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Review of BeOS Developer Edition 1.1

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the reviving-the-dead dept.

TweetZilla writes "Good review if you are a fan of BeOS. Not ready for regular users but tinkerers will probably love it to death. OSNews is carrying the story."

9 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And in one sentence, he described BeOS communit by NivenHuH · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Be, to me, brought a Mac-like interface to the PC with *nix capabilities.. (I guess you could think of it as os X on pc?) The only real pitfall was the lack-o-software and poor hardware support.. but.. the OS was almost worth building a box with supported hardware for it.. (well.. at least it was for me.. >=) )

    --
    Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
  2. Egads by The+Bungi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The review is interesting but it's been a while since I've seen such a glaring example of bad spelling and grammar actually make it as a live article in a high-traffic website dedicated to technical stuff.

  3. Re:I never consider trying it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You may want to look into Mac OS X then... it has GNU software, terminals and the company that owns it is not dead in the water.

  4. What the hell is the status of BeOS? by pete-classic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I keep seeing stuff about new BeOS variants on the street, but the most "official" thing I have heard is that Palm owns it.

    What gives. Are these rouge distros or what?

    Are they legal? Is there any reason to belive that Palm won't pull the plug on any variants out there at any given time?

    I'm sincerly trying to understand the situation. Links are appricated.

    -Peter

  5. Re:And in one sentence, he described BeOS communit by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Interesting

    uh? i started using beos just the other day(couple of weeks ago) on my irc/mp3 machine.

    i was quite amazed by the amount of opensource/community developed drivers for it(obviously lot of 'em derived from linux driver sources), and the whole community actually being there in general.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  6. The BE File System by Doodhwala · · Score: 4, Interesting


    All said and done, I think the developers of BeOS did a really great job. I recent got the chance to go over the Be File System (BeFS) for class and was amazed by what they did in a short amount of time (less than a year). If you want to look at a short presentation on the file system, you can grab it (in ppt) from here.

  7. PERFECT by Ashetos · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is it! A legacy-free, fast, UNIX-y OS, that could easily be used by casual(ie non-programmer/UNIX Admin types) and novices. If half of the Open-Source proponents out there really wanted to "make a difference" Open BeOS would be the project theyd be contributing to.
    I love Linux, love Open Source and all it stands for, but I'm sorry to say, it will never be able to deliver an elegant desktop sulution.

    As far as I'm concerned BeOS, could have been the most perfect home-PC solution. Regardless of whether it could ever find mainstream acceptance it not the point.
    Sure, no driver support, and nothing but half-assed apps to play around with, but still. The OS achieves a kind of balance, "perfection" if you will...

    Any group or company looking to overhaul Linux for _actual_ desktop use should take a very close look at BeOS. The way the OS is structured, the way deviced are handled, the simplicity and flexibility of the GUI, the way the shell coexists with the GUI.

    I don't want "full" UNIX, just the stuff that matters to me: A quick, good and consistent user interface, modern applications/drivers/utilities/, a clean directory structure, a refined, legacy-free configuration options to mess around with... and who knows? maybe even some ports of Linux apps

    1. Re:PERFECT by Squidgee · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In case you've not noticed, you've just described Mac OS X. In fact, Mac OS X has software and driver support, and is therefore superiour to BeOS. Don't get me wrong, I love BeOS, but if you want a quick consistant UI, ports of Linux apps, and the ability to run *nix apps/a shell, grab Mac OS X. It's far more robust than what you're looking at with OBeOS.

  8. Re:And in one sentence, he described BeOS communit by the+gnat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    and you're lying if you say that BeOS has a hand-up on OS X

    But OS X is fucking slow. So slow, in fact, that I've stuck with Linux and never looked back on fifteen years of Mac usage. I installed BeOS on my old 300Mhz Dell Latitude, which fortunately has one of the rare combinations of hardware that BeOS supports. It is blazingly fast. It blows Win2k right out of the water, and is very competitive with Linux. In fact, the only reason it isn't necessarily faster outright than Linux is that I'm using WindowMaker and not bloated crap like KDE or GNOME. Too bad it isn't actually useful enough to replace Linux.

    OS X has been a huge disappointment for me. The lack of customization is painful. The speed is horrendous. The Unix compatability is so broken as to be virtually useless. I'd take it over XP any day, but I'm sick of hearing about how great Apple is for bringing Unix to "the masses". It's markedly inferior to BeOS and IRIX from almost any perspective except application availability. I find little to admire in any user interface released since, say, 1993/4, and of course consumer OSes are just now catching up to features that enterprise OSes had long before then, like not crashing every few hours.

    I compromise with Linux and IRIX. I may have to recompile the kernel just to link with my Zaurus; I have to jump through hoops to handle Word documents- I find using Crossover less painful than using StarOFfice. And the SGI, of course, can't even do most of this. But I can always be certain that, once I've spent two weeks setting it up, my computer works the way I want it to, not the way the trained chimps over at Apple and Microsoft dictate, and that it won't creak to a halt when I try to edit a file because 90% of the CPU is stuck rendering antialiased menu bars.