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Be, Inc. to go public?
Jump Suit Jesse writes "It's been a long time in the making, but Be, Inc. may finally be going public. It should be interesting to see how this IPO fares before the alleged Red Hat IPO. Perhaps this cash infusion will be used for a nice propaganda campaign. "
maybe they can finally aford to write some useful apps now :-)
>>But, BeOS still might be an excellent, comfortable, inexpensive, great commercial OS. That's OK. But it's still proprietary. Why do one needs to be enslaved to another company?
How, exactly, am I enslaved to Be?
Well, to answer your questions :
So why couldn't it be more compatible?
Yep, they should finish the Posix compatibility thing, an emulation lib of some sort should do the trick.
Multi-threading libraries. Isn't that what glibc2 is supposed to do?
Err, it's not just the libraries that are multi-threaded, it's the whole OS ! Kernel, filesystems, GUI, etc... there are threads everywhere, even in drivers. Linux is far from that right now.
Multi-processor support. Don't we have that already?
Linux does SMP too, but that doesn't mean it really takes advantage of it. You need lots of multithreading in the OS itself to really use SMP. The "SMP capable" doesn't mean "SMP efficient". On Linux you need to thread your app to take advantage of SMP. On BeOS even a non threaded app will take advantage of it because all the system calls (kernel or GUI) go to multithread code.
A Media OS. What about The GIMP?
I think MS-DOS had a very good painting app called "Deluxe paint IIe" from the Amiga. That doesn't makes it a multimedia OS. Linux is too command-line oriented, when Unix was created graphic display was sci-fi, and when XWindows was created digital video was sci-fi too. A real multimedia OS must be built from the start to fit into today hardware (accelerated 2D, 3D, video, etc..), and have all sort of stuff to synchronize and mix audio and video. Linux is rather poor here.
Not to say that Linux is bad, it's an excellent server OS, makes Apache and Samba rocks, but it's a very poor thing when video and audio. It was just never design to handle that. You can't just add stuff here and there to make it more "multimedia", it just makes the OS more bloated and inefficient. That's what Microsoft did with MS-DOS (add a GUI there, a game lib here, etc...) and it has become the huge bloated instable stuff we know. It's like a car, sure you can try to make your pickup reach 200 mph but you'd better use a Ferrari for that, it's more adapted. It's always better to use the right tool for your task.
Sure, Linux is (beer-style) free, but there are a hell of a lot of worse ways to spend $70 than on a really great operating system. Try going out to dinner or drinking at clubs in any big city and see how far $70 goes. I guess you could get a half-dozen or so audio CDs for $70, or maybe a pair of tickets to a _single_ concert if you're lucky. Most new computer games are around $50. A round of golf can easily cost $70, not to mention the cost of equipment
BeOS is mostly selling to hobbyists at this point, and lots of people are willing to spend lots of money on things they find interesting. Did you see yesterday's discussion about people auctioning off Ultima Online characters for thousands of dollars or spending a lot of money on Magic The Gathering decks? Now that is what I would consider ridiculous!
They've got to start somewhere. I can accept that BeOS doesn't have the driver support of more established OSes, and plan my purchases accordingly.
If we just care about extensive (x86) hardware support and availabilty of apps, the undisputed champion is Windows. If we want to use Linux, a trade-off is that somewhat less hardware is supported. If we want to use BeOS, even more stuff won't work, although they actually have mainstream hardware covered OK (other than "Winmodems, of course).
The "propaganda push" is precisely what Be needs to get hardware manufacturers to start writing BeOS drivers, just as some companies are starting to write Linux drivers.
A goodly number of the applications available under BeOS come with the source code included.
True, the source fot he OS isn't available, but how many times have the vast majority of Linux fanatics actually gone in and modified the source to an application let alone the OS itself?
I'm sorry, but there is more to it than just the principle. A certain pragmatism should be considered too. If you really need to go modifying the source to the OS itself, then I'll readily admit, BeOS isn't going to meet your requirements. Beyond having that requirement, all I'm hearing is "religious intolerance".
Yeah right, please sit down one day and try and do some _REAL_ media work, mate.
If it can't funnel 16+ streams of realtime audio through a bunch of filter units with 1 millisecond latency and then record straight to harddisc then it aint no good. Windows offers me about 100ms latency (on a good day) Linux I won't even use as I have never seen it do this stuff properly. MacOS - don't even bother.
Witness the arrival of new apps in the summer - major companies are supporting it - Steinberg, Cakewalk etc... You may not want these apps but BeOS will likely find a good home in AV editting - besides it would also make a KILLER game platform!
Sorry if I get a little agrivated. I just got new contacts and I took offense.
Be may look all cute and cuddly with all those little icons, but you can conform the system to what you want, to exactly what you want to see. If you can show me this, I'd love to see this. I mean your dazzled at first but "sunshine and rainbows can give you a headache"
I agree with you on #2, just wondering do you use Linux and be?
On point 3, what I meant was that the most extremly useable apps for windows are made by other companys. And they charge riduculous prices for it. Ie: Isn't office 2000 retail for about 300? or 400, I forget.
Lets take this for example. Why would I use BeOS, if all I was gonna get out of it was a nifty GUI, and a bunch of shareware programs when I can have my Linux, not pay jack for it.. if I had the time to dl it, and its has everything that I need.
As for me describing half a dozen companies with OSes that rely on 3rd party....
Windows- they beat every one with windows, and made people scared of the mac. It goes back to the neanderthal days when people were scared off the dark cause it was different. "if I don't have windows, i'll crash like in the commercial"
Apple- Their OSes have been scattered and unsuccesful. Mac Os - microsoft stole it. Rhapsody? X?
OS2/warp - last time I heard IBM stopped supporting it, except for a sever tuned version of it.
Linux- unix was before it, so it is just following precedence (sp?) All other flavors... same thing
thats 4....
Tandy os man that was back in the day.. no third party developers ever touched it and it dropped
Geos... uhh, I think that was with GNU.. but either way.. don't see that many left.
Windows CE- hell they had the 3rd party developers and they still went to shit.
Right now it looks like windows is the only one that has relied on 3rd party... alright maybe you could fit in there the macOS... that has gotten anywhere.... but maybe I don't know anything about operating systems
acudzilo@iinc.com
Here we see the real problem with /. lately.
People write line after line after line before summing it all up with the comment:
"but maybe I don't know anything about operating systems"
We get what we pay for, I guess. Unless we click on the banner ads, in which case we pay too much.
i appreciate you just making a snotty comment. Obvoiusly you have nothing better to do than tell me what I wrote just setup one line instead of supporting my origional ideas I wrote about. Kudos to you
Be has a great advantage over Apple - they only make software, so their expenses are low. If Be can get the BeOS on 1% of new PCs, they will be financially successful. Apple won't survive if the Mac drops to a 1% share. I don't find it difficult to envision Be getting at least enough market share to break even. They've designed their product to be installed alongside Windows, so prospective customers don't have to commit a lot of money to a BeOS-only system. Now, if BeOS really catches on, Be could make enormous amounts of money for a company with less than 100 employees.
I hope Be succeeds by cutting into Microsoft's business, not Apple's.
Admit it, most of you know nothing about BeOS. You know its gui, its new, has little support from users right now, and exists on PPC and X86. What you don't know. BeOS has quite a bit of support from the commercial market. A lot of software is in the works, many being in beta right now. Civ: CTP, SC3000, Cinema 4D, UltraDV, Quake 2 & 3, Imagination, just about any quality audio program you can name, etc. Be was ahead of linux before it was created. The OS first started debuting in very experimental forms in 94, and in 4 years has some things still yet to be imitated in other OSes, including pervasive multithreading and incredible SMP support. You may say that Open Source would make it a better OS, but under the hood, its been a better OS than Linux for a long time. The only thing its lacking is even more support, and some hardware support, which doesn't come from being open source. Be gives you the source to many drivers on the system, and will often give you source for anything you ask for. Ie, they have developer support, unlike Linux. They have a public bug database where you can post bugs and see the current status of the bugs. Most bugs get fixed incredibly fast, even if you have to wait a few months for the patches or fixes. There are very few serious bugs in the OS.
If you're looking for a real Desktop OS, and you're looking at Linux, you're looking in the wrong direction. I can assure you of that. Be was only officially released in december with R4, and with that it has garnered more support than linux in the last 4 years. As things like GTK, and Wine are ported, its software only grows. With each release the OS keeps getting more software in leaps and bounds. If Microsoft had this type of support and the dedication of the programmers at Be, Linux would still be someone's pet OS that he developed in his spare time. Don't believe me? Read a little more about the OS. Especially Dominic's book on file systems _Practicle File System Design_. Look into Be Messages and the way they're used in communication within the OS. Check out the internal scripting. Through which you can change programs behaviour to which you don't have source.
Before you try slamming the OS with your lack of knowledge, look a little more into it. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, and possibly upset that you're using the wrong OS.
>And yes, I find built-in GUI's offensive
Which would you rather have, a functional, built-in GUI, or an non-functional, flexible GUI? Be is spending their time making BeOS functional where it counts, such as stability, speed, drivers, etc. These things are more important to most users right now. BeOS will eventually get a more flexible GUI, as shown by the easter egg that changes the title bars, but not until more functional improvements are made.
Yeah I know... "you can download it for free...". TO WHAT? I ask. What do you do with this 200MB file structure that you have spent three days of tying up your phone line to download once you get it? If you don't buy it from the likes of Red Hat then it will be a long hard journey to get it and install it. A journey that most people will not be willing or able to make. So the reality of linux is that it costs $50 per version. Now you take two years of this cost (we will assume two new versions have come and gone since) and you are at $150 so far. If you were buying BeOS, you would have spent about $125 (the intitial $75 plus $25 per upgrade). So BeOS is actually the cheapest OS I know of for the majority of the people. It is also the best desktop OS I have ever used - by a LARGE margin. Beautiful interface ... clean install ... fast boots .... multimedia rich to an extreme. Now if they woulod only port it to the Alpha I would gladly pay three times as much for it.
I use DHCP with US West DSL and I haven't ever had a problem. I have Be 4.
Fine technology never makes it to the ash heap. Even if Be failed as a company someone would end up owning the rights to this great OS and change the playing field a bit. Maybe they would place it under GPL as their dying act or maybe someone would buy it and breath new life into the marketing of it or maybe BeOS will just plain be a successful product along side other great products that set new standards the day they are released (such as Borland's Delphi did). But it will never be thrown out. There's nothing else out there that can measure up to it in so many ways. it would be easier to change the licensing or marketing of it then to rewrite something new that could compete with it on technical merits.
I had a platform that I just got rid of (wanted an Alpha) that booted installed everything but Linux without a hitch. I now have an Alpha that loads NT without a hitch but guess what? Linux chokes. So for me, Linux is the OS that has a lack of good drivers available. Both times Linux refused to load off my SCSI CD-ROM (two different platforms with two different SCSI CD-ROM drives). I am beginning to think it is because most linux geeks have shabby hardware and so the good stuff doesn't see too many development and debugging hours spent on it. Who knows?!
There were no negative posts until this BeOS zealot posted his foolish remarks. There was no trouble so the idiot BeOS advocate decided to stir up some controversy.
Because of these routine trolls by BeOS zealots I vow that I will never give BeOS a look. My life is very busy, and I would rather spend what little free time I have associating with grown-ups.
Actually those were facts, so far as I know Linux doesn't have a phone number or developer help disk with people to help developers with questions.
And I'm pretty sure you're not right about the number of commercial apps being ported to linux over beos. I've check info about both because i think beos has a future, and i've seen many more annoucned commercial programs being ported to beos than linux. There are like 30-50 some audio and video programs being ported as we type.
Im not a huge beos fan, and I've seen many a flaw within the OS, but I don't like the lack of knowledge spread in this forum by people not knowing facts.
I've benchmarked many, many OS in my time. And the fact is that the performance of most systems are less dependant on the OS but more dependant on the hardware. Most OS will perform within 10 percent of each other when fairly tested on the same hardware. And yes, some particlular applications may shine on a particlular OS. But the system reality is that if you want more performance, get better hardware.
Remember all the Amiga [and OS/2 and Atari] zealots? It seems like the BeOS has attracted those guys like flies are attracted to ... oh you know. It's too bad, becuase a lot of normal people have used those alternative OS's but you wouldn't know it because the zealots always wrest the steering wheel from them, and aim the bus over the cliff.
you cant see it boot, it only takes 7 seconds.
Last time I ever looked into it it was a single-user operating system... why not just run Windows if that's what you want?? I don't see any source for it either so again.. just run Windows.
What I do see for BeOS are coloring books and speak 'n' spell. I see the type of apps that appeal to TV viewing hobbyists. I see high-tech tinkertoys for boys.
I'm not holding my breath that G3 support will come anytime soon unless Apple decides to licence clones again or releases G4s and decides after to release the G3 specs to Be.
I ve used Be PR 2 on my pokey Powerbase PPC180 603e processor and was simply blown away at the speed and stability. Id keep 5 or 6 Quicktimes open and move them around and just be amazed the machine didnt crash. Evenetually I realized I couldn t do much as I couldn t print or much else.
But since they ve moved into the Intel space recently I've noticed the apps slowly trickling out.Cinema 4D and a high end video app are but two examples.
As a budding multimedia developer I realize I'll have to buy a PC to compile Director projects under Windows and yes my hardware decision will also be based on the BE compatability of the system. The thought of a dual processing 400 PII for under $2000 Canadian running BE is mighty tempting.......
I'm not holding my breath that G3 support will come anytime soon unless Apple decides to licence clones again or releases G4s and decides after to release the G3 specs to Be.
I ve used Be PR 2 on my pokey Powerbase PPC180 603e processor and was simply blown away at the speed and stability. Id keep 5 or 6 Quicktimes open and move them around and just be amazed the machine didnt crash. Evenetually I realized I couldn t do much as I couldn t print or much else.
But since they ve moved into the Intel space recently I've noticed the apps slowly trickling out.Cinema 4D and a high end video app are but two examples.
As a budding multimedia developer I realize I'll have to buy a PC to compile Director projects under Windows and yes my hardware decision will also be based on the BE compatability of the system. The thought of a dual processing 400 PII for under $2000 Canadian running BE is mighty tempting.......
We had a problem here at work where Linux wouldn't boot off a scsi disk. (vanilla RH 5.2 install, disk druid) Turned out no partition was marked as "bootable". While linux doesn't care about this, I guess the bios did; it said something like "no active partition found". One cfdisk later and everything was great. Wouldn't be something like this would it?
but you also become a slave to stockholders.
who cares? i'd rather be rich.
IBM never fixed the single threaded message queue bug which causes OS/2 to hang and forces a reboot. I waited for a fix for years and years and years. Finally I just zapped OS/2 off my drive and haven't looked back. IBM doesn't give a damn, why should you? (Remember, this bug is a SHOWSTOPPER and yet IBM didn't have the wits to fix it).
I have mixed feelings on this. I use BeOS and Linux and I like them both. On the one hand, the {OSS/Free Software} advocates' arguments about not being "enslaved" to a company and having "freedom" to modify code if necessary seem logical. On the other hand, from my experience of BeOS and my communication with Be, I find it impossible to believe that there is any evil in them. Some OSS advocates claim that Be are really just another M$ and only care about money, but all of my experience so far indicates exactly the opposite. Be are a company I feel I can trust. All of its employees are very dedicated and clearly work there because they *want* to make a better OS, not just to make money like most M$ employees.
OSS zealots talk about "losing freedom" by using propietary software, but by using BeOS I don't feel like I am losing my freedom at all. In fact, I feel like I have *more* freedom - freedom to just *use* my computer without getting bogged down in the bad design of Windoze or the complexity of Linux. BeOS is simple and elegant, and fits in with the way I think. It's a joy to use. It's hard to put into words exactly what I'm trying to say, but I think other BeOS users reading this will understand. I haven't tried to program BeOS yet because I haven't had time, but I am told by everyone who has that it's also a joy to program. I don't feel like I've had this much freedom since the day I learned to program my BBC Master.
And the Open Source development model isn't always best. I think that if BeOS became Open Source, everyone would suddenly be adding their favourite feature, and it would lose the simplicity and elegance that makes it so good.
Don't misunderstand me. {Open Source / Free Software} can have many advantages, especially the way that bugs get fixed quickly, which is very useful for server software among other things, and I hope that it will play a bigger part in the computer industry in the future. But "World Domination" will not and should not happen. I am firmly convinced it would be in everyone's best interests for Open Source and Closed Source to coexist, and each be used for what they're good at.
- Matthew
I boot NT on it now and have booted many other OSes on the drive in the past. Linux does seem to complain if there isn't free space on the drive. I get my MILO prompt and then when I enter the boot command to start the install off the CD it will give me errors when I don't have free space on my SCSI disk. If I delete one of my NT partitions then try I can get the install to start but then it randomly locks up while running through the various packages. I support micro computers in all sizes and configurations for a living so I know what I'm doing here. The SCSI bus is terminated correctly. Cables are in good shape and tight. Cable lengths are well within SCSI standards. All hardware is either new or in excellent shape. I believe the code for the some of the SCSI devices in linux is shabby. I can't think of any other reason for this behavior.
And NT might better be compared to the Olds Aurora. Big, heavy and over-priced but comes with that a certain amount of comfort.
you have not heard the last of me hahahahaha- Actually I was talking about the gui but now that you mention it, linux beat it in the kernel too!
acudzilo@iinc.com
thank you for clarifying, but you see where I'm coming from.
I LOVE my Honda. Retract those slanderous statements!
From what I can see, most slashdot people seem to think that BeOS is pretty neat and has some advantages over Linux, at least for certain purposes. Even though slashdot has a certain tradition of "free-spirited" debate, most readers really appreciate good technology such as BeOS.
It sure won't help the BeOS for us to come off as arrogant jerks, especially among the exact technologically knowledgable crowd that should be able to appreciate BeOS.
I think that be won't go public for said reasons. The problem is that they have mixed unix and windows theory in one. they charge a ridiculous (please excuse the spelling errors) amount (70 bucks last time I looked) for an operating system that really advanced, but not made for a home user market. For those of you wondering, I have used beos. My friend purchased it, and now regrets doing so. Mix in an operating system that you have to pay for that relies on third party developers to write software (most of it free) and expect it to make a killing?!? No way. Be is competing for developers that already enjoy writing free software for linux, or, aghh** windows. If you can get the same thing with linux, why bother the 70 bucks? What would going public do if , to me anyways, be has yet to find a market they can grab a hold of. It looks like a media OS, but I have yet to hear it has been used in such fields with dominance over any other OS.
PS: sorry about the anonymous posting, My POP3 is down, so I havn't gotten my pswd for slash yet. Feel free to write to my account acudzilo@iiinc.com I i'll be happy to read what you think when my pop3 gets back up (hopefully today when I get home)
BeOS' strengths:
1. Actually designed for SMP, unlike Linux.
2. Better multithreading, even on single processor machines.
3. 64 bit file system w/journaling
4. Clean API
5. Inexpensive although not free
BeOS' weaknesses (for now):
1. Multiuser security model not yet implemented
2. A lot of hardware not supported
3. Hardware 3D acceleration not finished (not that Linux is that much further along)
4. No way to turn off GUI (not much of an issue until and unless Be comes out with a "BeOS Server" version that has real security).
Note that "closed source" and "proprietary" aren't on either list, in my opinion.
The whole OSS idea is really an outlier, even though it's not a bad idea. I simply can't imagine why so many otherwise intelligent people believe that proprietary software is going to be swept away. Criticizing BeOS because it isn't OSS is ludicrous. The issue should be whether it is a good product for a reasonable price.
/., that is).
I mean really, folks, why are computer operating systems intrinsically different from every other product known to man? (I'm familiar with all the RMS/ESR/GNU etc. arguments, I just think they're quite a stretch). Where are the open source automobiles that come with enough engineering info to build a duplicate or even improved car if needed? What about open source restaurants that have complete recipes available on request? Do you feel "enslaved" because these products are "closed source" or "commercial"?
The paradigm shift required to allow OSS to displace proprietary operating systems would be a hell of a lot bigger than the entire field of computing put together, because the U.S. and international economy revolve completely around proprietary products, and around _money_.
I think BeOS will have a hard time growing beyond a niche market because of Microsoft's anticompetitive practices, but the product itself could easily win over a lot of users (both novices and advanced) because it's so easy and elegant AND because it is a commercial product. Commercial products are what virtually everyone is used to(outside of
Will OSS continue to develop and flourish? Absolutely! But so will proprietary software, and I find it simply mind-boggling that anyone considers the whole "world domination" thing to be anything other than a standing joke.
Aside from one smart ass AC, I have yet to see anyone in these discussions make an attempt at bashing BeOS, and at least three people screaming to give it a chance. Chill. Take a breather. I like to think that all os's (yep. *all* of them) are capable of living in harmony. I've used Be on a very limited basis, but during its usage, I must admit, it was nice. Take it easy.
------------------
Linux: The 1988 VW GTi with supercharger and nitrous system. It's cheap, damned fast, easy to modify, but ugly to most people. The people who like it love the way it looks.
BeOS: BMW M Coupe, that you scored pretty cheap. Has the performance and handling, but has a more refined feel. Not as easily modifiable, but that would upset the balance. Looks neat, not many people have seen them, and the appearance grows on you. Pretty new, but has a good lineage.
Windows NT: Four cylinder Honda Accord. Lots of them out there, pretty big and underpowered. Good amount of of percieved security. People in GTis and M Coupes laugh at them. Hard to modify.
Windows 9x: Honda Civic. Really cheap, and really common, and a lot of kewl d00ds like to p1mp them out by cutting the springs and putting big stickers all over them. See http://riceboypage.com for more info. VW and M folks laugh even more.
Solaris: Jaguar XJ6. Expensive, kind of rare, hard to get parts for. Still fairly fast, though it spends half of the time on the shop. Has rust spots because of its age. Hard to find a mechanic.
Okay. I'll point it out.
:)
I like using Linux because it has all my apps, and it supports all my hardware. BeOS probably would too, I tried booting it once, and what I noticed was the striking similarity many of the components had to Linux. Bootup, LILO, you name it...
So why couldn't it be more compatible? How about more free? Sure, you can compile a lot of UNIX stuff on it, but not everything. They apparently support a lot of the old baggage in the kernel, but not enough to really get the cross-platform source-compatible benefits.
Multi-threading libraries. Isn't that what glibc2 is supposed to do? Multi-processor support. Don't we have that already? A Media OS. What about The GIMP? Sure, BeOS might have some advantages here, but I don't find it compelling enough to switch.
I also find it offensive when people use open tools and don't contribute back their changes. BeOS did fix this mistake, somewhat, but it isn't even close to open. Sure, I'd use it over MacOS X, but not over Linux.
And yes, I find built-in GUI's offensive. How do *they* know that I want everything to look like that? People argue that this leads to a "consistent user interface", but that won't stop people from writing their own applications with different styles of interfacing with the user.
(Winamp. KAI Power Tools. There. No 'consistent user interface' on Windows or the Mac. Ha ha ha.)
I hope BeOS steals market share from Windows, but seeing yet another closed-source commercial OS struggling for dominance doesn't make me feel any better about it. I used to write DOS commands that essentially did functions that basic UNIX system utilities do just because I thought there was functionality lacking. No more will I make excuses for a vendor when I can get something better, or be allowed to do it better myself.
Also, I'm going to get a TV card for Linux. Why? It's cheaper than getting a 17" TV, and neater, too.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Thanks, that was a good, fair reply. I admit that some of the things I said were a bit troll-like in nature, but I like to see people think before they spout off. :)
:) But yes, for large graphical operations, it would be good to make sure that your OS is using all the processors and video card hardware features, that speeds things up a lot.
:) When DOS was created, digital video was sci-fi too, but it's easy to grab the processor, and the screeen, and play movies, assuming you have an app for it. X has DGA, which speeds up at least the screen-grabbing, and hopefully you'd have hardware for real movie-playing. (Did I mention I'm getting a TV card for my Linux box? :) However, for video editing, I'd have to find a good app, and I don't know what Linux has. I'll take your word for it here that it doesn't support it as well, because there seems to be less need for this sort of thing in the Linux community.
I realize that BeOS does "persistent" multi-threading, and I'm sure that makes the SMP a lot finer, assuming that your task benefits from this, and the syncronization doesn't slow things down.
However, UNIX really designs for this from the start. You don't have to use threads, fork should work fine too, but sometimes threads are theoretically more efficient (though not as portable IMO) if done correctly. Actually, you can run commands in the background, or use commands that do this for you. The obvious one is 'make -j'...
I admit that X still has lots of cruft slowing it down, and there are projects to fix that, but generally it's fast enough for my needs. Since I don't do large, multimedia projects, and I don't have the hardware for it, I can't really compare them here though.
My favorite MS-DOS graphics app was Improces, it was shareware, and I never could find another app that did quite what that program did. It was only in 256 colors, but that's all we used back then...
Well, if done properly, you *can* add stuff here and there to make it more "multimedia", I admit that sometimes this adds cruft and needs to be reworked, but that happens too. Huge and bloated actually seem to be synonymous with multimedia, but it has more requirements than the command line does, so that's expected. Unstable and inefficient... well, not in this case, I have yet to have *that* problem in Linux.
But I agree that if you have a tool that's designed for a specific task, it'll probably do better than a general-purpose tool. However, Linux is a really good general-purpose tool, and it even has a few specific purposes now, since people change and adapt it for new tasks. So it'll be interesting to see what happens here.
Of course, if I had the money, I'd try BeOS out, but since I'm running a one-processor system, I really doubt I'd see that many benefits over Linux.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You're missing the point. You are trying to push multimedia focused GUI's to people who really don't give a damn about them. All this crap about BE and multimedia will only have one effect, it'll pretty much doom BE to the same status as another "Multimedia" OS, namely the Amiga. Those who refuse to learn from the history are doomed to repeat it over and over and over and over again.....
But with an OS that sells like BeOS does, can they really be thinking an IPO is a good idea?
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Well, read RMS sometimes :) Ok, sorry, it's for real. I turned to Linux early, and I always seem to find a deep problem in every commercial program, and suffer from each of them. I abhor them. There are cool ones, but I can't depend on them because of bugs I can't fix. And that's not just a two-day hard bug-finding session, you also have to wait (possibly months) for the vendor to actually ship a fixed product, even if you spared a great deal of job from them to find the bug. I did this for both commercial and GPL programs, and it's unbelievably cool to get rid of an irksome problem in the free one, and it's highly depressing to pass the torch to the nameless corporation to get it fixed.
Otherwise, you could argue that in the case of a sufficiently Unix-like system, like MacOS X, or BeOS (i.e. where you can make most of the GNU programs run), you have *more* than me, since you can also run the "native" applications. Still binary-only programs always leave a bad aftertaste in my mouth, really. But maybe it could be turned around, and we'll see BeOS emulators if someone really needs that environment. Oh, and indeed, it's not about being enslaved, but being limited. Like working in a 4 sqft cubicle, that's how I feel when working with binary-only software. Bumping into something at each sudden movement.
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
But, BeOS still might be an excellent, comfortable, inexpensive, great commercial OS. That's OK. But it's still proprietary. Why do one needs to be enslaved to another company?
I didn't think I'm freedom-addicted to GPL, but I start to think if anything's going to be a big success for a long time, it won't be "another one", be it just another audio codec, another TV format, another commercial OS.
I want a paradigm shift. Like, the internet; like Linux. Like, throwing out the marketing business and have no ads. (Use the search engines.)
The world is really changing, and you can't build the unknown future on todays' commercially available material.
(I really fail to see how any commercial OS'es could take new followers if not based on a really different idea: freedom). Nevertheless, BeOS might be a big success -- for a while --, but then *we* will come :)
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
The street is going to jump on it initially, because everyone is looking for that technology stock that is going to make them rich. However, once they realize that it is an operating system company competing with Microsoft and that the market share is relatively low, the price will drop back down. If you want to short, this probably is a good one to do ;-)
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
People who strongly support a minority computer platform for itself rather than for its applications often believe they have found the One True Way, and those who are not followers of the One True Way are infidels to be treated, at best, with scorn. You see this with Amiga users and with Mac users; over the last few years seeing it with Linux users has become very common (at least in geek circles), and we're beginning to see it with BeOS users.
I think the Linux community is susceptible to it in a way that other user groups haven't been, because for a Linux zealot, the One True Way is based on a (sincere) belief that you must have the source code for your operating system. Technical arguments are sidelined--in theory, any new technology can be integrated into the open source model, and a tenet of the faith is that all technologies eventually will be.
For BeOS zealots, conversely, technical arguments are a cornerstone of the faith. The OS must be designed for low latency and high bandwidth from the ground up, so this tenet goes; aggregating new technologies to older ones is to be avoided on performance grounds. Linux started as a rewrite of Minix to bring it up to the functionality of Unix; it may have pure and crunchy philosophical goodness, but that doesn't mean you can edit broadcast-quality video in real time. (And before anyone brings it up, a Linux rendering farm being used on "Titanic" doesn't mean Digital Domain chucked their SGIs. And to give equal time: I don't give a damn HOW many QuickTime files you can play at once under BeOS. It's cute the first time. Now get over it.)
I don't really think logic is going to keep people from looking at OS choice as a religious issue. But, realists can still take heart. Those who aren't religious are going to evaluate Linux and BeOS based on the desired application. Server farms aren't going to be choosing BeOS over Linux, and audio post-production studios aren't going to be choosing Linux over BeOS. BeOS will succeed or fail independently of Linux's various successes (or failures); in fact, its success may very well depend on succeeding in vertical markets where "source openness" isn't a buying consideration at all.
All this "BeOS must suck because it's not Linux" is just as stupid as the Amiga/Mac/Windoze fanboys that go on and on and on about how Linux/BeOS/QNX/BSD/Amiga/Mac/Atari/whatever suck because they're not their platform of choice, without ever taking a look at the stuff they're slagging.
Only having one OS around would really suck, even if it was something useful like BeOS or Linux. Trying out new things expands your brain.
Playing a bunch of movies at once is evidence that BeOS is good at handling streaming media without throwing huge amounts of hardware at the problem. I'm guessing this is so offensive for Linux fans because X sucks so hard for this sort of work, and it's not the sort of thing that matters to your typical code jock.
- chrish
Will you guys quit being rumor mongers? Bob Young has officially stated that he has no intention of going public.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Why does this sound familiar?
And why do I have a sneaking suspicion that Be is headed for the ash-heap, IPO or not?
Flame away..
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".sig,
I don't understand why there is a linux camp bashing BeOS and a BeOS camp bashing linux. There are quite a few people who feel that it's a good idea to use both-linux as a server and BeOS as a desktop. In fact, http://bemagazine.com/ was created by the same people who brought us Linux Journal. So use both OS's-each have their strengths and weaknesses just as both development models have their strengths and weaknesses. Open source is a good development model. So is a highly focused bunch of brilliant engineers. Beats decisions by dopey PHB's any day of the week (hint: Microsoft)
---
There are two sides to going public. You get a large amount of cash, true, but you also become a slave to stockholders. Jean-Louis Gassee may have great plans for his technology, but stockholders tend to have great plans only for their investments.
I guess Mr. Gassse's accountant told him he's got to stop pouring all his own money into it if he wants to be able to afford food and shelter after he turns 60.
I agree that IBM isn't marketing OS/2 at the client and hardly doing much at the server but they are still supporting it. Last year they signed a deal the largest bank in Brasil for around $1.4 Billion with OS/2 on the client and servers along with as/400 servers. They still make alot of money from the product and to tell you the truth, it really doesn't need much work. Some new drivers and minor tweaks is all it needs. Heck, it had a CORBA-based desktop, flat 32bit memory, and multi-threading in 1991. Nine years of fixes to a well designed OS should make it pretty good. Did you know that GIMP runs on OS/2? So does most recompiled Linux apps when run in XFree86 for OS/2.
It isn't dead, just doesn't need much fixing anymore. New apps would be nice.....
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I agree with you, BeOS really does what it's supposed to well.
The fact that R4 is only the Second version of the BeOS that works on X86. The fact that it doesn't have drivers is really its downpoint though. I have a SB Live, and because there is no support yet, I hardly go into BeOS.
But, Genki will change that, R4.5 should have 3dfx support, more drivers. etc..
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
I like using Linux because it has all my apps, and it supports all my hardware.
No offense, but that's what I hear from Windows users every time I try to talk about ANY other OS, be it Linux, BSD, or BeOS.
-lx
I boot linux when I want to write code, experiment, play mp3's etc. I boot windows (unfortunately) when I want to play games, and Be OS when I want to do multimedia things. No offense people, I love linux, but have you people ever tried to watch a vcd on linux? You have MpegTV (which is commercial if you want the GUI), which skips horribly on a PII 400 if you double the size of the playing movie. It's even worse if you do full screen (which is a pain to set up). It's just a matter of using the right OS for the right task. BeOS does have a place, but if you don't need it's features, there is no reason to use it.
Hell, with linux, I can do ANYTHING i want with my OS, anything, I can even turn around and sell it.
I came from windows, of course, a few years ago, and I must say, i've grown REALLY attached to my new found computing freedom. That we are saying is that now we have absolute freedom, we are not going to trade it away. I like not having to pay for upgrades. I like not having to worry about my vendor ripping me off. I would remind you of the Blender GL problem a while back, shit like that doesn't happen to us now.
BTW, i own a copy of BeOS, i'm the guy who loves to play with new os's, I used it for a good while to, its fast and clean. Its a good OS, I honestly rather like it. But its going to restrict me freedoms, so i'm gonna forget it.
I'm try to not sound religous =)
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
"due to its reliance on an ATAPI CD-ROM drive for installation, which I just plain old don't use around here."
I installed BeOS with a SCSI CD-ROM. I suspect you haven't read the hardware support lists since R3, it includes the more popular adaptec SCSI boards now.
You're a bit ahead of yourself.. You just can't; 'wait to read all of the comments. "BeOS sucks." "BeOS is a crappy OS."'.
People may slag it, yes. But I'm sure they have their reasons for it (narrow mindedness comes to mind).
There are people out here in the rworld willing to give anything a go. Hell I for one am planning my next computer purchase on the hardware supported by OS's like BeOS. And from what I've seen on their web page. It looks very nice.
The next computer I buy I plan on installing 7 OS's onto. (BeOS, DOS/Win98, WinNT, FreeBSD, SuSe, Debian, OS/2 for starters).
The only thing I have against BeOS is that they're sold out of R3... (Hey I'm a student I need the cheap option)
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
You're a bit ahead of yourself.. You just can't 'wait to read all of the comments. "BeOS sucks." "BeOS is a crappy OS."'.
People may slag it, yes. But I'm sure they have their reasons for it (narrow mindedness comes to mind).
There are people out here in the rworld willing to give anything a go. Hell I for one am planning my next computer purchase on the hardware supported by OS's like BeOS. And from what I've seen on their web page. It looks very nice.
The next computer I buy I plan on installing 7 OS's onto. (BeOS, DOS/Win98, WinNT, FreeBSD, SuSe, Debian, OS/2 for starters).
The only thing I have against BeOS is that they're sold out of R3... (Hey I'm a student I need the cheap option)
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
You're right - I probably shouldn't have included ESR in that. ESR has stated, though, that he doesn't want software that sucks, and I sort of followed a line-of-thought with the comments I assumed were coming (namely, "BeOS sucks/is poor quality/isn't Linux").
Eric, if you're reading this, I apologize.
Those comments have, in the past, been leveled at Linux users as well. How many times in the past couple of years have you heard somebody in the media gurgling FUD about, "It's just not immediately obvious what advantages Linux - and the open source model in general - provide"?
I will not gush about eight movies playing on the desktop. I will not make claims that BeOS is a better server than Linux. I will not tell you it is flaw-free, runs faster and more stable than Linux, and has a special demo app that will cure cancer, stop war, and clean your bedroom.
On the other hand, for the things that BeOS has, and especially for the things that BeOS has that no other operating system has, I will stand up for. Playing eight movies may not be a great example, but it's an example of something that is difficult to do on other operating systems (to a much larger extent, eight movies is more of a "wow" to Windows users than Linux users).
As for the strengths of another proprietary OS - those lie in what that OS has that other OSes do not. There are some technical features of BeOS that Linux doesn't have, nor can't have unless parts of Linux are rewritten drastically (for example, pervasive multithreading). Not only is the kernel able to take advantage of multiple processors, so is the file system, the input system, and even applications not specifically written for multithreading (details of this aspect can be found on Be's web pages). As a result, BeOS is more efficient - holistically - than Linux is at taking advantage of SMP.
Is BeOS designed to replace Linux? No. Are there lots of things that Linux can do that BeOS can't? You bet. Can you do everything you want on Linux and ignore BeOS? Probably. Does that mean Linux is the best solution for every user, every application, and every lifestyle? No.
When I used Linux, after using BeOS, I found Linux to be more intrusive. More powerful, yes. I could almost feel the OS humming beneath my fingers as I typed on the command line. But for the same reasons I bought a car with an automatic transmission and not a stick, I want an automatic OS and not a manual one. Linux is too manual for me, and while I might've appreciated that a few years ago, my lifestyle has changed to where I don't have the time or energy to argue with my computer anymore. BeOS fits *my* needs better than Linux does - and that makes BeOS have a major strength as compared to Linux. Linux is not for every user. Windows is not for every user. BeOS is not for every user.
But BeOS *IS* for *this* user.
I can hardly wait to read all of the comments. "BeOS sucks." "BeOS is a crappy OS." "BeOS has no apps." "BeOS isn't open source."
I wonder how many of the people who feel qualified to comment on Be and/or BeOS have actually used the operating system for any length of time and tried to be objective about it. From some of the content-free bashing on Slashdot, it seems that the extent of some opinions are formed from either somebody else's comments or from finding a screenshot off the web.
It may not be up to the same level of usability that Linux is, and it may not have the same level of developer support, it may not be open source, and _God_forbid_ that it have one built-in GUI with no themes support - but don't fall into the Stallman/Raymond-esque viewpoint of "all closed-source software sucks simply because it's closed-source software".
For all of the shouting the Linux community does about "judging Linux on its merits, not on the FUD Microsoft spreads," I find it very ironic that the Linux community turns around and performs the same Microsoft-ish actions to others. Judge BeOS on its merits. If it has lacking driver and application support (as it does), point it out. If you think the closed-source nature of the software is a negative, point it out. But at least give BeOS credit for the things it does well.
I understand the desire to be proud of what Linux has accomplished, especially given the mutually exclusive natures of Linux and the commercial software market - but don't let pride lead to arrogance. Be proud of what you've accomplished, but don't shit on the little people because of it. Arrogance stems from insecurity (example: Microsoft). If you really believe how great Linux is, there's no need to bash the other guy. Let the merits of Linux speak for themselves.
BeOS may not be Linux, and it probably will never be Linux, but not everything *has* to be Linux.
A report just came over the Dow newswire that BE did file for an IPO with the SEC. It looks like they will be selling about 57.5 million dollars worth of shares. No underwriter was named or an estimated price.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" -- Albert Einstein
bullshit. He said he doesn't intend to do it in the near future. RH would never have scored investments without a forseeable exit strategy, IPO being the most likely.
Perhaps this cash infusion will be used for a nice propaganda campaign.
Perhaps this cash infusion will be used to finish the product to the point that it will boot on anything but the most vanilla hardware.
As desktop OS software goes, I have a certain liking for BeOS -- it's an example of the quality of well-done, cathedral software in much the same way as Linux & BSD are examples of quality bazaar-ish software (although admittedly, the BSD bazaar is fairly small, but that's beside the point here.)
Of course, the flip side is that BSD and Linux can install on the hardware I use, and BeOS can't (due to its reliance on an ATAPI CD-ROM drive for installation, which I just plain old don't use around here. I'd have to take my masq box down to yank the only ATAPI drive I have.)
It's a little premature to recommend a propaganda push. Let's see it boot, first.
Hi,
Let's hope that more people show interest in one of the best OSes around.
Linux and NT are nice Operating Systems, but BeOS is the future (or has at least very cool features). I really like the thread concept it has. And the file system is incredible.
This OS is really like "Mac on PC" (Bill Gates wanted that too, but we all know what happened
The only thing that would be even better would be some Nextstep mixed into it...
If there will we some apps in near future, I will erase Linux and NT and move to BeOS...well i'll keep my MacOS, though...until Apple gives the G3 code to Be...
I like choice as much as the rest, but the purist in me says one OS per machine. Or else the benefits of a modern OS are lost.
--
Be is a really elegant OS, without a lot of
terrible heritage.
Linux and CE could probably do something like this, but why not BE?
If the whole point is having a computer based
solely around internetapplications, you don't
really need compatibility with loads of applications. You don't need a powerful multiuser
OS with a buckload of features.
What you need is a simple elegant solution capable
of performing excactly the task it is supposed to.
And I can se BeOS doing excactly that.
Of course, they have to fix their support for DHCP
;-)
Is there a problem with with dhcp on beos? I've been asking people about dhcp problems in beos for about a million years now and no one seems to know anything about it. Man, please elaborate on this cause I've been running into some serious dhcp problems recently..