Interview with OpenBeOS Leader Michael Phipps

Gentu writes "Koki from the japanese site jpbe recently interviewed Michael Phipps, the project leader of OpenBeOS, the open source re-implementation of the BeOS. Read here for the english version of the interview where Michael is discussing the roots of the project, the current status, the roadmap, the choice of the MIT license, its relationship to YellowTAB's Zeta and the other efforts to resurrect BeOS, BeUnited and the Sun Java port and more."

Comments

Great!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Where can I pre-order an OpenBeBox?

Re:Great!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Redundant? It's one of the first 20 comments, I believe. No one even knows what a Bebox is, in all likelyhood. No other trolls can even manage the level of technically correct trollery that I can whip out in a microsecond!

I demand you re-moderate this as the troll (or possibly flamebait) that it is.

Oh, and just in case anyone has a bebox they'd like to find a good home for, please consider me for the role of caretaker. I refuse to try BeOS until I can run it on the real hardware...

Re:Spot the trend

[AntiOrganic]

At the very least, the Linux desktop movement can learn from BeOS's legendary responsiveness. Kernel 2.6.0 is a good step in the right direction, but GTK+ still just feels painfully slow.

Niche markets (Re:Spot the trend)

[tronicum]

These "niche markets" are pretty big IMHO. Think about all these cash boxes at bars. They price about 5000 US$/EURO. They have an touch screen, a auth method (sticks, magnetic stuff etc.) and a small printer.

Image all those webpads or Tablet PCs and arrange a setup of those components (TC 1000 or a cheap webpad) it will cost about 2000$/EURO, put a Open Source OS and a Point-of-Sale software on it and safe money

I think all embedded solutions with OSS have a big potential.

Re:Niche markets (Re:Spot the trend)

[AndroidCat]

The price of that small printer will probably make your hair stand on end. :^)

For the rest of it, you're comparing the price of all the parts with the price of a completed (and hopefully supported) unit. Being able to remove the cost of the OS from the price is nice, but a small part the total

really a shame they're so stubborn

[jbellis]

about not using linux or a bsd kernel. then they'd get all the drivers for free that those projects have... think anyone's going to bother writing drivers for ANOTHER kernel with a fraction of the mindshare? dream on.

He even says in the interview that the kernel is one of the 2 areas most in need of development help. Wake up! ... :(

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[squiggleslash]

A good, FOSS, real-time microkernel kernel would be a very good contribution to free and open source software.

Driver support shouldn't be that much of an issue - the beauty of Linux and the *BSDs is that if they have a driver and your GPL'd OS doesn't, you can take it. It's just a matter of finding a programmer with some spare time.

IIRC, Sun even has a set of libraries for Solaris to make it easy for someone to recompile a Linux driver for certain types of device to run under Solaris. Created much controversy when it first came out because SunOS isn't GPL'd, until someone realised that this would only ever get used by vendors of equipment (who'd written their own Linux drivers and thus own the copyrights) and end-users (who do not need to worry about relicensing GPL'd code as they, by definition ("end-users"), will not be releasing it to third parties.)

I'd have thought the OpenBeOS people could do something similar.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[the uNF cola]

Which BSD kernel. Last I checked, they all don't interpolate with each other and you need to make sure the drivers work for each instance.

'sides, if they are smart enough to write an OS, i'm sure they are smart enough to target an OS like freebsd or netbsd, or even linux, and port the drivers over.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[BasilBrush]

It's horses for courses. As the article says, Linux was designed for server use, and the BeOS for desktop use. The BeOS had a special feel to it, as the most responsive and multimedia capable OS of it's time. It was designed to handle large numbers of tiny threads and fibers well. Sure you mould a BEOS lookalike system around a Linux Kernel, but it doesn't mean it would feel like BEOS.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah gee, I guess they wanted to duplicate BeOS rather than making a Linux or a BSD, because thats what you'd have if you took the Linux kernel or the BSD kernel. Imagine that, an OS development team with a goal of producing an open clone of BeOS, choosing to produce an open clone of BeOS instead of Yet Another BSD. What ever is the world coming to?

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

And then we'd have just another generic distro of *nix. BeOS is different, and proud to be so, to dilute the concept by using "another *nix kernel" would be to defeat the whole purpose.

I for one am very glad they don't, I really don't like *nix (or MS for that matter, but that's another topic altogether)

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[starseeker]

"A good, FOSS, real-time microkernel kernel would be a very good contribution to free and open source software."

Well, I don't know if it's realtime, but you might find this interesting:
http://l4ka.org/projects/pistachio/

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC a lot of drivers are in userland so lots of drivers are open source. Just take a gander over to BeBits.com. Many drivers are opensource, probably taken from linux. And let me remind you, BeOS had official nVidia drivers before *BSD ever had

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[CoolVibe]

A good, FOSS, real-time microkernel kernel would be a very good contribution to free and open source software.

I'd rather see a unified and open driver interface that multiple operating systems and architectures could use without the porting. Then you'd only have to implement the interface, and just nick the drivers from somewhere else.

(oh, OT: yeah my website is down for the moment. Working on it)

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[AxelTorvalds]

You want to hear my BeOS experience? I thought it might be a fun niche. I forked out the cash, I bought the OS, bought the metrowerks dev kit, bought the books. Opened up and I was amped. It was a fun toy. I joined the dev program. 6+ years ago MW and Be were promisng a java port, I thought that would be nice and make this legitimate. Never happened. Then they killed the MW deal and completely shifted to gcc, which is cool, it just cost me $200+. At least I didn't buy in to the PowerPC idea...

The whole time, being a Linux user and developer, I was talking about opensourcing this and that, there was so much opensource in BeOS to begin with, why not take the bull by the horns. Be used Linux as a host platform to develop beos. Be used GCC. Be carped driver designs, and an OS platform from GPL libre software. Nothing ever happened. I even wrote to the company and explained it, the response is that we don't want to help linux, we want to be Be. Now the community is doing this and they are still against Linux; their FAQ even mentions that OpenBeos on linux would be an extension to linux and that is somehow a bad thing.

Long story short, I've got no sour grapes, I don't care about the money, time, effort or anything else, I think some of the ideas behind beos are cool. What chaps me is the unwillingness to play ball and the simple lack of a techincal explanation as to what Linux or BSD kernels (which ones did you look at?) doesn't do that the be kernel needs. Are we talking new APIs? Are talking messaging queues? Latency isn't there (I call bullshit on this one, especially with 2.4 and now 2.6) what exactly is it? In the interview he even says outright that he hasn't gone very deep, pretty much just dismissed it.

Be's problem as a company and a community has always been lot's of talk with no beef and some awful fear of playing with others. "Pervasive threading this," "media OS that" what does that mean? Why is it good? You'll never get an answer with numbers, at best "it feels" will be said. Further, in specifics, what is it that you need the linux kernel to do and why is it easier to start from scratch rather than fix linux to do that? Even if it isn't rolled into mainline, look at ucLinux, rtLinux, and other "forks." I'm simply asking as an engineer, which problem space is bigger? Again, I wish them well and have no real sour grapes other than I really want a project like this to succeed and from the information presented to me from them they aren't making good engineering decisions and aren't making a plan for success. If it's simply an experiment and they want to do it all then say that, but they aren't saying that and that makes me think they either don't know or it's some cultural flaw and either way I don't think it is a good thing for their success.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[ShadowRage]

well, linux and bsd might be excellent, and have great kernels, but if you've ever seen beos in action, it can put them to shame.

the original beos had excellent multitasking and multithreading support (you could run 20 mpeg movies at once.. and 50 mp3's... and there wouldnt be system lag.. at ALL.)

this is what these guys are trying to re-implement, and the last thing we need is yet another linux or bsd based system
the point of opensource is to be innovative. not to copy and work off someone else's technology without improving apon it.

create something new, exciting, bold, etc and you have something real there.

sure, I might be working on my own linux distro, but it's dedicated to older machines people wouldnt touch with a 10 foot long pole. but the fact remains, to sit there and roast them because they arent using a common kernel, is defeating the purpose.
I dont see linux torvalds sitting back and telling them to use his kernel. because hell, I know linux would be like "good luck on something new"
at least they're doing something unique and nonstandard.
if no one decided to push forward in computers, we'd prolly would be sitting at vt100 terminals still.
I say, let them go for it. they wanna use their own kernel, let them.
if I were making a real time desktop system, I wouldnt use linux for that. I'd use linux for a server and possibly a desktop as well.

OpenBeOS might be new competition for linux in the future.

never close your mind, always keep it open

and heck, I do love linux, it's prolly one of the best systems ever. in my opinion. however, from what I've seen in beos.. I say the linux kernel devs need to start implementing more features like that.. sure, there might be pre-emptive kernel features, but what about true multi-threading and multitasking.
This is also almost the scenario with linus and linux back when he started writing it, he got shit from minix devs and others who said he should just stop, and the monolithic kernel is dead, etc and just port an already existing kernel, etc.. well, he got help and now we have linux. end of story.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[kokito]

Perhaps this may give you a hint?

# Quote from Ximian's Robert Love interview on OSNews.com (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5459)

OsNews: Where would you like to see kernel 2.8 or 3.0 to go towards? Are there plans to implement a "visual" method and help users install easily third party drivers, like nvidia's or winmodem drivers instead of using the command line to achieve this?

Robert Love: There is definitely no plans to make binary drivers happier. Linus has made it clear: he and many other kernel hackers just do not care about them. I don't mind that, either!

***

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[the_2nd_coming]

read the damn article. at the time, Linux was not up to snuff, and BSD was not high enough performance wise on the desktop. they are to far along on their new kernel and at this point, having developed their own kernel will make the system work better together.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO and Intel created such a thing, called UDI, but it was rejected by Linus.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[AxelTorvalds]

Hmm? I don't understand what you're trying to say? The lack of binary drivers is the problem?

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[zymano]

scitech website.

maybe you read the news also.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[JoshRoss]

I wonder how real-time is HURD? It just needs a good MIDI server and the pocket book of IBM.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[Khazunga]

I think you are confusing the kernel with the distro. There's not much in the linux kernel that makes it usable only in Unix boxes -- apart from single-rooted filesystem and the concept of 'everything is a file', I can't remember much else. It'd probably be easier to use Linux/*BSD underneath a masquerading layer to change unwanted behaviours.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[shaitand]

Yes it's true, BeOS traded off REAL performance (as in operations actually completing faster) for responsiveness.

So that the system feels faster. Which is when you think about it perfect for a desktop user since they rarely actually need any true performance. The mouse was responsive, things appear on the screen in a blink... to a desktop user that's heaven, even if it takes 4hrs on to apply a basic gaussen blur to an image in photoshop on a 3ghz processor with a gig of ram.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[be-fan]

It was designed to handle large numbers of tiny threads and fibers well.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>&gt ;
No, it wasn't. BeOS didn't have fibers at all (fibers are lightweight user-scheduled threads on NT), and its scheduler started choking at around 400 threads on a 300MHz PII. What made BeOS feel fast was:

1) A preemptible, low-latency kernel, which Linux has now,
2) A scheduler that was really good at seperating interactive from non-interactive processes, which Linux is getting towards with O(1) and Con Colvias's work,
3) A GUI API that basically forced you to seperate GUI threads from computation threads.

The third one caused a lot of problems for developers, and made it hard to code really large applications and port foreign applications, so it probably wasn't a practical idea.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[squiggleslash]

In theory this is what BIOS (originally a CP/M specification) and OpenBoot/OpenFirmware were designed to do. The usual problem is that different operating systems tend to have different requirements (for example, a realtime OS will want the drivers to do things that a non-realtime OS will not care about, and a microkernel OS will want to impose strict limits on a driver's use of memory, much to the chagrin of a monolythic advocate who wants as much speed-efficiency as possible), and new types of hardware, of course, complicates the mix.

It's a nice idea, but I suspect something informal that different OS writers can work from is going to be easier in the long run. I have heard of people finding ways to wrap Windows drivers for some devices... I hope that never becomes "the" standard!

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[no reason to be here]

One place where BeOS was beginning to see some success (before the fscking "focus shift") was as the OS behind dedicated audio devices. iZ used beos as the OS for their Radar 24 hard disk recording station, and Tascam used BeOS as the core of a couple of devices that they released. Mr. Phipps and company are hoping that openBeOS might be able to pick up where the BeOS left off in those markets. the inability to have binary drivers could turn off some of those companies from using a particular OS; furthermore, those companies might want to be able to make hardware specific changes to the kernel without having to sacrifice any information about their "trade secrets." As such, a non-GPL'd kernel would be better, from those companies' point of view. This doesn't explain why they don't use a bsd kernel (my guess is that it simply hasn't been developped in the way that they would like), but it does show why they wouldn't want to use the linux kernel.

As far as the comment from the FAQs on the openbeos site, I agree. Using linux doesn't recreate BeOS, which is what the project is aiming to do, but rather extends linux. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't the goal of the project. the goal of the project is to recreate beos.

Also, Be, Inc. did start to open source some of the OS (OpenTracker and OpenDeskbar), and, according to an interview I read with a former Be engineer (I'm sorry, I can't recall his name) Be had plans to free more of the code, but found themselves in such a bad situation financially that they never had the chance to spend any time or money on opening any more of the code base.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[UnixRevolution]

also such a shame Ferrari is so adamant about not building 4-cylinder engines for their cars. Think anyone's going to bother making parts for a car with a fraction of the market share? dream on!

The Kernel is what makes BeOS behave like BeOS. If you use a Linux kernel on it, it'll just be a different skin for Linux.

Re:really a shame they're so stubborn

[kokito]

BeOS is easy on the user in every aspect: installation, configuration, expansion, user interface, responsiveness, you name it. Admittedly, Linux desktop distributions have made strides in the right direction, but overall, BeOS still offers the best user experience on the desktop (this is my opinion, of course).

To me, and I am sure that many average desktop OS users would agree, being able to install new drivers with ease is part of that user experience. That Linus or kernel hackers do not care about making installation of third party drivers easier may be fine for them, but it does tell how little importance they place on the user experience.

Most users are not hackers, nor do they have the skills (or want) to configure their operating system using cryptic commands from a terminal window or editing obscure text files.

I think that BeOS fans and developers in general believe that the average desktop user deserves better. Many contribute and support the OBOS project because they think that even after more than two years of Be Inc. being defunct, OpenBeOS and the other BeOS incarnations (like Zeta) still have a very good shot at serving desktop users better than other operating systems (including Linux with the 2.6 kernel), as well as evolving into the future.

I guess this is the point that I was trying to make.

Koki

BeGone

[segment]

Ok not to sound mean but aside from niche markets why would someone want to take BeOS serious, and I'm asking this as if I were a CTO'ish person. For one, with all the garbage being funneled into things *Open Source* by companies like SC(um)O and Mickeysoft, the entire *Open* anything is something I would (if I were purhasing) stay away from until the smoke clears.

Now I'm not saying BeOS is garbage in fact I have an older cd lying around somewhere, and it's pretty neat, but why (aside from geekiness) would I want to look to BeOS when there is so much confusion going on as is in the Open Source community for one, secondly it would have to mean I would have to take a backseat and chop up tons of code to get other programs I use frequently -- that are ported to other implementations of *nix (bsd/linux) -- to work on the BeOS machine. Meaning, if I downloaded just about any distro of BSD or Linux, I am almost certain I could get most 3rd party packages/ports to work, in BeOS (and yes I am assuming here) it's more than likely I would either have to wait or redo some code, so its not an option for me since I have no time.

Really I think its nice but nothing more than a hobby, I wish more developers however would come together under one roof and make he all-in-one super-ninja-hop-chop-socky OS without one having to wonder if a) there is support, b) it's cross `distro-able`/`platform-able`, etc.

My rants for the day fire away

Re:BeGone

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic advantage of BeOS is that it's modern. It's designed with current computing principles. Windows and the UNIXes are all based on old cludge.

Re:BeGone

[bluFox]

[I wish more developers however would come together under one roof
and make he all-in-one super-ninja-hop-chop-socky OS]

According to what standards ? or better whose standards?
Do you honestly think that all the needs of the diverse environments can be filled by a single os? Think of the difference between the server , desktop and mainframe,

Second, is the cross-distro-platform thing desirable always? doesn't it also mean that you get the denominator of all but not the 100% for the particular platform?

Third, what happens when the super-ninja approach is proved wrong, or when it hits a wall (where radical innovation is no more possible or is painful) as it seems to be happening in X servers
surely it is better to have on of the alternatives at hand (that may not have the limitations) than having to invent something from the scratch

Re:BeGone

[c.emmertfoster]

Here, here!

If Windows and the UNIXes are to survive at all, it will be among OS dilettante dabblers.

Re:Please give us Firebird first

[Anonymous Coward]

copied and pasted off some posts in this thread, they didn't even bother changing the title (firebird), mod down.

time ?

[selderrr]

while I applaud the efforts to re-write beos, I wonder where these guys find the time to do so ! And even more : the funding, as I assume they still need $ to feed their families.

I've done some small-scale OS projects, and even those took a serious bite out of my spare time, up to a level where I was getting sloppy in my day-time job... I could not, in any way, manage such a huge project unless some company paid me for it. (and even then i'd probably wouldn't have the skills, but thats another matter)

Re:time ?

[the_2nd_coming]

they all have day jobs.

Re:Please give us Firebird first

[aaronvegh]

Mod parent -1 Troll!

This is not a development effort of "just because I want to". A new OS that is open source increases the size of our OS ecosystem...this is one of the greatest threats that Linux poses against MS. Linux today enjoys widespread support, but having more choices out there is a very good thing. Who can say what the OS landscape will look like in 5-10 years? Think back even five years and you'll see what I mean!

As a supposed Linux user, would you then bash OBOS because it wasn't Linux? That's hypocritical at best, and spiteful at worst.

Re:Please give us Firebird first

[Bo Diddly Squat]

You mean: "Who cares about this open source project I don't like. How about working on a project I do like ?"

That's the fun with hobby projects. Programmers work in their spare time on what they like and see as worth doing.

I like BeOS and I help out with an open source project for it. Would I work on another project that you think requires more support ? Only if it's fun. It's my free time and I don't get paid for it, after all.

Can't they see...

[bjarvis354]

that OpenOS/2 is where its at?!

Re:Can't they see...

[Tumbleweed]

Good joke, but it really makes me pine for an Open WPS. WPS was one sweet desktop.

Re:Please give us Firebird first

[smittyoneeach]

The dimensions of the "Who cares..." question include, but are not limited to:

license

language

audience

scope

For a fact, if all of the Open Source intellect converged on a One True (Relatively Small Set Of) Answer(s) to the above bullets, it would arguable be a Good Thing, but figure the odds.

Re:Please give us Firebird first

[BasilBrush]

What's the betting the AC has never contributed to any open source project? For that matter, neither have, but I don't bitch about what other people want to spend their spare time on.

"just a matter of time"

[jbellis]

you don't get it, do you? even after I spelled out for you that they _already_ don't have enough developer time on the kernel.

even on large projects, developer time is a finite resource. much more so for marginal projects like this one.

Re:"just a matter of time"

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean by "not enough" ? Do they have a deadline they have to meet ?

Re:"just a matter of time"

[squiggleslash]

Not enough time? They have all the time in the world.

You're telling them and us that there is no value in them producing a non-Linux/non-BSD kernel and therefore, to get there quicker, they should use Linux or BSD. I'm telling you that there is value, and therefore they're justified in taking the extra time to do it.

And I'm pretty certain they'd consider it a trade-off that's not only valuable, but absolutely necessary to produce an OS that works the way they want it to. Linux is not the greatest kernel ever written. It's not the solution to every problem.

And, of course, there's Syllable, which works the way you want it to (a BeOS-like user-land on top of a Linux kernel.) So it's not as if OpenBeOS is preventing you from getting the OS you want.

So, in the nicest possible way, mind your own business! And my best wishes to the OpenBeOS people, I really hope something comes out of this project.

Re:"just a matter of time"

[xScruffx]

And, of course, there's Syllable, which works the way you want it to (a BeOS-like user-land on top of a Linux kernel.) So it's not as if OpenBeOS is preventing you from getting the OS you want.

Well, not exactly. If memory serves, Syllable is an actual fork of Atheos. Perhaps you're thinking of Cosmoe.

xScruffx

Re:"just a matter of time"

[squiggleslash]

D'oh! Yep, I meant Cosmoe.

Waste of Time?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may consider it a waste of time but I assume those involved in the project don't. For example, do you consider watching a movie a complete waste of time, how about playing a board game or D&D, what about any sort of hobby you may have that really benifits no one but yourself. How about art -- maybe that doodle you did that no one else will see. Is all of this a complete "waste of time" ? If it is so what, they are doing something they enjoy for whatever reason.

No they are not required to contribute to a project that you view as more important, nor are they required to not "waste" their time. So piss off and let them have fun, hell others may benifit at the same time even if you don't see it.

Advantages?

[spectrokid]

Sure BEOS has some neat tricks (don't they all?). But what features does it have that are (as good as) impossible to port to Linux?

Re:Advantages?

[renoX]

>What features does it have that are (as good as) impossible to port to Linux?

I don't know if those feature are impossible to port on Linux, but so far they haven't been replicated on Linux:
1) fast boot time: BeOS booted to the GUI on ~10s (to a usable GUI! Not like WinXP..), on Linux it take far longer, booting the kernel is slow, and KDE is quite slow to start too.
Usually, after this, someone remarks that with Linux, you don't have to stop your computer, true, but my computer is very noisy and I like to sleep at nights!
So fast boot time is quite interesting for desktop users, and no LinuxBiOS or equivalent doesn't count :BeOS used the standard BiOS..

2) responsiveness: BeOS apps felt very responsive, you were never "blocked", I think that the extensive usage of thread in the apps was the reason.
As a counter-example, there is Mozilla: if it doesn't manage to reach a server for a new page, the whole window can become freezed, in a responsive application, I should be able to continue browsing with the other tabs..

Unfortunately I don't really think it was a BeOS kernel thing, otherwise it would be easy to replicate, I suspect that BeOS guidelines for programming apps were pushing the usage of thread which explains the smooth end-user experience..
And changing the design of Linux applications to become smooth will take a looonnng time, if ever.

Oh and I'm not trolling against Linux, I just explain what my end-user experience of BeOS was: much better than any Linux so far, but with too few apps!!!
All BeOS technical prowess meant nothing as there were far too few apps.. :-(

Re:Advantages?

[Anonymous Coward]

I generally agree, but I guess the question is whether it's better to clean up Linux with their own custom distro or to do everything from scratch to address what I see as fixable problems.

There are some distros that spend years cleaning up KDE2 for home users, and there's enough space in Linux for them to release a distro the way they want.

I think BlueEyedOS has more a chance.

Re:Advantages?

[LurkerXXX]

How about it's API? BeOS was described by most programmers as a 'joy' to program in, compared to other OS's, Linux included. The API made it fun and easy, like play.

Re:Advantages?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that every letter in "BIOS" is significant don't you?

Re:When will it be available for the new Amiga?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, all C1581's are already sold, sucker! Get the C1541-II instead, like everyone..

Re:Spot the trend

[c.emmertfoster]

AmigaOS and BeOS, both great OS's but dead in the real world and finding niche markets or just fanboys.

Well, I won't be convinced until I see the Netcraft results to prove it. I'm no Kreskin.

Re:Spot the trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Kernel 2.6.0 is a good step in the right direction, but GTK+ still just feels painfully slow.

Use KDE, then. That's the beauty of Linux.

Re:Please give us Firebird first

[Anonymous Coward]

compiling kernels, module code etc.. just to get a piece of hardware going is stone age technology.

And the only Linux distro I can think of, apart from "Linux from scratch", that ever requires you to compile anything at any point, is Gentoo - which automates the process. Please leave the straw man arguments out of this.

My life is too short...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for RTFA.

BeOS? What a waste, what a pity. Why do people not port their projects to Unix (clones). BeOS was in many ways a Unix clone, so it shouldn't be too difficult for the most projects to port.

I mean, come on, everyone loves to get feedback. And I think a good BeOS project will get much more feedback after it has been ported to Linux.

Feedback equals motivation and that is probably the problem with openBeOS. It will never get the feedback to motivate it's developers enough to get it done. Every BeOS project owner waiting for a fortune will get demotivated sooner or later. What a pity.

Re:My life is too short...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more feedback available than others' opinions and money. Try using a piece of technical wizardry that you created.

I'd have to say that any programmer who puts more stock in others' opinions than in excellence will go the way of Microsoft. Sure, you'd get fame and fortune, but your products would suck.

I personally loved BeOS's unannoying behavior. I didn't have to spend hours of frustrating effort to get a GUI running like I seem to have to do with Linux and X. I didn't have to read 50 man entries or search through Google results with low signal-to-noise ratios or be thought of as a lazy idiot for asking questions on IRC or in a newsgroup just to learn the most basic factoid. I could have fun with it, get work done, and then learn the arcane commands at my own pace whenever I wanted to. If your life is too short not to get fame and fortune, mine is too short to deal with the frustration.

YEAH, RIGHT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make sure you open your fucking mouth when your head penetrates my asshole.

Re:Isn't this stupid ?

[torpor]

You're stupid. BeOS, failed? As if one failure is a reason to stop doing something...

OpenBe is wonderful. Having numerous OS choices to select from is wonderful. Cheers to everyone who wants to and does make their own Operating System ...

Having all these OS's around will serve one purpose: it'll devaluate the OS market. Good.

That needs to happen.

Age of Spiritual Machines

[bstadil]

You make an excellent point. Assuming some Darwinian development pressures at play on Operation Systems, we need a high degree of Chaos or Entropy in the system in order to have rapid development.

In Kurzweils excellent book Age of Spiritual Machines he is referencing some computer experiments on developments of Artificial "Lifeforms".

One of the unexpected things the researchers found (can't remember who it was) was that increasing the "Mutation rate" was not enough. You needed a complex and rapid changing Ecosystem.

OS's that finds it way into new application areas provides presicely such an Ecosystem that the dominant OS might later adapt to.

As an axample we can look at embedded devices. The pressure from Symbian in the Smartphone market causes Linux and Windows for that matter to change and adapt. The adaption does not need to be Monolithic as is the case with Windows but an OS bifurcation is fine and actually more akin to the real world evolution. In that sense OpenBeOS can be a real plus to everyone. User or not

Well, Your point is well taken

By the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still love you.

Please go out with me? We can skip the dating service...

Unresolved issues

[base_chakra]

BeOS news always generates the same responses: it's unnecessary, it's unteneble, it falls short of expectations, etc. BeOS seems to receive more criticism than most other underdog OS's because--to some minds--its irrelevance has already been "proven" by Be, Inc's failure, while most others have still to define their niche--or are still too immature even to fail to compete.

At this point I don't know whether I consider BeOS to be worth defending. I guess it comes down to these questions: is BeOS fundamentally a more efficient platform for multimedia development? Is Linux architecture so different as to be incapable of matching BeOS performance in regards to MIDI performance, audio processing, nonlinear video editing, or 3D development? Is the performance gap substantial?

Even if the answer to all of these questions is "yes," surely it is not so when comparing 64-bit Linux to the BeOS (with the exception of MIDI performance). And if 32-bit Open BeOS is so difficult to realize, then how much moreso for a 64-bit BeOS?

BeOS has a potential market in that there is no other "multimedia OS" as defined by Be, and for that reason there are hangers-on. Sadly, the implications brought up in previous BeOS discussions suggest that BeOS itself fails as a multimedia OS. If anyone has any encouraging counterpoints, please share.

Re:Unresolved issues

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a straw man argument. All you do is look at one aspect of BeOS's appeal: multimedia performance.

Ease of use was another major factor. Linux is nowhere near the ease-of-use of BeOS, especially when you have to fix a system problem before you can get work done.

Re:Unresolved issues

[unixbob]

Actually I think the most criticized OS on /. is BSD. I've yet to see a BSD story posted in the last 12 months without numerous trolls about BSD being dead.

With the increase in corporate interest in many open source projects, I think sometimes people miss the point about OSS. To qoute your post:

I guess it comes down to these questions: is BeOS fundamentally a more efficient platform for multimedia development? Is Linux architecture so different as to be incapable of matching BeOS performance in regards to MIDI performance, audio processing, nonlinear video editing, or 3D development? Is the performance gap substantial?

I've read the interview with Micheal Phillips and his comments seem to say that there is a way of doing things which the original BeOS did, which Linux doesn't / can't do. So from a technical standpoint he and other open source developers are trying to implement an idea and way of doing things. Linux and BSD didn't do things the way they wanted it doing. So they took it uppon themselves to implement something which they feel is better.

With it being open source, and therefore something they do in their spare time for enjoyment, I don't see that market forces come into it. Linux started gaining market share due to the quality of the product. Perhaps in a few years if OpenBEOS is so revolutionary and amazing then the same may happen. Or if it becomes a popular desktop for geeks and developers then is that really so bad?

Re:Unresolved issues

[base_chakra]

I can certainly see where you and Phipps are coming from. To address your points: I find it easy to ignore the 'BSD is dead' blather because the trolls are just that: trolls. The claim is sufficiently unrealistic as to be inconsequential and ignorable in this forum. However, I find that many of the criticisms of BeOS are valid enough to be worth addressing. I don't argue for or against the BeOS, I just see a need to resolve some outstanding issues.

I've read the interview with Michael Phipps, and I can relate to his view of BeOS as an evolution of AmigaOS. Perhaps the fact that OpenBeOS runs on the M68030 and other non-x86 hardware is itself justification enough for the OBOS project. I can also sympathize with the desire to resurrect the spirit of AmigaOS in OpenBeOS. The OBOS team has a passion for a computing experience that transcends utilitarianism, and I respect that.

Years ago, Jean-Louis Gassee wrote about his motivation for creating the BeOS, and although it's not entirely different from Phipps', it's clear that they have some pretty different ideas of what the BeOS is about. Most notably, Phipps seems to be unconcerned (in the interview) with perpetuating BeOS's former identity as a media OS.

I've chosen to adhere to its "media OS" definition for a very important reason: if no one makes this distinction, then it's unclear whether we're discussing the need for BeOS as a media-oriented operating system, or the relevance of a BeOS-compatible operating system.

The various BeOS resurrection projects have different ideas about this, but imho the attempt at optimized multimedia performance was BeOS's most defining characteristic. As it stands, OpenBeOS appears to be destined for other things.

I would but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I'm on UserLinux.

Re:Isn't this stupid ?

[teamhasnoi]

If you mean saturated as: Microsoft used monopoly power to stop the distribution of BeOS on new machines, I agree.

Be was not immune from making mistakes - their 'focus shift' to an embedded OS cost them their company.

If OpenBeOS focuses on being the happy medium between Linux and Windows, I can see it making great strides.

If Linux could get the raw speed and a consistent GUI interface that BeOS has, I could see it being a waste of time. I don't think that's going to happen. Linux and its GUIs are trying to be all things to all people.

It's not about choice in this case - it's about one thing that works (ala the ideas behind UserLinux, OS X)

OpenBeOS will be fine if they focus on the desktop, and the things that BeOS (was) good at: Audio and Video. It might be a bit vertical, but that didn't stop Linux/BSD from taking over the server market.

I look forward to the release of OpenBeOS (you can read my first Journal entry for a clue as to why).

You can keep in mind that this is the first release - the goals for this release are to recreate BeOS with binary compatabillity. Ideas for R2 are already out there and RFCs are being worked on.

I predict that we'll see some great things from OpenBeos and it's kin. Its a matter of waiting, contributing and helping where one can. Like any other Open Source project.

Your group-think is to narrow...

[ErnstKompressor]

"Why do people not port their projects -- BeOS -- to Unix (clones)"

Because it wouldn't be "BeOS" then?

"Every BeOS project owner waiting for a fortune will get demotivated sooner or later."

Maybe there are more important things then 'fortunes' that motivate people...

Re:Your group-think is to narrow...

[ortcutt]

> Because it wouldn't be "BeOS" then? Wouldn't be BeOS in what way? Are you saying that it wouldn't perform the same way, or are you making some other claim? If it performs the same way, why would anyone care whether the kernel is Linux or something else. I don't understand why people talk about this is mystical quasi-religious terms. It's a practical decision. Use what works. OpenBeOS with a linux or BSD kernel would have stable, developing hardware support. It seems like the decision to _not_ use a mainstream kernel is the real groupthink.

HAVEN'T WE MET BEFORE ???

[Anonymous Coward]

OS "ecosystem"? WTF?

[RLiegh]

The point of computing is to solve problems, once your problem is solved move on.

This whole "re-inventing the wheel" NIMBY bullshit is why Free Software is a huge joke in the corporate world.

Re:OS "ecosystem"? WTF?

[bstadil]

The point of computing is to solve problems, once your problem is solved move on.

Even if I agreed with you, which I do not, you are wrong even on your own premisses.

Problems can be solved in two ways. A point solution and a general solution.

Point solutions as you advocate tend to created further problems down the line so they are sub-optimal when looked at in a larger context.

Since you seem to value the Eco-system comparison, your suggested point solution is like the Koala Bear only being able to eat Eucalyptus leaves.

Not a good idea when the eucalyptus plant is disappearing. Compare this to a Rat that eats anything. FOOS development process secures that mostly Rats is being created not pretty and cuddly proprietary Koalas.

Re:OS "ecosystem"? WTF?

[ReallyQuietGuy]

once your problem is solved move on

what makes you think the problem is "solved"?

has any OS achieved perfection?

Re:OS "ecosystem"? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust me, there's no shortage of Eucalyptus.....

Re:OS "ecosystem"? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:OS "ecosystem"? WTF?

[peaworth]

I must say that "re-inventing the wheel" runs rampant in nearly every company that I have contracted to or worked for as an employee. Wheels are often re-invented within the same company multiple times. So, if the corporate world *does* in fact think that Free Software is a huge joke because of that, then they can't see their own nose in front of their face.

BTW, I am assuming that you meant
NIH (not invented here) rather than
NIMBY (not in my back yard).

intolerance of other poeples business

[Selecter]

It seems to be a /. point of view that anything outside of the Linux arena is a waste of time in some manner. If these folks want to try to revive BeOS, what business is it of yours, and why go on about it? There's 3 things BeOS had going for it - lighting fast GUI responsiveness, excellent handling of both audio and video media, and a way before it's time journaling FS that allowed you to yank the AC plug out of the wall with no data corruption. I daresay only one of these has been implemented on *nix ( the FS ) and the other two are still MIA. Until you open source guys get linux up to the same speed in the other 2 areas that they are concerned with, dont bother asking why they are working on OpenBeOS. They are doing it becuase even after 5 years not one operating system made compares in those 2 areas. And in general, pissing on other peoples parades shows insecurity about what you are doing. Let em alone.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these people even think that Linux developments are a waste of time.

Linux gets some new kick-ass threading? WAH, it breaks Wine. Bruce Perens is coming out with a new distro? WAA, just use Gentoo. Oracle is making Linux their primary platform? BOOHOO, use mysql. RedHat has a new C++ compiler? MOMMMY, it's not an official release.

Basically you are dealing with the Technology Taliban here. The only stuff that's "good" is Unix and Perl and other "Back To Basics" fundementalist crap that's older than they are. Everything else is "bad" by definition.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[toganet]

Well, "Technology Taliban" might be a little harsh, but you're examples all show the basic insecurity that most people share.

People fear change in general, and when you've invested a lot of time & mental effort in learning a certain OS or language, the threat of having to learn something new, and all the associated stress can cause people to enter whine mode pretty easily.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[shaitand]

If you've used the 2.6.0 kernel you know another one of those things has been knocked out. Without the hacks that rob the system in other areas. You say BeOS was ahead of it's time. I say BeOS used hacks that robbed the system in other respects to make the gui, graphics and video responsive at the expense of slowing everything else. Linux waited and developed this (gui responsiveness) the RIGHT way and is continuing on that road with reworking the gui itself.

Yes linux isn't as fast in terms of audio and video as BeOS still, but it's lightyears ahead of anything else, and unlike BeOS it scales. Would you care to tell SGI your BeOS system thinks it's faster than their 1000+ node linux cluster?

The truth is that linux will continue to evolve until there simply is no way to get more performance in any respect without compromising another aspect of the system. At that point the efficientcy of linux across the board may or may not have compensated for the speed increases BeOS gained at penalty for everything else, but if it hasn't it shouldn't.

Perhaps BeOS will have a place in later days as a specialty system for low end audio and video work, but even so it would advantageous to drop the OS part of the name and make it just Be and sit on top of the linux OS. The Be distribution could use a modified linux kernel with a hacked Scheduler and still be able to take advantage of the enourmous driver base of linux.

The truth is that these guys want Be to be it's own OS and not a modified Linux OS. There is no true reason for this, it boils to simply believing that is the way it should be.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[Anonymous Coward]

I've spent years with the Amiga and BeOS community--supporting the former as part of my job and being a member of the latter--and they are not, nor have they ever been, immune from this behavior.

I understand it's difficult to be kicked when you are down but perhaps they should have thought about that while they were on their way down.

Every OS community has their share of asses including Linux/*BSD. Of course, if the bottom drops out of a FOSS OS, the rest of the community isn't scrambling to re-write things from scratch.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[haggar]

What would you say if I told you that I tried Linux 2.6.0 on the same computere where BeOS is installed, and BeOS still felt much snappier?

And what would you say if I told you that a one-OS-fit-all approach is flawed, and that 1000+ node SGI "cluster" (you got that wrong, SGI isn't into clusters but large NUMA monsters) will not do for a destkop OS any good?

I know, you have your Linux and that must be everbody's pet project, or else... 'cause you only like or/and know Linux. It's hard to understand things outside your limited mind.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[shaitand]

"You got that wrong, SGI isn't into clusters but large NUMA monsters."

Try again:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF- 8&oe=UTF -8&q=SGI+linux+cluster&btnG=Google+Search

"What would you say if I told you that I tried Linux 2.6.0 on the same computere where BeOS is installed, and BeOS still felt much snappier?"

How can you feel snappier than instant response? Unless your test system is under 1ghz or doesn't have much ram (the ram being far more important on a linux system, which won't give a noticably different desktop respone between 500mhz and 1ghz but will dramatically change performance with memory since it doesn't swap if it has enough). I don't have anything beyond 5yrs old to test with.

"And what would you say if I told you that a one-OS-fit-all approach is flawed, and that 1000+ node SGI "cluster" (you got that wrong, SGI isn't into clusters but large NUMA monsters) will not do for a destkop OS any good?"

I really wouldn't pay much attention since your post lacks either basis or relevance on every point.

Your statement (or hypothetical statement the way your phrased it) that a one-OS-fit-all approach is flawed lacks any sort of basis. It's nice to throw pointless generalities out with no basis, would you like to PROVIDE A REASON this is flawed? It's not as if this has some inherent truth when analyzed.

At a glance that sounds reasonable, a multi function printer certainly doesn't work as well as a good external fax modem/printer/scanner individually.

But we aren't talking about that are we? We are talking about the lowest level common api that applications speak to and abracts them from hardware. To make linux a useful Be kernel for instance we can adjust the scheduler to give higher priority to audio and video and or increased hardware interrupts. And still have linux.

Linux is entirely modular, any piece that works contrary to your end can be removed and replaced with a new piece that is custom tuned for the application at hand or simply removed if not needed.

While you could try to apply one size fits all logic to it, it's like trying to claim rubber is flawed as an attempted one size fits all solution for tires. In a very small instance that may be true (tanks are the only thing that come to mind right now, and that isn't a downfall of rubber, it's really that TIRES don't suit tanks). You logic doesn't apply because rubber can be hardened or softened, shaped and customized into a tire which fits the application perfectly. This is especially ideal since there are already common tools and support for working with rubber to make tires. Someday something may come along which is superior to rubber for use in tires, but thus far both rubber and linux have proven to be flexible enough to make ideal tires and abrastration layers between hardware and software.

"that 1000+ node SGI "cluster" (you got that wrong, SGI isn't into clusters but large NUMA monsters) will not do for a destkop OS any good?""

The first I kindly provided a link to a google search of "sgi linux cluster" which should silence you on it. As for the other, this is the irrelevant part. You see that's great and all, aside from being so painfully obvious it's not worth stating, but it also has nothing to do with me stating that such systems provide better HIGH END audio and video capabilities. As for the low end, I refer you back to the post you replied to in which I already covered the subject.

Honestly, are you trolling, karma whoring or what? You grab a few random statements out of my post, take them out of context ignoring everything else I said (I can only presume because you don't have a logical argument against my statement as a whole but disagree despite logic and felt the need to dispute me?). Then for good measure throw in a few grand claims with NO basis or reasoning whatsoever, and another which is simply false.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[BasilBrush]

I used to run Seti@Home on a 400Mhz PII NT machine at work, and a 233Mhz PI Beos machine at home. The lower spec BEOS machine produced about 30% more units over the same time period.That doesn't sound to me like everything was slowed in favour of the GUI.

On the other hand, the GUI was quick. I remember you could lean on Ctrl-N and the computer would create new windows at the keyboard repeat rate. I can't remember if that was in a browser, or in tracker. Possibly both. Try that on your current OS, then remember that this was on a 233MHz PI.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is that these guys want Be to be it's own OS and not a modified Linux OS. There is no true reason for this, it boils to simply believing that is the way it should be.

This cuts more than one way. There is no compellling reason for Linux to exist since everyone could be using *BSD. In fact, the argument could be made that free software would be much further along if Linux wasn't sucking the oxygen out of the room.

The truth is that linux will continue to evolve until there simply is no way to get more performance in any respect without compromising another aspect of the system.

This is nonsense. Engineering is about making trade-offs. People try to shoehorn Linux into everything from watches to mainframes to super clusters to power desktops to embedded devices to PDAs, and more. Linux is trying to be all things to all people. Because of that, Linux will seldom, if ever, be the best for any particular task. Linux isn't the best for everything its used for, and it is unlikely that it ever will be.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[shaitand]

P2's really aren't faster than P1's in fact most P2's use dynamic memory where P1's used significantly faster static EDO memory so your difference wouldn't have suprised me if you were running WinNT on both ;) As I said in another post though, microsoft uses similar hacks (with piss poor implementation, unlike the efficient implementation in BeOS).

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[haggar]

I was wrong about the SGI clusters, and you were right.

I am convinced that there are different OS-es exactly because one can't perform in all the roles efficiently. If I was wrong on this one, today all computers would be running the same identical OS, but they aren't.

I am not karma-whoring, I couldn't care less about Karma. If I wanted to, I'd be praising Linux in all circumstances, as that's what most Slashdot readers and moderators would find appropriate. But I don't think as the majority, but rather as myself, with my own head. That's bad for this kind of "karma" but probably good for the real one.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[shaitand]

You just made my friends list with that post.

"I am convinced that there are different OS-es exactly because one can't perform in all the roles efficiently. If I was wrong on this one, today all computers would be running the same identical OS, but they aren't."

I'd counter that what is and what's best are not always the same thing. Your own logic supports my case better than yours since there are alot more computers currently running linux in all 3 of the major markets than BeOS, including the desktop.

I would also argue that although one size certainly fits all. The linux running on an embedded architecture is not neccesarily the same linux running IBM blue gene, nor is either same as the Linux running on my desktop.

They share common components only where there is not enough gain to justify differing components in the OS. In that way all 3 gain the benefits of joint development where they do share common components but at worst are better off than if they had to develop EVERY component individually.

Re:intolerance of other poeples business

[haggar]

I admit that I am rather amazed that Linux has such a penetration in the embedded devices market. Maybe not by numbers, but certainly it did prove that it's capable to perform well. One thing that it's enabling Linux to run in embedded environments is certainly the high integration of powerful CPU/MCUs and memory, so it's not anymore necessary to use highly specialized OSes.

That said, I would like to remind you that for real-time applications, the Linux kernel has to be compiled with special patches and modules, and is quite substantially different from the kernel in RHEL or the Linux running on the IBM Z series mainframes. So, I think we're in the grey zone here, because it's not evident that these are different or the same OS.

I have never claimed for BeOS to be suitable for anything except desktop and multimedia. I will be the first to admit that it would not be a good file/web server, or even an application server. But BeOS is fantastic at what it was meant to do. I also like a lot the way BeOS configures your hardware. Yes, again, Linux could do that, too, I hear you say, but at the moment, it's just a tad less elegant.

Now, if 2.6.x manages to achieve BeOS' responsiveness towards user and robustness when handling multimedia (+ user doing stuff), then you would/will have won this argument hands down. I propose that we wait and see. It's really a peaceful and reasonable proposition, I think.

Re:Spot the trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully the X development at freedesktop.org will produce a new X that GTK et. al. can work better with.

Re:Isn't this stupid ?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is still a huge market available where OpenBeOS (and similar OS, like Ateos) can succeed. There are a lot of people who want a free os that is not unix.
I do not like unix, even MacOS X is not what I am looking for. The UI is cool and consistent, but as soon you need to something different you got to dig in the unix-style file organizatioin (config files in /etc/* or maybe /usr/share .. or who knows where) and that is mess.

Have you extensively used linux?

[gilesjuk]

Ok, so what happens when you get for example a wireless card that isn't supported by your distro or pretty much any distro? you download driver code and have to compile it of course.

This is not just an example, this is exactly what I have had to do with all the distros I have tried on my laptop.

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[derF024]

Ok, so what happens when you get for example a wireless card that isn't supported by your distro or pretty much any distro? you download driver code and have to compile it of course.

And what happens when you get a wireless card that isn't supported by windows 2000 or XP. (like the wifi card in my thinkpad isn't supported) You have to download the driver, and force it to install, even through windows says that the driver isn't signed and that it doesn't match the hardware. Oh, except that windows doesn't support the intel eepro in the laptop *either* so I need to boot into linux, download the driver and burn it to CD.

Luckily Debian 3.x supports those wifi and ethernet cards out of the box.

In fact, with the exception of the new centrino wifi cards, all currently shipping wifi cards work out of the box in every linux distro i've come across. Of course, windows doesn't support those centrino cards either.

Linux hardware support is excellent (and almost never requires a compiler) compared to the shit that microsoft is shipping.

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[cens0r]

Having an unsigned driver != not supported by windows. All that means is that IBM didn't want to pay microsoft to test their driver.

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[derF024]

Having an unsigned driver != not supported by windows. All that means is that IBM didn't want to pay microsoft to test their driver.

No, I didn't even have drivers for either of the network interfaces until i went online and downloaded them. Of course, with no network access, the only way to do that is to boot into linux and burn those drivers to CD.

No drivers available in the default install == not supported by windows.

Linux supports all my hardware right out of the box, why can't windows?

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[cens0r]

Most likely because windows came out before that piece of hardware. How can they provide you with a driver for a piece of hardware that didn't exist yet? The manufacturer of the product should have provided you the driver at the time of purchase.

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[gilesjuk]

Duuuur use the CD that comes with the card?

Unsigned drivers do work, it's just Microsoft's way of shifting the blame for hardware crashes. Drivers run in kernel mode and a bad driver is the most common cause of a crashing OS.

You are comparing the available hardware support of the Linux kernel with the hardware that is supported on the Windows CD. Considering Windows still comes on one CD (Debian has 3 binary CDs) it has support for quite a lot of hardware.

I can name you at least two pieces of hardware where I have had to use a compiler. Iomega Buz (the version in the kernel is way too old), my Atheros AR5001x Wifi card.

It's almost impossible to have a Linux machine without a compiler setup if you want to use all software available to Linux (no distro has every single piece of GPL software available), or access every single piece of hardware available with a Linux driver (where the driver is outside the kernel).

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[derF024]

Duuuur use the CD that comes with the card?

Most new computers come with windows restore disks (which spew all sorts of nasty software into your system), not with driver disks.

You are comparing the available hardware support of the Linux kernel with the hardware that is supported on the Windows CD. Considering Windows still comes on one CD (Debian has 3 binary CDs) it has support for quite a lot of hardware.

Debian comes on 3 CDs only if you want the 14,000 or so packages that come with debian but don't feel like going on the internet to do it. You can get a full debian install disc (with all the drivers and software you need to get online and grab other software packages) in 40 megs. You can get a system like morphix or [g|k]noppix in 300MB or so which will give you more software then you'd get on your typical windows CD, plus drivers for all the hardware supported under linux.

It's almost impossible to have a Linux machine without a compiler setup if you want to use all software available to Linux (no distro has every single piece of GPL software available), or access every single piece of hardware available with a Linux driver (where the driver is outside the kernel).

I have plenty of machines with no compilers, and they all have access to tons of software via apt-get and alien (for RPMs.) Some obscure software won't be available via apt-get or RPM, as will some non-free drivers, but i've never run across any of these.

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[gilesjuk]

Which is why I asked if you had extensively used Linux. There are a variety of different computer users out there, different software needs running on different hardware. You can't simply assume your own situation applies to every single user.

All drivers for Windows are binary only. You never need access to a compiler, until Linux is in that position (and 2.6 does make that partly possible) it will have limitations.

I run Linux with 2.6 on my main computer and love it, however there are times when I wish I could just run a wizard and install some hardware and not have to mess around with a command line to install some kernel module.

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[derF024]

I run Linux with 2.6 on my main computer and love it, however there are times when I wish I could just run a wizard and install some hardware and not have to mess around with a command line to install some kernel module.

Sounds like you don't have hotplug or discover installed. They do exactly that. No wizard, though; You just plug the hardware in and it works.

Re:Have you extensively used linux?

[gilesjuk]

Oh it works like a treat on this 2.6 machine. But I have run Linux on at least two other machines. One has to run 2.4 to run a wifi driver that won't compile with 2.6.

Re:Spot the trend

[AntiOrganic]

I do, for precisely this reason. ;) However, there are plenty of people who judge the entire speed of desktop Linux off of Gnome and Mozilla.

justify your love

[Tumbleweed]

Why do you NEED a reason OTHER than for sheer geekiness? Be proud of your geekiness. Revel in it! If geekiness is a crime, LET ME BE GUILTY!

Re:Spot the trend

[Tumbleweed]

And why is that an invalid set of criteria? If your apps are slow, the end result is your computer using experience is slow. To a user, it doesn't MATTER where the problem is at.

User: OpenBeOS or the original?

[SharpFang]

I wanted to take a BeOS test drive, and potentially use it in the future if I like it (...more than Linux) but I'm not sure where the OpenBeOS development is, is it something I could just install and use, or is it like 90% placeholders, "not implemented yet", "this thing will go here", and I should just go with the old original BeOS closed-source binaries?

Re:User: OpenBeOS or the original?

[LurkerXXX]

Read the article. There is no iso image you can downlaod and use now. It's still in pieces parts until they get everything to beta stage. For now either use R5, or pay for yellow-tab.

I thought they changed the name

[Unoti]

There's some neat things in that OS for sure. But I thought they renamed it to WasOS?

Priorities

[MarkusQ]

but why (aside from geekiness)

For godsake dude, where are your priorities?!?!

-- MarkusQ

P.S. I am serious as I ever get.

Sockets!

[ak3ldama]

I think the best news in the whole interview is that they will change sockets to be more like file descriptors.

How does a multi-threaded GUI work?

[Latent Heat]

My experience is with Windows, but I suppose Linux is not that much different. The GUI is typically single-threaded and event-driven: the cooperative multi-tasking model. You can create all the threads you want, and I have even seen sample apps where those threads poke at the GUI, but to be technically rigorous, you really shouldn't do that. If you want to synchronize a worker thread with the GUI thread, all you need to do is SendMessage() (blocking call) or PostMessage() (non-blocking call), and the OS automagically takes care of the queueing and synchronizing to get this done.

While Java tries not to be tied to any one OS, you kind of see the OS poking through. Java too has a single-threaded GUI, and you are not supposed to invoke methods on any GUI object from other threads apart from InvokeNow() (guess what -- SendMessage()) and InvokeLater() (also guess what -- PostMessage()). The advantage of the single-threaded GUI is that any GUI method is in effect synchronized -- each GUI method is essentially its own critical section that won't get stepped on or poked at for the duration of its execution, and variables won't get changed unless you SendMessage() or PostMessage() (i.e. cooperative reentrancy) to somewhere else.

How does this work when you have a multi-threaded GUI -- are you declaring entire methods "synchronized" or have to have locks up the wazoo, or are there some easily-understood protocols?

Now apart from the single-threaded GUI, Windows has a way of "going away" for 10's of milliseconds at the system level -- disk reading is very coarse grained, and they say it is for performance reasons. These hyperthreaded Pentium 4's are creating very cheap context switches while the processors are getting so much faster that what used to be 10's of ms is now in single digits, so Windows and Linux and whatever are perhaps getting to multimedia Nirvana by brute computing power. Moore's law, yes BeOS can do it all on a 60 MHz Pentium I, but no one is running a 60 MHz Pentium I these days.

Re:How does a multi-threaded GUI work?

[renoX]

> Moore's law, yes BeOS can do it all on a 60 MHz Pentium I, but no one is running a 60 MHz Pentium I these days.

Only if the bottleneck is the CPU: if your application is busy waiting for the disk or the network, a faster CPU won't help you..
That's why I'm quite pissed at single threaded applications which freeze the whole window when they access the disk or the network: in Windows explorer if I click on a directory with lots of file inside, the whole windows freeze, if I made a mistake, I cannot choose another directory..

And these single threaded apps won't take advantage of the multi-threaded, multi-core CPUs that are coming around (even already there with the "hyper-threaded" P4).

Linux Performance Issues

[ortcutt]

I would like to know what the performace issues were that kept them from using Linux (or a BSD for that matter) as the kernel of OpenBeOS. I read some comments that said that Linux wouldn't provide the right feel. What does that mean? I know the scheduler makes a difference in GUI app behavior but that is something which can be tuned to different behaviors. In any case, I'm sure that OpenBeOS with a linux kernel on current hardware would provide the right feel... fast. I know it must be cooler to develop NewOS, but the practical thing would have been to use the tens of thousands of developer-hours of the major kernels (Linux, BSDs). Maybe they just didn't like the ambiguity of using a mainstream kernel. After all, when we talk about OS's we usually talk about kernels. If they used Linux as the kernel, then it starts to look like they are developing OpenBeDE (Desktop Environment) instead of OpenBeOS. But that doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me. Modern, C++ based, great API DE, runs on Linux! That is exiting. An operating system with sketchy hardware support is not.

Re:Spot the trend

[ortcutt]

Owen Taylor discussed GTK+ performance on OSnews recently. He wrote: "A big bottleneck right now in GTK+ performance is the poor performance of the RENDER extension drawing anti-aliased text. Even without hardware acceleration, it could be tens of times faster than it is now. I'm hopeful that the X server work currently ongoing on freedesktop.org will result in that being fixed." Neither Linux nor GTK+ are the problem. X is slow. BeOS doesn't use X. BTW, this isn't an attack on X, which I think is great. It is slow though.

Re:Isn't this stupid ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post failed. Point (Modded Flamebait)
You tried to penetrate a knowledgeable group of people with ignorance, and of course you didn't succeed.
Why should you post again?
The intelligent people are still here, and indeed the level of intelligence increases when compared to dumbasses like yourself...

You are saying that since an OS already exists, why create another one? It's called CHOICE asshole...

Re:Spot the trend

[be-fan]

Actually, for what it does (draw graphics on the screen) X is really fast. I've benchmarked it myself, as have many other people. The problem is in the toolkits and the applications. Its really hard to get good GUI feel* and you'd be surprised to see the number of "tricks" you notice in Windows to make it feel faster. Owen Taylor's comment about GTK+ seems dubious to me --- RENDER is accelerated (that subset used to draw anti-aliased text anyway) on NVIDIA's binary drivers, and GTK+ isn't any faster on those than it is normally. GTK+ is definately glacial. Qt, however, is pretty damn fast, as is KDE overall.

*> Things get much easier if you do what OS X (and now freedesktop.org's new X server) do. They back-buffer all windows, so the app never needs to handle expose events. They also synchronize all resize events, so the window frame doesn't enlarge until the app can draw the new contents.

Re:HENRY FORD - THE INTERNATIONAL JEW

[Anonymous Coward]

Henry Ford - The International Jew

Let us not forget that the first people to repress the Jews were the Israelites themselves, who ultimately kicked them out of their kingdom due to their sick and twisted ways. Since that time, every subsequent civilization has found Jews to be arrogant, self serving, and criminal, the very essence of evil.

NEVER FORGET THAT PLAGUE OF WORLD CULTURES: INTERNATIONAL JEWRY.

Volume One: The International Jew

"Among the distinguishing mental and moral traits of the Jews may be mentioned: distaste for hard or violent physical labor; a strong family sense and philoprogenitiveness; a marked religious instinct; the courage of the prophet and martyr rather than of the pioneer and soldier; remarkable power to survive in adverse environments, combined with great ability to retain racial solidarity; capacity for exploitation, both individual and social; shrewdness and astuteness in speculation and money matters generally; an Oriental love of display and a full appreciation of the power and pleasure of social position; a very high average of intellectual ability."

-- The New International Encyclopedia.

The Jew in Character and Business

The Jew is again being singled out for critical attention throughout the world. His emergence in the financial, political and social spheres has been so complete and spectacular since the war, that his place, power and purpose in the world are being given a new scrutiny, much of it unfriendly. Persecution is not a new experience to the Jew, but intensive scrutiny of his nature and super-nationality is. He has suffered for more than 2,000 years from what may be called instinctive anti-Semitism of the other races, but this antagonism has never been intelligent nor has it been able to make itself intelligible. Nowadays, however, the Jew is being placed, as it were, under the microscope of economic observation that the reasons for his power, the reasons for his separateness, the reasons for his suffering may be defined and understood.

In Russia he is charged with being the source of Bolshevism, an accusation which is serious or not according to the circle in which it is made; we in America, hearing the fervid eloquence and perceiving the prophetic ardor of young Jewish apostles of social and industrial reform, can calmly estimate how it may be. In Germany he is charged with being the cause of the Empire's collapse and a very considerable literature has sprung up, bearing with it a mass of circumstantial evidence that gives the thinker pause. In England he is charged with being the real world ruler, who rules as a super-nation over the nations, rules by the power of gold, and who plays nation against nation for his own purposes, remaining himself discreetly in the background. In America it is pointed out to what extent the elder Jews of wealth and the younger Jews of ambition swarmed through the war organizations -- principally those departments which dealt with the commercial and industrial business of war, and also the extent to which they have clung to the advantage which their experience as agents of the government gave them.

In simple words, the question of the Jews has come to the fore, but like other questions which lend themselves to prejudice, efforts will be made to hush it up as impolitic for open discussion. If, however, experience has taught us anything it is that questions thus suppressed will sooner or later break out in undesirable and unprofitable forms.

The Jew is the world's enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world's finances. Scattered abroad without country or government, he yet presents a unity of race continuity which no other people has achieved. Living under legal disabilities in almost every land, he has become the power behind many a throne. There are ancient prophecies to the effect that the Jew will return to his own land and from that center rule the world, though not until he h

The Linux kernel is used be the BeOS community

[Jungle guy]

There is another project that is trying to build an open source BeOS-like operating system, that uses the Linux kernel. It is called BlueEyedOS, and their website is here.

Discussions on Slashdot are good, but sometimes sterile. Do you think the Linux kernel would be a better kernel for OpenBeOS? Cool! Go help the BlueEyedOS guys. Of course, that would involve a lot of donated work to a software that may never see the day of light, but, if you enjoy coding, go for that.

BeOS performance.

[no reason to be here]

I've applied gaussian blurs on images in BeOS (obviously not in photoshop, but in natively written image editting programs in BeOS), and at most it has taken a minute and a half to apply the effect. And a large part of that was buffering the image for an instant undo, if needed.

I've had similar experiences with audio effects. BeOS was written to speed up multimedia opperations as well. I don't know where you got your idea that BeOS traded multimedia performance for desktop snappiness. That's just not true.

Re:BeOS performance.

[shaitand]

And what if I told you the same blur effect on Photoshop 7.0 ran through wine typically does not require a visible hesistation at all? Of course this all general on both your and my part, this all varies with the image and size of said image and certain aspects of the image I'm sure those who have written blur filters could tell you better than I could ;)

Photo editing really isn't a multimedia effect, it's generally math crunching (although admittedly on newer video cards it's becoming more and more crunching that the video card rather than the cpu do and therefore by Be's type of acceleration would become a bit snappier).

My point really wasn't in that specific example, BeOS accelerates multimedia and as a side effect gains a snappy desktop might be a better way to put it. It gives more interrupts to audio and video hardware and a scheduler to match. This could be done with most any open kernel however.

The price of course is that it's really just a hack, it's not more efficient and therefore faster. Instead it robs resources and cpu time from other tasks and the system to provide this speedup and therein lies the inherent problem. For the desktop of quite a few users this would be just fine (I'd GUESS about 70%ish) for the other 30% BeOS would feel pretty sluggish when it came time to get anything done.

Microsoft actually did something pretty similar with win95/98/ME and to a lesser extent win2k & XP, granted their implementation was piss poor but it's a large part of why 98 is so much more responsive than XP or 2K. They kept giving services these "performance boosts" until finally they end up "boosting" most everything and came pretty close to a balanced system.

BeOS is good in the ways it was intended to be, if you were going to implement said hack, BeOS' implementation would be the one to study. In any case, perhaps I misspoke, or perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying.

Re:BeOS performance.

[jonadab]

> I've applied gaussian blurs on images in BeOS (obviously not in photoshop,
> but in natively written image editting programs in BeOS), and at most it
> has taken a minute and a half to apply the effect.

His point wasn't that this particular operation is necessarily slow, but that
it *can* be slower than on other systems without bothering the typical desktop
user as much as, say, a delay before display when unminimizing a window. IOW,
he was saying that the user's perception of performance is based mostly on
things that the BeOS handled well. I tend to agree, though other systems are
catching up these days. The most useful feature of BeOS that I still haven't
seen in another system is the ability to have different resolutions and color
depths on different virtual desktops ("workspaces", the BeOS folks call them).
The pervasive multithreading has made its way into other systems, and the
abuse of filesystem attributes (e.g., using zero-byte files to store significant
amounts of information) was, despite being genuinely innovative, not terribly
useful.

CPU bottleneck

[Latent Heat]

You can write applications Windows applications that do non-blocking I/O, and that the GUI has one thread has nothing to do with it. The real problem is that the kernel schedules non-preemptible tasks that are coarse-grained, and faster CPUs help because those coarse-grained tasks become fine-grained (in time) when the CPU churns through them faster.

That Explorer freezes on a file-tree expand is the fault of Explorer, and it would be Explorer's fault under BeOS if it were written that same way. The kind of fined-grained I am talking about is on the submillisecond level, important if you are doing video frames where a 10 ms lock will cause a frame to glitch. Those 10 ms locks are deep in the OS, and faster CPUs have reduced them to 1-2 ms locks. And as for hyper threading, its existence may encourage kernel designers to tune for allowing more preemption without worrying that the system will stall doing context switches.

Combine this thread with another:

[aphor]

Well, once you get a few more CPUs, and you learn to push the vector math to the vector processor, then you begin to feel the difference.

BeOS predicted that eventually, Moore's Law would begin to fade or would periodically dip so that SMP systems would be employed to gain performance. The heavy threading will make it trivial to scale performance approaching linearity with the number of processors.

Think about fiber busses on the system board. Think stackable external CPU modules. Think Beowulf... (sorry, couldn't resist)

Re:Combine this thread with another:

[shaitand]

"Well, once you get a few more CPUs, and you learn to push the vector math to the vector processor, then you begin to feel the difference.

BeOS predicted that eventually, Moore's Law would begin to fade or would periodically dip so that SMP systems would be employed to gain performance. The heavy threading will make it trivial to scale performance approaching linearity with the number of processors.

Think about fiber busses on the system board. Think stackable external CPU modules. Think Beowulf... (sorry, couldn't resist)"

Cheers to that! Woot!

Without a doubt heavily threaded apps was something that Be did right. I just don't think it had much impact on Be's desktop performance on single processor systems. The effect people witnessed has more to do with a clean implementation (something which is not guaranteed to be replicated by the OpenBeOS project but hopefully will be). And Scheduler/interrupt "tuning" aka "hack".

Sorry, your post wasn't argumentative I'm in a bit of an ire because some people want the benefits of those adjustments recognized and the pitfalls ignored.

Without a doubt, with vector offloading and smp systems (and a good scalable implementation to those systems) BeOS wouldn't have needed multimedia hacks anymore :)

This is the real reason I lean toward thinking these guys should have gone with a linux kernel. I view it as kind of the melting pot of technology, it's certainly flexible enough to make the scheduling adjustment's needed for Be and can handle the threading and ALREADY has some pretty good stuff out there for scaling to multiple CPU's. A marriage between the Be desktop and apps and the linux kernel could be a beautiful thing :)

But to each his own I guess, there's nothing stopping parts of this open source project from being ported linux side and Be scheduling options from being added as a compile time option in the linux kernel despite what the OpenBeOS project does.

Are you suggesting....

[UnixRevolution]

not using linux or a bsd kernel.

Are you suggesting they make BeSD?

Be isn't about features, it's about feature-set

[tentimestwenty]

Being a long time Mac user, I liked the features and responsiveness of Be, but overall the potential of the OS came from the fact that it had a comprehensive, predictable environment. Like Mac OS you could just tell that there were certain rules at work. The GUI was consistent. The programs all behaved according to an understood structure and it was easy to see that in a few years the relatively nasty command-line-esque parts were going to be relegated and the whole OS was going to be a GUI power tool. It was the leanest, trimmest thing out there and this is what pro designers etc. want with their tools. Even today with OS X, there just isn't the feeling of power or freedom to do things as quickly as you want. Windows and Linux are like sludge in comparison, not just for pure speed but in the endless UI clutter everywhere. I think finishing what Be started is a great goal to have. In the least it will set the bar high for the commercial OSes and perhaps finally force Linux to get its act together on the desktop.

Apple is dying

[n1ywb]

Sorry. Too many people are saying that OBOS is a waste. I just had to throw in another short-sighted knee-jerk reaction.

Re:Apple is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

1996: 3,960,000 Macintoshes sold; 72,200,000 total personal computers shipped.

1999: 3,448,000 Macintoshes sold; 112,700,000 total personal computers shipped.

2002: 3,101,000 Macintoshes sold; 132,000,000 total personal computers shipped.

Apple the corporation isn't dead. Just the Macintosh as a computer. As annual computer sales overall went up 82% over six years, annual Mac sales went down 22% in the same time period.

Thank you for the correction.

[RLiegh]

I did, in fact, mean NIH.

I did not know that.

[RLiegh]

Thank you for clarifying that for me.

Don't get me wrong...

[ErnstKompressor]

I am not saying that I agree with the stubborness of the OBOS group, I was simply pointing out that from my admittidly *limited* understanding of the original BeOS, it is effectively different than Linux, and that Linux is not a one-shoe-fits-all solution -- rather there are perfectly valid reasons for wanting to implement something on the order of the original kernel rather than grafting just the 'experience' of the BeOS onto another existing kernel...even if that reason is essentially novelty.

You forgot

[odiado]

The BeOS sound mixer. I remember you could control sound volume by application on the system mixer. Wasn't that great too?

OT: Your sig line is too long

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig line is too long.
There is a 120-character limit, which you have exceeded.
In case you have sigs turned off, it looks like:

Galileo, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect, has

Please fix it.
Thank you.
That is all.

I would say...

[jotaeleemeese]

... why to reinvent the wheel?

Re:I would say...

[haggar]

And my answer would probably be: because in operating systems, the wheel hasn't yet been completely invented :o)

Re: Here, here!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, here!

That should be "Hear, hear!"

Shared experience.

[jotaeleemeese]

The Linux guys are saying: "look, do not waste time, use the Linux kernel, twist it and get the same functionality you used to have, that way you get drivers and many other things without the innordinate effort (we are talking about millions of loc!)".

If I see a felow pedestrian going to fall in the same hole in which I just falled in, what I am suppossed to do? Warn him or wait there to laugh at him once he falls?

Open Source that you can't modify?

[jotaeleemeese]

Mmmmmhhhhh

Re:Open Source that you can't modify?

[squiggleslash]

According to this it's licensed under the LGPL.

Better they decide.

[jotaeleemeese]

http://www.blueeyedos.com/project/license.html

otherwise they lack any credibility due to the confussion....

Re:Better they decide.

[squiggleslash]

Given the Sunday datestamp of the news entry concerning the switch to the LGPL, it's not that surprising you can still find the old license on the website...

Re: Here, here!

[c.emmertfoster]

Damn, you're right. Thank you.

The thing that bothers me is that I wish I could treat /. as a silly message board, and not a goddamn term paper or something where I have to proofread and edit my shit five-hundred times.

I always notice things I wish I could revise but don't have the ability to. Oh well. Fuck it.

Re:Spot the trend

[ortcutt]

The nvidia driver doesn't use hardware acceleration for the RENDER extension ... at least not by default. The README reads:

"Option "RenderAccel" "boolean" Enable or disable hardware acceleration of the RENDER extension. THIS OPTION IS EXPERIMENTAL. ENABLE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. There is no correctness test suite for the RENDER extension so NVIDIA can not verify that RENDER acceleration works correctly. Default: hardware acceleration of the RENDER extension is disabled."

I don't know whether you specifically enabled hardware acceleration for RENDER, but if you didn't then GTK+ ought to perform similarly using the closed drivers and the open drivers. Last I heard, only Matrox cards supported hardware RENDER acceleration in a non-experimental way.

Re:Spot the trend

[be-fan]

I enabled RenderAccel. Its a nice boost for Qt/KDE (where it makes text highlighting and scrolling much smoother), but using the nvidia driver at all (RenderAccel on or off), makes GTK+ resize even worse than it does already.

BeOS is Dead

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, say the new BeOS implementation OpenBeOS is alive and well. I am very excited to see what comes out of this project, and all these Linux zealots need to realize that using a Linux kernel is not BeOS like. It's just plain ignorant.

The main point of OpenBeOS and BeOS in general was the continuity of the interface across the board. Sorry, but Linux doesn't have this. If I have to choose between window managers, than the interface is already labeled is mis-matched f*ck-fest.

Again, I root for OpenBeOS, and wish them the best. As for these nay-sayers on /. (to be expected, they are Linux users and hate everything but Linux) grow up and realize that your OS isn't divine, and has it's own flaws (unified systemwide interface).