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BeOS Lives on in the Form of Zeta

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the rise-from-the-ashes dept.

DgtlDivide writes "BeOS, one of the pinnacle examples of something really good that died far before it should have, is apparently not quite dead yet. BeOS has continued to captivate a large and devoted community. The Haiku project is working on an Open Source version of the OS and now out of Germany comes Yellowtab's Zeta, a continuation of an unreleased development version of BeOS code-named "Dano." Is Zeta worth the price? Will Yellowtab raise BeOS from the ashes and inflame public interest in the OS?"

8 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. BeOS: "I don't want to go on the cart!" by TheLoneIguana · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I feel happy! I feel happy!"

  2. Depends on leadership - and public image... by raydobbs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It depends - does it have that arrogant SOB Gasse running things? If it does - it's doomed. If not, perhaps they will stand a chance. With Apple now moving to Intel hardware - there is a better chance of BeOS finding it's way onto that hardware.

    Having used an older version - it was definitely unique and ahead of it's time. That being said, it will have to have changed a great deal between when I saw it last, and it's next incarnation, otherwise - the current crop of Mac OS X and Windows XP / Vista already does what BeOS did.

    1. Re:Depends on leadership - and public image... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is very much debatable.

      While BeOS would have provided the best-of-breed OS technology for the Mac, it wouldn't have helped Apple the least bit as a company.

      The way I see it, Apple's comeback was delivered through 4 major factors:
      1. Steve Jobs' charisma in bringing people together to work on a common goal. This solidifies Apple into a single-minded company with everybody going in the same direction, instead of many-masted sail ship buffetted by sea winds. Be didn't have Steve Jobs. Gasse would have grounded Apple totally.
      2. Mac OS X's UNIX-based foundation, which enables the scientific community and some industries to quickly adopt the Mac as both 'workstation' and 'day-to-day computer' platforms. The familiarity of UNIX infrastructure and the elegance of the GUI represent the best compromise (though separately, they may not be best-of-breeds) for most computing tasks. BeOS was sort-of POSIX-compliant. But, it wouldn't have been easy porting all those UNIX apps to BeOS-based Mac OS.
      3. Cocoa. Rapid development, elegant interface, a plethora of built-in features. What else is there to say? This is THE platform which provides Mac users like us with the useful software trinkets we so much love. BeOS did not have anything close to this.
      4. iPod. This is Steve Jobs in his best form. Gasse? Well....

      Steve Jobs' return to Apple was essential. While I do lust for BeOS' stark efficiency and elegance, they could never have guaranteed the Mac's survival.

  3. slashdot by eobanb · · Score: 5, Funny

    news for nerds, stuff from like, a year ago.

    --

    Take off every sig. For great justice.

  4. The Anti-Linux Factor??? by digital-madman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Alright, disclaimer here. Normally I don't bother to comment on any offbeat anymore but i got something to ask...

    What is the target market for this product?

    Lets face it.. BeOS or Zeta (doesn't really matter what you call it) can not be a mainstream desktop OS. Just like Linux it faces the same problems, plus some. No Games, migration factors, software software software?? You could port alot of linux software to the OS. But what?s the point.

    You offer all Linux software on BeOS it could be another anti-Linux migration barrier. (Although portable code aside.) For general user base, its to confusing. (That sounds a little lame i know.)

    A quote from Futurama stuck in my head after that thought: "Your average voter is still as drunk and stupid as they were in 1980". Well... your average joe six pack user is just as drunk and stupid as they are in windows.

    Also, where's even a niche market for this product??? Its not like the BSD's which have great server and datacenter applications. Hell, even OS/2 survives on SOME ATM machines. Where's the niche? or even market?

    The only useful thing I could see this is for... is a ultra secure webserver at tops. (Security through obscurity). But mostly as a novelty for uber geeks.

    In the end this will mean nothing or be a confusion point for joe six pack user looking to switch from windows.

    -Digital Madman

    --
    A bullet sounds the same in every language. So stick a fucking sock in it...
  5. Re:Will it make it as an OS? by misleb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Zeta/Be has one serious, and ultimately fatal, flaw. It is single user. Nobody in their right mind is going to put anything important on a Be box. Maybe single user (and no meaningful file permissions) would pass in the days of Mac OS 9 or Win 95, but the world has moved on. Security is a real issue for everyone. No matter how much developer and hardware support Zeta gets, it will always suffer from that one fatal design flaw.

    -matthew

    --
    "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
  6. Why are you so wrong? Mod parent down... by Tezkah · · Score: 5, Informative
    BeOS already runs on Intel hardware. It has been running on x86 for over 7 years now...

    Due to Apple's aggressive moves and the mounting debt of Be Inc, BeOS was soon ported to the X86 platform with its R3 release. Through the late 90s, BeOS managed to create a niche of hardcore followers, but the company failed to become solvent. As a last-ditch effort to increase interest in the failing operating system, Be Inc. released a stripped-down, but free, copy of BeOS R5 known as BeOS Personal Edition (BeOS PE). BeOS PE could be started from within Microsoft Windows or Linux, and was intended to nurture consumer interest in its product and give developers something they could tinker in.

    - from Wikipedia

    That being said, it will have to have changed a great deal between when I saw it last, and it's next incarnation, otherwise - the current crop of Mac OS X and Windows XP / Vista already does what BeOS did.


    The only way that Mac and Windows and Linux are now able to do what BeOS was doing is that we now have 3GHZ processors in our computers, while BeOS was providing the same speed and responsiveness on much slower machines. The threading of BeOS is one of it major strengths, and windows is JUST NOW (with vista) starting to implement the idea in full.

    That said, the story doesn't give us any new information... oh... Zeta!? I had never heard of this product before on slashdot...

  7. Re:Buy to Try by sonicattack · · Score: 5, Funny

    [...] and costs nearly $100 to boot?

    Boot manager menu (please type in credit card number and expiry date, then press listed key to boot):

    F1 Windows XP ($10)
    F2 Debian Sarge ($1)
    F3 Zeta ($100)

    Money will be drawn from your account upon successful boot. Reboot due to system crash within 3 minutes comes FREE OF CHARGE (Only applies to key F1)