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."

Comments

Re:Nobody cares about BeOS

[darien]

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.)

BeOS

[VAXGeek]

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.

Re:BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:BeOS

[FrankNputer]

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.

Re:BeOS

[EverDense]

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?

BeOS

[pagercam2]

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?

Just curious, but

[stratjakt]

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?

Support for modern hardware yet?

[poopie]

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?

For those that missed the story few weeks ago...

[babbage]

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*