Why must you labor under the impression that if an operating system exists, it must exist for the sole purpose of defeating every other operating system and becoming YAWOS (Yet Another Window OS)?
Be isn't "trying" to defeat Linux. They aren't even trying to defeat Windows. They're making an operating system with interesting technology, and marketing it for specific purposes. It seems that many members of the Linux community seem to scoff at the notion of a specialized OS and then decide that Be is trying to compete head-on with Linux and Windows. Get over it.
Be is competing with Linux in the sense that it presents yet another alternative operating system on the market. They aren't trying to crush Linux. They aren't trying to eradicate Linux. Despite my support of Be (my machine is 100% BeOS), I don't think they could crush Linux if they tried. On the other hand, Be offers me things Linux can't - and I would prefer not to have my OS of choice obliterated by some reactionary zealots who subscribe to the "if you aren't with us, you're against us" view point.
If you want Linux, go for it. I support OSS wholeheartedly, and I'll stand up right with you if anybody tries to step on it or any product thereof. All I ask in return is that you don't shit on me because it doesn't fulfill my needs.
It also depends on the type of water. Salt water (as commonly found in the ocean) is more dense than fresh water.
(That's why, in case there are any fellow scuba divers hanging around here, you need to give yourself more weight when diving in the ocean; salt water is denser, so you don't sink as easy.)
As per the subject line. Not to be interpreted as some crazy pro-BeOS zealot, but BeOS runs without a problem on my machine, which was built specifically for running the BeOS (all the hardware in it was certified on the Be compatability list).
Without knowing the details of your system, I'd suggest that you remove any cards that aren't supported under the BeOS to see if that fixes your stability problem. It isn't an ideal solution, especially if you're dual-booting, but if you don't have the need to boot into another OS for a while you might want to give it a shot.
I think all life sentences that do not specifically prohibit parole eventually wind up in a parole-able state (after 20 years, as you suggest, although I don't know the exact amount myself).
Life sentences without the possibility of parole are truly life sentences, and consecutive life sentences can screw somebody over even if they have the opportunity for parole.
I'm relying on second-hand information, but isn't the licensing fee only applicable if you're charging for your product? In other words, if you're distributing it for free, you don't have to pay for the licensing?
The APIs for the BeOS are in C++. BeOS itself is written largely in C.
In the BeOS Bible, an interview with one of the guys who ported BeOS from PPC to Intel divulged that BeOS is something around 95% "highly portable" C code (considering they had made one jump already, from the Hobbit processors in the prototype BeBoxen to the PowerPC processor in the "mainstream" BeBoxen, it's not that surprising that they'd code with portability in mind).
In theory, BeOS could be ported to other platforms, but there's not a whole lot of market potential for BeOS to run on, say, Sun's hardware. However, if the BeOS code is fairly easy to port (for any given definition of an "easy port") then it certainly helps Be in the set-top arena.
I think part of it is simply to gain more exposure. BeOS is caught in the wake of Linux (at least with regards to being an alternative operating system to Microsoft's Windows), but doesn't have the catchy buzzphrase of Open Source (I'm not disparaging it; it's simply a fact of the current media that many journalists trump Open Source without actually understanding a single iota of it).
Be's trying to gain some market share for their operating system, and in order to do it will license their OS for free, or approximations thereof. How this plays into their business plan, I'm not sure. Perhaps the licensing is based on volume, or future upgrades will cost money while the initial license is free, or... fill in the blank. As far as I know, no mention of the licensing issues has been brought up, and I don't think the Microwerkz deal falls under the "free licenses to OEMs!" offer that JLG made (IIRC, that was about preloading BOTH Windows and BeOS on the same machine with equal ability to choose between them).
So... I don't think this cleared up the matter, but maybe shed a bit more light on it.
A 2.x hard drive will be utter overkill. After I installed the regular Intel BeOS version (R4.5), with all of the optional components (which are a huge disk waster, but they're all better off classified as "goodies" - images, videos, experimental code, etc), Gobe Productive, a paint program reminiscent of GIMP (called Becasso), as well as several different editors and a couple of different images viewers...
My total hard disk consumption, on an 8.4G drive, was about 300M to 400M. So for Joe Average, a 2.xG drive will be sheer overkill unless they start downloading massive amounts of pornography.:)
From what I read, not only is all of the work being contributed back into the normal GIMP development tree, but the BeGIMP people (for lack of a better title) are going to be modularizing the GUI code, something that's been on the list of things to do for a long time.
So the overall GIMP project benefits by getting a major item done (granted, the Linux version of GIMP needs to be redone with the modularized system, but at least it's there now), and BeOS gains the GIMP.
The reason they're working on games are because games tend to be really great showcases for multimedia. Think about it - you've got all of that 3D, high speed rendering combined with incredible sound effects and background music.
As for the other things, they've been couting a lot of places, and if you go look at their press releases, many companies are in the process of developing/porting programs over. Unfortunately, almost all are still being developed. Another six months or so will yield a vast trove of very high performance software.
The reason why somebody has to be wrong and somebody has to be right is because we're all insecure in our decisions, and we want to be affirmed that we did the "correct" thing. Barring that, we want to make absolutely sure that we did the "correct" thing by making everything else the wrong option.
(My two cents' worth of pop psychology.)
Though not on this particular story, I actually was inspired to give Linux another shot based on a lot of Slashdot comments. I recently grabbed a Linux Central CD of Slackware 3.6 and gave it a spin. I spent a few days playing with it, and then zapped it. I liked Slack - I ordered the Slack 4.0 Linux Central CD in case I felt adventurous in the future - but BeOS really did more for me with less hand-holding. (Even given that Slack is the most manual and hands-on of the distributions.)
There's nothing more important than freedom. On the other hand, freedom should allow me - if I so choose - to give up some of my freedom if I wish. That's simply a part of being free.
That's what you do in American society as part of the social contract. You give up total freedom for certain perceived benefits. A police force is a good example; society has given up a bit of its freedom in order to become a bit more secure. You can't go murdering freely and you aren't supposed to speed on highways, which impinges on your liberties; on the other hand, the police force also works diligently to track down and prevent murderers, as well as attempting to keep speeders to a minimum.
The benefits I reap of using BeOS outweigh the freedom of being able to look at the source. I'm not saying open source is a "bad" way of doing things - I happen to support whole-heartedly the "free speech" aspect of open source. I also happen to STRONGLY enjoy the fact that should something bad ever happen to Be/BeOS, Linux will always be there as a fallback. I'm not even shitting (pardon my illustrious pseudo-French) on those who happen to use Linux. But Linux doesn't fit my needs as well as BeOS.
I respect your choice of using Linux, and I respect your beliefs, even if I happen to disagree (which I don't). But the instant you fail to respect *my* beliefs and *my* choices, I will defend them.
I think the rules of reverse-engineering are interpreted somewhat differently in a scenario where Joe Clueless goes off into his backyard and manages to reverse engineer something, whereas comparatively large Company X does the same thing.
I think the perceived intention is much different.
It's not sour grapes on Be's part anymore than they really wished they could've continued on the PowerPC/G3 side. Given Apple's reluctance to help them out, they can't count on having Apple be a truly long-term stable platform to continue to maintain a port on.
Be continues, periodically, to request the specs but Apple keeps turning them down.
As I said, the situation sucks but it's perfectly understandable. I think both Apple and Be suffer from the deal. Be could've probably sold Apple quite a bit of hardware, and Be would've maintained a healthy set of sales on the Apple side of the computer world. Given the comparative sizes of the companies involved, however, Be is going to take it as a much greater hit.:(
I don't think there is one. You could conceivably base it off of Linux/GPL'ed sources.
The most obvious hurdle is the kernel; BeOS uses a microkernel where as Linux is a macrokernel. You'd have to whip up a new kernel from scratch or modify an existing kernel (Hurd?). Hey, if you use Hurd you'd also help further it along some.
You could use XFS as the file system, since it is closest to the existing Be file system (it's nearly identical; 64-bit, journalling, with attributes).
In terms of GUI, you'd probably need to modify GNOME or KDE for the task (there are a bunch of things that you can do in BeOS that you can't in the UNIX environments - for one thing, you can dynamically change placement of window tabs for individual windows). Given the popularity of BeOS themes for those two environments, however, it wouldn't be too hard.
For the MIME-based file system, you'd have to whip that up from scratch. Given XFS and an integrated GNOME/KDE-style GUI, it wouldn't be too difficult, although there'd be a tight integration between the GUI and the MIME typing.
All in all, it's not impossible. It'd just be time-consuming to put together all of the pieces.
There's no better way to demonstrate that you are a sheep than to mindlessly recite the old Linux proverb of "closed source, binary-only, proprietary" software.
Open-source protects me from closed-minded individuals such as yourself, who look at the world in total black-and-white, with no regard or place for another person's opinions?
Wow - here I thought it was a philosophy of writing code, not a solution for intolerance and discrimination.
With respect to Be going under, OS/2 was orphaned by IBM a long time ago and that community is still going strong. Given the support of the Be community, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar following emerged. Further, given the hype around open source, if Be DID collapse there's the possibility that they would release what source code that they could rather than let it die off completely (granted, there's probably an amount of code under NDA or some such).
Barring those two solutions, I will happily transition to Linux. I've installed it and used it. For me, BeOS - regardless of licensing issues - is a better solution for me than Linux. It provides for more of my needs than Linux does currently. Simply because BeOS has the _potential_ to fail doesn't mean that it will, and it doesn't mean that I should just abandon it because some Linux blowhard feels his way is The One True Enlightened Path To Wisdom (tm).
It works for me, and it works better than Linux. If there ever comes a point where Linux works for me better than BeOS, I will go to Linux. But you aren't going to get me to jump ship based on some vague prophecy of impending doom.
It stems from when Apple was shopping around for thier next-generation operating system. It came down to BeOS and NeXT. Jobs decided to choose NeXT (for whatever reason).
After that, I think Apple has felt threatened by BeOS as a competitor to their operating system, and doesn't really want to encourage it on their hardware. It's only due to Be's peculiar sixth sense that they managed to do a successful transition to the IBM-compatible market.
Couldn't I just as easily dismiss Linux as 'just another UNIX' workalike, albeit it with a bit more "spit and polish," as you so elegantly put it?
>Closed, binary-only, proprietary.
Yeah, you're right. Unfortunately, your philosophical extremisim results in a closed mind. Apparently for you, nothing good will ever come from closed source. You refuse to look past the licensing to the actual technology implemented (and as a side note, the fact that you CAN dismiss it as simply a licensing issue and not provide examples of how Linux's technology is better or comparable to BeOS would indicate that you are unfamiliar with BeOS at best), and therefore there is no argument in the world to dissuade you.
Just be careful of that soapbox you stand on to preach to the masses - it's an awfully long fall.
While I would dearly love for this to be moderated down as a "Troll," I have this sinking feeling it's going to be moderated up with "Informative" or "Interesting".
The reason why BeOS is appealing is because it's different. It's different than Linux, and it's different from Windows. It uses different ideas, different philosophies, different technology. It has things that Linux doesn't, that Linux won't (simply because some of what BeOS has goes against the grain of certain UNIX philosophies). Does that mean BeOS is superior? Hell no - Linux will always kick BeOS's ass in certain areas. Does that mean Linux is superior? No.
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.
It's $25 to upgrade - for people who already own the BeOS, and only if you want a CD. The point release will be made available for downloading free of charge, probably within the next week.
It's not really "officially" released. Most in the BeOS community consider a "point" upgrade released when it is both orderable through BeDepot as well as downloadable free of charge from Be's web site. So far, the latter is not yet available.
Most speculation tends to think that Be will make the official release announcement next week at PC Expo.
Well, not to add fuel to his arguments, but when I tried Slackware I had a very rough time with PPP. (I know another distribution - such as Debian - would most likely be vastly easier, but I'm _supposed_ to be learning how to use Linux, right?)
The first time I installed it, everything went hunky-dory. Almost. I couldn't get the connection set up unless I ran the 'ppp-go' script and manually invoked the PPP daemon. Then it would return my IP addresses and away we went. However, my disk had some problems and I had to do some repair work, and so decided to start over fresh with Slack.
After the reinstall, I couldn't quite get Slack PPP working again. It seems to connect, and when I poke around in/var/log/messages it seems to make the connection between the serial port and the ppp interface - I just don't ever get any local/remote IP addresses returned to me.
I've spent quite a few hours beating on this, so his claim in this area isn't totally inaccurate. On the other hand, I'm a certifiable Linux moron; in my four years of using Digital UNIX (I guess now it's Tru64) at college, I never did much mucking around with it beyond that of Joe Average user.
On the other hand, I'm using what is perhaps the most manual of distributions. I can't imagine that with a distribution like Red Hat it would take even a fraction of that hour to get PPP working.
Slashdot Mirror
Why must you labor under the impression that if an operating system exists, it must exist for the sole purpose of defeating every other operating system and becoming YAWOS (Yet Another Window OS)?
Be isn't "trying" to defeat Linux. They aren't even trying to defeat Windows. They're making an operating system with interesting technology, and marketing it for specific purposes. It seems that many members of the Linux community seem to scoff at the notion of a specialized OS and then decide that Be is trying to compete head-on with Linux and Windows. Get over it.
Be is competing with Linux in the sense that it presents yet another alternative operating system on the market. They aren't trying to crush Linux. They aren't trying to eradicate Linux. Despite my support of Be (my machine is 100% BeOS), I don't think they could crush Linux if they tried. On the other hand, Be offers me things Linux can't - and I would prefer not to have my OS of choice obliterated by some reactionary zealots who subscribe to the "if you aren't with us, you're against us" view point.
If you want Linux, go for it. I support OSS wholeheartedly, and I'll stand up right with you if anybody tries to step on it or any product thereof. All I ask in return is that you don't shit on me because it doesn't fulfill my needs.
It also depends on the type of water. Salt water (as commonly found in the ocean) is more dense than fresh water.
(That's why, in case there are any fellow scuba divers hanging around here, you need to give yourself more weight when diving in the ocean; salt water is denser, so you don't sink as easy.)
As per the subject line. Not to be interpreted as some crazy pro-BeOS zealot, but BeOS runs without a problem on my machine, which was built specifically for running the BeOS (all the hardware in it was certified on the Be compatability list).
Without knowing the details of your system, I'd suggest that you remove any cards that aren't supported under the BeOS to see if that fixes your stability problem. It isn't an ideal solution, especially if you're dual-booting, but if you don't have the need to boot into another OS for a while you might want to give it a shot.
I think all life sentences that do not specifically prohibit parole eventually wind up in a parole-able state (after 20 years, as you suggest, although I don't know the exact amount myself).
Life sentences without the possibility of parole are truly life sentences, and consecutive life sentences can screw somebody over even if they have the opportunity for parole.
I'm relying on second-hand information, but isn't the licensing fee only applicable if you're charging for your product? In other words, if you're distributing it for free, you don't have to pay for the licensing?
>Do you know that BeOS is written on C++?
The APIs for the BeOS are in C++. BeOS itself is written largely in C.
In the BeOS Bible, an interview with one of the guys who ported BeOS from PPC to Intel divulged that BeOS is something around 95% "highly portable" C code (considering they had made one jump already, from the Hobbit processors in the prototype BeBoxen to the PowerPC processor in the "mainstream" BeBoxen, it's not that surprising that they'd code with portability in mind).
In theory, BeOS could be ported to other platforms, but there's not a whole lot of market potential for BeOS to run on, say, Sun's hardware. However, if the BeOS code is fairly easy to port (for any given definition of an "easy port") then it certainly helps Be in the set-top arena.
I think part of it is simply to gain more exposure. BeOS is caught in the wake of Linux (at least with regards to being an alternative operating system to Microsoft's Windows), but doesn't have the catchy buzzphrase of Open Source (I'm not disparaging it; it's simply a fact of the current media that many journalists trump Open Source without actually understanding a single iota of it).
Be's trying to gain some market share for their operating system, and in order to do it will license their OS for free, or approximations thereof. How this plays into their business plan, I'm not sure. Perhaps the licensing is based on volume, or future upgrades will cost money while the initial license is free, or... fill in the blank. As far as I know, no mention of the licensing issues has been brought up, and I don't think the Microwerkz deal falls under the "free licenses to OEMs!" offer that JLG made (IIRC, that was about preloading BOTH Windows and BeOS on the same machine with equal ability to choose between them).
So... I don't think this cleared up the matter, but maybe shed a bit more light on it.
A 2.x hard drive will be utter overkill. After I installed the regular Intel BeOS version (R4.5), with all of the optional components (which are a huge disk waster, but they're all better off classified as "goodies" - images, videos, experimental code, etc), Gobe Productive, a paint program reminiscent of GIMP (called Becasso), as well as several different editors and a couple of different images viewers...
:)
My total hard disk consumption, on an 8.4G drive, was about 300M to 400M. So for Joe Average, a 2.xG drive will be sheer overkill unless they start downloading massive amounts of pornography.
That's not quite right.
From what I read, not only is all of the work being contributed back into the normal GIMP development tree, but the BeGIMP people (for lack of a better title) are going to be modularizing the GUI code, something that's been on the list of things to do for a long time.
So the overall GIMP project benefits by getting a major item done (granted, the Linux version of GIMP needs to be redone with the modularized system, but at least it's there now), and BeOS gains the GIMP.
Give and take - just like what you wanted.
The reason they're working on games are because games tend to be really great showcases for multimedia. Think about it - you've got all of that 3D, high speed rendering combined with incredible sound effects and background music.
As for the other things, they've been couting a lot of places, and if you go look at their press releases, many companies are in the process of developing/porting programs over. Unfortunately, almost all are still being developed. Another six months or so will yield a vast trove of very high performance software.
The reason why somebody has to be wrong and somebody has to be right is because we're all insecure in our decisions, and we want to be affirmed that we did the "correct" thing. Barring that, we want to make absolutely sure that we did the "correct" thing by making everything else the wrong option.
(My two cents' worth of pop psychology.)
Though not on this particular story, I actually was inspired to give Linux another shot based on a lot of Slashdot comments. I recently grabbed a Linux Central CD of Slackware 3.6 and gave it a spin. I spent a few days playing with it, and then zapped it. I liked Slack - I ordered the Slack 4.0 Linux Central CD in case I felt adventurous in the future - but BeOS really did more for me with less hand-holding. (Even given that Slack is the most manual and hands-on of the distributions.)
There's nothing more important than freedom. On the other hand, freedom should allow me - if I so choose - to give up some of my freedom if I wish. That's simply a part of being free.
That's what you do in American society as part of the social contract. You give up total freedom for certain perceived benefits. A police force is a good example; society has given up a bit of its freedom in order to become a bit more secure. You can't go murdering freely and you aren't supposed to speed on highways, which impinges on your liberties; on the other hand, the police force also works diligently to track down and prevent murderers, as well as attempting to keep speeders to a minimum.
The benefits I reap of using BeOS outweigh the freedom of being able to look at the source. I'm not saying open source is a "bad" way of doing things - I happen to support whole-heartedly the "free speech" aspect of open source. I also happen to STRONGLY enjoy the fact that should something bad ever happen to Be/BeOS, Linux will always be there as a fallback. I'm not even shitting (pardon my illustrious pseudo-French) on those who happen to use Linux. But Linux doesn't fit my needs as well as BeOS.
I respect your choice of using Linux, and I respect your beliefs, even if I happen to disagree (which I don't). But the instant you fail to respect *my* beliefs and *my* choices, I will defend them.
I think the rules of reverse-engineering are interpreted somewhat differently in a scenario where Joe Clueless goes off into his backyard and manages to reverse engineer something, whereas comparatively large Company X does the same thing.
I think the perceived intention is much different.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
It's not sour grapes on Be's part anymore than they really wished they could've continued on the PowerPC/G3 side. Given Apple's reluctance to help them out, they can't count on having Apple be a truly long-term stable platform to continue to maintain a port on.
:(
Be continues, periodically, to request the specs but Apple keeps turning them down.
As I said, the situation sucks but it's perfectly understandable. I think both Apple and Be suffer from the deal. Be could've probably sold Apple quite a bit of hardware, and Be would've maintained a healthy set of sales on the Apple side of the computer world. Given the comparative sizes of the companies involved, however, Be is going to take it as a much greater hit.
I don't think there is one. You could conceivably base it off of Linux/GPL'ed sources.
The most obvious hurdle is the kernel; BeOS uses a microkernel where as Linux is a macrokernel. You'd have to whip up a new kernel from scratch or modify an existing kernel (Hurd?). Hey, if you use Hurd you'd also help further it along some.
You could use XFS as the file system, since it is closest to the existing Be file system (it's nearly identical; 64-bit, journalling, with attributes).
In terms of GUI, you'd probably need to modify GNOME or KDE for the task (there are a bunch of things that you can do in BeOS that you can't in the UNIX environments - for one thing, you can dynamically change placement of window tabs for individual windows). Given the popularity of BeOS themes for those two environments, however, it wouldn't be too hard.
For the MIME-based file system, you'd have to whip that up from scratch. Given XFS and an integrated GNOME/KDE-style GUI, it wouldn't be too difficult, although there'd be a tight integration between the GUI and the MIME typing.
All in all, it's not impossible. It'd just be time-consuming to put together all of the pieces.
Caution, troll-bridge...
There's no better way to demonstrate that you are a sheep than to mindlessly recite the old Linux proverb of "closed source, binary-only, proprietary" software.
Open-source protects me from closed-minded individuals such as yourself, who look at the world in total black-and-white, with no regard or place for another person's opinions?
Wow - here I thought it was a philosophy of writing code, not a solution for intolerance and discrimination.
With respect to Be going under, OS/2 was orphaned by IBM a long time ago and that community is still going strong. Given the support of the Be community, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar following emerged. Further, given the hype around open source, if Be DID collapse there's the possibility that they would release what source code that they could rather than let it die off completely (granted, there's probably an amount of code under NDA or some such).
Barring those two solutions, I will happily transition to Linux. I've installed it and used it. For me, BeOS - regardless of licensing issues - is a better solution for me than Linux. It provides for more of my needs than Linux does currently. Simply because BeOS has the _potential_ to fail doesn't mean that it will, and it doesn't mean that I should just abandon it because some Linux blowhard feels his way is The One True Enlightened Path To Wisdom (tm).
It works for me, and it works better than Linux. If there ever comes a point where Linux works for me better than BeOS, I will go to Linux. But you aren't going to get me to jump ship based on some vague prophecy of impending doom.
It stems from when Apple was shopping around for thier next-generation operating system. It came down to BeOS and NeXT. Jobs decided to choose NeXT (for whatever reason).
After that, I think Apple has felt threatened by BeOS as a competitor to their operating system, and doesn't really want to encourage it on their hardware. It's only due to Be's peculiar sixth sense that they managed to do a successful transition to the IBM-compatible market.
>just with some more spit and polish
Couldn't I just as easily dismiss Linux as 'just another UNIX' workalike, albeit it with a bit more "spit and polish," as you so elegantly put it?
>Closed, binary-only, proprietary.
Yeah, you're right. Unfortunately, your philosophical extremisim results in a closed mind. Apparently for you, nothing good will ever come from closed source. You refuse to look past the licensing to the actual technology implemented (and as a side note, the fact that you CAN dismiss it as simply a licensing issue and not provide examples of how Linux's technology is better or comparable to BeOS would indicate that you are unfamiliar with BeOS at best), and therefore there is no argument in the world to dissuade you.
Just be careful of that soapbox you stand on to preach to the masses - it's an awfully long fall.
While I would dearly love for this to be moderated down as a "Troll," I have this sinking feeling it's going to be moderated up with "Informative" or "Interesting".
The reason why BeOS is appealing is because it's different. It's different than Linux, and it's different from Windows. It uses different ideas, different philosophies, different technology. It has things that Linux doesn't, that Linux won't (simply because some of what BeOS has goes against the grain of certain UNIX philosophies). Does that mean BeOS is superior? Hell no - Linux will always kick BeOS's ass in certain areas. Does that mean Linux is superior? No.
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.
It's $25 to upgrade - for people who already own the BeOS, and only if you want a CD. The point release will be made available for downloading free of charge, probably within the next week.
It's not really "officially" released. Most in the BeOS community consider a "point" upgrade released when it is both orderable through BeDepot as well as downloadable free of charge from Be's web site. So far, the latter is not yet available.
Most speculation tends to think that Be will make the official release announcement next week at PC Expo.
>Which distribution are you using?
/var/log/messages it seems to make the connection between the serial port and the ppp interface - I just don't ever get any local/remote IP addresses returned to me.
Well, not to add fuel to his arguments, but when I tried Slackware I had a very rough time with PPP. (I know another distribution - such as Debian - would most likely be vastly easier, but I'm _supposed_ to be learning how to use Linux, right?)
The first time I installed it, everything went hunky-dory. Almost. I couldn't get the connection set up unless I ran the 'ppp-go' script and manually invoked the PPP daemon. Then it would return my IP addresses and away we went. However, my disk had some problems and I had to do some repair work, and so decided to start over fresh with Slack.
After the reinstall, I couldn't quite get Slack PPP working again. It seems to connect, and when I poke around in
I've spent quite a few hours beating on this, so his claim in this area isn't totally inaccurate. On the other hand, I'm a certifiable Linux moron; in my four years of using Digital UNIX (I guess now it's Tru64) at college, I never did much mucking around with it beyond that of Joe Average user.
On the other hand, I'm using what is perhaps the most manual of distributions. I can't imagine that with a distribution like Red Hat it would take even a fraction of that hour to get PPP working.