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AtheOS Fork Brings BeOS on Top of Linux
Eugenia writes: "Yup, Bill Hayden has forked AtheOS by using its app_server and Interface Kit (along with some other of its kits, like the filesystem layer) and ported it on top of the 2.4.x Linux kernel, without the need for X11. He already has the graphical environment working, and he also has some BeOS apps recompiled and working under Linux. Why BeOS applications? Because that was the reason of the fork. Exactly because AtheOS and BeOS have similar technical principles (highly multithreaded, truly preemptive, similar C++ API etc), by modifying AtheOS's API to match BeOS, Bill is trying to resurrect the BeOS. By doing so this way, Bill is already way ahead from the other two efforts to ressurect BeOS, OpenBeOS (dependant on the 'clean' NewOS kernel) and BlueOS (which depends on Linux and X11)."
I'd rather have FrankensteinBeOS than deadBeOS R5 that can't run on my new hardware. Perhaps you should help him rather than just bitch about it being a patchwork of different projects
That depends on how you define 'way ahead.'
People like me who really like BeOS admire the entire structure of the operating system, from top to bottom. I have zero interest in running FrankensteinBeOS, which is what this sounds like. Therefore I am content to work on the OpenBeOS project, which may be 'way behind', but should have a nicer outcome (for people who like BeOS). The project is coming together quite nicely for something so young.
Yes, but there's something to be said for taking the middle road, too. It may be true BeOS was a radical departure as opposed to Linux's adherence to legacy POSIX. But I suspect this new fusion may have more success as a desktop OS than either Linux or BeOS had alone. While not as radical a departure as Be, it is still a very significant departure for Unix/Linux. As nice as Be was, commercialy it went over like a lead balloon. Perhaps a more incremental approach to innovation will have more success.
This is the beauty of open source - you can mix and match as you please, and the cream rises to the top. And now that one of the nicest desktops has migrated over to one of the most advanced (and popular) kernels, I expect to see some interesting developments going forward.
i think getting rid of x is a good an logical step. There is no reason for a normal desktop user to have all the features that X provides.
it would result in a serious performance infrease. i think Apple got it right when they implemented OSX without the X windows part. Linux shoudl follow that model.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
You had 10 Pentium class PC's, and all you could think of was to throw them away? Linux will run fine on them, as will Window95. I'd give you $20-40 for one, and I know a number of friends who probably would too. There are a number of charities that would take, and a lot of computer geeks that might like a new box to play with. Put up signs around the local college campus. Just don't fill our landfiles with stuff that still has life left!
I'm sick of every single program havng its own way of doing fonts and printing.
Hate to tell ya this, but the Windows world is standardized only in theory.
C) Umm, you can do remote desktop on Win2K as well, its called Citrix. The damn thing is fast enough to run Word comfortably over a medium-speed DSL line.
Hooray. I run VNCServer on *n?x, MacOS (including OSX), and Windows. You have to have that faster network connection for it to be worthwile, though, especially with eyecandy-happy OSX.
Back to A)...
A) GNOME and KDE, as good as they might be to deluded Linux users, is nothing compared to BeOS and Windows. I know. After having used BeOS for years on my 300MHz PII, KDE 2.2 and GNOME 1.4 run painfully slow, even on my new Athlon 1700+. Win2K on both machines is blazingly fast.
Repeat after me: there's speed, then there's stability and security. Guess what's more important? And as I said before, you're probably some poor sap without enough RAM, and you probably have Apache and all sorts of crap you shouldn't have running if you're using your machine as a desktop machine. Shut off the network services. All of 'em. Now. Now go find some small company with a fair amount of computers, and ask them if they'd like to unload any old 486's or Pentiums (or, if it's a print business, any old beige G3s or something) on anyone. Run Apache on that.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
1. Because it'll be done a lot fater than openbeos would.
2. Because some people actually like apps. This is what kept on people from NOT using BeOS in the first place.
3. Because linux has much better hardware support (including closed-src drivers), than openbeos would ever have, unless it become popular fast.
Wha??? EVERYONE cares about network transparency these days! (even if they don't realise that they do)
;-)
I hardly know any windows users nowadays that don't access their email through a web interface, so they can access it from any computer they happen to be on. Outlook Exchange is the next thing up, which true - is still a corporate thing at the moment.
But think - how long will it be before your wordprocessor is running on a remote machine and you just have a dumb terminal? What would be the advantage of this? Well it doesn't take much hardware to run a dumb terminal, compared to having to carry around a hard disk, cdrom, lots of memory, etc. etc. etc
And the extension to this is distributed computing - I mean true distributed computing, where your wordprocessor uses other peoples run time if it needs it, and theirs does likewise. Eventually you end up with the idea of one _massive_ computer, distributed around the world so that it never goes down in one go, which everyone connects to using dumb terminals.
Network transparency is the future, for these and for numerous other reasons (control your fridge from your computer! Yay!)
In the same way that "Only a geek sends text messages & emailswas 5/10 years ago, the same is happening now with network transparent computing.
We can't help it if we are ahead of fashion
Right now I am running XFree86-4.2.0 on FreeBSD-4.5. I have to interact with a Solaris-8 box. With X, I am able to run Clearcase, Rational Rose, Framemaker, etc. under FreeBSD. That's awesome.
If all you're doing is running some game under Wine under Linux on a standalone box in your dorm, then you don't really need X. But the rest of us appreciate the power and simplicity that is X.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Here's how I read this:
After evangelizing the hell out of his baby, the developer
has completely lost interest in the project. He has
totally abandoned all the people who became interested
and contributed code, and furthermore,
his ground rules say that no one else can touch his
core code.
One of these people said, "Enough!", took the code as he
has *every* right to, and made his *own* project out of it,
leaving the original project firmly and safely (albeit very
lonely) in the hands of the original developer.
It is somewhat of a misnomer to call this process "forking";
the new project is completely different from the base code.
Different in implementation, different in goals.
You feel old on Slashdot? I remember when anonymity
wasn't just for trolls and crapflooders. You really
don't have a clue in my book.
Is that what open source is coming to? Don't we have any respect anymore for the people that innovate? If open source development continues to be a race to see who can stab the other person in the back and take credit for his/her work it WILL NOT improve quality.
:) We wouldn't be here arguing about it, anyway...
The people who say "that's how the GPL is designed to work" really don't have a clue in my book.
I think it's extremely sad you feel that way. I feel exactly the opposite - events like this are what breath life into OSS and stand as shining examples of the power and strength of the GPL. That an individual can stand on the shoulders of great achievers and reach even higher ground, fully supported both legally and morally in an environment of innovation and creativity is incredible and should serve as both a warning and an example to companies mired in the morass of IP lawsuits and closed source development.
This is darwinism at its finest - survival of the fittest ideas in operating system design and implementation. What we are witnessing here is pure evolution of thought and concept.
Consider if natural evolution had the "attitude" you seem to espouse - what if the first organism to "figure out" replicating DNA had a lock on it, with "Mother Nature" prohibiting other organisms from taking the idea and running with it because it would "stab the other [protozoa] in the back"? Or worse, because the original organism "closed sourced" it and retained IP rights to it
I say - Great Job Bill! This is what the GPL and OSS are all about. Let's see what he puts together and consider it valuable intellectual research and contribution into the world of OSS OSs. May the fittest concepts prevail in the end.
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from their journaled-filesystem
Hmm.. I was under the impression the only thing journalling was good for was quick recoveries after a system crash/reboot. I didn't know it directly affected filesystem performance...? Maybe I've been hittin the crack pipe too hard.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Go for it. I think monsters are fine so long as they are useful. Timeliness matters.
> Linux is not an official part of the GNU system,
Yes it is
> is Linux even GPL?
Yes, very much so.
> And just having a version of the Linux kernel does not make your OS Linux.
If using the LINUX KERNAL does not make you OS a LINUX BASED OS (which is what I've typed) WHAT DOES?
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
The simplicy and power of typing setenv DISPLAY mickeymouse.window.manager:0.0
...having a fully functional computer (called X-terminal) being fully subutilized because the system was planned with a thin client in mind which ended up being a thick client?
Yup! Just try doing that on Windows and you'll see the simplicity of it. My login script sets my DISPLAY, so no matter which remote machine I login to, I can display locally. Really nice and completely effortless.
Or the simplicity of the most retarded cut and paste model yet developed?
Cut and paste is a policy. By rights, it shouldn't even *be* in X. It belongs in Motif, GTK+, Qt, etc. A policy-less GUI has its disadvantages, but the advantages outweigh them.
Or the power to drag and drop between almost no applications?
Don't blame X. Blame GTK+, Qt, Motif, etc. A policy-less GUI means it won't impose a standard on you. Because of this, a KDE program can drag and drop from my FreeBSD box to a program running remotely on my Solaris box. Otherwise there would have to be some standard out there with enough teeth for Sun to adhere to. A standard with that much teeth in it is detrimental to my freedom.
As it is now, it doesn't matter which which X server is running, my X client is fine.
Oh! If only I could subutilize Windows the same way! If only I could push that everpresent IExplorer running in the background off to another machine... If only I could compile in the background without dragging my MystIII down...
A subutilized CPU is a wonderful thing! Well worth the money. But if you want a fully utilized CPU, the answer is simple. Just downgrade.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Just so you guys know, this is the guy who wrote BeMP. (Amp for BeOS, think WinAMP)
:D ) I still have the source code lying around on one of my backups. I have to say though, some of the code was nasty. I rewrote a good portion of it before I gave up and created my own personal BeMP, then promptly stopped using BeOS.
Side-note: Thanks Andy for the awesome BeMP. I used that mp3 player more than I can remember. The buttons got me. I have a thing for the look of BeOS buttons, what can I say? And thanks for giving me the BeMP R4 source, I learned alot about BeOS programming from that.
I ported the thing to R5 a loooong time ago. (last time I checked there were still ~400 warnings and a cast bug that made the playlist useless in mp3's encoded with more than 128bps unless your songs really are 6534453435.0 seconds long
And yes BeOS was awesome. It also sucked for hardware support. Have fun getting *ANY* support now. If anyone wants to fight over which os is better here or there, I can break out my old K6-2 350 and we can have a battle royale on latency and what-not. But it doesn't really matter does it?
Anyway, enough rambling.
If this BeOS GUI on the Linux kernel turns out to be all it's cracked up to be (at the least a better-looking, easier-to-code-for windowing system) then perhaps it may become more attractive to both GUI app developers and "mainstream" users alike.
I know from talking to friends and family who've tried Linux, part of their reluctance to change is due to the way X behaves and how it works (or doesn't work) with video and applications such as Netscape or RealPlayer.
Another advantage is the ability to port many of the nice-looking/functioning BeOS programs to run in Linux.
Someone mentioned it before, but take MacOSX as an example - they did it right: Use a powerful backend (BSD) and slap a much prettier interface on top. Joe Sixpack doesn't care or need to know what OS is actually running in the background as long as the interface is easy-to-use and clean (enough). As a developer new in the world of OS programming, it seems like Linux is a good choice for open source driver support and overall popularity of the operating system among open source developers.
Give me a good OS or give me WindowsXP! (read: death)
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.