Slashdot Mirror
BeOS For Linux
Bob Gortician writes "The BlueOS guys have posted a few screenshots of their progress in porting the BeOS interface to Linux. Note that this is an intermediary step toward a BeOS clone OS. " I actually had a Be machine for a while, and played with it - nice OS, and well thought out, just a problem of very little applications for it.
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.
Driver support. Had virtually no video or sound support, so everything was in grey and mute. I loved the interface, and it booted up as quick as can be, but there's only so much you want to do with no driver support. Why make an application when no one else has a machine it'll run nicely on?
Not that the majority of Linux users care about the Mac, but the fact is that Mac OS X represents something I believe a whole bunch of Linux users should get behind if they want their OS to succeed - It's Linux with the useability that Joe Sixpack can handle. BeOS has its uses, but aside from the glory hack of porting its interface to Linux, I'm afraid that this can only serve to fragment the already small effort behind pushing Mac OS X as Linux's true way to combat Windows, because let's face it - Neither KDE nor Gnome are going to make my mother leave Windows anytime soon...
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
If it were the other way around a lot of us would probably be running BeOs on an Alpha chip right now.
The developing of a BeOS clone via this route may yield atleast the se two main benefits:
* Linux and other *nix's will gain another easy to use, mature, comprehensive GUI.
* BeOS will gain from more exposure and may get new development.
This is a great way to continue this great product.
"UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things."
just a problem of very little applications for it. Why were the apps so small?
Did it help to have a bigger monitor?
When you iconify a very little application, does it disappear?
Jeez, no wonder BeOS failed.
No one would write a lot of apps until it had a larger user base, no user base would be generated until it had more apps.
It's the same set of problems Linux has faced in the past. BeOS was/is a fine OS, but it never seemed to have a good backer, nor a solid niche. Artsy types already prefer Macs, so it's hard to compete there. Ordinary desktop users have already been won over by Microsoft, so it's really hard to compete there. Linux users already had a free OS and a nice looking desktop if they wanted it (re: KDE, Gnome. You should know that by now).
I think that BeOS was a nice, stable OS that could have been a contender. It's a shame it didn't get more press or attention from major industry players. Oh well, I look forward to another nice Linux desktop all the same.
My sigs always suck.
That's why I prefer Windows, where all my applications are *huge.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
BS.
An evil monopoly didn't kill BeOS; Be, Inc. did. Every time they got momentum doing one thing, they decided it wasn't going to work and changed business plans. If Be had picked a good business plan and stuck to it, they could have at least carved out a niche. Instead they kept changing their minds about what their core business is.
They had a great (amazing!) piece of technology first, and then tried to decide how to make money from it, and screwed up over and over. BeOS was the nicest, cleanest, most well-engineered OS I've ever used, but it didn't have a chance.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
The project leader is Guillaume Maillard. It's hosted at blueos.free.fr. I'm going out on a limb - the guy speaks something other than English as his native language?
While BeOS had a nice GUI, its read strength was its highly efficient threading model, which made the OS very effecient and responsive. The OS was especially adept at efficiently utilizing multiple CPUs.
While it is certainly nice that Linux users will have the opportunity to benefit from a nice new GUI and API, the best part of the OS, alas, is being left behind...
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
I run Darwin w/o Quartz. I still have all the Quartz/Aqua stuff installed, but quit out of it at boot. I run Darwin over Debian PPC for a couple reasons:
1. Power management: Darwin works very well with the hardware (iBook). This manifests in more than one place. Longer battery life, and sleep works well (by shutting the lid).
2. The option to go into Quartz/Aqua: One of the things I hated about using Linux/x86 (what I ran as my main OS for a couple years before getting a Mac) was having to reboot into Windows to play a game or use certain useful applications for which there's no equvilent in Linux. This was true back when I used Linux a lot more than it is now, though. But with OS X, I can play games and run real, useful apps. And if I choose to run XFree86 straight out of the text console in Darwin rather in tandem with Quartz, I can always quit X11, and go back into Quartz. A lot less hassle.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
You can create the most beautiful, well-thought-out and consistant UI for an OS, but if the individual apps are written with sloppy UIs, it all falls apart.
The one problem I have with Linux is the fact that 90% of the GUI apps have simply idiotic user interfaces. I burst out laughing the first time I used Linuxconf. The dialog window that popped up the first time it ran had a "Quit" button instead of a "Close" button. That is a perfect example of the misleading, inconsistant and just difficult to use interfaces plague the platform. There needs to be some sort of effort put into implementing a consistant UI across all apps, or else all of this work will be for nothing.
On the Mac, and to a slightly lesser extend on Windows, almost every app is interacted with in the same way. A user knows what to expect when they start just about anything but a game. And while you can argue what paradigm is the best, the fact remains the consistancy is the key and Linux lacks not only that, but a core set of accepted design principles. You can argue this will somehow curtail your "freedom" or something all you want, but the fact remains it is a solution that offers much more promise than the embarassingly ameturisih one we currently have to suffer through.
Badly designed user interfaces make Linux look bad. It's simple as that. When Linux looks bad, it's adoption rate is affected. How do people expect to combat the negative stereotypes of the platform if they are unwilling to band together to overcome the easiest to fix, yet most glaring problem with the OS? This isn't as much about asthetics of Linux apps as it is about the success of Linux itself.
If you think "Oh, I just use the command line" or "Who cares, let them program it themselves" or "It's pretty, so what's the problem?" you are being ignorant of the demands and expectations of those you care attempting to bring over from Windows or wherever.
Drop the elitism, drop the selfishness, just realize what needs to be done and understand the awful truth of the computing industry, one that seems lost on most Linux developers:
Give them what they want, or they will go away.
It's not about what you want, it's about what they want, how they want to work. Never forget that. You can't force-feed them every paradigm change and excuse for every bit of laziness on your part. You have to adapt to their needs and adapt quickly. You only get one chance to make a first impression and pissing them off by acting high and mighty about changing things to make their lives easier is not the way to do it. Many a promising platfom has died because of this, don't for a second think Linux is immune to the negative effects of the choices made by its proponents.
People need to realize that ignoring this sort of thing forever will somehow fix the problem, or that we will slowly somehow overcome it. I don't think that meshes very well with reality. It's going to take a clear and consistant vision with a lot of effort on the part of the developers and users to overcome this impasse. And believe me, it is an impasse. The platform is currently reaching critical mass and a point where it decides where it wants to go, and what it wants to be. Sure, this is going to be unpopular, but I don't care, I'd rather get modded down to oblivion than let this go unsaid. Because it needs to be said, and it needs to be appreciated, if not neccesarily liked.
Part of the 'hours' were spent looking online for a player that didn't suck as much as iTunes. (I never found one for OS X, unfortunately, and I can't see running the whole classic environment for just an MP3 player.)
But the consistency problems are hardly minor. They're part of a disturbing trend with Apple -- they're moving away from usability as their primary concern and going toward flashiness. Sadly, I've had much better out-of-the-box experiences with Linux (mostly Mandrake, but Red Hat is getting better and better) than I did with OS X. OS X is frustrating to use... Linux Just Works (tm). It's all a matter of taste. But I still wouldn't set up my grandmother with a Mac.
(I pick on iTunes because it's the single most frustrating end-user app I've ever used. It won't play OGGs, ignores some directories of MP3s at random, is a pain to reorder files in (I have them sorted by filename in subdirectories for a reason, thank you. If you're going to sort by ID3 tags, at least do it by track number instead of track name!), etc. etc. It's just painful to use.)
- fader