Slashdot Mirror


BeOS Max Edition v3.0 Released

JigSaw writes "After Be went down, 2-3 "distros" of BeOS 5 PE (the free version of BeOS) were created and continued making releases by literally tweaking the internals, patching the kernel etc. in order to bring BeOS up to speed with new hardware. Additionally, these distros include lots of third party software. BeOS Max Edition is the most popular of the bunch, and version v3.0 came out today. The BFS ISO installs in its own BFS partition, however it requires a bit of attention in the way you have to burn it."

268 comments

  1. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by bhtooefr · · Score: 3, Informative

    Obviously, SOMEONE cares about BeOS, if they're making something as large scale as THIS. It's like Amiga. It's dead (in the incarnation that we all know - NOT like AOS4/AmigaONE, which is an entirely different platform from the classic Amiga).

  2. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by darien · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Woo hoo. If only they hadn't discontinued the PPC edition, we could have run this on our AmigaONE boards.

    Which may sound like a troll, but actually I'd love that. BeOS is everything I used to love about AmigaOS, and loads more besides. Seriously, if anyone out there hasn't tried it, I really do urge you to give it a whirl. It's (IMO) what MacOS X should have been.

    (No apps, of course. Ho hum.)

  3. CDRTools Windows by jandrese · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Has anybody ever gotten CDRTools to work for Win2k or WinXP? I remember trying it out a few weeks ago and getting an instant bluescreen when I started it up. I was really hoping for a CD burner without all of the cruft found in the commercial packages (Nero is nice, but burns coasters on my machine, and Roxio suxio. Cdrtools and gcombust work perfectly under FreeBSD however)

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:CDRTools Windows by maxume · · Score: 1

      check the main cdrtools website, there are links to a version that works great under 2k/XP...

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    2. Re:CDRTools Windows by stratjakt · · Score: 0, Informative

      Yes, I have.

      And in true OSS style, RTFM j00 fuck1n l00s3r!

      Theres possibly some ASPI hoops to jump through, depending on what other software you've installed.

      Aside; Getting it to work under linux was actually much harder for me (device links and dummy scsi drivers, modules, wrappers and whatever other jibber jabber).. It still won't burn a CD-RW for some retarded reason that I'm sure only Linus knows.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    3. Re:CDRTools Windows by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 4, Informative

      You need to get an ASPI layer for your system.

      Click HERE for the tool forceASPI.

      Click HERE to see where Roxio's software should go.**

      **Dont click if you value your sight. It nasty.

      --
    4. Re:CDRTools Windows by jandrese · · Score: 1

      I was using verion 1.2, which was listed as working under 2k/XP.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    5. Re:CDRTools Windows by Trolling4Dollars · · Score: 1, Funny

      Is this the first time a goatse post was actually modded up above a 2? w00t! ;)

    6. Re:CDRTools Windows by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 1

      I warned em'. If they wanna click on a goatse link, thats their problem.

      Was also trying to be helpful as the crashing problem is a bad/no aspi layer in his version of windows.

      --
    7. Re:CDRTools Windows by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2, Informative

      EXCUSE ME, but thats on topic. The first link is a legit link to fix/install ASPI on his system. The second's an opinion to how bad Roxio software is.

      --
    8. Re:CDRTools Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HAHAHA. I have to laugh at all the worthless shits who modded me down. I'll bet you only did it because you clicked on the link in my sig. I know that my sense of humor can be a little warped, but keep in mind I am NOT a troll as most of my posts will bear out.

    9. Re:CDRTools Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "burnatonce is a cdrdao / mkisofs gui for windows."
      http://www.burnatonce.com/
      Needs aspi doohickeys tho.

    10. Re:CDRTools Windows by BlackBolt · · Score: 1
      I warned em'. If they wanna click on a goatse link, thats their problem.

      You didn't warn us that it's ADDICTIVE!!!

      whoa. just kidding.

    11. Re:CDRTools Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try Burnatonce Burnatonce It's a windows cdrdao / mkisofs GUI.

    12. Re:CDRTools Windows by Ravadill · · Score: 1

      The latest burnatonce (0.99a) uses a native windows control to burn and dosn't need any ASPI installation. (at least on XP and 2k)

    13. Re:CDRTools Windows by WiKKeSH · · Score: 1

      try CDR-WIN or Fireburner.
      Those are the two lightest-weight recording programs i've run into

    14. Re:CDRTools Windows by NeoChichiri · · Score: 1

      Isn't the posting of links to goatse illegal? If not, well...for the benefit of all mankind it should be. heh

      --
      NeoChichiri
      http://www.neochichiri.net
  4. Could they update it otherwise? by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 2, Funny

    Perhaps if they only tweaked the kernel figuratively they could have stayed in business.

  5. Aaah! My Eyes!! by tweder · · Score: 5, Informative

    Good Lord! There should seriously be a disclaimer attatched to the link to BeOS Max Edition website.

    1. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wow...you're right, dude. I think I'm sterile now after visiting that site. The "webmaster" should be shot.

    2. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by smackjer · · Score: 5, Funny

      At least I wasn't the only one... This Wednesday on Fox: When Web Designers Attack!

      --

      This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    3. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Karamchand · · Score: 3, Funny

      Not needed, it's slashdotted already anyway.

    4. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Otter · · Score: 5, Funny
      At least on Mac IE, the dark background tile loads well after the electric blue and canary yellow text. It's still hideous but not actively dangerous. You may not have noticed if you instantly closed the page to shield your eyes from the yellow-on-white initial rendering.

      Fortunately, a few years of clicking Slashdot links develops one's window closing reflexes to a superhuman level.

      BTW, I like the "Informative" you got...

    5. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Got'cha, your tried to read the article!

      What, you expect the /. editors to not only read the links, but actually bother to look at them?

      so is it time to have a DRTFA - Don't Read The Fine Article or VAYOR - View At Your Own Risk

    6. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by WwWonka · · Score: 1

      God forbid that Vinny Testeverde* tries to read that site!

      Oh wait, this is Slashdot. Not a good place to use a colorblind football player reference.

      *See EA Madden 2004

    7. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by sharkey · · Score: 4, Funny

      Damn straight. From this day forth, any who claim that $LINUX_DESKTOP is just too ugly, will be required to use BeOS Max Edition.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    8. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He just might have been referring to the image link that someone put in the message field on the site. Don't look again. Trust me, you'd regret it.

    9. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I put that there long after the OP was posted.

    10. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by novakane007 · · Score: 1

      Not only is the site ugly, but the picture that is a scroll off screen is more offensive than gotse! That site deserves to be slashdotted!

      --

      WURD!!
    11. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OMG! Please put a DISCLAIMER on this site NOW!!!!!

    12. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by siskbc · · Score: 1, Funny
      Wow...you're right, dude. I think I'm sterile now after visiting that site. The "webmaster" should be shot

      Yeah, but you're posting on slashdot, it's not like you were probably going to be doing anything with your junk anytime soon anyway.

      --

      -Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat

    13. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by ScottSpeaks! · · Score: 1

      The font/background colors aren't the problem. It's the rather explicitly spectacular excretory photos on the page that... well, trust me: you don't want to see.

    14. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      they lack ANY respect for people who work for a living and people who post those kinds of images deserve to be shot dead. thats all there is to it.

    15. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      I must say, after looking at that site for a second, especially seeing a part of the, the um, picture, I have no interest in ever trying it.

    16. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [Beavis grabs neck.]
      Beavis: Ahh, My Liver!
      Butthead: Um, I think it's lower dude.
      [Beavis grabs crotch.]
      Beavis: Ahh, My Liver!

    17. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by redhat421 · · Score: 1
    18. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by leifm · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that pic was the first thing I ever found on Freenet, titled adobe.jpg, I thought it would be protest pictures....

      --

      "Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
    19. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by BlackBolt · · Score: 1

      You're welcome. I purposefully DoSed it in order to protect you. It was obviously designed by the Goatse guy - colorwise, anyway. Hmmm... I wonder if Slashdot should charge for Slashdotting badly designed websites, or should it be a public service.

    20. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Hektor_Troy · · Score: 1

      I fail to see what's wrong with that site. It's black text and blue links on a white background.

      Oh, wait - this is Opera, I switched to User mode. Does wonders for your eyes.

      --
      We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
    21. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by grolschie · · Score: 1

      "arrghhh it burns! it burns!" -Gollum

    22. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Afrosheen · · Score: 1

      I'll use it as long as the webmaster didn't have any say in the gui design.

    23. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Muahaha!

      The Geocities School of Web Design strikes again!

    24. Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by inertia187 · · Score: 1

      I think this is an advanced topic on BeOS. Be as obnoxious as possible.

      --
      A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
  6. BeOS by VAXGeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    BeOS used to be so much fun, but two things really held it back when I used it. One, NetPositive was the best browser. That sucked. It was like Netscape 3.0 compatible. I know that's not really valid anymore. There is a Mozilla port now. The second thing, which is probably still an issue, is the fact that BeOS wasn't totally POSIXified. All kinds of hacky stuff had to be done to get stuff to port. Compare this with OS X, which for all intents and purposes, is FreeBSD. Stuff compiles so good on there. I think the next time I will give BeOS a second try is when one of the free BeOS projects starts to come along. I kind of think of BeOS as OS X for i386.

    --
    this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
    1. Re:BeOS by Adelvillar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      BeOS has never been and will never be open sourced. There are several open sourced projects to try reproduce its functionality and some go as far as to try to achieve binary compatibility. However those projects are far from complete.

      Regarding your question why would anyone...? Hell 'cause they want to, 'cause they fell like doing it, 'cause they like the OS.

      Don't dismiss people's efforts and projects because in your narrow mind you don't find a use for whatever they are doing?

      Linux would not exist if everyone would think in such a near sighted terms.

      --
      "In God we trust, all others must bring data" - W. Edwards Deming
    2. Re:BeOS by darien · · Score: 1

      If you ask me, BeOS has the potential to become what a lot of people want Linux to be - a free, open, stable desktop environment (well, if not BeOS then OpenBeOS). Seriously, it stomps all over Windows in terms of efficiency and versatility, but it doesn't impose any of the complexities of running a Linux box on the end user (though they're there if you want them). As I've said elsewhere in this story - it's what MacOS X should have been.

      So if it could only get some damn marketshare it would absolutely the ideal OS for running productivity software (it was originally marketed as a "media OS", whatever that means). It just seems to handle resources so much more cleanly than anything else I've used. There's a demo where a 3D teapot spins around in a window on the desktop, and you can just keep on opening them till your desktop is full of these lovely 3D things moving around in real time, and damned if I can get any of them to even stutter, no matter what else I do. Try that with Windows some time.

      So I would LOVE BeOS to be my platform for graphics and for digital audio. If only...

    3. Re:BeOS by B3ryllium · · Score: 3, Informative

      As I understood it, the POSIX implementation was full - except for one very important area. The network stack. It was fine-tuning the "new" network stack that put the company out of business; they took so long that their market evaporated ... and they had to find a new market.

      It was sad. :(

    4. Re:BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How exactly is it narrow minded for him to ask what its practical uses are? If anything, you're narrow minded for not asking that question yourself.

    5. Re:BeOS by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 1

      Isn't being fully multiuser part of the POSIX standard also? As I remember it when I saw a sales presentation on the BeBox circa 1996, it was single user only.

      --
      taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
    6. Re:BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      BeOS has:

      1. Microkernel architecture
      2. < 20s boot time (compared to nearly 30s for XP on the same computer)
      3. Nearly complete POSIX layer (save pthreads, *sob*)
      4. Fantastic SMP

      For pratctical use, Be is useful as a soft-realtime OS.

      The POSIX layer, combined with a fairly clean user interface API, combined with the decent development tools, make it a nice platform to develop on.

      Really, it's a great OS to play with. Try it. You'll be amazed at how little it takes to run a graphical OS that's exceedingly responsive.

    7. Re:BeOS by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      It had all the hooks to be multi-user, but they delayed the implementation. I have no idea why.

    8. Re:BeOS by FrankNputer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The gain is resurrecting an "end of life" OS, as you put it, into an open version which would perpetually extend it's life. The Max edition is manily a patched R5 PE edition, so it's appeal in and of itself is limited; however, the OpenBeOS project aims to replicate all that was proprietary in BeOS in an open form, essentially trying to do for BeOS what Linux has done for UNIX.

      And as for the best features of BeOS living on in Linux...I wouldn't hold my breath. It's apples and oranges. BeOS is NOT a UNIX and never was. The similarity lay in POSIX and having a BASH shell. Personally, I'd love to see Linux do multimedia well - I've been waiting for that for years, while the majority of hackers seem content to write Yet Another Network Application - But BeOS has most of the groundwork for this already.

      The biggest obstacles I see are a lack of drivers and apps. (The ones that do exist, however, are very nice!) Sure, drivers are a bitch to write - but I really think that the appeal of an easy-to-write-for OS can spark enough interest to take care of getting some quality applications together, once the worry about support depending on the solvency of a company is no longer an issue.

    9. Re:BeOS by ConsumedByTV · · Score: 3, Informative
      --


      "Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
    10. Re:BeOS by Bloxyman · · Score: 1

      AmigaOS has had a tcp/ip stack for ages, it also was the first OS to have a decent irc client"amirc", which still is to this date, one of the bests irc clients around. It has even has Apache ported for it.

    11. Re:BeOS by phre4k · · Score: 1

      Well one feature that is missing is certainly multiuser support.

      --
      "Nobody really checks their email any more. They just delete their spam"
    12. Re:BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wonder if /. is aware that this is advertising IP, copyright and licenseagreement violation. As a matter of fact the license under which BeOS R5 PE, on which this founds, was released prohibits the kind of modifications which were applied as well as the installation on another partition than the intended "fake" partition inside a Windows installation.

    13. Re:BeOS by Blackknight · · Score: 1

      Because we can.

      It's a geek thing, you wouldn't understand.

    14. Re:BeOS by ahacop@wmuc.umd.edu · · Score: 1

      He's not dismissing people's efforts. He's genuinely asking why BeOS is worthy updating. I'm curious as well -- what does BeOS provide that other OS's don't?

    15. Re:BeOS by EverDense · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That said, why would anyone want to start using an effectively end of life OS,
      is there that much that can be done with the OS?


      BeOS is incredibly well written for all manner of multimeda activities.
      BeOS does shiny graphics and shiny sound, really, really well.

      ...and THAT is why I'm glad people are bothering.

      Microsoft seem to be an admirable job of making minor tweaks to their
      OS user interface, and convincing everyone that its some completely new thing.
      Why can't OpenBeOS do that too?

      --
      http://jesus.everdense.com/
    16. Re:BeOS by AntiTuX · · Score: 1

      when I still worked on the release engineering team at netscape, I'd have to reboot the BeOS build machine on a semi-daily basis. Stability was *NOT* one of BeOS's strongpoints. The compiler and the VNC server would kill the box VERY often.

    17. Re:BeOS by cide1 · · Score: 1

      I noticed a big differance between 4.5 and 5.03 in terms of stability. BeOS 4.5 was quite stable, but I've had my share of problems in 5.03.

      --
      -- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
    18. Re:BeOS by Jeremi · · Score: 1
      NetPositive may suck as a general purpose web browser, but it reads Slashdot and other not-too-fancy-schmancy sites just fine, it's very fast and responsive, and it launches in about a third of a second. Because of that, I still use it instead of Mozilla whenever it can handle the content.


      So there :^)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    19. Re:BeOS by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      Nah, it was Microsoft strong-arming all the OEMs into not bundling BeOS with their hardware that put Be out of business, combined with Be's disastrous "focus shift" into making Internet Appliances that never worked right anyway. BONE (the new networking stack) was just collateral damage (along with the new OpenGL implementation and lots of other neat stuff that never saw the light of day... sniff)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    20. Re:BeOS by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      You hardly need to lecture me, Jeremy. I ran MUSCLE for almost a year and a half, if you recall. In fact, *nudge nudge wink wink* beshare.beryllium.ca is back up. ;-)

    21. Re:BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My nick's Jeffimix an all websites but I don't have it regged and am too lazy...

      The C64 internet thing was, I believe, more out of hobbiest amusement than anything else, not a serious piece of work.

      AmigaOS is rather nice actually, and it's not just another Unix clone like Mac/Linux/whatever which, while it's great and all that you can easily port between em, it gets kinda boring.

    22. Re:BeOS by Olathe · · Score: 1

      Then Be, Palm, or Yellowtab (the developers of Zeta, which is essentially BeOS 6) can sue them if they want to. I don't see that happening and I doubt it will.

      Those organizations can speak for themselves and don't need your help.

      Slashdot is a news site by the way, not a BSA site.

    23. Re:BeOS by mlk · · Score: 1

      What does Linux provide that BSD or Solaris do not?

      --
      Wow, I should not post when knackered.
    24. Re:BeOS by Z4rd0Z · · Score: 1

      You might get nice performance out of BeOS, but will you get it from OpenBeOS? Do those guys know how to recreate the performance, not just the APIs, of the real thing?

      --
      You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
    25. Re:BeOS by jejones · · Score: 1

      "If the best features of BeOS live on in Linux I do see that as a benifit but what gain is there in spending the time and effort in reviving a dead horse?"

      It's their choice. They could be out flying ultralights or customizing cars instead (and in some ways your question is like "Why refurbish that 56 Chevy?"), but they choose to make an Open Source BeOS clone instead, or whatever. (Some folks I know are working on getting TCP/IP going on the Tandy CoCo 3. Why not? If nothing else, I can then ftp my CoCo's hard drive's contents over to my Linux box for backup or so I can emulate the CoCo under MESS.) Who is any of us to kvetch about how other people spend their spare time, if it hurts nobody?

      Since it's open source, the best features can end up in Linux. Second, there's nothing like a labor of love for motivation (OK, for voluntary motivation). How many programmers might be cutting their teeth on device drivers or file systems or kernels doing this work? What they learn will serve them well in the future--and some of them may turn their attention to Linux.

    26. Re:BeOS by ahacop@wmuc.umd.edu · · Score: 1

      Solaris isn't free.

    27. Re:BeOS by EddWo · · Score: 1

      Well they said their recreated file system actually gave better performance than the real thing. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

      --
      "Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
    28. Re:BeOS by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      It has nothing to do with need, I lecture you because I enjoy lecturing you, Beryllium ;^)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    29. Re:BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This post is factual incorrect - why is it modded up?

      oh, right. Slashdot.

    30. Re:BeOS by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 1

      I'm curious as well -- what does BeOS provide that other OS's don't?

      In my opinion, its best feature is the very reason I prefer Linux - it's not evolving as fast and in as many different directions as Linux. While certainly there are exceptions to the rule, I've noticed that a lot of closed source software starts out great on Linux, but then gets worse every day as Linux changes and the closed source program dosn't. The most annoying example I can think of is epsxe. It started out great, and pretty much on par with the windows version in my opinion. But the OpenGL drivers, and the program itself are closed source, which is very bad as the authors of both are using pretty outdated distros. The thing not crashing if I try to use 3D, sound, and gamepad plugins at the same time is more the exception than the rule these days. Running the windows version through wine is actually more convenient, and it even runs faster via wine than the native Linux version.

      That situation would be pretty rare in BeOS, OS X, or Windows simply because changes to them are made on such a rare occasion that it's a major event, and developers can use those releases as a marker to get their stuff working right there. With Linux, I can sympathise with their lethergy. Keep current with one distro and possibly break compatibility with another. Don't and risk breaking compatibility with the former.

      --
      Everything will be taken away from you.
    31. Re:BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BeOS has all of the best features from various OS's all in one.

      The stability of Linux, the usability of OS X, the speed of QNX and the clean looks of, well, BeOS.

      There are some additional benefits as well, like the fact that no matter what you are doing, the OS itself ALWAYS stays responsive. There is no such thing as an "hourglass" or "working in background" cursor under BeOS.

    32. Re:BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does Linux provide that BSD or Solaris do not?

      Drivers for (most) modern hardware, like 3D cards
      Commercial games (see above)
      Linux isn't dying ;-)
      x86 is a main development platform, not a half-forgotten ugly stepchild (like it is for Solaris)
      A (mostly) friendly and helpful user community

    33. Re:BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would I want to use BeOS?

      Hmmm. Let's see...

      - It's faster much faster than Linux (not hard when you think about it)
      - It's more responsive than Linux (I press a button, the effect is immediate)
      - It's easier to use than Linux (stick your grandma in front of linux and see how far she gets)
      - It's more consistent than Linux (single, clean ui)
      - It has had features for years that Linux is only just now picking up (64-bit journaling FS...)
      - I don't have to live in a bash shell (most apps are gui-based)

      And the #1 reason (drum-roll): There's no dependency hell when installing apps! All SOs are right where I need them, included in the main package.

      Granted the OS still has some limitations but Zeta will eliminate many of those with the first version. For now BeOSMax is quite modern and supports so much hardware and software. And it is far from dead.

    34. Re:BeOS by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      AmigaOS always had ethernet support, just put your hydra.device or ariadne.device into devs: and away you go...
      As for TCP/IP support, commodore even made a tcp stack for it, called AS2525 or something... hardly anyone used it, opting instead for third party stacks, but it was there...

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    35. Re:BeOS by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      Oh. Well. Carry on, carry on.

    36. Re:BeOS by fredrik70 · · Score: 1

      nope, BeOS didn't have pthreads nor mmap(). which cause all sorts of mayhem when trying to port more advanced apps. Still a good OS though, bought a few versions of it

      --
      if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
    37. Re:BeOS by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      Ooh, right, mmap() was a nasty missing one as I recall.

    38. Re:BeOS by ccp · · Score: 1


      Nah, it was BeOS thinking they could CHARGE for an OS,no matter how good it was.

      They were five years late to the party. And, I have to add, I absolutely LOVED BeOS.

      Cheers,

  7. Soo... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2

    Hows the Clone open-source BEOS going?

    We havent heard much about it..

    --
    1. Re:Soo... by darien · · Score: 3, Informative

      Dude, the answer's right here!

      Anyway, to answer your question: it's still coming along, slowly but surely. They're releasing updated components (most recently new versions of the tracker and the audio mixer). There was a newsletter a fortnight ago.

      I don't know how usable OBOS is though. They don't seem to say on their site, and I really can't be bothered with installing it until it runs Photoshop. ;)

    2. Re:Soo... by WowTIP · · Score: 1

      I don't know how usable OBOS is though. They don't seem to say on their site, and I really can't be bothered with installing it until it runs Photoshop. ;)

      Right now it is not usable at all, if you don't count using their released replacement code/apps inside for example, BeOS MAX v3.

      As far as I can tell from reading the mailing list and newsletters, there is a lot that has been done, but there is also still a lot of more things to do, before we can download a bootable ISO of OpenBeOS r1.

      --

      --

      "I'm surfin the dead zone
      In the twilight, unknown"
    3. Re:Soo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As best as I could determine, it's another two years away before there's a usable version.

      Gah, I just saw a *nasty* image on the BeOS Max edition site. Hopefully it's just that they got hacked... Gotta go poke my eyes out now...

    4. Re:Soo... by MyHair · · Score: 1

      I don't know how usable OBOS is though. They don't seem to say on their site, and I really can't be bothered with installing it until it runs Photoshop. ;)

      Their primary goal is an OS that is binary and source compatible with BeOS 5 (there might have been some exceptions for network code), so it's going to be a while. But since that is their goal they can use actual BeOS modules in place of the unfinished parts.

  8. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you can get a copy of BeOS 5 (the one you pay for, not the X86-only free beer version) on eBay, there is a PPC version on there. No idea if it would work on an AmigaONE board, but worth a try.

  9. Attention: There is a typo in the burning file by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's a typo in the MaxV3.cue file.

    On the line where it refers to the iso image, it reads:
    FILE "BeOS5PEMaxEditionV3b3.iso" BINARY

    It should say:
    FILE "BeOS5PEMaxEdiionV3.iso" BINARY

    It's easy to change this in an editor, and so you don't have to wait for the re-release and download it all over again.

    1. Re:Attention: There is a typo in the burning file by jolyonr · · Score: 1

      It should say: FILE "BeOS5PEMaxEdiionV3.iso" BINARY

      Is there a typo in your correction of the typo?
      Jolyon

      --


      Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
  10. SCO link by bain_online · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Wait isn't BeOS a SCO code derivative? isn't all the OS theory a SCO IP derivative?

    --
    BAIN http://www.devslashzero.com
  11. BeOS by pagercam2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I understand that BeOS is well done and some say that it advances the state-of-the-art is OS design and usability and its great that it has been open sourced to allow code and apps to the public. That said, why would anyone want to start using an effectively end of life OS, is there that much that can be done with the OS? I see all these people putting effort into reviving BeOS or AmigaOS or C64 OS's with TCP/IP and ethernet is this at all useful. If the best features of BeOS live on in Linux I do see that as a benifit but what gain is there in spending the time and effort in reviving a dead horse?

  12. Howabout BeOS ported to Amiga? by jbottero · · Score: 1

    Oh, I must have missed the big Amiga product line announcements. I'll have to ask my systems guy when we'll be able to play around with the Amiga file and database server and web server beta boxes, I'm sure this is going to just be a revolution in our shop. But I wonder if BeOS can be ported to the Amiga boxes, man our server cage will be the envy of all the visitors to the farm...

  13. Re:Advantages by darien · · Score: 1

    It has a single, consistent GUI? Counts for a lot if you want to make it on the desktop. Not, of course, that BeOS is going to do that any time soon. Which is a DAMN SHAME if you ask me, because it's the only OS I've ever used that actually made my Athlon 2400+ feel significantly faster than my old 14MHz A1200.

  14. well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    With this release as well as the several OpenBeOS (openbeos.org) Milestones reached recently and Zeta (yellowtab.com) coming out soon, BeOS is probably not as deas as some trolls claim.

    1. Re:well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yah. uh huh... right.

  15. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by ePhil_One · · Score: 1
    (No apps, of course. Ho hum.)

    I don't mean to troll, but exactly does one do with a dead OS like this? Is it just hobby value? Is there an app that works really well on BeOS, or only on BeOS?

    --
    You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
  16. Burning it... by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 5, Funny
    The BFS ISO installs in its own BFS partition, however it requires a bit of attention in the way you have to burn it."

    What? You can only burn it in the night of February 29/March 1 when it's a full moon, the CD is plated with mithril, the burner in sanctified with the blood of a virgin and Duke Nukem Forever is released? When you burn it, might it cause a rip in time or a quantum instability?

    Man, BeOS is some scary stuff. I can imagine reading about it in the newspaper already... "Kid installs BeOS, blows up universe. God sues for damages."

    1. Re:Burning it... by phfpht · · Score: 1, Funny

      ...the burner in sanctified with the blood of a virgin...

      Well, that shouldn't be difficult to find (here).

    2. Re:Burning it... by ryanvm · · Score: 4, Funny

      the CD is plated with mithril, the burner in sanctified with the blood of a virgin...

      Well, at least the virgin blood should be easy to come by here on Slashdot.

    3. Re:Burning it... by B3ryllium · · Score: 4, Funny

      They usually mean female virgins when they say that.

    4. Re:Burning it... by damsgaard · · Score: 0
      Reminds me off:

      Solving this problem involves first appeasing each of these powerful minions of Satan, and then minimizing their contact. A beautiful redhaired woman, between 25 and 30, must masturbate to orgasm over the network hub while picking the scabs off of the ass of the janitor of the building. Both should be dressed in simple, plain white garments. All the while, the network administrators, help-desk personnell and technicians should sing "Danny Boy". This should appease both of the hell-spawn simultaneously. After this, hang a dried frog from each printer to encourage the presence of the imp Chuntici, who will act as intermediary between the rival spirits.

      Of course, the whole poblem could be solved much more simply by using a REAL OPERATING SYSTEM on our servers and workstations, but management never listens to me.
      From: Satanic.org.
    5. Re:Burning it... by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      Are you saying that the blood of a male virgin is less valuable somehow? Sexist bastard... ;^)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    6. Re:Burning it... by MyHair · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, at least the virgin blood should be easy to come by here on Slashdot.

      Sorry, I can't help anymore. Shoulda asked me before I turned 33.

    7. Re:Burning it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, that's what they're saying. In fact it's a lot like installing a standard Linux distribution.

    8. Re:Burning it... by Channard · · Score: 1
      Well, at least the virgin blood should be easy to come by here on Slashdot.

      Yeah, but the sheer amount of cholesterol and fat floating about in the blood would mean you'd need to spread it with a pie server.

    9. Re:Burning it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > They usually mean female virgins when they say that.

      DOH!!

    10. Re:Burning it... by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      It's less value by virtue of there being an excess. Common supply and demand.

  17. Re:BeOS? by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 1

    BeOS is its own operating system. It literally almost became the basis for OS X, but they asked for too much $$$ from Apple and were turned down.

  18. Bah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The most popular? Bullshit! Developer Edition has been around for MUCH longer and just made a nice new release some time ago. Plus there's been a few "illegal" distros which included such things as unreleased beta software and patches. Max is in no way the "most popular" one. In fact, it's often seen as Yet Another Crappy PE Ripoff. I've tried it and Developer Edition is better.

  19. Remember, there could be problems. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Somebody on osnews reported he was having problems installing BeOS 3.0 on his computer. Read the story on OsNews

  20. Re:BeOS? by minnkota · · Score: 1

    So I can install BeOS on my computer instead of Windows ME? Can I run Half-Life: Counterstrike, Winamp Internet Explorer? Those are the only programs I use. Thanks

  21. Re:This theory has already been proven. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The real Don Knuth knows how to spell "theorem".

  22. Re:BeOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, you mean it well, but as you problably know by now YHBT... ;)

  23. Re:BeOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes!

  24. usage by micronix1 · · Score: 1

    i'm curious as to when operating systems like this will go mainstream. i woved to stop using windows as soon as microsoft interferes with my media usage. many will follow when their current operating systems go from buggy to buggy and restrictive. i didnt really expect to see another release of BeOS. i'm interested in seeing how useful it would perform as a business, internet and gaming OS.

  25. Just curious, but by stratjakt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What's so tricky about offering a bootable ISO?

    Why should you have to jump through hoops to burn anything for the PC these days?

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    1. Re:Just curious, but by Sillypuddy · · Score: 4, Informative

      in the true slashdot fashion, you didn't read the faq:

      Many of you have asked us to create ISO images for BeOS Installations. This article comes to clear out some misconceptions about BeOS Installations.

      BeOS images are ISO images. But not ISO Images in the sense Windows sees them. Those ISO contain FAT32 or FAT16 compliant filesystems. ISO9660 compliant is a FAT32 system. BeOS uses BeFS which is a 64bit journaling filesystem that stores a lot of the file info in different places such as Attributes. If we where to create an installation of BeOS using a classic ISO image (one that can be read by IsoBuster) it wouldn't Install !!!! If you copied files out of it to BeOS, some of them would be useless.

      Installation of BeOS requires BeFS Images. THAT'S IT.

      And we won't fix it. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

      NOTE: YOU CAN ASK THE COMPANIES THAT CREATE ISOBUSTER AND WINIMAGE TO SUPPORT BeFS.

      -joe

    2. Re:Just curious, but by elanoz · · Score: 1

      And ROCK you shall!!

    3. Re:Just curious, but by soulsteal · · Score: 2, Informative

      They offer a bootable cd-rom but it's formatted with BeFS, the 64-bit journaled filesystem that shipped with BeOS.

      Their explanation is that system files lose meta-data when their install image is converted to an ISO9660 compliant filesystem.

      Seems simple enough.

    4. Re:Just curious, but by bragi · · Score: 1

      All STANDARD (windows/unix) CD file systems are based around the ISO file system with extensions.

      Windows typically uses Joliet (and can't use RockRidge)
      Unix typically uses RockRidge (and can use Joliet)

      Most burning software under linux defaults to Joliet now, as file permissions just aren't something that's worried about on a CD.

      Any ISO cd filesystem can be read under any OS that supports the ISOfs, but the extensions may not be supported, leaving you with either 8.3, or 31 characters for the filename.

      There are other extensions, but these are the main two that are used. Off the top of my head, I don't know what MacOS, OS-X or BeOS use.

      --
      -- James "Bragi" Deucker Patrician of Networks
  26. Re:BeOS? by H8X55 · · Score: 0

    you've got to be kidding...

  27. Does BeOS have H/W accel OpenGL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A while back I know of a company that wanted to have their game under BeOS, but had to scrap the plans because they had to have H/W accel 3D under OpenGL and it could only do S/W. Has this been changed?

    1. Re:Does BeOS have H/W accel OpenGL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BeOS doesnt have shit.

      Well it has shit, literally. Not figuratively.

      You know what I mean.

      It's right up there with linux and the hurd when it comes to good gaming platforms.

  28. Support for modern hardware yet? by poopie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Last time I was in my kick to use as many different OSes as possible, I found the hardware support for BeOS terribly lacking. Does it support modern graphics cards now? What hardware *won't* work with BeOS?

    Is BeOS still stuck in the gcc 2.95 world due to c++ libraries?

    At one time, I cared. BeOS could have beaten OSX to the punch. It could have been a kick-a$$ multimedia box.

    Now, though, aside from the coolness factor of it being yet another OS that runs on Intel hardware, what exactly does BeOS have that makes it a desirable platform for users? Or put more succintly, Is there anything in BeOS that is not available in Linux?

    1. Re:Support for modern hardware yet? by SewersOfRivendell · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Is there anything in BeOS that is not available in Linux?

      A decent user interface?

      Yes, yes, troll -1 I know. I'm normally a Mac OS X user and developer. I know about GNOME and I know about KDE and I use both of them (GNOME 2.4, even) on my Linux box. They still cannot hold a candle to Mac OS X or BeOS for consistency and overall polish. Also, BeOS is much easier to code for. (Nothing is as good as Cocoa -- and GNUstep isn't quite there yet.)

      I do expect this to change over time. GNOME is almost there; it needs a few more really solid releases and a decent set of supporting tools, and probably a few more major architectural revisions. Right now, however, the prospect of running BeOS instead of Linux on my PC is one that excites me: an environment I actually might enjoy living in on my PC? Bring it on!

    2. Re:Support for modern hardware yet? by RenaissanceGeek · · Score: 1

      BeOS dang near WAS MacOS X...

      Except that Jean-Louis Gasee' et. al. refused to be bought out (you can do that when you're a privately held company): they insisted that Apple pay a per-unit liscence fee, regardless of any modifications to the code that Apple produced.

      Instead, Apple took one step FURTHER back into its own history, and brought back Jobs by buying NeXT.

      --
      What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?
    3. Re:Support for modern hardware yet? by loosifer · · Score: 1
      Except that Jean-Louis Gasee' et. al. refused to be bought out (you can do that when you're a privately held company): they insisted that Apple pay a per-unit liscence fee, regardless of any modifications to the code that Apple produced.


      Untrue. Be refused to be bought for less than $150 million, which Apple thought was too high. Instead, they bought Next for $450 million. And rest is crappy lickable history.

    4. Re:Support for modern hardware yet? by rkz · · Score: 1

      I would be a mac user if they brought Be instead of NeXT

  29. The question is... by Anonym1ty · · Score: 0

    To Be or not to Be?

    Well I know that's gunna be my question anyway. I am going to have to try this out and see.

    It's about time I can Be again ---I hope I still like it!

  30. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by darien · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nothing that ONLY works on BeOS, but applications always seemed a lot more responsive and stable under BeOS than anything else I'd used (except the Amiga). This gave me very good feelings about it, and made me want it to be my platform for multimedia applications.

  31. + 1 gazillion, lifesaver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Lion's Eye Bank will thank you.

  32. Re:Wow! by wmaker · · Score: 1

    hmm, see i was thinking +5 for funny considering the big screenshot with oprahs face on it but,,, hey whatever you say boss!

  33. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

    BeBits will reveal everything and more. :)

  34. Great for the old boxes. by ayersrj · · Score: 3, Informative

    BeOS is spectacular for your old boxes laying around if you want to try something new. It books on my AMD/300 with 64 MB of RAM in under 15 seconds.

    YellowTAB is creating the next incarnation of BeOS code named Zeta, which essentially R6. It should upgrade driver support for the newest hardware releases. Unfortunately a free edition looks doubtful.

    1. Re:Great for the old boxes. by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      i'm using an 450mhz k6-2, before i was using a 200mhz mmx pentium for beos..

      i just had to waste my 50d uptime on it to install another gfx card and some more memory. it's main usage is a mp3 player box + irc(with occasional web browsing, my mouse on that computer sucks though so i don't browse too much with it), so it gets used pretty constantly when i'm at home anyways.

      and fyi it's not r6, since they acquired the rights(or some rights, i don't know the catches) to r5 codebase(not the codebase that was supposed to be r6, there's a leaked beta out there of a release of under codename 'dano', and it will stay up, well, at least for 50d+, but it's not legal and a dead end in that way which is a shame though :)

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:Great for the old boxes. by ccp · · Score: 1


      I really don't want to start a fight, but...

      Why this obsession with load times, also observed when discussing Open Office, Mozilla, KDE, etc.

      How many times a day you LOAD your favourite app?

      Am I missing something?

      Please enlight me.

      Cheers,

  35. Installing without formatting my HD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is there any way I can install this WITHOUT formatting my whole hard drive first? (I only have 1 partition, that's the way it came)

    1. Re:Installing without formatting my HD? by kfg · · Score: 1

      Partition Magic. Don't leave home without it.

      There are free tools to do the job as well, but if you aren't already au fait with the command line and partitioning drives I can't say I'd recommend them.

      So the down side is it will cost you some money. The upside is that Partition Magic is a really kick ass piece of software and worth every penny.

      KFG

    2. Re:Installing without formatting my HD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      :D Thank you

    3. Re:Installing without formatting my HD? by ParallelJoe · · Score: 1

      Yes you have to type, but GNU Parted has always worked nicely for me. They even have floppy images you can boot from.

  36. How does it work with *older* hardware, though? by IM6100 · · Score: 1

    I purchased BeOS back in the day and still have the boxed set. I am interested in installing it on PPC. I have some great Power Macs that it would be super on. Will this install on them?

    --
    A Good Intro to NetBS
    1. Re:How does it work with *older* hardware, though? by ayersrj · · Score: 1

      You'll need the Professional Edition which was sold through Gobe (which also made the Gobe Productive Office Suite). it was $50 retail, you should be able to find it on E-Bay for much less. Gobe might even still be selling it.

      There were a couple Power Mac models that it wasn't compatible with, but most should be cool with it.

    2. Re:How does it work with *older* hardware, though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Several things about PPC/BeOS.

      1) The CD is not bootable. You'll need a MacOS partition and BeOS partition. If you want to be able to access the Mac partition from Be, it needs to be HFS rather than HFS+. These two points seem to catch a lot of people up.

      2) For whatever reason, 5.0 Pro refuses to work on my 5500/250s. 4.5 Works fine though. If you are primarily concerned with PPC, get a 4.5 CD on fleaBay for $10, it's the same rev for PPC anyway (only x86 is 'actively' maintained).

      3) AFAIK, you MUST use MacOS 8.6 to run BeOS PPC. I know I've never gotten it working in conjunction with 9.0.4, etc.

      4) If you have a machine with a CSII or other outboard Ethernet card, be aware that 'Mac built in networking' will not address it. You have to pull down the slesction menu and choose the appropriate DEC tulip adapter driver, which works fine.

      5) You'll have to have a 603e/604/604e proc. So far as I know, G3/G4 support was never forthcoming due to Apple's refusal to release architectural details of the systems.

      Good luck, pound for pound Be 4.5 runs faster than 8.6 on old Mac hardware.

  37. BeOS -- the undead OS by gothicpoet · · Score: 2, Funny
    Man, this OS never dies does it?

    The trouble with the BeOS was always hardware support. It was a thing of beauty (fast and pretty) when you got everything going, and it could do really cool stuff. Without the kind of heavy duty developer support that other operating systems have it couldn't run on all the latest and greatest hardware though.

    That didn't stop me from using it in a dual boot system until after the company went out of business though. Damn shame.

    --
    Quoth he ::
    "It's all academic anyway..."
    1. Re:BeOS -- the undead OS by daveman_1 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Like many things favored around this public forum it just never got off the ground. Slashdot should consider registering the name "underdogs.org". That is just how I feel about all of this lately. M$FT won.

      --
      Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
    2. Re:BeOS -- the undead OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well I have BeOSMax v2.0 running on my fairly recent PC (2 years old, 900MHz AMD Duron) with ATI Radeon 7500 and various other goodies and have absolutely 0 problems doing anything.

      Chances are if you are running decent hardware it will work for you also. And since it is free there is no risk in trying it. Having partition magic to spare up some room helps too.

  38. See the result of following your advice by DrSkwid · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  39. BeOS logo by lawpoop · · Score: 3, Funny
    What is that symbol supposed to be?

    It looks to me like a guy with a headache or a cartoon 'swirl of confusion' above his head.

    It makes me think that using Be would be a frustrating experience.

    --
    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
    -- Pablo Picasso
    1. Re:BeOS logo by ScottSpeaks! · · Score: 1

      The logo is a stylized eye and ear, reflecting the OS's excellent support (certainly by contemporary standards) for multimedia.

    2. Re:BeOS logo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The logo is a combination of an eye and an ear, look again from top to bottom. It was supposed to represent the media richness of the BeOS.

      I imagine that we will certainly see the fruits of Be's labor in upcoming Palm products. I for one look forward to well designed multimedia rich mobile devices using the superior multimedia BeOS (or the BeOS based multimedia platform that Be was developing when Palm acquired them.)

  40. For those that missed the story few weeks ago... by babbage · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Slashdot didn't pick up the story when it happened a couple of weeks ago, but Be, Inc. has settled its antitrust suit against Microsoft for $23 million. Microsoft, as usual, admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement.

    Readers may recall that Be brought their suit against the Microsoft back in February 2002. At the time this suit was brought, it was becoming obvious that the US government's antitrust suit against Microsoft was not going to result in any significant punishment for the convicted monopolist, and in fact time has borne this out -- Microsoft is arguably more powerful today than ever before.

    Some observers felt Be's claims that Microsoft's vendor contracts excluded competitors from the market was a stronger case than the browser bundling aspect that the US department of justice pursued, but in the end it seems that Be no longer had the resources to complete the trial.

    With the Be lawsuit abandoned, the best hopes for a remedy to the Microsoft monopoly now seem to be in the European courts, or with a possible regime change in the USA in 2005.

    Microsoft may have gotten away with murder, but at least we've got people nursing the corpse along, as stories like the current one illustrate. *sigh*

  41. Re:IT'S TIME FOR THE MICROSOFT SKULL FUCK!!!!! by Perianwyr+Stormcrow · · Score: 1

    The Spongebob Squarepants theme kinda works.

    --

    What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey

  42. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by LinuxMan · · Score: 1

    I am really happy to hear about yet another release of a very well designed OS. Because BeOS has it's history tied to where NeXT did, in Apple, it is a very simple, yet like NeXT, elegant OS. I hope to see people do for BeOS what Apple did for NeXT.
    NeXT was really great, but was not quite as user friendly as the consumer would have liked, but Apple was able to take an already well developed architechture, and without too much blood and sweat, create a truly beautiful (in my opinion) interface. I truly think that the same could be done with BeOS, not that it is not already really well designed. I think that between all the other free desktop OSes to gain market share, BeOS is one of the most promising.

    Be Advanced Topics

  43. jeeeeeez..... by kaan · · Score: 4, Funny

    for a group that works with one of the nicest looking operating systems ever, they've really produced a horrible website. my "nice" guess is that they're either colorblind, or a group of teenagers who still lament the loss of the tag (or both).

    1. Re:jeeeeeez..... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      O gosh, I thought I would be the only one missing some style at that web page.
      angel'o'sphere

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  44. Wheeeee by FrostedWheat · · Score: 1

    From the BeOS Max website:

    This page has been accessed 35611 times since July 26th, 2003

    90% in the last hour probably :). I've never seen a counter move so fast!

    Wait ... I better stop reloading!

    Sorry BeOS Max guys ...

    I'll get my coat.

  45. Re:I for one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Soviet Russia, Linux running Beowulf clusted BeOS overlords welcome YOU!

  46. Goodness Gracious!!! by kelzer · · Score: 1

    Could the BeosMax website be any harder on the eyes?

    Remember when BeOS was for Macs, whose users tend to be artistic? Guess that's not the case now that it's an Intel OS, eh?

    --

    ---------------------------------------------
    SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  47. Re:BeOS? by homer_ca · · Score: 1

    Yeah, and it didn't help that Steve Jobs used to run NEXT. Not that either one would've been a bad choice.

  48. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by The_DOD_player · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So what if nobody cares about it right now?
    Popularity is not the same as quality.

    A few minutes ago, I knew nothing about BeOS except that it was an OS. But the fundemantals of the BeOS sounds very nice indeed.

    So, why dont you care about BeOS?
    Lack of apps? hm?!
    I suppose you are the kind of person that didnt care about Linux 3 years ago.

    "FreeBSD is dying, BeOS is dead, MacOS is dying" - please shut up! it only applys if you think the single CPU-arch + single OS model is a great thing. Free Software is not just about replacing Windows with Linux because its c00l3r (witch it is by the way ;)). People should be able to choose the OS that fits them, even if nobody else "cares about it". One size does not fit all.

  49. Re:Advantages by kfg · · Score: 1

    The main advantage of BeOS over everything else available right now is that it has a complete lack of history and cruft. It was designed from scratch for modern graphical enviroments, yet also has an easily accessable Unix like command line, that works.

    It's chief disadvantage?

    It has a complete lack of history and cruft.

    People want evolution, not revolution, no matter what they say.

    KFG

  50. BeOS: The dev machine! by elanoz · · Score: 2

    BEEEEoooooooSSSS, back again! I am going to blow the dust off my old 400 and install! I will provide an installation update in three weeks when I successfully configure my hardware!!

    1. Re:BeOS: The dev machine! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The configuration is not and never was the problem of BeOS. In fact I do not know any other modern Operating System which need so few configuration as BeOS. You can take your harddrive out of one computer, put it in one with a completely different system and boot it perfectly without BeOS saying one word. .. well... as long as the hardware you run it on is supported of course,.. which is the Real Problem (TM)

    2. Re:BeOS: The dev machine! by elanoz · · Score: 1

      Writing device drivers and configuring unsupported hardware is exactly what I was getting at! There are no problems for which I cannot provide a solution!

  51. BeOS AbiWord Port by uwog · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since I saw AbiWord already in the 3rd screenshot, I figured there might be some interest left for an AbiWord 2.x port for BeOS as well. If anyone is interested in such a port, he/she should stand up now and contact the AbiWord Developers Mailing List. If we find no active BeOS developers within the next 2 weeks, we'll drop the currently unmaintained and outdated BeOS port from our tree.

    1. Re:BeOS AbiWord Port by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought there was someone from Japan that picked up the BeOS port of Abiword. Is he not currently active?

    2. Re:BeOS AbiWord Port by uwog · · Score: 1

      He submitted one or two patches (which were comitted), and then vanished...

    3. Re:BeOS AbiWord Port by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 2, Informative

      You might try checking with the zeta people. I think they had abiword in one of the screenshots they distributed. So they might be willing to contribute to keeping the beos version up-to-date.

      --
      Everything will be taken away from you.
    4. Re:BeOS AbiWord Port by hub · · Score: 1

      Zeta people never came to us to give anything. They never told us that they had a build.

      This is almost the 3rd or 4th time we tell we are about to ditch BeOS support. And we have gone thru BeOS "authorized" information source to announce it. The problem with BeOS is that there is almost no developer, and the few that still do some BeOS development don't have a clue about the real interest of Open Source.

      --
      Hub
  52. PORN???? Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by net_bh · · Score: 1

    Whats with the PORN on that site.....i am gonna have a hard time getting that image out of my mind!!

    --
    There is no patch for stupidity

    Visit my blog

    1. Re:PORN???? Re:Aaah! My Eyes!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was your first goatse! Welcome to Slashdot!

  53. Re:For those that missed the story few weeks ago.. by the+unbeliever · · Score: 2, Informative
  54. Argh! by CommieBozo · · Score: 1

    That BeOS Max page has the goatse image on it! Don't go there!

    1. Re:Argh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Yeah, I contributed a little bit of fun to the "Your Message" area :)

      Woo!

    2. Re:Argh! by zephc · · Score: 1

      arg! so is the damn tub girl pic *barf*

      --
      "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
    3. Re:Argh! by Mr.+Cancelled · · Score: 1

      Pity the poor webmaster who has to come home to this!

    4. Re:Argh! by The+trees · · Score: 1

      So, which of the vulnerable bits do you think was used to deface the site?
      http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=b eosmax. org

      Remember, folks, patching is important even if you're not using Windows!

      --
      $ make work
      make: *** No rule to make target `work'. Stop.
    5. Re:Argh! by GutBomb · · Score: 2, Informative

      it was the webmaster's stupidity. it's not a matter of someone hacking or defacing the web page by any means other than posting html code in the "your message" area on the page.

    6. Re:Argh! by The+trees · · Score: 1

      Ah. I didn't stick around long enough to notice those were user comments, I just zapped the browser window as fast as I could. At least that means the ISO is (probably) safe.

      --
      $ make work
      make: *** No rule to make target `work'. Stop.
  55. BeOS is Dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Face it friends, BeOS is dying

  56. Re:For those that missed the story few weeks ago.. by babbage · · Score: 1

    Whoa, how did I miss that? THANK YOU.

  57. Mini FAQ on BeOS by IWantMoreSpamPlease · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know this article will generate a ton of "BeOS is dead, who cares" and "Who the hell uses BeOS anymore?" or "What is BeOS?" style posts, so as an avid user of BeOS I will attempt to explain some things:

    (1) You'd be surprised how much hardware is supported by BeOS, Athlon XP CPUS, P4s, firewire cards, SCSIs, Magneto Optical, scanners, etc. If it's not natively seen, www.bebits.com (as well as bedrivers.com) is the place to go.

    (2) BeOS is a refreshing change of pace from the "Big Brother" of Windows, the "Here's a million bits, put them together yourself" of Linux or the "Our way, the only way" of Apple. BeOS relies on the "less is more" viewpoint. Software packages range in the hundereds of k, as opposed to the hundereds of megs in size, yet still do what they need to do.

    (3) I have yet to see a GUI is clean, useful and *consistant* as BeOS.

    (4) It just works.

    (5) The user base is friendly, enthusiastic and you won't get any of the typical *nix attitudes of "lamer" or "rtfm" in the BeOS user forums.

    --
    So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
    1. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      in response to #1 -

      and yet it still fails to recognize my intellinet 10/100 pci lan card, although it is in fact a RTL8139.

      hmmm...

    2. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by JudgeFurious · · Score: 1

      In your supported hardware examples I note that I don't see video Cards or network cards mentioned. Is this an oversight or is the support for such things as dismal now as it was back when I bought 4.5?

      Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed BeOS and got pretty enthused about it but I found that it didn't network worth beans and the list of good cards supported was wanting. I'd like to think that it's come along since then. Has it?

      Oh and for my money I'll take the "Our way, the only way" Apple approach. I haven't found anything I like better than the OSX experience. I once thought BeOS was going to be the OS that did something like this to Intel boxes. Maybe it still will be.

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
    3. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by josepha48 · · Score: 1
      You missed a few questions: 1) Didn't Palm buy BeOS? 2) Was BeOS closed source or was it open sourced? 3) Who owns the rights to BeOS PE? 4) Who develops these new drivers and the kernel???

      No really I want to know, I tried beos 4 (maybe 5) and liked the UI, but it just didn't have hardware support and Be the company does not exist. 6) What about openbeos? Where do they fit into the BeOS picture??

      --

      Only 'flamers' flame!
      Does slashdot hate my posts?

    4. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by Troll_Kamikaze · · Score: 3, Funny

      You'd be surprised how much hardware is supported by BeOS, Athlon XP CPUS, P4s, ...

      Wow! An x86-oriented operating system supports x86-compatible CPUs? This is revolutionary!

    5. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) Yes Palm bought BeOS
      2) Beos was for the most part closed source (some execptions) but had a very open API.
      3) BeOS PE was free distributed.
      4) The Kernel has no new development going on. Drivers are written by good natured people.
      5) look for compatible hardware at http://www.frizbe.net/hardware/
      6) Open Beos is still being developed. When it releases its 1.0 the BeosMax distro will stop and start pointing users there.

    6. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by mlk · · Score: 2, Informative

      > 1) Didn't Palm buy BeOS?

      Yes, don't expect to see Palm-Be For Desktops thou. Palm bought Be for the excellent engineers the code was a by product. Bits might make it into PalmX.

      > 2) Was BeOS closed source or was it open sourced?

      BeOS is closed source. However a few other versions have no appeared tring to remake BeOS.
      At lest two closed source (Max, and YellowTAB)
      At lest two open source, OpenBeOS, based on a brand spanky new kernal, and redeveloped from scrach. And BlueEyedOS, based on Linux.

      > 3) Who owns the rights to BeOS PE?

      Palm, but before Palm bought Be, Be did a deal with Max to alow it to redistrube it, and did a deal with YellowTAB to not only redistrubute it, but also modified versions of Dano (the next version of offical Be Inc BeOS).

      > 4) Who develops these new drivers and the kernel???

      Max, YellowTAB (but only for there distributions) and normal developers for gerneric R5 drivers.
      Then Linux devs for BlueEyedOS
      and OpenBeOS Developers for OBOS.

      > 6) What about openbeos? Where do they fit into the BeOS picture??

      It will take some time before OBEOS gets a usable version, so the Max & YellowTAB are here to fill the gap untill OBEOS takes off. I'm sure I've seen posts by both YellowTAB and the MAX people that they would like to be come OBEOS distrubuters when this happens.

      --
      Wow, I should not post when knackered.
    7. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by keirnoff · · Score: 1

      The main thing people loved about BeOS (which I bought back in 1997, rc3) besides the speed was the UI. How hard would it be to design a window manager that copied that for X windows? I wouldn't think it would be any harder than writing the dozen other UI. Or would it require a lot of work on widgets and what not?

    8. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BeOS supports the newest Nvidia and ATI cards. Most new ethernet cards as well

    9. Re:Mini FAQ on BeOS by IWantMoreSpamPlease · · Score: 1

      It's the look of the UI that is what makes BeOS so great (although that is indeed a large part of it) it's the fact that it is *consistant* thoughout the OS, regardless of app.

      Something that *nix lacks....

      --
      So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
  58. Re:BeOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People like you deserve Windows ME. Nothing more, nothing less.

  59. 0wn3d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The website has been owned.. check your sigs and sums before running stuff. Unless, of course a big gaping ass picture is actually part of BeOS now.. Please ignore this if that's the case.

  60. DEFACED! by rikrebel · · Score: 1



    OMG!

    http://www.beosmax.org/main.php

    I love BeOS, as would most developers. Great platform, sorry to see that it's been so marginalized.

    BUT, why would anyone want to deface the page?

    It's really gross too.

    Some *ssh*les need to get real lives.

    rr

  61. just when I thought I'd seen it all by Sarin · · Score: 0, Redundant

    and version v3.0 came out today.

    there's this guy on the main page that's called "version v3.0" for some perverted reason, guess he's one of the developers or something 'coming out'..

  62. Be. Careful by polyp2000 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Someone has posted some stomach churning pictures right on the main page of beos max...

    --
    Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
    1. Re:Be. Careful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please tell me why warning people of the vile images on that site is flamebait...

  63. ...and the answer is... by r00zky · · Score: 1

    2B OR NOT 2B == FF

    --
    I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
  64. DISCLAIMER!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OMG! Please put a DISCLAIMER on this site NOW!!!

  65. Re:BeOS? by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 1

    You can run CL-Amp, which is a Winamp/XMMS clone or Soundplay. Mozilla is available. You would not be able to run CS. BeOS was typically oriented towards audio-production types of people in its heyday.

  66. BeOS MAXXX Edition. by Wolfier · · Score: 1

    Brought to you by, Intel! Best run on Pentium EXXXTREME.

    1. Re:BeOS MAXXX Edition. by paradesign · · Score: 1

      and ATI rage MAXX grafx cards

      --
      I want 2D games back.
  67. VERY work inappropriate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was looking at that beos website and there is content on the main page which is extremely work inappropriate. I would definitely NOT suggest going to this website from work for ANYBODY.

  68. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why bother? Mac OS X is, by far, the gold standard operating system and it does everything BeOS ever did, only with a better GUI, true Unix underpinnings and all on the fastest hardware money can buy! Why would you want to run a niche OS like BeOS that doesn't support modern applications and hardware? For christ sakes, I'd rather run Windows! (Although I do concede that BeOS kicks Linux's ass all over the place).

    1. Re:WTF? by Assimil8or · · Score: 0

      > Mac OS X is, by far, the gold standard operating system and it does everything BeOS ever did yeah, sure, you've actually used BeOS, right?... LOL

    2. Re:WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whether I've used BeOS or not is irrelevant. Name a single useful thing that BeOS does that Mac OS X doesn't. I am always amazed at how operating system zealots will ignore the obvious solution and go with niche alternatives that aren't even close in terms of availaility, security, usability, and overall polish. Nothing even comes close to Mac OS X.

    3. Re:WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow! You managed to get MacOSX to run on Intel hardware? Then there truly isn't anything BeOS can do that MacOSX can't.

  69. Wow. Spooky. by BlackBolt · · Score: 2, Funny

    My wife has an old Win98 Internet box at home that suicided just last night (first time ever for that box, oh miracle of miracles). Windows was *completely* smoked. Fried. I've got the steaming hard drive with me right now, because I was hoping to find the old BeOSFree around on the net tonight and put that on for her. This is one better!

    Now I must publicly proclaim that there is a God, he loves me, and furthermore, doesn't want me to run Windows - as we all suspected! Praise the Lord! It's a sign!

    Now if only I'd listened to Him when he told me to sell Nortel in early 2000... :-(

    1. Re:Wow. Spooky. by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Who suicided? Your wife or the box? Or both?

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    2. Re:Wow. Spooky. by BlackBolt · · Score: 1

      The box, but my wife knows I will use any weasely excuse to buy a G5 (or similar bloated extravagant monster computer), so she'll probably have a heart attack when she sees the bill.

    3. Re:Wow. Spooky. by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Hmmm. G5...Wife...

      Difficult choice.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  70. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Trurl's+Machine · · Score: 1

    So, why dont you care about BeOS?
    Lack of apps? hm?!
    I suppose you are the kind of person that didnt care about Linux 3 years ago.

    With all my sympathy towards your general stance, I can't help but pointing out that BeOS actually started its history a year _before_ Linux (for BeOS it's 1990, for Linux it's 1991). Look what progress Linux has made from the historical first post (damn, the very presence of this character string guarantees me a mod down!) made by Linus in 1991 to comp.os.minix (you know, the one with "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.") . And then compare it to the progress made by BeOS from 1990 to the present day. Frankly, I'm not even sure if the word "progress" applies to this case.

  71. BeOS is dead - long live BeOS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was a BeOS fanatic from around 1997 until Be went under. I first picked it up because I wanted to take up programming again (my CS courses in college were in something called Algol-W - it was right before the school switched to using a cool new language called Pascal, if that tells you anything about my age). I taught myself C++ via Be's tutorials and various free resources on the web. I tried to get my wife to use BeOS, but she wouldn't because the version of Minesweeper that came with it sucked, so I wrote a really cool Minesweeper game from scratch, complete with 32-bit graphics, continuously resizable board (stretch the window and the entire game scales up proportionately), progress bars for squares and mines - it really wasn't that hard to do with the BeOS API.

    When Be finally went belly-up, I switched to Debian as my primary OS and KDevelop/Qt for my hobbyist coding, and was pleasantly surprised to find it quite BeOS-like. I still occasionally boot into BeOS to play Civilization: Call To Power for the sake of nostalgia.

  72. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is a port of Open Beos Being worked on for Amegia1 and it sounded like it would be ready sometime next year after OBOS is completed.

  73. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Haven't done it yet, but I'm going to scrounge up some junk boxes and see if it's reasonable to pull out old hardware and make a good word-processing/web surfing box for family/friends who keep asking for something so simple for practically nothing... without having a linux box which chugs under the weight of X Server.

    Of course maybe I'm wrong and it'll chug too, but I'm curious to play.

  74. Remember when...? by LionMage · · Score: 1
    Remember when BeOS was for Macs, whose users tend to be artistic? Guess that's not the case now that it's an Intel OS, eh?

    Actually, I remember farther back, when Be made its own hardware, the BeBox (which Be, Inc. president Jean Louis Gassee called the "Amiga for the 90's"). It was a dual processor PowerPC machine which was designed to accept PCI and ISA cards originally made for the x86 PC world. This was back when Be's original slogan was "One processor per person is not enough!"

    I started working for Metrowerks right around the time when Be was in the beta release cycle for the x86 version of BeOS. My job was supposed to be porting the BeOS debugger to the x86 architecture, a problem compounded by the fact that the BeOS debugger was actually a port of the Macintosh PowerPC debugger. A lot of Mac toolbox calls were being emulated (inefficiently) by BeOS calls. What we really needed to do was a complete rewrite, but nobody wanted to spend the time or money on that.

    Metrowerks stabbed Be in the back and killed all BeOS development, and I was given a choice of leaving Metrowerks or switching to another division. I chose to leave. Be eventually did make the full transition to x86, and PowerPC support became a less compelling concern.

    It's interesting to note that BeOS support for Macintosh hardware was begun as a project to work around an asinine restriction placed on Be, Inc., by the folks running Macworld Expo. Apparently, the expo organizers decided that unless BeOS ran on Macintosh hardware, Be wouldn't be allowed to show its product off at Macworld; up to that point, BeOS ran only on the BeBox. An internal team got the OS ported, and soon after, Be's management realized that there was no reason for Be, Inc. to be a hardware vendor. The x86 port pretty much clinched it. I think JLG thought that he'd make Be into a software-only company like NeXT, and indeed, BeOS was one of the OSes being considered by Apple to replace Copland; with Apple's decision to buy NeXT instead, Be's only real avenue of survival was cut off.

    The moral of the story is that there's little or no room left in the x86 world for alternative operating systems that you must pay for. Linux survives precisely because it costs nothing, so Microsoft has no leverage against Linux in that arena. I still like BeOS, the same way I liked the Amiga's OS, but I knew the handwriting was on the wall when the efforts to get BeOS pre-bundled on x86 hardware stalled. I noticed that Be was trying to get BeOS ported to MIPS hardware, apparently in a bid to compete against Windows CE (and this seems to be why Palm bought Be's intellectual property), but nothing ever came of that either.
  75. No doubt! by J3zmund · · Score: 1

    Definitely a candidate for "Websites that Suck"

    --

    It's all Hood
  76. What's the deal with BeOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's the deal with BeOS, is it an OS, or is it just trying to Be and OS, ahaha.

    -Damn it's been a long day.

  77. Tsarkon Reports: BIGTIME trip-up by "VaxGeek" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't insult the FreeBSD kernel like that ; comparing OS X to FreeBSD and saying they are the same is absurd. I also take umbrage at the remark even if it is only in reference to the userland. FreeBSD's 4.8+ and 5.X+ userlands are one thousand times more useful that the piece of shit OS X.

  78. OMG!!11! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... are you a geek or something?

  79. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by The_DOD_player · · Score: 1

    Its is true that Linux has a lot of momentum than BeOS. From that point of view youre absolutely right.

    My point is that the attitude that: "if few people uses it, then its of no interest" - is not very healthy. If some folks think's BeOS' really nice, they should be able to use it, regardless of how popular it is. Perhaps they know something the rest of us dont. I certainly was a little impressed with some of the features of BeOS.

  80. Ack ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ack...it's the text version of goatse.cx.

  81. did anyone else get goatse'd? by otis+wildflower · · Score: 1

    two words: ass fountain..

    WTF? mebbe it no likey me privoxy..

  82. Wow I can now jump up and down with gleed by siouxmoux2 · · Score: 1

    Wow I can now jump up and down with gleed. now that the new Free version Be OS is now out

  83. BeOS Live CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A BeOS live CD ala Knoppix seems like it would be a useful and usable implementation of the OS. Any plans for or thoughts on this?

  84. Re:BeOS and POSIX by berenddeboer · · Score: 2, Informative

    The BeOS POSIX implementation is very complete. Non-network utilities are usually easy to port. But the big issue is that sockets are not descriptors. That's right. You can't pass a socket descriptor to read() or write(). You need to use send() or recv().

    That's the single biggest issue in porting POSIX applications to BeOS and also the hardest to fix.

    --
    If I had a sig, I would put it here.
  85. wow by BlueJay465 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I am amazed that this is the first goatse.cx troll I have seen that actually made it to the front page.

    Timothy, did you even click the link before deciding that it was worthy for the rest of us?

  86. USB?? by acxr+is+wasted · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Exactly how long ago did this release come out? AFter booting off the cd, my usb keyboard and mouse won't work. The drivers library can't be that bad...

    --
    "Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
  87. be.com price reduction! by Anonymous+Squonk · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Got this email today...

    Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 15:47:46 -0700
    From: Dan Johnston
    To: danj@beincorporated.com
    Subject: Be.com Domain

    You are receiving this e-mail because at some point in the past year you
    have expressed some credible interest in purchasing the be.com domain name.
    At that time we indicated that we were seeking an amount within the
    appraised range of U.S. $230,000.00 and U.S. $290,000.00. Because the
    appraisal was performed at a peak period of the market and economy, it is
    clear that Board should now be willing to consider offers below that range.

    The competitive offers that have been made to date have fallen within the
    U.S. $50,000.00 to U.S. $100,000.00 range. I am trying to determine if you
    are still interested in purchasing the domain name and, if so, requesting
    that you make a renewed bid at this time. I will take the highest bid back
    to the Board of Directors for approval with the intent of finally accepting
    that highest bid and completing the sale without taking the domain to a
    public auction.

    Let me know if you would like to make an offer under these new conditions.

  88. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I care about BeOS. Increment your counter.

    Seriously though, Linux and Windows both suck for their obvious reasons and BeOS is cozy. It's beautiful, free, and doesn't force me to live in a bash shell.

    BeOS from 3 years ago still runs circles around today's Linux on the same HW.

    The company did die off and the OS still have issues but it's interesting to see that the newcomers to BeOS all seem to be Linux-dropouts. They all complain about wanting to escape M$ but having to put up with grep-this and rpm-that that they almost consider running back to Bill Gates until they try BeOS and fall in love.

    Anyhow, you're free to disagree..
    Just my 2 cents.

  89. Heard of the Roland UA100, IZT Radar 24 & th S by DABANSHEE · · Score: 1

    BeOS's forte is audio mixing, as such it is the choice OS of the Edirol/Roland UA100, the iZ Tech - RADAR 24 & the SX-1 Integrated Audio Production Station.

    There maybe Mac drivers for the Edirol/Roland UA100 but I doubt the Radar 24 & the SX-1 are Mac compatible, seeing these intigrated autio editors were built from the ground up to use BeOS as their OS. Getting Mac OSX to work on either of them would be nearly as hard as porting some hospital machine that uses QNX to MacOSX

  90. Wow, a blast from the past(OT) by clockworx · · Score: 1

    How's it going, Bery? (if you remember me)....I am shocked...SHOCKED to stumble into you in a BeOS thread ;)

    1. Re:Wow, a blast from the past(OT) by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      vaguely ... and I don't actually run BeOS any more, I've found that a combination of Windows XP for desktops and FreeBSD for servers makes for a comfortable working environment. :)

  91. Re:BeOS and POSIX by Starship+Trooper · · Score: 2, Informative
    That's painting a rather rosy picture. Let's see, off the top of my head, in addition to lacking socket descriptors, BeOS also lacked:
    • mmap
    • job control (^Z doesn't work, which makes the UNIX shell about as useful as DOS)
    • pthreads
    • working select or poll
    • POSIX priority control
    There are also countless other little things that irked me coming from a UNIX background and trying to use BeOS' shell. Their POSIX layer basically implements the bare minimum to get bash and the GNU sh-utils running, and very little else. Calling it "very complete" is like calling a Pinto "very fast".
    --
    Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
  92. why are all the new "distros" diffs against PE? by justins · · Score: 1

    I actually paid for BeOS 5. I'm not terribly interested in the new stuff going on, I've more or less given up on BeOS. Still, it irks me a little that I can't even check it out, since all these new developments seem to be released as modifications to the freeloader version of BeOS, rather than the "pro ediition" that genuine Be enthusiasts paid for.

    Is there a way around this?

    --
    Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
  93. beos website by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    unlike many of my fellow slashdotters, i actually downloaded it and installed it on my laptop. and i have a few points. 1. just change the name of the beosiso in the cue file and then burn the cue, it isnt hard. 2. the beosmax website looks alot different in netpositive (the beos browser) and 3. doom is installed as one of the games.

    andrew

  94. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Moraelin · · Score: 1
    So, why dont you care about BeOS?
    Lack of apps? hm?!

    Bingo. I know that the official slashdot view is that the _only_ reason to have an OS is to brag about uptime. (Big deal. My old Windows 98 can stay up for months too, if I don't run anything on it.)

    But for the rest of us, you see, it's the apps that matter. The _only_ reason to have a computer, and an OS on it, is to run the software I need or just want.

    I suppose you are the kind of person that didnt care about Linux 3 years ago.

    Yes, in fact, I'm exactly the kind of person who couldn't find much use in Linux 3 years ago. Nor around '93, when I first tried it. And I still can't.

    And yes, I've tried. Had several versions of SuSE, RedHat and Mandrake installed so far.

    Invariably, same issue: either it does not run the stuff I want to run, or the effort involved is completely disproportionate, compared to just booting up Windows. (No, recompiling half the libraries on the system, plus X and several kernel modules, just to get WineX to run... does _not_ qualify as "ready for the desktop.")

    People should be able to choose the OS that fits them, even if nobody else "cares about it".

    Fine by me. I'm not going to try to stop you from running anything you wish. For all I care, install GEM. Or Coherent. Or OS/2. (Now that was a good OS.) Or yeah, BeOS.

    Still doesn't mean I have to take it seriously, though.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  95. But what about BeBox owners? by torpor · · Score: 1

    Anyone know what the absolutely latest and greatest BeOS version for us humble BeBox owners is?

    I've gotta get my machine back up and running (it was raped for ram and video years ago...) but when I do, I want to run the best OS I can on it. Any suggestions?

    (Yes, I know about the BeBox-linux project, but are there other interesting things to do with BeBoxen?)

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  96. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's why I run BeOS. Linux, *BSD and Windows don't have the apps that BeOS have.

    Heck Linux doesn't even have full drag'n'drop.

  97. BeOS isn't FreeBSD?!?!?!? by duck_prime · · Score: 2, Funny
    It's not FreeBSD.
    Does that mean it's not dying?
    1. Re:BeOS isn't FreeBSD?!?!?!? by ConsumedByTV · · Score: 2, Informative

      No no, dying is before it's dead.

      Be INC. killed the BeOS.

      Be is dead, so is the BeOS.

      Which sucks because I have a fucking BeBox sitting in my closet.

      --


      "Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
  98. ahh yes by comet69 · · Score: 1

    beos is quite a fun little OS if you ask me.. i'm one of those kind of people that enjoy trying out as many different possibilities for computing as possible.. which includes experimenting with all sorts of OS's.

    i think beos is great for everyday, regular computing.. AIM, E-mail, cd-burning, wordprocessing, IRC, whatever it may be, there's usually a piece of software written for the task you are looking to accomplish.. of course there arent very many "advanced" apps for all you crazy users out there, but i mean think about what the majority of internet users do when they connect? the basics...

    and what better for those types of people, than a free OS thats easy as hell to install, and is pretty stable?? i'm glad they are still releasing new versions of the max edition.. when

    i like a little change in my computing diet.. i enjoy dual booting linux and BeOS cuz it just gives me the opportunity to have a more dynamic computing experience.. something different.. for basic users..

    --
    - Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
  99. No Multi-User support by Clith · · Score: 1
    Aong with the sucky network stack, the multi-user support was non-existant. By default, all files were owned by the user baron (Baron was the head QA guy at Be, and was also part of a cool little band). If you changed your USER environment variable to fred, all files would magically change to be owned by fred.

    Since there was only one user, there was not a lot of file-level security (they're always all your files). Although having a proprietary kernel was listed as one of BeOS's features, I always considered it to be a detriment. BeFS was cool, and the API being C++-oriented was cool, and ya, low latency was cool. But if the cost was the almost-but-not-quite-POSIX OS, then that's not cool.

    --
    [ReidNews]
  100. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's (IMO) what MacOS X should have been.

    You are really dumb, arent you?

  101. Re:Nobody cares about BeOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Ready for the Desktop" isn't the same as "Ready for the Desktops of Stupid People Only."