yellowTAB's Zeta 1.0 Reviewed

Provataki writes "OSNews' Thom Holwerda posted the first in-depth review of the recently released Zeta 1.0. He goes over installation, impressions, usage, application and hardware support, BFS queries and concludes that yellowTAB's Zeta is the deserving future of BeOS; plus, it's the only one based on the original source code by Be, Inc."

Comments

Re:1999

[Anonymous Coward]

1970 called, they want Linux back (Actually, they think you can have it. Instead, they want Plan 9 from Bell Labs.)

Interesting Review

[Arghdee]

However, I noticed a few niggles.. The fact that minor oversights like videos being image/jpeg instead of video/mpeg exist suggest more testing is needed. I would expect more of a major version release, even if it is only Version 1. (Being that it is based off a relatively well aged code base) I really do hope this does succeed - I would hate to see the developers waste their hard work.

Re:Interesting Review

[Aluminum Tuesday]

It's a 1.0 release; it doesn't surprise me that there are still niggles to be ironed out. It'll get fixed.

Re:Interesting Review

[GauteL]

It seems to me from reading the article that the image/jpeg problem is only there when transfering videos from a digital camera, not when downloading films from the Internet.

I can only assume that the application expects a still picure camera to feed it still pictures and have some glitches in support for the limited video features of these cameras.

This makes the glich a little less important.

Re:Interesting Review

[Arghdee]

It seems to me from reading the article that the image/jpeg problem is only there when transfering videos from a digital camera, not when downloading films from the Internet. I can only assume that the application expects a still picure camera to feed it still pictures and have some glitches in support for the limited video features of these cameras. This makes the glich a little less important.

On re-R'ing TFA, it appears you are right. Quite possibly not a glitch that would come up in ordinary testing.
Still, I wish these guys good luck. They'll need it.

Re:Interesting Review

[maxgilead]

It seems to me from reading the article that the image/jpeg problem is only there when transfering videos from a digital camera

Maybe his camera records videos as MJPEG (mine does) and Zeta detects them as regular JPEGs?

Re:Interesting Review

[d34thm0nk3y]

I can only assume that the application expects a still picure camera to feed it still pictures and have some glitches in support for the limited video features of these cameras.

This makes the glich a little less important.

Considering I can't even get video from my still camera to work correctly in Windows...

Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[Anonymous Coward]

Amiga Freaks
Be Nuts
Xbox Clowns
Dreamcast Babies

An elite group of fans of marketplace losers plaguing an Internet near you.

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[Aluminum Tuesday]

An "elite group of fans"? Nah: just a userbase making use of a product that does what they want it to. Would you continue to use and support your OS if only 5% of the rest of the computing world was using it? If not, you're probably not passionate enough about the OS to "get" BeOS fans.

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[Aluminum Tuesday]

It's more like anything that challenges Windows but isn't Linux or Mac OS X. If you're a BSD fan, you'll find the same thing.

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[blueZhift]

Oh and let's not forget about OS/2! No really, please don't forget about OS/2...

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[Digz]

..and I've been a member of all those groups.

Man, I need to get out more often. ;)

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[BlowChunx]

...errr, I get passionate about my wife, not an operating system.

The OS is a tool. In that light, it's like getting passionate about a cordless drill. And you need to get out more.

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[flosofl]

Oh and let's not forget about OS/2! No really, please don't forget about OS/2...

Why not? IBM did.

Well, actually they bitch-slapped it a few times, threw it on the ground, and ground their heels into its lifeless carcass.

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[Kick the Donkey]

Heh!!! Is he knocking cordless drills? Is nothing sacred?

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[heinousjay]

The anonymous fanboy: "I have chosen a corporation to which I shall tie my identity, and I will die proclaiming my love for it (anonymously) on the internet!"

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[networkBoy]

True enough, though to be honest I'm considering a switch. If I can use this on my existing video platform (x86, not Mac), and speed it up by simply switching the OS, I'll be happy to.

The only gotcha for me is application support. I use premeir currently and I am lothe to switch. If they had a 30 day before I shelled out $130 or so I'd be happy to try their apps and decide.
-nB

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[jacksonj04]

Ouch...

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[Eideewt]

And you need a better cordless drill.

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[kitzilla]

Does this group include anonymous Slashdot flamers?

Re:Be, A Member Of An Elite Group

[NevermindPhreak]

My car is a tool to get from point A to point B. That doesnt mean i dont have fun in the process.

Deluxe Edition?

[onion2k]

From the Zeta FAQs:

"The Home Edition and Developer Edition don't have all the applications the Deluxe Edition does."

That's fine, I just want to poke about with the OS and see if I want to go further.. Developer edition will be fine thanks.

Pop to the Shop section.. Alas, only the bloated Deluxe edition with 3Gb of apps I'll never look at is for sale.

Back to *nix..

Re:Deluxe Edition?

[Chicane-UK]

Indeed.. a stripped down test version to see if my network, graphics, and sound will work would be great.

Alas the hardware list is typically sparse and I don't particularly want to fork out 99 Euro's on something I can't be sure will work with my system.

Nevermind!

Re:Deluxe Edition?

[Aluminum Tuesday]

My first introduction to BeOS was a live CD of BeOS R4.5, which was distributed on a magazine's cover CD for the purpose of giving people a taste of BeOS and the chance to see if it'd run on their machines. I suspect they gained a number of customers from that live CD (me included), and I also suspect YellowTAB could benefit similarly.

Re:Deluxe Edition?

[Freexe]

Well, you can do what you probably did with windows at some point in your life and pirate it http://www.torrentreactor.net/view.php?id=5014587, see if you like it, and then use Linux

Re:Deluxe Edition?

[Aluminum Tuesday]

That link isn't to 1.0; it's to RC3. That download is out of date.

Re:Deluxe Edition?

[MrAl]

If it is RC3, stay clear. The R1 release of Zeta has a new kernel that's pretty darn smooth. BeOS has been known for at least appearing fast, but Zeta's new kernel in R1 blows any previous release away. It's a world's apart from RC3.

Hobbyist OS ?

[Gopal.V]

I know BeOS was a cool thing (especially BeFS), but it has been recently sidelined into the hobbyist OS category (unfairly yes, surprising no).

The sad part is that you can hardly run it on an old box. To run it properly you need at least a good video card (which I never spent much on).

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[dysprosia]

Well, BeOS's target was always in high-end multimedia, and old boxes aren't always the best for that sort of thing, regardless of OS...

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[eean]

BeOS you could certainly run on an old box, I ran the free demo and I remember it being snappy with the hardware I had at the time (like 300 mhz).

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[tha_mink]

The sad part is that you can hardly run it on an old box. To run it properly you need at least a good video card (which I never spent much on).

Actually, the sad part is that you have to pay out the heinie (~$114 USD I think) for it. I give YellowTab props for picking up the project but damn...I can buy Windows XP Pro for $85 USD.

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[Monoman]

XP Pro for $85? Is that an "upgrade" or full version price?

http://www.compusa.com/products/products.asp?N=200 704&Ne=200000

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[shiller]

I guess it's a special offer he got via email. "ch3ck our very l0w pr1ces!"

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[gristlebud]

You can find the full version for way less than the retail price. Here's an example for $110:

http://directdepot2u.com/item.asp?PID=666

You can also get system pulls for less than $65:

http://directdepot2u.com/item.asp?PID=671

Whether it's legal or not is open to intrepretation; if you're the kind of person who thinks ELUA'a are unenforceable, I'd say go for it.

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[homebrewmike]

Well, how much would you pay?

This isn't free as in beer, and developers gotta eat.

Still, it would be nice if they would release a "live" version on a bootable CD. Buying something that you haven't test drove is pretty freaking retarded.

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[LurkerXXX]

Well, I wouldn't pay $144. And I'm a huge old BeOS fan. I bought a dual CPU system with the exact specs that Be used for 3.0 and had the machine up and waiting for the release date to install it. Be themselves didn't charege that much. 4.0 was only $70 for a full version or $35 for an upgrade. That was including Gobe.

Now that it's not Be anymore, but a group just trying to update it, I'm just not willing to part with $100+ to see basically BeOS 5.x with some additional hardware support.

There's nothing I'd like more than to see BeOS make a big comeback, but from what I'm reading I just dont' see this as a big point-release upgrade from 5.0, and definitely not worth $100++.

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[tha_mink]

Well, how much would you pay? This isn't free as in beer, and developers gotta eat.

I should have made that clear from the get-go. I would spend ~$30 US to give it a try. I used to love the BeOS but even the last version I purchased from Be INC wasn't as much as the YellowTab version is going for. I mean, you can't charge more than the original retail price...can you?

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[LurkerXXX]

Oops, that was a typo. That was the price for 5.0 (not 4.0).

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[jayloden]

Er....I ran BeOs 5 pro on a 450mhz pentium with an 8mb video card to try it out a while back and it ran ok.

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[jonadab]

> I can buy Windows XP Pro for $85 USD.

Where? Where I come from, XP Pro is $135.99.

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[Kent Recal]

Over here in germany you can buy them for that price (and less) all over the place. You don't get a box, though (who needs that anyways) as they're OEM-versions.

MS has sued a couple dealers because OEM versions are supposed to only be sold bundled with hardware - and lost.

Re:Hobbyist OS ?

[tha_mink]

http://www.edirectsoftware.com/WindowsXPP.html

sometimes, it would partially turn all grey.

[akadruid]

sometimes, it would partially turn all grey.

come again?

good article though, despite the minor confusing bits.

It looks like quite a nice operating system for 'geek who has everything'. Runs nicely on outdated systems too, and it will have a bucketload of security through obscurity too. reasonable hardware compatability and loads of bundled apps means its pretty functional too. 99 euros seems quite reasonable too (I was looking at RHEL prices for work this morning!).

Good

[kahei]

Look, a faint dim spark that still lights the way toward the wondrous land of OSes that are not encumbered with the baggage of Unix and Windows.

The forward thinking population of /. will now mock it because:

* It's old.
* It's not Linux or OSX.
* It's not free.

They will ignore the fact that:

* Much of what OSX has just started to do, in terms of usability, BeOS explored all the way back then.
* It's really easy to develop fast GUI apps for.
* And to develop for in general.
* Diversity is good, and a billion people writing GNU-style apps for Linux is not diversity.

In summary, I -- hey! Get out of my yard! Damn kids these days.

Re:Good

[Aluminum Tuesday]

And let's not forget that BeOS nearly did become Mac OS X, in the way that NEXT eventually did.

Of course, whether we'd have had Jean Louis Gassee at the helm of Apple now, rather than Steve Jobs... I'll leave to your imagination. ;-)

Re:Good

[drsmithy]

The forward thinking population of /. will now mock it because:

The only reason I will mock it is because it isn't multiuser.

Re:Good

[lisaparratt]

I dunno, the half baked network stack is probably worthy of a gentle mocking, too.

I believe the open source clones have fixing it as one of their priorities.

Re:Good

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Look, a faint dim spark that still lights the way toward the wondrous land of OSes that are not encumbered with the baggage of Unix and Windows.

An OS that's not encumbered by the baggage of Unix or Windows is an OS that:

1 - does not take advantage of decades of POSIX normalisation, made by hundreds of thousands of high-level developers and designers.

2 - does not take advantage of the huge existing base of developers who know the POSIX and Windows API inside and out the world over.

3 - can't run any of the good, and not-so-good software written on any OS for the last 30 years.

4 - Re-implements design flaws that have been already been purged out of Unix or Windows (well, just Unix)

Personally, I wish they didn't waste their time reinventing the wheel. Other designers have already been there, and while there's a lot to say about the heavy legacy of various existing designs, they work and have billions of man/hours put into them.

Re:Good

[jedigeek]

Actually, a lot of the things in BeOS had been copied from what Apple started in the 80s. And what do you mean by "what OSX has just started to do, in terms of usability"? os x has been basically the same (although it has clearly evolved) for nearly 5 years now. I'm just wondering: have you even used a mac?

If you take time to read the badly written review on OS News, you'll notice that Yellow Tab seem to have totally derailed what made BeOS good, and made a bizarre version of BeOS mangled with terrible open source fonts, icons and themes. And it costs more than an OEM copy of Windows. Consider that 100% of consumer peripherals support Windows, and Windows has a simple UI that nearly everyone finds easy to use, Zeta pretty much fails it on every account. I don't really understand the argument of using BeOS over Windows, other than a lot of noise created by disgruntled anti-Microsoft slashdot posters. What does it have going for it that the end-user cares about at all? Absolutely nothing.

Re:Good

[SmittyTheBold]

I believe Zeta uses the BONE stack, not the old one that was almost universally derided.

Re:Good

[SmittyTheBold]

Database filesystems, to begin with.

Good multithreading that extends to the GUI, improving perceived responsiveness.

Those're the first two my sleep-deprived brain comes up with.

Re:Good

[cahiha]

Other designers have already been there, and while there's a lot to say about the heavy legacy of various existing designs, they work and have billions of man/hours put into them.

Well, I think people ought to explore new directions. Trouble is: BeOS/Zeta isn't doing that--it is basically the same as mainstream systems, only with more bouncing heads and less modularity.

Re:Good

[morgan_greywolf]

And these are the things that make a good, production-capable operating system. These are the things that keep Unix and Windows fully-entrenched in server rooms and on desktops.

Of course, there are plenty of people with specialized needs out there and those needs might differ from what the mainstream wants. MacOS has always done well in the fields of graphic design and A/V production (as well as being a good general desktop OS). SGI Irix was, at one point, the premier OS for 3D graphics/CGI video production. Linux has always been a great desktop for developers (but has been seeking to become a great mainstream desktop lately, of course). BeOS/Zeta seeks to fill the multimedia production niche.

There will always be niche OSes for niche applications; sometimes the mainstream just doesn't cut it.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

An OS that's not encumbered by the baggage of Unix or Windows is an OS that:

1 - does not take advantage of decades of POSIX normalisation, made by hundreds of thousands of high-level developers and designers.

Strong argument, I guess the BeOS people agreed with this and your other points about POSIX, they included a posix api in their OS.

4 - Re-implements design flaws that have been already been purged out of Unix or Windows (well, just Unix)

Ofcourse fixing design flaws in unix and especially windows requires backward compatability, which slows down the fixing process enormously. BeOS is about revisiting the design decisions made decades ago with what we now know about how computers are used and programmed. This ofcourse means there are gonna be millions of implementation flaws that you don`t have in a mature UNIX implementation. But those are bugs, you can fix them with a debugger. There is no need to get out a drawing board and restart a fundamental design flamewar if you make the right design decision right away, which you can becouse the wrong one is already made ;-)

Re:Good

[haggar]

The effort invested in BeOS is worthwile, because BeOS doesn't feel anything like Linux or Windows. It's the most respnsive desktop OS I know, with it's great emphasis on multithreading and it's near-realtime scheduling (but not completely realtime - it's tweaked for responsiveness, not hard-realtime).

I have heard and read arguments like yours, and without a single exception, they came from people who did not use BeOS (booting it up is not using it). Those who used BeOS apps for at least a few hours, understand why BeOS is worth the effort.

The other remark I would make, is: having people experienced in a certain area/product is useful, but sometimes it's much better to take the leap into the new area, instead of regurgitating old ideas and contents. That's the only way to progress. Otherwise, we would still use (very advanced perhaps) core memory and valves in our computers today. At the advent of semiconductors, valves were a really mature technology, but semis were so much better that the choice was clear, at least for computers. Valves are still in use today (as will UNIX be) because they offer unparalleled performance in high-power high-frequency applications.

Re:Good

[endoplasmicMessenger]

BeOS was POSIX compliant, duh.

Re:Good

[Mark Round]

But then, BeOS _is_ largely POSIX-compliant. It ships with a bash shell, runs Apache, PHP, SSH, Perl, Python and most GNU / open source utilities (and it's even got an X server if you do need it). It's just that you don't need to go mucking around in the terminal to get things done - it's very much like Mac OS X in that regard.

Re:Good

[AnObfuscator]

1 - does not take advantage of decades of POSIX normalisation, made by hundreds of thousands of high-level developers and designers.

2 - does not take advantage of the huge existing base of developers who know the POSIX and Windows API inside and out the world over.

That's just.. wrong. BeOS *is* Posix compliant. Always was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS

3 - can't run any of the good, and not-so-good software written on any OS for the last 30 years.

as to "can't run software" arguement, well, a similar argument can be made for Linux or even OS X.

4 - Re-implements design flaws that have been already been purged out of Unix or Windows (well, just Unix)

Example?

Personally, I wish they didn't waste their time reinventing the wheel. Other designers have already been there, and while there's a lot to say about the heavy legacy of various existing designs, they work and have billions of man/hours put into them.

Personally, I am glad to see that people are willing to continue exploring alternative UI designs, new FS's, etc. Reinventing the Wheel has a LOT of benefits -- faster algorithms, new programming technique, and so on. More ideas being tested is never a bad thing, no matter how many "man-hours" have been invested in the "old way".

Also, I'd like to point out that Apple, Google, and MS are "reinventing the wheel" in desktop search, since BeOS had this 10 years ago. BeOS also had true SMP back before MacOS even had multithreading. BeOS is *still* one of the most innovative OS designs around, and I'm thrilled to know that it's development is being continued.

on the other hand, I don't think Zeta can make a go of it -- unless they start distributing it for free. Alas, they don't seem to want to do this...

Re:Good

[Khuffie]

os x has been basically the same (although it has clearly evolved)

Something cannot basically stay the same, and evolve at the same time. Evolution signifies a significant change. Basically staying the same defies that evolution.

In short, I think you were right the same time: OS X has basically stayed the same, and Apple has charged its fanboys every 12-18 months over $100 to 'upgrade'.

Re:Good

[Khuffie]

edit: "right the first time"

Re:Good

[ltbarcly]

I have heard and read arguments like yours, and without a single exception, they came from people who did not use BeOS (booting it up is not using it).

Every time I've heard someone say turds aren't good to eat, it's been someone who doesn't even eat turds (tasting it and spitting it out isn't eating it).

And now hopefully you see why you are wrong.

Re:Good

[Otter]

I have heard and read arguments like yours, and without a single exception, they came from people who did not use BeOS (booting it up is not using it). Those who used BeOS apps for at least a few hours, understand why BeOS is worth the effort.

Put me down as a first case. It worked beautifully and had the second-best API I've encountered (next to Qt). The problem wasn't the OS itself -- it was that using it for even basic real work required buying a whole set of new applications. The price barrier to entry was just too steep for no compelling advantage over MacOS System 8. (How often do I need to play multiple MP3s simultaneously?)

Linux took off because it was initially embraced by users who just wanted to run vi and pine in an xterm, and then prospered among desktop users because it had included, free desktop apps, if not necessarily good ones. And, of course, the whole thing was free (beer).

Re:Good

[cloudmaster]

What? BONE, available to the public? I guess my order for Duke Nukem Forever will probably be filled soon, then...

Re:Good

[oblivionboy]

Personally, I wish they didn't waste their time reinventing the wheel. Other designers have already been there, and while there's a lot to say about the heavy legacy of various existing designs, they work and have billions of man/hours put into them.

I sometimes wonder if people like you are really so short sighted, or if in fact you're just having some kind of weird emotional reaction.

I'm sure there are other posters who will sit around and argue each and everyone of those points, and there certainly are many that could be made against them.

But the biggest one I have is: why would YOU care about what ANOTHER group of people are doing? Do you think these people would be somehow just redeployed for your favourite pet project -- "scrliminitrrtrt" -- some obscure unix command prompt that sees less and less use as unix finally matures in the interface area?

No of course not. They would be doing something else entirely. By your logic, UNIX itself should never have been developed, because instead there was MULTICS around. And MULTICS had years of development, and had all the "good" software. So why bother?

Everytime I see someone doing something new, even if its something that doesn't interest me in the least, I say "go for it". Because thats the only way humanity advances, and to be honest it helps stave off boredom while we're at it.

Re:Good

[sootman]

Agreed. I was a big fan of Be, just had no practical reason to use it. Gotta love a box that booted 10-15 seconds after POST. Everything else was fast. Amazing what you can do when you throw away decades of legacy crap. (And, inevitably, a bit sad what you lose.) I never had enough files on it to make use of the cool filesystem, but the right-click navigation was awesome and super-obvious to use.* I wonder if Zeta is as fast as Be was on, say, a classic Pentium 150 with 32 MB? I also wonder if Zeta has the option of (I think) control-alt clicking on the start menu (tracker button? I forget its name) and setting the theme (and much behavior) to Win98? If so, it might be worth looking at.

That's one of the downsides of Be--as good as it was that things were different, it was bad that they had to throw away some things just because they *had* to be different. Taskbar and start menu (excuse my terms) as two overlapping squares in the top-right corner? WTF was that about?!?!?

* for those who never saw it, you could right-click on a file on your desktop and, in addition to the standard things--open, delete, etc.--were three options: copy to, move to, create link in. Select one of those, and it would create cascading dropdowns of your whole filesystem so you could pick your destination. Sorry, can't find any screenies. Trust me: it was cool.

Re:Good

[crache]

"Personally, I wish they didn't waste their time reinventing the wheel. Other designers have already been there, and while there's a lot to say about the heavy legacy of various existing designs, they work and have billions of man/hours put into them." You could have said the same thing to Linus and the early linux hackers. What if they had listened to you?

Re:Good

[haggar]

In fact, I did work with OS/2 2.2 and liked it a lot. Later on I played around with Os/2 3.0 Warp.

However, as for responsiveness it feels somewhere between BeOS and WinNT. It's not that BeOS is particularly "lightweight", but as a desktop user you feel really privileged and listened to. No hourglass, focus stealing, delays, none.

Re:Good

[Shinobi]

Never mind that reinventing the wheel is also a good thing.

Point in case, without reinventing it, our cars would still use ancient wooden wheels stuck together into an almost solid form.

By reinventing it, we have come up with far better wheels.

The whole view-point of "We shouldn't reinvent the wheel" is dangerous. Those interested in history, archeology and similar studies know about the dangers posed by people who don't bother doing their _own_ research anymore, but just reading others research and referencing that. The same problem is becoming visible in computer related fields, where people who want to try something entirely new are disparaged, not the least on sites like this one. Comments like "It's not the UNIX way", "Why waste time on that when you can contribute to " etc aren't exactly rare. The whole viewpoint leads to copycats, rather than thinkers.

To innovate, you occasionally have to reinvent something or you risk (To use the word that is so trendy among so many here on Slashdot) monoculture, only following a limited path due to peer pressure. Without reinventing the wheels(and other aspects), we'd never have progressed to where we are now, technologically

Re:Good

[VolciMaster]

yep, reinventing the wheel is a bad thing, until you get people thinking that maybe a wooden wheel with steel wrapped around it isn't the best way to go. Or the folks at Michelin who come up with a tire that needs no air (see here).

BeOS fully supported all of GCC, so any applications could be ported quickly (for command-line stuff, it was generally just a change to the makefile). The Be engineers did their homework. Several came out of Apple's OS group to found Be Inc just so they could explore new ways of doing things. Metadata attached to every file, fast searching, native TCP/IP message passing in the OS (which made network applications simpler to write). They were working on a multiuser version when they got sidetracked into internet appliances, which haven't really gone anywhere in the intervening time since.

Also, I don't know if you ever used the Be command line, but the arrangement of files and commands all pretty much matched what you'd expect to see in a Unix/Linux/BSD environment.

New APIs come around all the time (Qt, Win16, OWL, Win32, .NET, POSIX (which isn't even an API), Carbon, MFC, Cocoa, etc). And every time a new one shows up, people bitch and moan about how everybody already knows the other ones inside and out, and why move to something new? Maybe the new one is better. Maybe not. Some are better, but don't catch on due to weird licensing (Borland's OWL pops to mind).

Some folks play with 'alternative' OSes because they can. There are some playing with them to see what could be. The typical /. poster seems to only want to hear stuff about BSD, Linux, Windows, and OS X. (One of which is fully commercial, another mostly commercial.) I loved running BeOS 4, 4.5, and 5. I didn't run it because it supported butt loads of applications, nor because developing for it wasn't horribly difficult (though I would've personally liked an IDE for GUI stuff). I ran it because it worked really really well. It ran almost everything I needed it to (Gobe Productive wasn't to the level of compatibility with Office I had to maintain at the time), and almost never crashed. It didn't matter what I did to it, the OS kept on humming. Applications could go nuts and croak, but they never took out anything else.

BeOS seemed to incorporate a lot of the ideas of Stallman's GNU HURD kernel (drivers in user space, don't reboot to load new drivers, just quit and restart that server), but actually got it working (unlike HURD which is still under development).

And that's why a lot of us are going to use YellowTab, too.

Re:Good

[LurkerXXX]

You sir, are a moron.

Be was almost completely POSIX complient. That's why 95% of the apps for it were just quick ports of POSIX programs that had been already written for *BSD/Linux.

Personally, I wish idiots like you would try learning something about an OS before bashing it. It's obvious you've never used it.

Re:Good

[drpimp]

* It's old.
* It's not Linux or OSX.
* It's not free.


You forgot no screenshots. This distro will be dead before version 2.0

Re:Good

[snkline]

The sad thing is, BeOS always had the underpinnings necessary to be Multiuser, just never had it implemented for the users.

In fact people have written login apps that at least allowed Windows XP style Multiuser, where only one user is logged in at a time. This requires some interesting hacks since the home directory which stores all user specific files needs to be recopied from user directories each time someone different logs in.

However there is full support of filesystem and process level security, and you can make users with non-root priveleges technically. Hopefully future incarnations of the OS will deal with this issue, the framework for multiuser is there, but it needs some work.

Re:Good

[jonadab]

> The effort invested in BeOS is worthwhile

It was when Be did it. Very worthwile. BeOS introduced a lot of really interesting concepts. However, the rest of the world has now had about a decade to catch up...

> It's the most respnsive desktop OS I know

The Linux kernel is a *LOT* more responsive than it used to be, even on a single-core system, and, starting now, by the time YellowTab could even optimistically hope to get anywhere, dual-core will be VERY common. Practically the only remaining think that will make a Linux system unresponsive these days is when it's IO-bound (the ultimate example being when you're using an smbmounted filesystem and somebody shuts down the computer that hosts it; that sucks). Yes, the BeOS is responsive, but the difference is not what it used to be, and there are so many other things lacking, such as a multiuser security model for running untrusted code with reduced privileges. (This is important from a security perspective, even for systems with only one user, including desktops. If the BeOS were anywhere near as popular as Windows, it would have serious security issues because of this. YellowTab can fix that, but by the time they do, Linux will have fully caught up on the responsiveness issue.)

> I have heard and read arguments like yours, and without a single
> exception, they came from people who did not use BeOS

I have used BeOS, significantly more than just booting it up. I never used it as my primary desktop OS long-term, but I used it for almost two weeks solid at one point (while I was reading the BeOS Bible from cover to cover) with only the occasional reboot into something else to check my email. (I get too much email to use a web interface to get it, and the POP3 client I used at the time is Win32-only; I've since switched to Gnus, so if I were experimenting with BeOS today I could get my email from there, but there's little reason to experiment with the BeOS today, unless you haven't already done so in the past, because little has changed.) As recently as two weeks ago I used BeOS to copy some stuff from a FAT32 partition on a SATA drive over to an ext2 partition on an IDE drive, because, for arcane reasons involving among other things some issues with the BIOS on that system, none of my other OSes could see both partitions. That was BeOS 5 PE, which if I'm not mistaken is older than SATA, but it worked fine, and that didn't surprise me at all, because I understand some of its strengths. BeOS had a lot of potential, and there are still some things we can learn from it. (Heck, there are still some things we can learn from VMS. I *want* filesystem-level file versioning, for instance; that's the Coolest Filesystem Feature Ever, and despite having less "Wow" value, it's way more useful in practice than the BFS extended attributes. But I wouldn't select VMS over other systems available today on the strength of that.) The way BeOS Just Works with a lot of hardware it doesn't have specific drivers for, for instance, is instructive. (MS-DOS 6 also works with SATA drives, no problem whatsoever. You're limited to FAT16, though, so 2GB per partition...)

But saying "This feature and that feature of BeOS were cool, modern systems should learn from that" is one thing, and saying "BeOS was so cool, it's worth making into a modern system today" is something else. It's, to be blunt, far too late for that. Too much time has been lost. What YellowTab has today is just enough of a foundation that they could now seriously *start* the process of modernizing BeOS, a process that will take 5-10 years. By then, Reiser4 will be stable; WinFS will be on the horizon; dual-core will be on every geek's desk; the 2.8 Linux kernel will be old news.

If YellowTab could have started about the time Be, Inc. starting focusing on BeIA and started letting BeOS 6 development lag, BeOS would be a modern OS *today*, with a full multiuser security model, a complete networking stack (and, probably, firewalling), and other goodies. But it isn't and it doesn't. The milk has been spilt.

Re:Good

[Idealius]

This branch on this thread reminds me of when someone wants to buy a lottery ticket.

Person A) I'm going to buy a lottery ticket.
Person B) The chances of you being successful by winning is 1 in a zillion? You're wasting your time & money.
Person C) You shouldn't discourage him, what if he wins?
Person A) Buys lottery ticket.

Wednesday night rolls up, or w/e they check ticket.

Person A) Ah I lost.
Person C) Better luck next time.
Person B) Told you, ya idiots.

Or alternatively:

Person A) I WON!
Person C) Oh my god SHARE!
Person B) Oh my god SHARE with me...PLEASE!
Person A&C) That would be a waste of time & money, ya naysaying idiot.

My point is we're all just talking about is 'chance' and our preferred disposition to it, which is dependent on variables we can't control (by much) so just talk about the features or something.

Re:Good

[sevinkey]

I wonder what product engineers at Firestone think about re-inventing the wheel :)

Re:Good

[wernst]

* It's really easy to develop fast GUI apps for.

Yup, its never been easier to develop fast GUI apps for all 10 regular BeOS users...

Re:Good

[SmittyTheBold]

They sure don't shout it from the rooftops, but this support request thread makes it sound like the BONE version of an app should be used in Zeta. There are other references to be found, too.

Re:Good

[dingman]

Old? *shrug* so's NeXT^WOS X

Not Linux? Something new might be interesting.

Not free? I pay for Linux when it suits me.

Not Free? I might use it when I'm getting paid to, but not on my own time.

I would love to try it

[castlec]

Unfortunately, the price is just too high to justify. The effort required to customize a linux installation is well worth 99 eur in my opinion. If they survive, I may try them in the future but not right now.

Re:I would love to try it

[Aluminum Tuesday]

Zeta is aimed more at people who don't have the time, skill or inclination to customise their own open source OS, but who do have the money to pay for something that just works straight out of the box.

Re:I would love to try it

[peterih]

Then you should just wait for haiku-os to become useable. As I understand it is supposed to be free.

Re:I would love to try it

[ytm]

Yes, there was something like that, but all these efforts were merged into http://haiku-os.org/. In its current state Haiku replaces most of BeOS Personal Edition (that free one) components, it is not yet an OS of its own.

Re:I would love to try it

[Achra]

Haiku OS (Formerly OpenBeos) is (as I understand it) still a long way away from release, and is at the "pile of code" stage.
http://haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=faq_normal
Beos PE R5 is still available from BeBits and works on older machines
http://www.bebits.com/app/2680
and Beos MAX will work on newer machines, it's a hack of the old closed source with some newer drivers and some extra functionality like being bootable.
http://www.bebits.com/app/3892
The BeosMAX people have expressed that they would release no more versions once Zeta released, so I guess 3.1Beta1 is _it_. I still think it's an OS with a place. I loved it when I was first introduced to it by BeOS PE (FREE!), and was surprised that it hadn't caught on. Snappy, usable, friendly. A surprising number of linux apps release for BeOS as well, including Firefox (but not openoffice), Freesci, Sarien, Dosbox...

Re:Such a waste...

[afd8856]

ignorant, ignorant
double ignorant.

Doesn't work with my hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an Abit KT7A-Raid Motherboard with the latest firmware...

First Problem
If I try to install on a Maxtor 120GB harddrive, it says "Could not determine suitable harddisk drive". This happens whether I'm on the UDMA66 channels or the faster HPT370 ATA-100 Channels. But if I drop in a 5GB Maxtor drive, it works but only on the slower channels. There was a replacement IDE driver for BeOS 5 but I haven't tried to see if it'll work with Zeta. With BeOS you could install this on the slower channels and switch to the faster.
http://www.bebits.com/app/2625
But it doesn't help me with installing on the Maxtor 120GB since I can't get installed on any channels to apply the patch.

Second problem
Network card not detected: SMC 1255TX-PF (Accton EN-1216 Chipset).
I'm keeping an eye open for my old SMC 1244 with a Realtec chipset to see if it works. I know BeOS 5 worked with the SMC 1244. I thought it did with the SMC1255 as well, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Mugsy

They have been selling the beta since about a year

[yormas]

On german teleshopping Zeta has been sold for more than a year - thought only a beta version. Pretty expensive but hailed as virus free. And they always say: "You can do everything with Zeta that you can do with WindowsXP" Yeah sure - tell that your kid when he tries to install any game.

Good luck, but ...

[DoktorTomoe]

... I am still wondering how an operating system with virtually no native software and no developer and/or user base will survive, let alone compete against Lin/Win/Mac ...

Re:Good luck, but ...

[Aluminum Tuesday]

Check out bebits.com for BeOS native software, including the Firefox browser you probably used to post that message.

If it survives (and here's hoping), it'll be because its specialised and does what it does very well. Video editing on a 300MHz PC running BeOS 5 Pro was a lot less painful than you might think. I hope they keep that up.

Re:Good luck, but ...

[zorander]

Is there modern video/audio editing software for it? Particularly, is there a recent version of a production grade audio production suite (like protools or logic or cubase) for it?

If not, then why are people touting it's multimedia capabilities? I mean sure, it's damn cool, but it's not going to be used for pro audio video if they're not there. I however, am ignorant--what's out there for Be in the audio/(video) world?

Re:Good luck, but ...

[Elektroschock]

Well, actually they hire developers and want them to move to Germany

Re:source code?

[Aluminum Tuesday]

Yes, they have it. They bought the BeOS code when Be went under. And yes, I have a pretty good idea which P2P networks will have the Zeta ISO. I'll pay for mine, thanks.

Re:Such a waste...

[ssj_195]

I'm not sure if this applies to Zeta or not, but to make a point about this argument that crops up whenever someone forks a project or appears to re-tread old ground: Programmers are not interchangeable, especially if they are programming for free, and in their spare time. Such programmers will tackle the projects that interest them, and if deprived of such projects, may well opt to not tackle anything at all rather than help with an (to them) uninteresting project.

not good

[cahiha]

The forward thinking population of /. will now mock it because:

It will mock it because it has the same problems as Linux, BSD, OS X, and Windows, and on top of that isn't even backwards compatible.

Diversity is good, and a billion people writing GNU-style apps for Linux is not diversity.

Diversity is good. Too bad that BeOS and its derivatives don't provide it.

Re:1999

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

1970 called, they want Linux back

Given that Linus Torvalds was born on December 28, 1969, I'd say he was precocious...

BeOS is not Linux

[Aluminum Tuesday]

There seems to be some confusion here as to what BeOS actually is - it's not just a hobby OS or a Linux clone, but a full-featured media-centric OS designed for music and video production. It's fundamentally different to Linux and other Unixes: it's designed to be low latency rather than to have a network-aware window system and multi-user capabilities. It was designed from the start to be a desktop OS - when everyone else was going multi-user, Be stayed single user and concentrated on its multimedia specialisation. It's worth a look, and I hope they do a demo live CD the same way that Be did for R4.5. Otherwise most of you non-pirates are never going to see how cool it is.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

it's designed to be low latency rather than to have a network-aware window system and multi-user capabilities. It was designed from the start to be a desktop OS - when everyone else was going multi-user, Be stayed single user and concentrated on its multimedia specialisation.

If that's all it has to offer, I'll just hack together a distro with low-lat Linux kernel packed with all kinds of A/V drivers and software, with login taken out. Gee...

My point is, existing software already does that, be it Linux, Windows (urgh), QNX or whatever. BeOS (or Zeta or whatever it's called) won't work because it has nothing significantly new to offer, and it's not compatible with anything.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[Aluminum Tuesday]

"I'll just hack together a distro"

And for media pros without the skill, time or inclination to do that, here's BeOS! Ready-made for what they need. Understand?

And maybe BeOS was offering this stuff before the others were; did you think of that? Maybe there's an established user base of people who want to keep using the OS they're used to, rather than switch to one you'd like to see them using. Maybe they don't like your choice of OS, and maybe they wouldn't like the one you'd put together for them.

Maybe Be and YellowTAB "get it" in the exact way that you don't.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[wiit_rabit]

I think Roscoe has probably never used BeOS, much less Zeta. Although I will sound like a fanboy of BeOS (or Zeta), I encourage everyone to experience this OS. Other posts and the article talk about low latency, but you need see the OS first hand to understand what this really means. Secondly, with millions of PII '440BX' or similar based systems out there being tossed in the trash pile for no good reason other than they won't run XP very well, they should sing running this OS.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

First, let me say I have a dual 133MHz BeBox at home and used to think it was a wonderful system. So I'm not an anti-BeOS zealot.

But exactly what apps are these media pros using on BeOS? The OS can be designed for that kind of work as much as you want, but without the apps to take advantage of it. Correct me if things have changed, but what replacement would any 'media pro' have for any of Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Motion, Logic, Cubase, DVD Studio Pro etc etc? Because those are the apps all the media pros I know of use.

It's nice that BeOS has a fast system-wide search with live queries, and it's nice that it had it before other systems (I remember using it back in 96 or so). But most 'media pros' don't spend all day searching for files.

No matter how great the OS is, no matter how great it is at running on an old machine, it's the apps that matter. Sad, but true.

I might consider installing it on an old machine for my dad who surfs and does nothing much more. But it'd be useless for any 'media pros'.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[Aluminum Tuesday]

yT bought the BeOS source code when Be went under.

Although media types are more likely to be using Mac OS X and Windows now, rather than any of the OSs you list (I was big on AmigaOS way back when, as it happens), it's great that we have options and that I could consider a return to the OS I used for video editing, if I wanted.

Any software product needs to be refined and expanded to meets its user's changing needs. Here's hoping yT is able to do that with Zeta.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[cahiha]

it's designed to be low latency rather than to have a network-aware window system and multi-user capabilities

First of all, the Linux GUI uses shared memory and IPC, just like almost every other desktop OS in common use.

Secondly, none of those things are mutually exclusive. For example, ultiuser capabilities have no impact on the Linux kernel or its performance.

Be stayed single user and concentrated on its multimedia specialisation.

Yes, and that's a needless specialization. All major desktop OSes are more than fast enough to handle multimedia.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[theolein]

And for media pros without the skill, time or inclination to do that, here's BeOS!

I seriously doubt that Media pros will be using an OS for which there are almost no professional applications.

An OS lives and dies by the amount and quality of applications available for it. I just don't see anything around for Be or yT.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[paulbd]

All major desktop OSes are more than fast enough to handle multimedia.

That depends on your definition of multimedia. There is no (mainstream) Linux distribution that, "out of the box" is fast enough to handle professional audio requirements. The fact that Linux can handle such things when patched is because of the great work of people like Ingo Molnar. Yes, the stock 2.6.12 kernel is now better than any Windows release to date in this area. But its still not possible to get the performance of OS X without running a patched kernel.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[ephex]

Sure, any common OS can help you play mp3's and watch videos on less than modern hardware.

But here, multimedia means something else; content creation. As an amateur producer I can tell you not all OS's are equal when it comes to having latency of 5ms @ 44.1Khz for the output of a sound wave that is being generated in realtime from multiple software synths being passed through arrays of effect units and a mixer or two [or more], and maybe some more effect units. ;)

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[haggar]

There are at least 2 apps I use often, are excellent... and incidently, free. One is Sequitur, the other is XRS.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[object88]

But exactly what apps are these media pros using on BeOS?

IIRC, Blender started out on BeOS. Of course, that was years ago, and there isn't a current BeOS / Zeta port, but given what it currently runs under, perhaps it's not far off.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[dvNull]

Blender started out on IRIX AFAIK, not BeOS.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[algae]

Correct me if things have changed, but what replacement would any 'media pro' have for any of Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Motion, Logic, Cubase, DVD Studio Pro etc etc? Because those are the apps all the media pros I know of use.

From the Audio Pro side, don't forget ProTools, any number of VST plugins and instruments such as Waves, NI Reaktor, and TC Native. That last one actually still benefits from having hardware DSP thrown at it.

I love BeOS too, and actually paid for an r4.5 CD, but without ports of real actual applications that people use to make money and products with, it's not going anywhere.

Re:BeOS is not Linux

[podperson]

And, in fact, On Location was available for the Mac before Jean Louis Gassee left Apple to form Be. (Apple's developer CDs used to include On Location indices.) So while BeFS did something you needed a DA/Init combo to do on the Mac (and similar but inferior products were available for Windows), it wasn't Earthshaking.

Why do I want this?

[TedRiot]

I admit that I'm totally ignorant of BeOS - all I know about it is the name.

Who is this for and what kind of things are they supposed to do with it? What does it offer that current operating systems with lots of applications don't offer? From the GUI orientation of the article I suppose this is not for some specific server need.

Variety is good, but what (good) variety does this bring?

Re:Why do I want this?

[kahei]

It's main benefits are:

Very good with all things video
Fast, especially at GUI tasks
Very good filesystem, such that you can define a folder as 'everything in /etc that is less than 5 days old and is a sound file'
Easy to write for
SVG graphics! Okay, not really a solid benefit but a cool technology; graphics are vectors and therefore zoom and scale as you would expect.

It was designed to be an efficient single-user graphical OS, specially for use in multimedia (ie they couldn't think of any other niche for it). As a result it's much faster than Unix/Linux and much cleaner and freindlier than Windows for doing GUI tasks and as a platform for video codecs.

In terms of apps, the big open source projects (firefox, vim etc) are all there, but there's precious little else.

The main DISadvantage is that nobody uses it and there's not the slightest chance that anybody ever will :) However, it is more comfortable and responsive to use than any other OS I can think of -- a bit like using NeXT, in fact, if anyone remembers those.

Re:Why do I want this?

[Aluminum Tuesday]

It's a single-user, low-latency media workstation OS for audio/video production. It does pretty much everything you can do with media on Mac OS X or Windows XP - but it does it faster and in a way that BeOS fans will be used to and comfortable with.

Re:Why do I want this?

[tomstdenis]

"It's a single-user, low-latency media workstation"

You mean like a VCR?

Hehehe, sorry.

Tom

Re:Why do I want this?

[Error629]

I think they were going more for the Post-It look!

Re:Why do I want this?

[WheresMyDingo]

"It's a single-user, low-latency media workstation" You mean like a VCR? Hehehe, sorry. Tom

Hmmm.. a MythTV-like application could be the killer app for Zeta given its strengths-- anything like that out there?

Re:Why do I want this?

[aussersterne]

And its two insurmountable drawbacks as well:

- Very narrow video, storage, and device driver support; you are unlikely to get it to run unless you shell out for compatible hardware in addition to the OS itself

- Very few applications of any kind; sure, it runs a smattering of applications from the open source world, but not really very many at all in comparison to the number of OSS apps out there, and there's little diversity, but precious little else unless you want to write it or port it yourself

You basically have to buy a PC with supported hardware just to run it, and once you do, there's little you can do with it that you couldn't also do with a web appliance or a Windows CE HPC--you're basically relegated to browsing, emailing, typing letters, and watching DVDs.

Re:Why do I want this?

[LurkerXXX]

Sorry, Spotlight on Mac is not the same thing (I've got a Mac too). Although Apple hired Dominic Giampaolo (creator of the Be File System) and he made spotlight, spotlight is a hack onto the existimg Mac filesystem. It isn't built into it by design as he did with BeOS. Spotlight is somewhat similar, but not as good as BFS. Maybe by os 10.6 we'll have an equivalent of BFS, but it's not there yet. Sorry.

Re:1999

[Anonymous Coward]

1996 called....they want their joke back.

Re:Such a waste...

[Aluminum Tuesday]

And doesn't it suck to live on a planet with chefs putting effort into new and exciting fish recipes when they could be cooking you a tastier hot dog?

Re:Zata as download image

[Aluminum Tuesday]

It's actually easier than that - if you give them some money, they'll mail it out to you on a physical disc. They even throw in a manual so morons who can't even get the OS' name right ("Zata"?) are at least in with a chance of understanding what it's about.

I can understand you wanting to pirate from big faceless corporations, but geez: YellowTAB is a really small and specialised company. If you like their stuff, buy it.

"In Depth"...

[Mike Connell]

For the MTV generation maybe, but I didn't see a great deal of depth there: filesystems? 3D support? network stack quality? hardware coverage? It looked a lot more like "I installed some CD and this is what happened" to me.

Not to mention that a review containing "Firefox 1.0.3 requires no introduction, however, a few notes on it are justified: fast & stable. I do not know what the yT guys and girls have done, but they made Firefox on BeOS stable and usable. And that's a great achievement." strikes me as a little suspect. Is Firefox not normally fast and stable, or is the reviewer really stuck for good things to say about Zeta?

Re:"In Depth"...

[i-neo]

I think the reviewer is probably a former BeOS user. He used to have problems with programs such as Firefox (display bugs).
This comment is interesting for people like me who used BeOS before, but stopped because of the lack of support of the open source comunity.

However I agree this is not an in-depth review, just the experience of a user.

As review are often biased, I prefer to know what the review did or experienced rather than having a lot of numbers and charts that often don't mean anything since you may have a lot of different hardware configuration.

What I can say about BeOS is that it was really good (back in the 2000) for realtime audio compositing, with really low latency. Even with my low-end computer, I managed to get good multimedia performance.

I think it is worth trying, just to feel/know that a system can be/behave differently with another OS, even on the same hardware.

Re:"In Depth"...

[Aluminum Tuesday]

Firefox used to suck on BeOS; it was sluggish and crashed if you looked at it the wrong way. Obviously yT has fixed it.

Re:"In Depth"...

[ytm]

filesystems? 3D support?

BeOS 5PE had ext2fs and vfat support and there is reiserfs 3 driver on bebits so I guess that all of them went into Zeta.
As for 3D there was OpenGL kit in BeOS from the very beginning. NVidia drivers are supported.

Re:"In Depth"...

[Rinikusu]

Well, on my system, Firefox has a tendency to lock-up once a day or so. I have to kill the process in task manager, and it takes a few moments to do so. Loading it for the first time after a reboot seems to take forever, and if I try and load it twice, both windows will then pop up instantaneously. Really bizarre. But everything works aside from those 2 anomalies.

Haiku OS - BeOS clone

[Anonymous Coward]

The BeOS clone Haiku also made some nice progress during the last months. Most kits do work and are in alpha or beta stage. There are vmware and vpc images to try out on philipp schmid's blog and also some screenshots.

Re:Haiku OS - BeOS clone

[Mitchell Mebane]

So that's why I couldn't get to his blog...

Re:Zata as download image

[iibagod]

I don't feel the need to pirate from a small and specialized company....I just don't feel the need to give over my hard earned cash to try some marginal OS that (by your statistics) less than 5% would use, only to find out that....I'm part of the 95% non-Zeta users out there. If I like it and there's enough support for it to get things working, I'll think about it. But hey, I already run a small-market OS that actually has plenty of support. And guess what.....it was free.

No thanks, zealo.....uh, passionate BeOS user.

screenshots

[doubleshot]

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?re lease=223&slide=1&title=zeta+os+deluxe+edition+scr eenshots here are a few screenshots for your viewing enjoyment

Re:screenshots

[jurt1235]

Sorry for Zeta, but this looks like fvwm95 or windows 95 without the goodies installed. They may have been way ahead, but I will prefer my KDE desktop over this any time.

Re:1999

[frostw]

2008 called. He was amazed because he just read Slashdot and people were still posting this tired old joke.

Mod this flamebait if you like it

[ratta]

But what is another closed source os for? If you want to attract people away from windows you need something more than a nice GUI, and IMHO opensource is the only thing that may do it. It is very unlikely that peole will abandon windows just to be locked into another proprietary os, provided by a much smaller corporation. BTW kudos to the zetaos people, even if it is quite unlikely i'd be happy to see some competition.

Re:Mod this flamebait if you like it

[despisethesun]

An AC pointed out that yellowTab would like to open-source Zeta, and from what I've seen he's correct. They sponsored an Open Source conference a few months ago (in Japan, I think) and I'm fairly sure they've been supporters of the Haiku project (OpenBeOS). The problem is that they've licensed the BeOS source code from Palm and Palm doesn't want that source released. That might be why they want Haiku to succeed. If it does, they can start replacing the Palm-licensed portions of Zeta with Haiku and move on unencumbered. I'm not sure what legal issues that might bring, though.

New hardware

[gilesjuk]

I would have liked to have seen the review done on modern hardware. Large SATA hard disk, dual core or hyper-threaded CPU, Nforce chipset, PCI express graphics etc..

It's popularity will be severely limited if it doesn't support as much hardware as Linux, never mind Windows.

99 euro?

[Zedrick]

"For only 99,- Euro, a bargain."

Even compared to FreeBSD or how much a Linux distro would cost me?

Sounds nice, but for 99 euro I would at least want a time limited installation to try out, before taking out my VISA.

Re:99 euro?

[crazymandias]

This is where you need to use some proactive piracy buddy. Download the full package via torrent. http://isohunt.com/download.php?mode=bt&id=3879079 and buy it if you think it's cool.

Re:99 euro?

[m50d]

Yes, it is. It's really good for multimedia, the scheduler has to be seen to be believed, and it's a good integrated package. It compares pretty favourably with, say SUSE, at least as a media OS. Of course you can get linux and bsd distros for free download, but the amount of time you'd have to spend finding codecs and getting them set up as well as YT is would easily be worth 99 Euros for many people.

Re:Zata as download image

[Aluminum Tuesday]

All you're saying to me is that you're not part of YellowTAB's target market. No worries; hopefully enough people are that they'll make some money from Zeta.

And I'm not currently a BeOS user. I use FreeBSD and Mac OS X.

Re:!(Linux or Mac OS X)

[Aluminum Tuesday]

It's based on BSD, but BSD is only a small part of it as a whole. Most Mac OS X users will have no idea they're running a BSD, or even a NEXT-derived OS.

Re:Such a waste...

[R.D.Olivaw]

"new and exciting fish recipes"

Dip fish in batter, fry and serve with chips.
Now, can we please get back to improving the hotdog?

Re:Zata as download image

[iibagod]

My apologies, you can clearly understand how I got the impression that you use BeOS by seeing how you've so devoutly covered these comments.

And thats oh so helpful of you to dismiss me as not being of the target market. I'm certainly not anymore.

Re:Such a waste...

[Zedrick]

When you think about it, yes...

Just try to imagine what kind of hotdogs we would have to choose from if all great chefs of the world were developing new hotdog-recipes all the time!

Mmmmmm. I think I'm going to buy some hotdogs, hotdog bread and 5 different kinds of cheese to experminent with tonight.

Re:They have been selling the beta since about a y

[aarku]

"You can do everything with Zeta that you can do with WindowsXP"

That's really funny when you say it in the zombocom voice.

Re:source code?

[Aluminum Tuesday]

"i live in a country where ppl never pay for software"

Oh, that makes it alright then.

Re:Zata as download image

[Aluminum Tuesday]

That's the reality though, isn't it? Your earlier comment says to me that you want:

* a free OS
* a widely supported OS

Zeta is neither. You aren't who they're aiming themselves at.

And I can see how you got the impression, but there was still no need to jump to conclusions.

Re:OMG

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

this operating system fails it and is dying

Does Netcraft comfirm it?

So?

[Willeh]

While it's a nice thing to have for the former BEos enthusiast, the rest of the world shrugs and says "So?" I think that with the pool of apps ported to all platforms (Firefox, VLC, Thunderbird et al) A modern platform has to have some significant advantages to stand out.

I just don't think that having a Spotlight(c) like functionality in the OS is much of a selling point, neither is "Good video editing" capabilities. For all i(and everybody else) know it's just another video editing application, when in the rest of the OS world there's already plenty to satisfy the budding Spielberg or (god forbid) Uwe Boll. It's just an example to illustrate the lack of REAL tangible selling points this OS has. Any of the real BEos fans want to educate a sceptic with some real advantages instead of that subjective "It's just a better experience for ${APPLICATION}" garbage you hear in every platform discussion?

Re:So?

[Aluminum Tuesday]

And when a new version of Windows comes out, I pay little attention to it. It's all down to personal taste.

Re:So?

[Rinikusu]

For all the knocks Uwe Boll gets (and justifiably, I might add), I'm sure he cries himself to sleep on a big mattress full of cash every night. Makes me wonder if I'm in the wrong business...

Nice, but where is their market?

[starseeker]

I'm glad BeOS still lives in some form - it deserved to survive. But it will be forever a niche OS.

a) Expensive. Sorry folks, but however nice BeOS was it wasn't enough of a leap ahead to make people want to pay for it instead of make do. DOS taught the world this decades ago - cheap wins in any mass market environment.

b) Driver support. Linux has enough trouble in this regard - how does BeOS (pardon me, Zeta) plan to do it? By becoming like Apple and selling box+hardware? If so they'd better get moving, because Apple has had tha market locked up for years now.

c) The "why should I bother?" effect. Switching OSes is a MAJOR task for all but a very small subset of us. Guess how many people are going to bother with this, without a compelling reason?

I think there is one, and only one, way to get people to switch operating systems on a massive scale - mathematically provable security and quality. A system that can be proven uncrashable and unhackable will change the world, since that is currently the great unmet need. People have good enough, in both commercial (Windows/Mac) and free (Linux/*BSD). It's going to take a leap to the next level, and that's so difficult I doubt we are even training computer scientists in the right tools to attempt it. We need the Final OS - the one where an upgrade means you swap in a new proof that impliments the previous behavior more efficiently, or provides more functionality while still proving out on security and previous functionality. Upgrade bugs need to become not just unheard of but mathematically impossible. Then people will pay attention.

Re:Nice, but where is their market?

[Zemplar]

"I think there is one, and only one, way to get people to switch operating systems on a massive scale - mathematically provable security and quality. A system that can be proven uncrashable and unhackable will change the world, since that is currently the great unmet need."

OpenBSD and Solaris 10 are very close to this goal, yet they still remain niche OS's to the masses. It will take what you suggest AND the ease of installing OS X or Windows XP for the masses to adopt. However, the more secure operating systems are inherently more complex due to the capabilities and layered security, thus, the masses will never fully adopt the most secure solutions available to them.

Although OS X is a great start in the right direction and has, through it's heritage, adopted some of OpenBSD's features.

Re:Nice, but where is their market?

[mikrorechner]

b) Driver support. Linux has enough trouble in this regard - how does BeOS (pardon me, Zeta) plan to do it? By becoming like Apple and selling box+hardware? If so they'd better get moving, because Apple has had tha market locked up for years now.

Yes, they really should build their own hardware. They might, for example, call it a BeBox or something. Yes, that indeed is a neat idea.

Re:Nice, but where is their market?

[hyphz]

> OpenBSD and Solaris 10 are very close to this
> goal, yet they still remain niche OS's to the
> masses. It will take what you suggest AND the
> ease of installing OS X or Windows XP for the
> masses to adopt.

It's nothing to do with ease of installing. The majority of users never install an OS.

What they need to do is to start getting pre-built hardware sold with the OS installed. Get a lower spec machine (cancelled out by BeOS's higher performance), stick a decent office suite on there with fileformat compatibility with MS then sell them in bulk to officework firms. Use the lack of app support as a selling point ("includes security technology preventing the installation of 99% of games and other unauthorised software!").

Re:Nice, but where is their market?

[agraupe]

OpenBSD is a good server system, but for desktop use it doesn't quite cut it for me. I tried getting everything working for a desktop on OpenBSD, and it was a little bit disappointing. I think, more than anything, it's just the fact that it is a niche player, even moreso than Linux. It's not impossible to use as a desktop, but Linux does have more support from game vendors and other things necessary to have a good desktop offering (is OpenBSD able to run Linux binaries? IIRC, FreeBSD can). Perhaps if someone took the time to write a simple guide to setting up an OpenBSD desktop, it would fare better. It's the small things, like setting up audio, 3D video, and other miscellaneous drivers/hardware that worry me when I think about switching to OpenBSD as a desktop.

Re:Nice, but where is their market?

[Zemplar]

I meant to say "install and use", but you are correct. Also, given your suggestion, Solaris 10 offers all of what you ask, only it does not [yet] come preloaded on super low-ball hardware....although there is the Sun Ultra 20 for a great price.

Re:Nice, but where is their market?

[LurkerXXX]

is OpenBSD able to run Linux binaries?

Yes.

Re:OMG

[Aluminum Tuesday]

Because we all know an OS lives and dies by its GUI glitz, right?

Re:Zata as download image

[iibagod]

I want an OS that does what I want. I haven't found one that completely fills my needs. I have no agenda either way towards free/non-free. I don't want to get screwed out of my money because I bought an OS that didn't live up to my standards (Again). I am a potential customer, and may end up buying it (highly unlikely at this point), but as long as there exists little to no return policies for software (but but you could have copied it and sent it out over the internet!), then I find a way to try it if I feel the need.

Let's just say I'm not buying it or trying it and leave it at that, shall we? Or would you like the last word?

Re:1999

[Nick Driver]

2008 called. He was amazed because he just read Slashdot and people were still posting this tired old joke.

Ask him if DNF ever shipped yet.

Re:source code?

[PhilHibbs]

Lets follow this one through, just out of interest.

Nobody ever buys software in Elbonia.
Therefore nobody ever writes software with the Elbonian market in mind.
Therefore Elbonian software sales are never in the business plan.
Therefore everyone in Elbonia can download software without impacting anyone's profit margins.

Where's the flaw in this logic?

Re:!(Linux or Mac OS X)

[webplummer]

Don't be so sure. OS X has a high geek to average Joe quotient. I'd actually be interested in what Apple's research says about the technical education of it's OS X user base.

Getting back on topic (LOL), I say the more OS choices the better. And hopefully the best ones will subsume the best features of the others.

A little review of Zeta/some issues I've noticed

[timecop]

I also downloaded (pirated, whatever) for evaluation a copy of Zeta 1.0. I was interested in just testing it on a old celeron 700 box with 256meg memory, intel 810 chipset (onboard graphics) and a 20gb hdd.

First, I did a test install inside a pirated VMWare 5.0 Workstation. Installer loaded without a problem, using something that looked like a 8bit vesa graphics mode. No problem, I thought, this is VMWare and it's unlikely they would have a driver for VMWAare's svga adapter. About 5 minutes into the install, the mouse locked up (VMWare mouse), and got stuck in upper left corner of the screen, unmoving.

Here's where my problems started. While installer was fairly usable from a keyboard (usual things like tab, space, enter, etc could be used to navigate the simplistic dialogs), once the install was done and I was presented with what I assume was a control panel for completing setting the system up, I was stuck.

The mouse was still in upper-left corner, not moving, and no amount of pressing tab, ctrltab, alt-tab, or trying to get focus to move off the control panel app into anything else did anything useful. I cursed and powered down the emulator, and put the same zeta cdrom into the celeron 700 i was talking about earlier.

Installation on a real machine was about as fast as inside emulation. Seems like the real bottleneck here is disk access, and not CPU. Some of the small files took forever to copy. Not knowing the filesystem on the cdrom (it looked like a custom 2-session (maybe?) disk, with only a small boot session), I couldn't tell how the install files were stored. Anyway, a bit of improvement could happen there in the installer.

Mouse didn't die on the celeron, so I'm writing off the odd mouse behaviour to something VMWare related. After install, I rebooted the celeron and yes, Zeta takes a 15-30 seconds to boot. Sure, whatever, my Windows 2003 Standard (pirated) install on my 2.2ghz p4m laptop with 1gb ram takes maybe 10 seconds to come out of hibernation.

After reboot, i was still presented with the same 8-bit vesa video color. This was on a i810 graphics adapter! Even LINUX of all things supports such old equipment. Not Zeta. No 16-bit color or resolution > 640x480 for me.

TO summarize my report here, the following things I'd like to see happen with Zeta before it becomes more usable:

1) Accessibility (keyboard/otherwise) in installer and the main os/apps.
2) DRIVERS! (WTF @ not supporting i810 graphics in 2005)

Re:Pixel

[Brmbolec]

That's a really interesting project!! :) I'll give it a shot...

In-depth?

[teslatug]

It didn't seem very in-depth to me. They hardly covered applications, and I would have liked some more information as to what's changed since r5. There are still rumors that they do not have access to the source code. The biggest changes noted in the article were cosmetic or to new applications (i.e. the new preferences panel).

They have ported Firefox, which is great, but IMO they need Thunderbird and OpenOffice as well.

I am glad there is a new player in the OS market, but I doubt it's going to get much traction. I liked BeOS when I first tried it in 1997, but that was because the 1997 OS's were crap compared to it. The OS world has changed since then, and Zeta needs to keep up. I wish them luck and hope they make it.

Re:camera-support

[Brmbolec]

Together with Pixel should be a cool tool for digital camera users...

http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel

Re:Zata as download image

[Aluminum Tuesday]

"I want an OS that does what I want."

Sounds good to me. Here's hoping YellowTAB releases a live CD demo of Zeta, like Be did with BeOS R4.5.

Re:Such a waste...

[Aluminum Tuesday]

BeOS was designed for the desktop from the start.

Linux and BeOS were designed for two different things. Developers who get use out of one over the other should support and develop for whichever works for them.

Does Not Compute

[Zobeid]

Quote:

* It's really easy to develop fast GUI apps for.
* And to develop for in general.

I thought BeOS required programming in C++. Has that changed? Because IMO nothing that requires C++ can possibly be called easy.

Re:Does Not Compute

[mattgreen]

Nice attempt at a karma-whore with the meme, but every platform has a bit of a learning curve as one becomes acquainted with the way things are done. Your 'argument' can also be applied to KDE, which has quite a few applications already developed for it.

Re:A little review of Zeta/some issues I've notice

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure pride yourself in pirating everything that is piratable, don't you? And I'm guessing now you're gonna bitch about people commenting on you pirating, rather than on your review. Or smile, knowing that someone noticed.

Next on the horizon...

[Pollux]

Another interesting scenario to use BeFS is when you are putting songs on your MP3 player. Want all music from Bruce Springsteen? Or all songs from the Devils & Dust album? All songs from the 'rock' genre? You can do that without ever touching a music player or other specialized applications

Well, I guess we know which company Microsoft's going to purchase next...

BeOS Filesystem

[eggsome]

I know BeOS was a cool thing (especially BeFS)

Although I've never used BeOS I have followed its progress over the years and the information on the capabilities of BeFS outlined in this article are intriguing to me.
Looking at the filesystems sypported by fdisk on my linux box I see "eb - BeOS fs". Is it possible to use BeOS on Linux? And would you get the searching and other funky goodness?

Re:BeOS Filesystem

[Patrix]

Well:

1 - if fdisk can see a partition type, it doesn't mean you can do anything with it in Linux. This is fdisk, its job is to read the partition table and modify it, with any recognized partition type

2 - there is a befs driver for linux (not bfs, but befs), it's read-only AFAIK

3 - even once you can read and mount a befs partition in Linux, that doesn't give you any of the BeFS power until you have applications that can take advantage of it - therefore, you would need to have them all written.

Contrast and compare.

[chris_sawtell]

How does Zeta compare to Syllable technically?
Yes I know I can read the puff about them both, but that's just what they want us to believe.

btw, I thought that BeOS was sold to Palm. How come it's Zeta now?

Re:Contrast and compare.

[Vanders]

They don't. Syllable just happens to have a high level API that looks, at first glance, similiar to the BeOS/Zeta API. The filesystems share some common features. That's about it, on the technical front. As the poster above points out, Syllable is not compatible with BeOS/Zeta and it is not intended to be.

Of course, this could be just what I want you to believe..

Re:1999

[2008]

Still nothing... but my Phanton console rocks!

Re:!(Linux or Mac OS X)

[dar]

My Mom is in her 70s. She has no technical background and loves her Mac with OSX.
She's been using a Mac for years to make her artwork packets. She upgraded to OSX last year.

Much as I hate to say it...

[argent]

Much as I hate to say something nice about Linux, I think you're relying too much on rumor and faulty memory.

BeOS was usable on the desktop when Linux was just a little toy [...]

Word Perfect for Linux, one of the early commercial desktop applications for Linux, came out in 1996.

In 1996 BeOS was still demoware.

What's your source of information?

[argent]

They bought the BeOS code when Be went under.

I don't think I've ever seen an authoritative statement from anyone one way or the other on this. I would really appreciate it if you could provide some online references.

Re:1999

[Mechcozmo]

You have that memorized, didn't you?

Boot time MAY be relevant, but...

[argent]

The short boottime is something that has always been a huge selling point for the Be to me, as I hate slow-booting operating systems (luckily OS X has good sleep/wake functionality, else it would be such a pain to use).

Boot time can actually be relevant... but you have to know what it means. By itself it's only an issue if it extends into mainframe-class hour-long melodramas, because rebooting the computer is not something you should need to do all that often.

% uptime
9:18AM up 702 days...
% uptime
7:18AM up 217 days...
% uptime
9:18AM up 50 days...
% uptime
9:18AM up 73 days...

Windows "boots fast" because it puts up the login dialog as soon as the graphics subsystem has initialised far enough to display it, and because it preloads a lot of the files it uses during boot. These tricks provide an illusion of performance but don't actually do anything to make the system run any better while you're actually using it.

BeOS has a big advantage over Windows NT and UNIX-based systems like Linux and Mac OS X. It doesn't actually have a lot to do during the boot process... there's no multi-user support and very little background processing, most of what it's doing is loading drivers and starting the desktop. And it's a relatively lightweight desktop, more like Windowmaker than Gnome or KDE.

This is laudable, for a dedicated desktop OS, but it does mean that "boot time" isn't really a useful measurement of overall performance. It's more akin to "login time" on Windows or UNIX/OSX.

Boot Time

[R.Mo_Robert]

Booting is a matter of, say, 15 seconds, completely blowing away any Linux, Windows or OS X install. The short boottime is something that has always been a huge selling point for the Be to me, as I hate slow-booting operating systems (luckily OS X has good sleep/wake functionality, else it would be such a pain to use).

Umm, 15 seconds might blow away my Windows XP and Ubuntu box, but it is certainly pretty close to my new iMac G5. I haven't timed it, but it is surprisingly fast. This author makes it seem like OS X boots SO slow (I have seen slow-booting Macs: OS 9 and OS X on G3 iBooks, but, um, let's stick to technology from this decade if you're complaining about boot times, because I bet he's not testing on a comparable PC ... though he does mention a PII, but also mentions faster computers) and that using sleep/wake is the only way he can stand it.

"micro"kernel?

[Erich]

640k? That's not a microkernel.

This is a microkernel.

Novel hobbyist toy

[ehaggis]

Although I like the look and concept of Zeta, where does it fit into the OS ecosystem? Unfortunately it does not. Zeta may be doomed to a novel hobby OS. It has several disadvantages in competing with other operating systems. (Assuming it is competing.)
1. Look and Feel - OSX hands down is better. Dare I say, even Windows XP is better?
2. Drivers, Support, Compatibility - Windows XP
3. Cost - Linux
4. Stability - Linux, OSX
5. Security - I'll give Zeta this category, only because there would only be a few niche virus writers / crackers who would even attempt compromising a specialized system like this.
6. Interoperability - OSX and Linux are better

I am glad to see someone attempting to compete (assuming they are competing) on the desktop, but to succeed they will need a contemporary OS, not a circa 2001 OS.

Re:Novel hobbyist toy

[m50d]

1. Obviously personal preference, it's pretty much as themable.

2. Yes, this could well be its downfall.

3. True, but many of the commercial distros have similar costs.

4. Are you sure?

6. They're not that much better, it interoperates pretty well IME.

Beos' multimedia capabilities are still the best on any OS. It was years ahead of its time, did things in 1992 or so that other OSes are only just getting. That's where it's going to be marketed, it's the best thing to use as a multimedia system. It runs a reasonable suite of apps, nothing like the range available for windows but like linux you can find a program for most things. It's eminently usable, especially for older hardware. Whether it will succeed I don't know.

The real question:

[payamchee]

To Be Or Not To Be? (Ducks!)

Re:A little review of Zeta/some issues I've notice

[despisethesun]

You have to tell me where you found an R1 ISO. I've only been able to find the release candidates (which yT sold for some reason rather than waiting until they had a stable release ready). Maybe that's your problem, you're using RC3 or Neo?

How yellowTAB could make a buck

[theolein]

Since I agree with the majority here that Zeta, while surely a nice successor to BeOS, is more or less dead in the water due to the lack of drivers and applications, I should also offer a thought on a way for yT to actually succede in the marketplace: OEM deals.

If Linspire (formerly Lindows) can get Wallmart deals with an easy Linux on Wallmart PC's, then anyone can. If yT were to find a cheap chinese brand PC maker who would sell PC's with Zeta preinstalled, yT could then concentrate on porting Linux apps to the OS and possibly getting some developers to write software for it as well.

It would provide them with a base to start from.

Since Zeta is supposed to be the king of multimedia it would be extremely wise for them to get something like Cubase and Premiere ported or written for the OS in order to show off its strengths. YAOP (Yet Another Office Package) is not going to save yT's ass since OOo is already good enough on Linux and Windows and office stuff doesn't provide anyone with an incentive to fork out 99.- Zeta will succede or fail on the strength of its multimedia features. period.

Re:How yellowTAB could make a buck

[sootman]

"...a way for yT to actually succede in the marketplace: OEM deals."

Are you kidding? That was tried before and didn't work out. At all.

"Zeta will succede or fail on the strength of its multimedia features. period."

I guarantee it will fail, just like it did before. As a Be fan (bought R3 for Intel as soon as it came out, then R4 and 4.5; never bothered with 5 because I realized right away "This is really cool. Too bad there's not a thing I can do with it.") it pains me to say this, but if they couldn't make a dent in 1998, they don't have a prayer today. MS Windows and Mac OS both have multiprocessor support, both ship with video editing apps, and hardware is fast enough that a cruft-free OS is not the selling point it once was. Why would anyone, other than an enthusiast or hobbyist, buy this?

Yes, I loved how quickly it booted. Yes, I loved watching 5 movies playing faster than 1x because I had 'caps lock' pressed when I launched them... on a P150. (R3 only.) Yes, 3DSound was great fun to play with but they didn't ship it until R4.5, IIRC, and it would crash like mad. Without Photoshop or Netscape I had no reason to run it then, and a cool platform to run Firefox is not that compelling today.

Re:OMG

[Bob The Cowboy]

You misspelled "Bling"

Re:OMG

[LPetrazickis]

Uh, look harder. It does have very obvious scalable icons.;)

Finally...

[guinsu]

You know, not a week goes by where I don't say "Boy I wish we could run XXXX on BeOS". right now, if there was a Java 5 JVM I'd switch my office in a heartbeat. As it is I'll probably spend the money and try it out.

Re:Finally...

[mmu_man]

java is getting there...

it is a niche Re:Nice, but where is their market?

[javaxman]

it will be forever a niche OS.

From the looks of their web page, they're quite aware of this and are marketing it as such. To quote from the yellowTAB "Company" web page :

yellowTAB doesn't intend to compete with Microsoft but offers an alternative for those wanting to run a second operating system.

I definitely agree that if they want to become anything other than a niche player, they have some serious work to do. Really, though, I think that's not the goal- if Be, Inc. and NeXT, Inc. couldn't take on Microsoft, and Apple's just starting to claw their way back to the market share they once had... maybe that's not the fight yellowTAB is looking to take on, at least not this decade.

Really, though, there's nothing wrong with being a _successful_ niche player. Aside from the fact that you're going to remain a fairly small company, of course.

Naming Issues

[magerquark.de]

May I suggest the readers to read about MY (negative) experiences I had with this Zeta-OS?:

http://tinyurl.com/dx2ol

Thanks
Uwe

BeOS

[aliensporebomb]

I really loved BeOS - I still have all of my old
BeOS discs (PR3, all of the subsequent releases
until v5 etc).

I still have an old PowerMac with BeOS V5 on a SCSI
hard drive. I boot it once in a while to enjoy the
Be flavor.

Lots of great multimedia features and it gave me my
appetitive for Linux/Unix operating systems as well
as OS X....

Best thing ever: Be's ridiculous software midi synthesizer allowed you to specify stupefyingly
fast bpm rates.

You'd bust out laughing running some midi sequence
at 32767 beats per minute and it would use so much
of the system resources it would bring it to its
knees but the fusillade of immense note density
would have had Frank Zappa applauding.

You could also do things like have a spinning
cube and each cube face running its own quicktime
movie on it. This was on a 180 mhz PowerPC G3
with 80 megs of ram and a 1.6 gig hard drive and
it ran it respectably.

Re:I gotta ask...

[Eugenia Loli]

Thank you for proving to me that you don't understand shit about people. I am not mean, not by a long shot. But I am not a zombie either, like most people are. I say things the way they are, clean from any kind of bias and personal favorites. If that makes me a bitch, then I *most certainly* am one. And I am proud of it.

Bug Report

[popo]

I went into "System Configuration" and changed the color of those little 'yellow' tabs... to more of a bright pink color. ... and then my computer melted.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Re:Such a waste...

[aussersterne]

I ran a multiuser office from a Linux server all the way back in '92, using four VT100 terminals and a console on an i386DX/25 with 8MB RAM. And at home, I ran TWM on my Linux desktop along with NCSA Mosaic for World Wide Web access through term rather than slip which gave me TCP/IP through 7-bit shell dial-up, along with InterViews (which I later replaced with Andrew) both GUI WYSIWYG office suites on an accelerated full color desktop that were also free.

This is long before Be. And before Linux was Linux, its direct ancestors (sharing virtually the same user interface as today) were X and GNU applications on the hardware accelerated Unix desktop (mine was SunOS on an sbus Sparc) at 1152x900 full color with 32MB memory, which I was enjoying in the '80s when DOS users were still oohing and aaahing at Windows 3.0 (can you say 'no preemptive multitasking, 640k application limit') running 640x400 in 4-bit color on their 1MB machines.

BeOS wasn't even a sparkle in anyone's eye when Linux was already powering sites on the Internet. And to suggest that BeOS predates the Unix 'way' and the dominance of Unix and Unix desktop applications at the high end of microcomputing (including high-end graphics) through the '80s and '90s is very, very silly.

Re:!(Linux or Mac OS X)

[webplummer]

Silly, I didn't say that there are NO average Joes on OS X. I just said the geek quotient was high. If your 70-year-old mom is not a geek, then she's not contributing to the high geek quotient.

BE does have a target audience

[zlogic]

Even though Linux, OSX and Windows exist out there and are battling for market&mindshare, BE will have its audience.
I know a guy who is absolutely fanatical about BE since he tried R5 in late-2004. He's used various Linux distros as well as Windows, but the only OS he doesn't wipe out is BE.
What is great about BE is that it has the power and simplicity of UNIX while remaining easy to configure with an included GUI. Consistency is also great. No KDE vs. Gnome battles. However OSX now has nearly everything so valued in BE. And if it does get ported to ordinary x86, legally or not, the only virtue of Zeta will be its speed and the ability to run on old machines. Oh, and BE fans.
I think however that the main problem of Zeta is inconsistency. Does anyone else feel that icons, window headers and buttons are all in different style? The window headers are shiny ala OSX and the buttons look like it's the year 2000 or even older.