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.

Comments

More information on BlueOS

[Eugenia Loli]

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.

Not so much applications as...

[b0r0din]

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?

Re:Not so much applications as...

[Eugenia Loli]

Actually BeOS had quite some support with BeOS 5 and the third party drivers found on BeBits. I agree with BeOS 4 and 4.5 did not have many drivers, but version 5 was really good at the time. Now, it is 2 years with no BeOS official updates, so naturally, it is already out of date.. :(

Fragmentation...

[Cutriss]

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...

Re:Fragmentation...

[Cutriss]

Well, I made that comment because while I'm totally offbase from a geek standpoint, for the average home user, Mac OS X presents them the closest semblance of a UNIX-like operating system they'll ever see. And more people out there in this decade have heard of Linux than UNIX (Again, we're talking about average schmoes)...so I think that X's popularity will further the interest in Linux (Even if it is based on BSD, which is another point entirely).

Re:Fragmentation...

[powerlinekid]

Ok #1) MacOS X is beautiful... but its also the Mach kernel with a BSD compatibility layer on it. Its definitly not linux and typical linux apps won't run on it without a little tweaking.

#2) Have you played with the KD3 beta2 yet? Did it last night and its gorgeous... has some bugs left, but we're talking beta software here. I think if we fix up the config file mess (slackware people excluded, because they like them ;-)) and put kde3 on a machine, windows users should have no problem.

On a side note, my two little brothers accidently logged into my linux box. One didn't know he wasn't in windows and was using it fine and the other knew he was in linux but liked it better. Just something to think about.

Re:Fragmentation...

[fader]

KDE, GNOME still lack the consistency of a real desktop environment like Mac OS 9 or X

You know, after hearing this for so long, I actually picked up an older iMac off of eBay and put OS X on it. Let me tell everyone something right off: OS X is no more consistent than either GNOME or KDE... probably less.

The Apple freaks will flame me to hell for this, but it's true. I like OS X -- it's pretty and based on Unix. But it's anything but consistent. After spending a couple of hours trying to either get iTunes to work or find a decent MP3 player for OS X, I started to understand how normal 'users' feel about computers. Half the time I couldn't figure out what was a control and what wasn't, and when I could, the controls had to be played with to figure out what they did. No tooltips, no useful icons. But they sure were pretty.

Yeah, that's just one app. But it's from the company that made the bloody OS! And don't get me started on QuickTime Player or iMovie... they suffer from the same problems, so it's not like it's an isolated case.

Third-party apps that follow Apple's HIG (you know, the document that Apple decided to ignore) are pretty good. But then, so are the GNOME and KDE apps that do the same things. OS X is decent, but it's not the end-all of desktops that some people would have you believe.

sad but true

[jbischof]

that the best technologies frequently are not the ones that make it in the marketplace

If it were the other way around a lot of us would probably be running BeOs on an Alpha chip right now.

This should cause atleast two main benefits

[BoxJockey]

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.

Applications?

[RobL3]

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.

BeOS had the classic catch 22

[mystery_bowler]

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.

Apps

[rjamestaylor]

just a problem of very little applications for it.

That's why I prefer Windows, where all my applications are *huge.

Re:I know how we can help...

[jsprat]

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?

GUI without the GUTS

[glenmark]

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...

Re:GUI without the GUTS

[be-fan]

You do know that Linux's thread model is pretty damn good itself. What was special about BeOS wasn't that it kernel, but the way it was designed. Take multithreading, for example. Linux probably handles apps with multiple threads just as well as BeOS, as long as you stick to 4 CPUs. Yet, multithreading is tons more useful on BeOS because people actually USE it. The thread-phobic UNIX developer community just doesn't take advantage of the responsiveness gains to be had through multithreading. Take Galeon for example. Where BeOS and Net+ were agressively multithreading, Galeon is agressively single-threaded. It seems like the developers did everything they could to make sure that while the browser was doing anything, the whole UI would freeze up. On my PII-300 MHz, surfing the web with dozens of windows open is no problem in BeOS or Windows 2000. Yet, with Linux/Galeon, it is torture because everything I open a complex page in a new tab, the rest of the galeon UI locks up for several seconds while the page renders. I think that this BlueOS project is the greatest thing ever. It takes what is great about Linux (the kernel and the hardware support) and merges it with what's great about BeOS (the UI and development model).