Slashdot Mirror
BeOS r4.5 released
Eric S. writes "BeOS r4.5 is available at BeDepot.com. I'm not sure if its officially released yet, as there is no information about it on any Be website, but if I can get it it's released. Consequently, none of the updated features are disclosed yet. "
Not true. For updated compatibility, examine :a dylist_intel.html
http://www-classic.be.com/support/guides/beosre
The actual features (Apart from the extra harware compat) while not actually stated explicitly, have been mentioned at various stages in Be newsletters etc.
Having been using the release for some months now I can heartily reccommend it. If I can only get emacs-20 ported ok I'll be a very happy chappy.
~Pev
The Intel comptaibility list has also been updated : http://www-classi c.be.com/support/guides/beosreadylist_intel.html :-(
Will allow many more users to use it. Bad thing is nothing new on the PowerPC pages
Btw The announce on Bedepot is preorder. The OS isn't ready Yet . The developers haven't been warned of anything Yet (maybe on the Beta list on which I ain't). So to say it is not released ! Ludo
none Yet.
How could they do this without using reverse-engineered specs? They need specs from _Apple_ to guarantee compatibility, and as other posters have pointed out, they aren't getting them.
It's not different than being on Intel in that respect, in fact you are guaranteed that if you want to support newer Intel chips you will probably end up writing some code.
Um, no. Or at least, you don't have to. You could dig out an old copy of Windows 3.1 and it would run on your brand new Pentium III, because the architecture is completely backwards-compatible (which is both a blessing and a curse, but that's another story). Now, any _application_ that, say, used SSE would be in trouble (because of data lost during context switches), and you could certainly increase efficiency by modifying code for the new processor, but the OS wouldn't _break_. Such is not the case, I am told, with G3-based systems.
Jean Louis Gassee said in an interview that for Be to make BeOS run on the G3's, he needed all the tech data from Apple. He also says that it would not be too difficult to reverse-engineer everything they way the LinuxPPC people did, but that it's not good for a company to do "hacker-ish" stuff when they're trying to maintain a professional corporate image.
It's a cross between Apple's reluctance to give them official specifications and Be's reluctance to reverse-engineer or otherwise become dependent on unofficial specifications.
It's a case of limited resources (and I can hardly wait for all of the ultra-religious OSS fanatics to come crawling out of the woodwork for this thread). In order to support the G3 processor, Be would have to reverse-engineer the various motherboard chipsets (it's not actually the processor itself that's the problem). However, that would leave them not only at the whim of different revisions of the motherboard (altered chipsets that would break Be's unofficial specs), but also leave them guessing as to future developments. When Apple introduces the G4, Be would find themselves right back where they started.
(In case anybody needs it, the starting point for the OSS argument is: "If BeOS were open-source, then they wouldn't have to worry about being squashed - they could let somebody else out there in the Big Coder World (tm) figure out the differences in architecture!")
In other words, Apple's relucantance to give Be official specs means that Be is at the mercy of Apple. Be would rather not remain dependent on Apple, given Apple's rather surly attitude towards them. It might suck royally - I'd probably have considered buying a G3 instead of piecing together an IBM-compatible, had BeOS been able to run on it - but it's completely understandable.