication and a willingness to sit down at the table that anything positive is going to be done.

I'm not trying to bash the Linux Community at all, please understand, but I feel it's in our best interest to help each other, when the giants that we all love to hate (such as M$, IBM, and others) won't sit idly by while their market erodes in front of them.

That's all I'm saying. Take a good hard look at what beunited.org is up to, and see if that will help you any. Thank you.

They sound like they should be taking notes from beunited.org

The BeOSJournal recently spent over 2 hours in the second part of an ongoing interview that outlined the future direction of the non-profit organization.

BeOS may be dead, but openBeOS is alive and well, and with the help of beunited.org, will start to achieve many great things.

It would be great if both groups started a relationship that would surely benefit everyone involved. It's through open communication and a willingness to sit down at the table that anything positive is going to be done.

I'm not trying to bash the Linux Community at all, please understand, but I feel it's in our best interest to help each other, when the giants that we all love to hate (such as M$, IBM, and others) won't sit idly by while their market erodes in front of them.

That's all I'm saying. Take a good hard look at what beunited.org is up to, and see if that will help you any. Thank you.

BeUnitedis heading up the initiative to license BeOS from Palm and if that doesn't succeed then OpenBeOS will be the primary focus of the BeOS developer community.

Once you've tried BeOS it's very difficult to go back to another OS. Yes i use Linux on one of my servers and am very happy with it, but i have two other PCs running BeOS and an old PowerPC running MacOS (slow slow slow).

BeOS is my OS of choice. I can connect to Sybase or MS SQL Server databases, PostgreSQL databases, run Apache etc etc etc.

Checkout BeOS, BeBits and BeGroovy. And checkout exactly what BeOS can do for you.

cheers

peter

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.

To be a lot more effective such announce should be spread a little bit more.

Mozilla will be the browser for many alternative OSes (read OS/2, BeOS, Linux, Qnx, Aix ....). Some of these OS already back up the mozilla project , and donate engeeniring forces to the project thats good but for other OSes, distro etc it's not the case So i sugest this announce to be publihed on sites like :

advogato

Beunited

QnxStart

I don't know any windows related sites, but adnantech should do it.

This announce should also be mailed on developing mailing lists like apple's darwin developement list
.

Anyway a lot of great doc are available here and are good sartup point. Sometimes ago some video detailling how to dig in the code where available on mozilla's web site (but I can't find them right now).

And R6 is due out soon as well.

Having used most OSes known to man at some time or another, I can sincerely say that BeOS is the most *comfortable* OS for the desktop. Its user interface just feels natural and easy to use.

I'll agree that BeOS is not for everything or everyone. Linux, FreeBSD, and the free Unices are by far superior on the backend, whereas BeOS network performance, features, and support are, for lack of a better word crappy at the moment. Be was meant for the desktop. M$ still has the corner market on games, but BeOS is coming out with some great ones, including Worms: Armaggeddon.

BeOS is designed to be "The Media OS" and now it is beginning to live up to it's claims with the new features and media support that has been introduced in R5. Several things still need to be done for BeOS to become a M$ killer on the desktop:

More media support (increased codecs, file translators, etc.)
UDF and DVD movie support
Increased device driver support
Better browsers (can we say Bezilla?)
Mainstream applications (we're halfway there)
More interested programmers

Eventually, with the continued help of everyone, BeOS will become a truly competitive OS of it's own right.

If you are a programmer and are interested in developing for the BeOS, have innovative ideas, or just would like to help, email me [carlos.noguera@millersville.edu] and visit the BeUnited website.