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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."
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).
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.)
Good Lord! There should seriously be a disclaimer attatched to the link to BeOS Max Edition website.
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
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.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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?
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."
Hate me!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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).
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
So what if nobody cares about it right now?
;)). People should be able to choose the OS that fits them, even if nobody else "cares about it". One size does not fit all.
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
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.
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.