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BeOS Ready for a Comeback as Zeta OS
Anil Kandangath writes "BeOS, the operating system that could have been the foundation for Mac OS X, but almost died, instead has returned as Zeta OS -- which is supposed to be fast, stable, media centric and boot within 15 seconds. Zeta is being released by yellowTAB of Germany and has applications such as an office suite and the Firefox browser bundled with it. Most BeOS applications will also run as-is. Screenshots are available." According to the NewsForge story linked there, the release could be as soon as next month.
Which would have been technically better as Apple's new OS - the nextstep based OSX, or a BeOS based OS?
I figure any weight put on boot time means an OS is pretty shitty. If it's at all relevant it means it's booting far too often, and is probably crashing.
One of the most appealing facets of BeOS, IIRC, is the fact that it was FREE. At ~$100+tax, I don't see this flying off store shelves. Furthermore, I didn't read anything about it supporting RISC architecture (did I miss it)?
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
I looked over their site and couldn't find hardware requirements documented.
One thing I love about open source operating systems is that the system requirements are right there, up front -- or at least you don't have to look hard to find them.
It claims to boot in 15 seconds, which I don't doubt. It would be great to use on a laptop for that very reason. However, will my poor little laptop be able to handle it? I'd love to know before I get my hopes up.
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
Yes,
just what the world needs, another OS for personal computers...
AmigaOS, OS2, BeOS were all going to challenge Windows dominance... *yawn*
Whether you like it or not, WinXX will remain the dominant OS for as far as the eye can see. Linux variants will have traction in some areas, but it will always be very secondary to WinXX.
Until there's a huge shift in the computing paradigm, nothing will change. Today all PC OS's are interactive; you type something in, and it does something for you.
The next significant step in computing will be an OS that becomes much more proactive; it watches and learns what you like to do, and over time it will perform tasks on your behalf without being instructed to..
That'll be an opportunity for a new type of OS, and a new way of thinking about applications and services..
Until then, it's a windows world...
I agree. I just booted my 1.5GHz Powerbook, 1.2GB RAM.
Power-on to login screen: 59 seconds.
Enter on login to finished login: 29 seconds.
Now, the nice thing about OSX is that you generally don't have to reboot ever unless there is an OS update, so I boot about once a month (for the point updates and security updates). OSX resumes *instantly* from sleep, which is really nice.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
It was back in 2002 at the CeBIT show in Germany that the people from YellowTAB gave me a "late beta" of Zeta for reviewing purposes. "Only a few problems left to fix", they said.
Turned out the entire GUI crashed all the time and tons of drivers where missing. Then came a big upgrade, then another beta and then... nothing.
Now it's 2005, and it's now "ready for a release next month". I suggest they bury it instead. For good, or turn the whole thing over to the OpenBeOS people.
-- http://z80.org - all opinions, all the time --
Windows boots in 15 seconds, too, on a supercomputer.
I know this comment was meant as a joke/insult towards windows, but it just inst true. Windows boots in 10 seconds for me.
Using Windows XP Pro on an old (2 years) Dell box.
P4 2.66ghz
1GB of ram
Booting linux straight into X with KDE on the other hand is what? 30+ seconds?
Windows boots in 15 seconds, too, on a supercomputer.
GNU+linux fans are in no position to criticize windows speed. My GNU+linux system (with twice the ram) boots in twice the time it takes my windows 98 system.
Guy going with windows because its faster
My laptop's Linux takes about 30 seconds to boot up, counting from the bootloader, when resuming from a suspend. This could be tuned a LOT, though -- if I forced it to clean out more memory and write fewer caches, and repeated this on my desktop (which takes 30 seconds for a normal boot, so it'd be much faster from suspend), I might get 15 seconds.
Maybe that's cheating. My desktop linux takes about a minute, including time spent launching an X and a couple of needed programs.
But seriously, people, this is really just problem of bootscripts and choice of desktop. That means that I can make my OS boot in 30 seconds merely by switching to a lightweight window manager, doing a little bash programming, and cleaning out the init scripts I don't need.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If Apple had chosen BeOS it would be a copany with a great product but no vision or direction. Just like the 10 years before and every other product that didn't survive. Mr. Jobs at least gave the company a direction and purpose. Whether or not you agree with their direction or not is another matter though.
I do work for a small German company called "zeta software".
Currently, yellowTab is selling the ZetaOS through multiple German home-order-TV shows to computer-illiterate persons. Of course most of them fail to successfully install ZetaOS on their supermarket-bought PCs.
A daily average of two or there of them call us (not yellowTab!) and ask what they can do, now that they crashed both their Windows installation and their ZetaOS.
Even the hints beside every phone number on our website that we have absolutely nothing to do with that ZetaOS did not help much.
yellowTab seems to be aware of the problem that many many customers seems to be very discontented with ZetaOS and additionally call all companies that seem to have the Word "zeta" in their name (which are quite a few), because yellowTab hired a marketing agency (or how you call that in English) that called us some time ago on the phone.
This agency seemed to have the task to call all those zeta-named companies and apologize for the "idiots" (= ZetaOS customers) calling them. The agency further asked us what the average questions of the ZetaOS customers was. You could call that "Indirect surveying" ;-).
I really whish myself and all zeta-named companies that yellowTab runs out of venture-capital really soon and that they disappear and never ever return again *sigh*.
-- Watch me working: www.magerquark.de
I concur, and therefore propose a new and relevent benchmark for system boot time called BMPY or Boot Minutes Per Year. This will measure the amount of time (a 24/7 machine) spends per-year in a booting state. for instance imagine you can boot Zeta in 15 seconds but you need to reboot every three days (this is a hypothetical example I have no idea how often it will need to be rebooted) then you have 365/3 boots per year or 122 total boots for a total boot time of 1830 seconds or 30.5 BMPY. Now take another system for example linux that takes 1.5min (a conservative estimate, my system with no optimization takes slightly less) too boot but needs to be rebooted only once a month (again conservative as sometimes I only reboot at major kernel releases) for a total of 90*12 or 1,080 seconds, which comes to 18 BMPY. So in this case although it takes the linux system longer to boot, it actually spends 12.5 minutes less per year booting up. I hope someone will take this idea into serious consideration and maybe create a standard benchmark.
-kaplanfx
Visualize Whirled Peas
BeOS had a fully functioning bash command line. From the perspective of the user, the CLI *was* UNIX. From the perspective of the developer, it was kinda UNIX (basic POSIX, but nothing advanced like AIO, and some missing features like sockets as file descriptors).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I call this the Disney effect. If you've ever been to a Disney theme park you typically wait about 20 minutes to get on a ride (excluding the "mountains") however they break the line up and never let you see the whole thing as well as have little pitstops of entertainment before you get on the actual ride.
I've always thought it was brilliant and was reminded of it the first time I saw Windows 2000 boot (it goes through 3 stages, NT text, then the splash, then the screen before login).
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Hmm, just a minor correction:
1) There was printing capabilities, but only something like three printers were supported at the time.
2) BeOS had just moved from the old file format (IIRC AOUT) to ELF.
3) The issue of purchasing NeXT had as much to do with technology acquisition as it did with purchasing management know how (aka, Steve Jobs). Had Apple bough Be, what would be the likely hood of failure with JLG in charge? highly likely.
Apple needed someone with marketing know how and able to provide a the company with a world class reality distortion field (other companies have them, but Apples seems to have the best one). Steve put marketing into overdrive, killed off products that were uncompetitive, outside the scope of Apples core business (Apples old internet service business) and R&D that basically was going no where - that is, if R&D were to be spent, it was to be on REAL projects that could deliver *REAL* results for the company - not pie in the sky ideas.
That coupled with his show manship bought the company back from the brink - for all of Be's good points - JLB had as much charisma as a roll of wall paper.
no, i do understand.
the problem of storing metadata that way is that its non portable. it's exactly the same problem that plagued macos classic. great when you only deal with macs but bad when the internet comes around and suddenly you have no simple way to transport files around.
also bad when you need to talk eg nfs or smb.
storing metadata in bundles and the whole bundle system allows macos to be transparenly "native" on just about any filesystem.
linux and nt have the ability to attach metadata to files, but nobody uses it. it would be a huge pain if anyone did start, because it would then suffer from again being non portable.
osx bundles are a sort of compromise between having metadata available, but in a way thats portable. its a bit ugly, but it works.
its also all xml, woo woo.
BeOS was insanely great, with some innovations that were entirely ahead of its time. But do they really have that much going for them now? Microsoft, Apple and several Linux groups already have highly GPU-integrated window managers going, for example, and work's being done on more metadata-rich filesystem-based platforms - WinFS and Spotlight both sit on top of NTFS and HFS+ respectively.
I wouldn't be surprised if it'd take them a few months or years to catch up to the current state of technology, because it's been maintained by enthusiasts ever since the company maintaining it dropped it. Even for something that was ahead of its time, it has catching up to do, both when it comes to technology and killer apps, and I guess what I'm asking is... is it worth it?
Moving to a BSD(unix) based system breathed new life into the MAC with a world of software possibilities and its ability to place nice with other systems. MAC has proven that unix can be used for a friendly and powerful desk top system. In a way it also proven that it is very hard to make it as a third party alternative sandwiched in between the Nix * Windows world. This reincarnation of BeOS sounds interesting enough for me to buy a copy, but I wonder about its potential to survive in niche that is similar to one that MAC decided was not a good place to be. Maybe the 2 keys this time around is that it is starting off in Europe away from Bill Gates' home market and that microsoft may be distracted with linux as a challenger to the point of not trying to crush this new version of beOS
I'd like to second Watts on this. I ran BeOS as my primary home OS for several years on both PPC then Intel hardware. BeOS is one of my favorite OSes ever, right up there with NewtonOS and Amiga. BeOS was incredibly responsive on even the most modest hardware back then. For me the OS provided a stable writing, web development and browsing platform that also allowed great control over disk formats, allowing recovery of crashed Mac and Windoze drives. It could also do things like play several dozen instances of large Quicktimes simulataneously - like 30 copies of a Star Wars trailer at once. BeOS rocked - it was everything that Apple and Commodore had promised but come up short with their products.
I also agree w/ parent about this new ZetaOS not being compelling in 2005. A lot of great software has been written in past 5-6 years.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Yes. My server is hosting my own e-mail, file server, web server, dhcp, and database. It's running on a Mini-ITX ME6000 board, with a single 80GB seagate drive. There's no cooling fan in at at all. Total power consumed is about 40 watts, which works out at 7c per kilowatt hour, to be 6.72 cents per day. It adds $2.01 to my typical monthly electric bill.
Nobody who suggested that the electricity used by my server (which would be useless if it weren't turned on all the time) was an extravagent expense actually realized that I know how much my computer consumes.
Do you?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I'll just respond to this point: there's a good reason that Smalltalk syntax is used. The dot notation implies some sort of "ownership", so x.y() means call y which is a member function of x. But this is different in Objective-C, because the idea of using member functions isn't present here - we use the idea of sending a message to an object. You can send a message to any object in a dynamic language such as Objective-C, so really the idea of ownership doesn't really work, because an object can "capture" a message and forward the message on or do other stuff with the message. Perhaps the idea of Smalltalk notation is unpalatable, but the dot notation simply doesn't imply the right semantics in Objective-C.