Linux has a larger group of users because it has been around much longer, (yea and the Open Source thing.) But face it. Most people don't use Linux for the Open Source aspect. They use it for the free aspect. A bunch of OSS people built up Linux to a point where regular people chose it over say BSD because thought both were free, Linux had more active development. I can tell you right now that very few people care of Linux and its freeness. In fact, if all you guys would develop BSD as actively, people would flock to it because of the BSD license. BeOS just gained an obsence number of users in the last 5 days. Sure lots won't keep it on their machine, just like lots of people who buy linux CDs don't keep it on their machine. But say 1/3 do. Thats like 100,000 users! Sure not as big as Linux's several million, but quite significant. When OpenGL and BONE come out, this will be the situation. One can choose Linux with its marginally better hardware support (for new stuff anyway. A lot of the linux drivers are really old stuff and that doesn't really matter to tell the truth. In fact, BeOS already supports the Aureal Vortex chips, unlike Linux.) and better software support, or BeOS with its easier interface, faster system, passable software support, and super kick ass multimedia support.
Re:It's definitely not for PPC
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Actually, Amiga was the most advanced OS of its day too. But lets define advanced shall we? If you're talking about networking/server type stuff, BeOS is kind of in the dark ages. If your talking multimedia stuff, BeOS is quite advanced. Look at the rest of the field. All the *NIXs are out, because even if it works, the monolithic kernel design is not very advanced. Then take a look at the other microkernels. Mach is pretty good, but most Mach OSs have a monolithic system server, and Mach IPC is not that great. Take a look at NT. Its a microkernel, it has a HAL, it has mad hardware acceleration, but it has a crufty API and has a lot of crappy code. Take BeOS. You've got a really nice microkernel, a good driver model (interupt handles in kernel, accelerants in server space) a well desgined server model (app, media, audio, graphics, net, input, etc. You can take down a server should it crash, or should you upgrade it, without taking down the whole system. For example, I added a new filer to the input server that would detect my window key and use it to launch the be menu. All I did was copy it into the add-ons directory, and wrote a shell script to kill the input server, wait 5 seconds and restart it. Voila, on the field upgrade. Then there is the BeOS API, which offers you a lot of direct access to hardware and in general makes decent use of acceleration, then you have all the BeOS system services like translators, add-ons, replicants, etc. In fact, aside from a good OpenGL pipline (which should be released soon) the only thing BeOS is lacking is an implementation of COM.
Re:Some differences BeOS for Linux / Windows
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There is no reason to use a kernel config file. its not linux you know. Just go to preferences, swap, and move the slider down to a sane level!
Actually, very little is built into the kernel. (Its a microkernel OS. Even networking is relegated to the net server, until BONE at least.) The CODECS are loaded dynamically by the media server. The reason its fast is beacuse BeOS is very good at moving large amounts of media data around with low overhead.
Hey, just because it is not a server OS, don't knock the FS. It is more industrial strength than ext3 I'll tell you that. May not quite be up to XFS standards in terms of features, but comes close in terms of speed, integrity, and stability.
If you want industrial strenght file system check out BFS. Fully journeled, hits 90% of the media's capacity for througput, and has database capabilities. Too bad its not attached to a server OS. (We media people like it too, though:)
Not at all similar. The Sega system had two full processers. This just has two vector pipelines, like the Pentium III has three integer pipelines. It is much easier to do sheduling across two pipes than two procs.
I don't totally agree that Apple has been more OpenSource. Most of what they did Open Source had no effect on their revenue. Most of what Be open sourced had no effect on their revenue. Same thing. (gcc had to be open sourced. They made changes to it not becuase they wanted to, but because they wanted easily available of MacOSX.) BeOS "lite" is not crippled. Be pays a license cost for each copy of RealPlayer G2 that it bundles. It pays a license cost of each copy of the MP3 codec it bundles. All these costs add up. Now Linux distros include only free software. Thus by your logic a Cheap Bytes RedHat 6.1 CD is "crippled linux" because it doesn't include WordPerfect 8 like RH Deluxe does. The other limitations are just in your mind. 5 minutes ago, I booted from the 512 meg file, used installer to install into a BFS partition, and am up and running just like R4.5 (which I payed $40 for.) Aside from the development tools and the demos (which can be downloaded free) it has the same level of functionality. What crippled features (aside from the commercial software) are you talking about? Apple probably isn't afraid now, with its release of OSX, but at the time Be was asking them for specs, they were. Face it, MacOS and its apps and ease of use are one of the only things that keep people on the Mac platform. If BeOS could run on the G3 macs, a significant software base would have built up on it because media people would figure out that MacOS sucked. (And in terms of technical stuff, MacOS 10 did suck.) That would lead people to a BeOS/PPC situation. Of course, for the price of a 500MHz G4, I can buy a 1GHz PIII. The PIII performs just as well in photoshop, performs better for 3D, and has more apps. You figure out the rest. And your MkLinux thing proves my arguement. Why did apple help out MkLinux and not Be if they weren't afraid of Be? A manual with specs would have helped Linux (and LinuxPPC in particular) just as much as Be. The point you miss is that to keep people on their hardware, they have to keep people on their OS. Thats why Apple doesn't release specs on the system. LinuxPPC would be too easily written, and people would move to Linux once it was established. From there, people would move to x86, and voila, no apple. As for the hacked system, I never said it was anything bad. But LinuxPPC has people. Be doesn't. They can barely get out OpenGl and BONE on BeOS, much less reverse engineer a machine.
Actually nothing in the BeOS userland is UNIX. Supporting the POSIX API does not make something UNIX, it makes it POSIX compatible. Though it does support POSIX, will soon support GTK+, and has an X server, it is NOT a UNIX. The kernel is entirely new, and the userland servers are much more modular than Mach servers. For example, most Mach implementations have a big BSD system server. In contrast the BeOS has the media server, the app server, the audio server, the net server, the input server, etc. And all of them are based on non-UNIX designs. Because of the POSIX layer, a lot of commandline stuff was ported to BeOS like bash and awk, etc, but thats just the CLI. Having cp does not make something a UNIX. BeOS is about as UNIXish as NT. (Though its POSIX support whips NT's ass.)
1. Apple has provided two open-sourced operating systems. Be is 99% proprietary (the only open part being what they had to open-source due to licensing conflicts). >>>>>>> Why release the source to BeOS? So they can put it into Linux? Face it, Darwin is not an Open Source OS. It is simply the Open Source Mach kernel with the Open Source BSD code around it. The only thing Apple did was to not take advantage of the BSD license and released the code. Open Sourcing MacOS X is nothing. Nobody will use it in its current form, people will use MacOS X for the GUI apple chooses to keep closed.
2. BeOS 5.0 is crippled, and just an attempt to get people interested so people will code for these supposed Be-powered toasters and set-top boxes. It's obvious Be is giving up on the OS front. Threat? Not likely. >>>>> Would you please get your info before you speak out your ass. BeOS is just about as uncrippled as a free commercial OS can be. 1) There is no SMP support if you boot from the file. That is not due to any technical limitation, just a limitation on how Windows leaves the system. 2) Some of the commercial stuff does not come with it. Why should it? Show me a free Linux distro that comes with RealPlayerG2. The stuff that is taken out is propriotory stuff that COULDN'T be released because of license costs. In all other respects, its the same OS. As for the diskfile, you can mount any partition you want. Install the OS to a 512 meg file, and mount/boot/apps on a 80 gig BFS partition. There's nothing to stop you from doing that. It also seems to me that you can just use Installer once it is loaded and install into the 80 gig drive from there. There are probably some things that could have been done better, but it is hardly crippled. And when Linux can edit digital video in realtime as well as my "toaster" OS, I'll think about switching.
3. JLG, head of Be, is largely responsible for Apple having been so closed in the past. He was one of the biggest critics of cloning back when he was at Apple. Read up on his history - he's a smart guy, but he's not perfect. >>>> Yea, true. There were a lot of harsh relations between the two.
4. Be realistic. Jobs doesn't care about the BeOS one way or the other - he just knew that it wasn't Apple's job to subsidize Be's development. Should Apple pay Be's dev costs? Not now, and esp. not back when they were practically dead (ie. around when Be started backing away from PPC, coincidentally).
>>>> Wanna bet? Jobs is scared. Why do people use the MacOS? Newbies use it, and media professionals use it. If they can get it done better on BeOS (quite a few media apps are being ported) why stick with apple OSs? In the end, if a large media app base moves to BeOS, Intel would get a major part of those because its hardware is cheaper (and for 3D)faster and more available. Why did they help out Linux development (MkLinux) and not BeOS? Its not like Be is asking them to write code for them. All they want is an official manual with the specs.
5. If the Mac platform is so closed, explain: LinuxPPC, MkLinux, Yellow Dog Linux, BSD, and Darwin. I'll wait. >>>>>>> They are hacked OSs. Face it, all of those OS reverse-engineered the system specs. BeOS doesn't want (or doesn't have the manpower) to reverse engineer stuff. Remember, they are a real company with investors to answer to. You can bet that if they did they'ed get hit with a lawsuit pretty fast.
6. Conveniently timed Intel investment? Hmm...
7. ROM in RAM architecture, move to industry standard components, etc. This is a platform being opened-up, not closed. >>>> A lot of stuff is still closed. Why did the LinuxPPC team have to reverse engineer the G3 then?
All the while, Be has been switching business focus repeatedly, meaning (to me) that they just can't do it. Be is not a threat to anyone - if it was only judged on its technical merits, it'd be sharing the market with the MacOS and Linux, and Windows would not exist. >>>>> Well, we'll see. Right now there are literally hundreds of thousands of people trying out BeOS. 30K in one german server alone.
This is a question about the general direction of Linux DEs. It seems to be going in the wrong direction in terms of feature bloat. Windows did that, integrating IE into Windows 98. Of course, IE is fairly lightweight. What about integrating Mozilla? I'm not the only one here who thinks that Mozilla is not exactly the pinacle of software design. My general beef is that GNOME (and KDE to some extent) tries to do to much. Its Cobra, its OLE2, its a UI, its an environment, its a widget set, it slices, it dices, it make jullian fries! Take OLE2 for example. Even the MS people admit that it is slow and complex. Thats why MS has mostly given up on it and moved to D/COM. And why is COM in the DE in the first place. Shouldn't it be at a lower level? My general gripe is that everywhere in Linux there is duplicated functionality, or functionality layered wrong. Stuff like GNOME isn't doing anything to help. In BeOS, my UI takes up something like 3 meg. All the inter-app interface is in seperate parts of the app server, not in the UI. Its layered correctly. If you think MS is bloated, think about this. With the release of GNOME 2.0, it will be possible, with only 4 apps, to require the loading of 4 large system APIs into memory, (QT 1 and 2, and 1x and 2x versions of GNOME libraries) Whats your outlook into this?
Usually I don't get too fired up when stuff is ported to BeOS and ignored. Yet, this one pisses me off. The port of NeverWinter nights was announced for BeOS quite some time ago, and is pretty far along. Like I said I really could care less if/. put it up, but ignore the BeOS port and post the Linux port?
Sorry, but the whole minimize/maximize/close thing is much more efficiant on Windows. Face it, most people are right handed. Thus it makes sense to group all buttons togethers on the right side. (Of course it is trivial to adjust for left handers.) I doubt many people hit the close button often because between the two is the little use maximize button. Grouping the two together makes for that much less mouse work. Good apps should always ask if you want to quit. I would rather put up with the occasional accidental quit then the constant extra finger work. In the end, it shouldn't matter. The GUI should let you choose where to put it. (I can theme my GUI to all hell, but can't choose where to put my close button?)
Actually that close of a connection between the OS and the language does not "feel right." for a lot of people (I'd go so far as to say the majority.) Anything that tightly restricts the evolution, expandibility, and scope of two systems by tying them to each other does not "feel right."
Actually, under your definition, BeOS too is a UNIX. (The GUI can be removed as it is just a part of the app server.) I certainly doubt you would call BeOS a UNIX (you better not!) Actually, aside from the GUI part, even NT is a UNIX. I think there is a design thing, treating everything as a file, having a fairly non-modular system (Linux, modular, yea right)(Even a microkernel like MACH can fit this definition because they usually just have a big BSD system server.). In the end, its one of liniage. Is it mainly a derivation of a classical UNIX, or is it just influenced by UNIX design?
While Linux users are happy at the GPLing of the software, BeOS and other alternative OS users (BTW. Linux is getting to the point where BeOS is to Linux as Linux used to be to Windows:) should be happy for the code merge. Because Bochs has already been ported to many platforms (Be), if Plex86 uses bochs for the core, then it should be pretty easy to get Plex86 working on BeOS. This will have to be done by BeOS developers since Plex86 doesn't have any plans for supporting non-UNIX OSs, but I'm sure there are enough of those.
I'm talking about efficiancy. If you look at the BeOS and MacOS APIs a lot of what they do is very efficiant code-wise. I'll speak for BeOS because thats what I use most often. The BeOS display server is just a thread in the app server (the BeOS is a microkernel.) The connection between the app and the server is just some really efficient message passing between two threads. It leaves out a lot of the negotiation and protocol stuff needed with X. In the app server, it is drawn using the graphics driver which is loaded as a dynamic link library. I don't know too much about MacOSX, but I do know that it too uses a light weight window process. Also, there is very little cruft in the BeOS window manager. It is not nearly as feature heavy, and a lot of the layers such as toolkits and window managers and desktop environments are not there. Sure it can't do any of the network transparent stuff, but it really isn't meant to. Aside from technical factors, X is slow from experiance. There are noticable problems with redraw in KDE, and it just doesn't feel snappy. Its on par with windows 98 and slightly slower than 95. Of course, since I come from BeOS, it is painfully slow. I've seen what a light, well designed interface can do. For example, BeOS has a busy cursor, but I've only seen it once when running a benchmarking app. Huge menues load instantly, complex views almost never have redraw problems, and there is never a time when you feel like you're waiting for the sytem to respond to you.
No, X is really not very efficiant for local devices. BeOS and MacOS X display servers are efficiant, X is nowhere in that ball park. Actually, I didn't realize if embedded Qt does not support multiple windows (does it?) I know that BeOS certainly does and its graphics driver is loaded as a dynamic module. Having a client/server has nothing to do with it. Second, DirectX style is not only 3D. 2D graphics and input are also part of it. X has pretty bad 2D performance, and DRI is a pretty big hack. I'm saying that on the desktop there is no reason to have X (which is bloated and offers a lot of useless features (of the desktop anyway)) when something lighter and more efficiant can be put in place. PS> Network transparency should be a much higher level service. In a desktop environment, stuff like X and OpenGL and DCOM and SOM disgust me for their performance robbing network transparency.
Everyone here does realize that nothing they do, no threats of boycott from the Linux market, no jihad against closed source is going to do anything for their core business. Most people could care less about Open Source, and most people don't use Linux. Their core business is high-performance graphics. Something that Linux is not asociated with. When it does become associated with it (if SGI pulls through) then they will release closed source drivers for some kick-ass hardware, and no-one except the Open Source fundementalists will care. If its the fastest hardware, they'll use it. I've made this arguement before. Long as the drivers exist, the company could care less about open source. Think about it, what good do open source drivers do for nVidia? You think you hackers could write better drivers for nVidia hardware than nVidia? A graphics drivers is not like regualar programs. The intracies of the PC arch. are well understood, thus programming Linux with a bunch of hackers works. But if I came up with a brand new architecture, and asked you to code an OS for it, are you saying you could do it better than the guys who designed it? If so, why don't the Voodoo linux drivers whoop the voodoo windows drivers? Same source, they've had as much devel time, so where's the beef? I get the sad feeling that when the NV25 comes out with awesome binary only linux drivers and a tweeked OpenGL service, I'll be sitting here enjoying it while the Linux OSS fundementalists sit their with the voodoos refusing to give up their religious belief in open source software. C'mon guys, its a driver! Also, and I've made this arguement before, Linux is being used by these companies to get some kind of competetive advantage. Thats why dead/dying/tiny companies are jumping on the bandwagon. Market leaders have no use for it until it becomes mainstream (a place were OSS won't matter. Free will, but OSS won't.) Matrox, ATI, 3Dfx, all companies who have seen better days. Proof: Linux people are about the only people who bought the Voodoo3, an inferior product to the TNT2, after the TNT2's release. Without Linux, there would be no reason to even consider Voodoo3.
This is not only great for embedded systems, but for desktops. A) The whole X server over network paradigm isn't really needed for a local desktop (most of the time) by utilizing the framebuffer and hardware acceleration, this is provide an increadible peformance and memory usage boost. One reason I use BeOS that its GUI is so ridiculously responsive. Meanwhile KDE on a PII300 and TNT chugs along. Ever open up SysV init editor and resize the window? Talk 'bout major redraw. I really hope they put in support for writing directly to the framebuffer. That way OpenGL could be put on it and we'd be in desktop heaven. B) Its X compatible so no re-writing apps to support a next Gen interface! C) It dumps all the X stuff that is in qt and is redundant anyway on a Qt system. I think they seriously have the right idea with this release. Finaly, a great kernel like Linux gets a good windowing system to go along. If this is GPLed, it will not make its biggest splash in the embedded market. It will make a splash in the desktop market, because even if Trolltech doesn't have the right focus for this product, I'm sure lots of media obsessed users pissed of by poor interactive performance do. This is seriously cool. This also bodes well for a DirectX type API on Linux. Think about it! It support hardware acceleration, so SDL could be put on it and have a very direct route to the graphics hardware. If basic SDL-style input services are put in, and OpenAL plays nice with it, you have a Direct, low-overhead API that is cross platform to boot!
Whoa boy, outdid me in the comment length department. You're wrong on most counts however. 1) Being a set top is a specialized job. Nothing in a GPOS makes it any easier than a specialized set-top OS. 2) I know UNIX guys want to stuff in every feature under the SUN, but face it. 99% of the consumer base has no clue what MIDI is! 3) Don't get too cocky with the GPOS thing. QNX can do everything that Linux can do yet fits in like 1/50th the space. Mainly because QNX is optimized to do these, and leaves out a lot of cruft Linux keeps in. 4) Where do you get all these technological marvels? AGP 8X will not be out anywhere near Q3. More like Q3 2001. (AGP 4X is barely out NOW.) DDR SDRAM is still nowhere near as fast as embedded VRAM. Latency is lower. It has special grpahics functions, and the bus width is about 8 times wider. Even if the DDR-SDRAM runs at twice the clock, the Embedded VRAM is 4 X as fast. Take a look at what you're saying. A 2GHz PIII with a GPU capable of beating the PS2 is nowhere near Q3 this year. Even if chip power continues at its present astronomical rate, a chip cheap enough to put into a console at 2GHz is a year away. Computers evolve quick, but not THAT quick.
X - 8 MB vtwm - 1.5 MB Linux - 3 MB (And that's a FAT kernel) Various bits of "glue" - 1 MB. >> A) How did you get X to fit in 8 meg? Mine hogs damn near 24 meg normally. Second, it probably won't use something like vtwm. If they wan't compatibility with normal Linux apps like Mozilla, they'll use something like GNOME or KDE. I doubt something like vtwm would fly with the general public.
The other bone I have to pick: You don't need to shutdown Linux if it runs from a Read-Only partition. >> Whats the point of a read-only Linux disc drive? People have to mount the hd to write to it don't they? People shutdown consoles, people pull the plugs etc. You still have that problem.
How about once every two hours? That's how long the original Playstation went without crashing for a lot of people... 3 times a year would sound DAMN good.
>> Don't know about you, but I have the 2nd gen model. My claims about stability stand. Maybe some of the first gen models had heat problems, but thats only if you put it on a carpet and not a hard surface. Second and third gen models didn't have heat troubles that I have ever encountered.
I can't see the fact that people are willing to be WITHOUT their console for WEEKS when they have to send it back for repair (which, as we have seen with the PS/2 and original PS, is OFTEN). >> Again, I don't hear to many statistics on repairs needed. After the first gen glitches, the PS was very reliable, and aside from the memory card and heat issues, I haven't heard to much about the PS2. Rest assured that these will sort themselves out by the time this hits the US.
Time for a Paradigm shift... >> You call having to update an app that should have been coded properly in the first place a paradigm shift? Sorry, but I like our paradigm better. People bitch all day about game companies releasing unready software then patching it and you think it is a paradigm shift?!
Well, turn off that feature then. Let the game be as buggy as released. You think that console games have no bugs? Hahahahahahahaha... >> Console games in general have far far fewer bugs than PC games do. Mario 64 has crashed on me once. Thats it. Even Blizzard games, which are extremely well polished, have crashed more often on my PC.
>It can't be difficult, it can't be unstable (reletivly), it can't take energy to maintain. It has to be transparent to use, and be easy to use as your toaster. Literraly. >> The tivo doesn't try to do anything NEAR what this console is. It streams video to a TV and uses Linux as data manager. No interface to speak of, no X, no nothing. Certainly no web-browser and gaming services.
[sarcasm] Yeah, I mean, like TiVo NEVER released their patches and stuff. And the TiVo crashes daily. And the TiVo has 64 MB RAM. And the TiVo has swapping capabilities. And the TiVo has multiuser capabilities. [/sarcasm] >> Excuse me? What does this comment have to do with Linux being fat? The TiVO is an entirely different beast from this machine. A) It can put up with the overhead of UNIX, for the cost cut associated with having a working off the shelf kernel. Streaming video to a TV is not exactly a terribly tasking job, thus the proc doesn't really feel the burden of the system that much. I doubt the TiVo guys took out all the GPOS (General Purpose OS) stuff in Linux. It still has a VM, still has the concept of swap space (even if you turn it off, it is an integral part of the VM) still has security, still has multi-userness, still has a lot of concepts that a console doesn't need. Linux has something like 5 different types of IPC, different file systems, etc. Even if you compile out some of these features, the core code needed to support the is still there. (IE. Linux can't write to a raw file system. Something in its file manager must pass it off to a fs driver.) Stuff like that puts an inherant strain on the system that doesn't need to be there in a console. There is nothing so great in Linux that they put it on the TiVo for. They just did it for the hype and for the fact that it was free and off the shelf. It is not as good an OS as the PS2 libraries for a console, so whats the point of using it aside from the hype aspect?
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Linux has a larger group of users because it has been around much longer, (yea and the Open Source thing.) But face it. Most people don't use Linux for the Open Source aspect. They use it for the free aspect. A bunch of OSS people built up Linux to a point where regular people chose it over say BSD because thought both were free, Linux had more active development. I can tell you right now that very few people care of Linux and its freeness. In fact, if all you guys would develop BSD as actively, people would flock to it because of the BSD license. BeOS just gained an obsence number of users in the last 5 days. Sure lots won't keep it on their machine, just like lots of people who buy linux CDs don't keep it on their machine. But say 1/3 do. Thats like 100,000 users! Sure not as big as Linux's several million, but quite significant. When OpenGL and BONE come out, this will be the situation. One can choose Linux with its marginally better hardware support (for new stuff anyway. A lot of the linux drivers are really old stuff and that doesn't really matter to tell the truth. In fact, BeOS already supports the Aureal Vortex chips, unlike Linux.) and better software support, or BeOS with its easier interface, faster system, passable software support, and super kick ass multimedia support.
Actually, Amiga was the most advanced OS of its day too. But lets define advanced shall we? If you're talking about networking/server type stuff, BeOS is kind of in the dark ages. If your talking multimedia stuff, BeOS is quite advanced. Look at the rest of the field. All the *NIXs are out, because even if it works, the monolithic kernel design is not very advanced. Then take a look at the other microkernels. Mach is pretty good, but most Mach OSs have a monolithic system server, and Mach IPC is not that great. Take a look at NT. Its a microkernel, it has a HAL, it has mad hardware acceleration, but it has a crufty API and has a lot of crappy code. Take BeOS. You've got a really nice microkernel, a good driver model (interupt handles in kernel, accelerants in server space) a well desgined server model (app, media, audio, graphics, net, input, etc. You can take down a server should it crash, or should you upgrade it, without taking down the whole system. For example, I added a new filer to the input server that would detect my window key and use it to launch the be menu. All I did was copy it into the add-ons directory, and wrote a shell script to kill the input server, wait 5 seconds and restart it. Voila, on the field upgrade. Then there is the BeOS API, which offers you a lot of direct access to hardware and in general makes decent use of acceleration, then you have all the BeOS system services like translators, add-ons, replicants, etc. In fact, aside from a good OpenGL pipline (which should be released soon) the only thing BeOS is lacking is an implementation of COM.
There is no reason to use a kernel config file. its not linux you know. Just go to preferences, swap, and move the slider down to a sane level!
Actually, very little is built into the kernel. (Its a microkernel OS. Even networking is relegated to the net server, until BONE at least.) The CODECS are loaded dynamically by the media server. The reason its fast is beacuse BeOS is very good at moving large amounts of media data around with low overhead.
Hey, just because it is not a server OS, don't knock the FS. It is more industrial strength than ext3 I'll tell you that. May not quite be up to XFS standards in terms of features, but comes close in terms of speed, integrity, and stability.
If you want industrial strenght file system check out BFS. Fully journeled, hits 90% of the media's capacity for througput, and has database capabilities. Too bad its not attached to a server OS. (We media people like it too, though :)
Not at all similar. The Sega system had two full processers. This just has two vector pipelines, like the Pentium III has three integer pipelines. It is much easier to do sheduling across two pipes than two procs.
Yea, but none of the major GNOME window managers, which is what I was talking about. (Theme to all hell and that.)
I don't totally agree that Apple has been more OpenSource. Most of what they did Open Source had no effect on their revenue. Most of what Be open sourced had no effect on their revenue. Same thing. (gcc had to be open sourced. They made changes to it not becuase they wanted to, but because they wanted easily available of MacOSX.)
BeOS "lite" is not crippled. Be pays a license cost for each copy of RealPlayer G2 that it bundles. It pays a license cost of each copy of the MP3 codec it bundles. All these costs add up. Now Linux distros include only free software. Thus by your logic a Cheap Bytes RedHat 6.1 CD is "crippled linux" because it doesn't include WordPerfect 8 like RH Deluxe does. The other limitations are just in your mind. 5 minutes ago, I booted from the 512 meg file, used installer to install into a BFS partition, and am up and running just like R4.5 (which I payed $40 for.) Aside from the development tools and the demos (which can be downloaded free) it has the same level of functionality. What crippled features (aside from the commercial software) are you talking about? Apple probably isn't afraid now, with its release of OSX, but at the time Be was asking them for specs, they were. Face it, MacOS and its apps and ease of use are one of the only things that keep people on the Mac platform. If BeOS could run on the G3 macs, a significant software base would have built up on it because media people would figure out that MacOS sucked. (And in terms of technical stuff, MacOS 10 did suck.) That would lead people to a BeOS/PPC situation. Of course, for the price of a 500MHz G4, I can buy a 1GHz PIII. The PIII performs just as well in photoshop, performs better for 3D, and has more apps. You figure out the rest. And your MkLinux thing proves my arguement. Why did apple help out MkLinux and not Be if they weren't afraid of Be? A manual with specs would have helped Linux (and LinuxPPC in particular) just as much as Be. The point you miss is that to keep people on their hardware, they have to keep people on their OS. Thats why Apple doesn't release specs on the system. LinuxPPC would be too easily written, and people would move to Linux once it was established. From there, people would move to x86, and voila, no apple. As for the hacked system, I never said it was anything bad. But LinuxPPC has people. Be doesn't. They can barely get out OpenGl and BONE on BeOS, much less reverse engineer a machine.
Actually nothing in the BeOS userland is UNIX. Supporting the POSIX API does not make something UNIX, it makes it POSIX compatible. Though it does support POSIX, will soon support GTK+, and has an X server, it is NOT a UNIX. The kernel is entirely new, and the userland servers are much more modular than Mach servers. For example, most Mach implementations have a big BSD system server. In contrast the BeOS has the media server, the app server, the audio server, the net server, the input server, etc. And all of them are based on non-UNIX designs. Because of the POSIX layer, a lot of commandline stuff was ported to BeOS like bash and awk, etc, but thats just the CLI. Having cp does not make something a UNIX. BeOS is about as UNIXish as NT. (Though its POSIX support whips NT's ass.)
1. Apple has provided two open-sourced operating systems. Be is 99% proprietary (the only open part being what they had to open-source due to licensing conflicts).
/boot/apps on a 80 gig BFS partition. There's nothing to stop you from doing that. It also seems to me that you can just use Installer once it is loaded and install into the 80 gig drive from there. There are probably some things that could have been done better, but it is hardly crippled. And when Linux can edit digital video in realtime as well as my "toaster" OS, I'll think about switching.
>>>>>>>
Why release the source to BeOS? So they can put it into Linux? Face it, Darwin is not an Open Source OS. It is simply the Open Source Mach kernel with the Open Source BSD code around it. The only thing Apple did was to not take advantage of the BSD license and released the code. Open Sourcing MacOS X is nothing. Nobody will use it in its current form, people will use MacOS X for the GUI apple chooses to keep closed.
2. BeOS 5.0 is crippled, and just an attempt to get people interested so people will code for these supposed Be-powered toasters and set-top boxes. It's obvious Be is giving up on the OS front. Threat? Not likely.
>>>>>
Would you please get your info before you speak out your ass. BeOS is just about as uncrippled as a free commercial OS can be. 1) There is no SMP support if you boot from the file. That is not due to any technical limitation, just a limitation on how Windows leaves the system. 2) Some of the commercial stuff does not come with it. Why should it? Show me a free Linux distro that comes with RealPlayerG2. The stuff that is taken out is propriotory stuff that COULDN'T be released because of license costs. In all other respects, its the same OS. As for the diskfile, you can mount any partition you want. Install the OS to a 512 meg file, and mount
3. JLG, head of Be, is largely responsible for Apple having been so closed in the past. He was one of the biggest critics of cloning back when he was at Apple. Read up on his history - he's a smart guy, but he's not perfect.
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Yea, true. There were a lot of harsh relations between the two.
4. Be realistic. Jobs doesn't care about the BeOS one way or the other - he just knew that it wasn't Apple's job to subsidize Be's development. Should Apple pay Be's dev costs? Not now, and esp. not back when they were practically dead (ie. around when Be started backing away from PPC, coincidentally).
>>>>
Wanna bet? Jobs is scared. Why do people use the MacOS? Newbies use it, and media professionals use it. If they can get it done better on BeOS (quite a few media apps are being ported) why stick with apple OSs? In the end, if a large media app base moves to BeOS, Intel would get a major part of those because its hardware is cheaper (and for 3D)faster and more available. Why did they help out Linux development (MkLinux) and not BeOS? Its not like Be is asking them to write code for them. All they want is an official manual with the specs.
5. If the Mac platform is so closed, explain: LinuxPPC, MkLinux, Yellow Dog Linux, BSD, and Darwin. I'll wait.
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They are hacked OSs. Face it, all of those OS reverse-engineered the system specs. BeOS doesn't want (or doesn't have the manpower) to reverse engineer stuff. Remember, they are a real company with investors to answer to. You can bet that if they did they'ed get hit with a lawsuit pretty fast.
6. Conveniently timed Intel investment? Hmm...
7. ROM in RAM architecture, move to industry standard components, etc. This is a platform being opened-up, not closed.
>>>>
A lot of stuff is still closed. Why did the LinuxPPC team have to reverse engineer the G3 then?
All the while, Be has been switching business focus repeatedly, meaning (to me) that they just can't do it. Be is not a threat to anyone - if it was only judged on its technical merits, it'd be sharing the market with the MacOS and Linux, and Windows would not exist.
>>>>>
Well, we'll see. Right now there are literally hundreds of thousands of people trying out BeOS. 30K in one german server alone.
This is a question about the general direction of Linux DEs. It seems to be going in the wrong direction in terms of feature bloat. Windows did that, integrating IE into Windows 98. Of course, IE is fairly lightweight. What about integrating Mozilla? I'm not the only one here who thinks that Mozilla is not exactly the pinacle of software design. My general beef is that GNOME (and KDE to some extent) tries to do to much. Its Cobra, its OLE2, its a UI, its an environment, its a widget set, it slices, it dices, it make jullian fries! Take OLE2 for example. Even the MS people admit that it is slow and complex. Thats why MS has mostly given up on it and moved to D/COM. And why is COM in the DE in the first place. Shouldn't it be at a lower level? My general gripe is that everywhere in Linux there is duplicated functionality, or functionality layered wrong. Stuff like GNOME isn't doing anything to help. In BeOS, my UI takes up something like 3 meg. All the inter-app interface is in seperate parts of the app server, not in the UI. Its layered correctly. If you think MS is bloated, think about this. With the release of GNOME 2.0, it will be possible, with only 4 apps, to require the loading of 4 large system APIs into memory, (QT 1 and 2, and 1x and 2x versions of GNOME libraries) Whats your outlook into this?
Usually I don't get too fired up when stuff is ported to BeOS and ignored. Yet, this one pisses me off. The port of NeverWinter nights was announced for BeOS quite some time ago, and is pretty far along. Like I said I really could care less if /. put it up, but ignore the BeOS port and post the Linux port?
Sorry, but the whole minimize/maximize/close thing is much more efficiant on Windows. Face it, most people are right handed. Thus it makes sense to group all buttons togethers on the right side. (Of course it is trivial to adjust for left handers.) I doubt many people hit the close button often because between the two is the little use maximize button. Grouping the two together makes for that much less mouse work. Good apps should always ask if you want to quit. I would rather put up with the occasional accidental quit then the constant extra finger work. In the end, it shouldn't matter. The GUI should let you choose where to put it. (I can theme my GUI to all hell, but can't choose where to put my close button?)
Actually that close of a connection between the OS and the language does not "feel right." for a lot of people (I'd go so far as to say the majority.) Anything that tightly restricts the evolution, expandibility, and scope of two systems by tying them to each other does not "feel right."
Actually, under your definition, BeOS too is a UNIX. (The GUI can be removed as it is just a part of the app server.) I certainly doubt you would call BeOS a UNIX (you better not!) Actually, aside from the GUI part, even NT is a UNIX. I think there is a design thing, treating everything as a file, having a fairly non-modular system (Linux, modular, yea right)(Even a microkernel like MACH can fit this definition because they usually just have a big BSD system server.). In the end, its one of liniage. Is it mainly a derivation of a classical UNIX, or is it just influenced by UNIX design?
While Linux users are happy at the GPLing of the software, BeOS and other alternative OS users (BTW. Linux is getting to the point where BeOS is to Linux as Linux used to be to Windows :) should be happy for the code merge. Because Bochs has already been ported to many platforms (Be), if Plex86 uses bochs for the core, then it should be pretty easy to get Plex86 working on BeOS. This will have to be done by BeOS developers since Plex86 doesn't have any plans for supporting non-UNIX OSs, but I'm sure there are enough of those.
What does that have to do with it? Every major PC windowing system aside from X can switch color depths on the fly.
I'm talking about efficiancy. If you look at the BeOS and MacOS APIs a lot of what they do is very efficiant code-wise. I'll speak for BeOS because thats what I use most often. The BeOS display server is just a thread in the app server (the BeOS is a microkernel.) The connection between the app and the server is just some really efficient message passing between two threads. It leaves out a lot of the negotiation and protocol stuff needed with X. In the app server, it is drawn using the graphics driver which is loaded as a dynamic link library. I don't know too much about MacOSX, but I do know that it too uses a light weight window process. Also, there is very little cruft in the BeOS window manager. It is not nearly as feature heavy, and a lot of the layers such as toolkits and window managers and desktop environments are not there. Sure it can't do any of the network transparent stuff, but it really isn't meant to. Aside from technical factors, X is slow from experiance. There are noticable problems with redraw in KDE, and it just doesn't feel snappy. Its on par with windows 98 and slightly slower than 95. Of course, since I come from BeOS, it is painfully slow. I've seen what a light, well designed interface can do. For example, BeOS has a busy cursor, but I've only seen it once when running a benchmarking app. Huge menues load instantly, complex views almost never have redraw problems, and there is never a time when you feel like you're waiting for the sytem to respond to you.
No, X is really not very efficiant for local devices. BeOS and MacOS X display servers are efficiant, X is nowhere in that ball park. Actually, I didn't realize if embedded Qt does not support multiple windows (does it?) I know that BeOS certainly does and its graphics driver is loaded as a dynamic module. Having a client/server has nothing to do with it. Second, DirectX style is not only 3D. 2D graphics and input are also part of it. X has pretty bad 2D performance, and DRI is a pretty big hack. I'm saying that on the desktop there is no reason to have X (which is bloated and offers a lot of useless features (of the desktop anyway)) when something lighter and more efficiant can be put in place.
PS> Network transparency should be a much higher level service. In a desktop environment, stuff like X and OpenGL and DCOM and SOM disgust me for their performance robbing network transparency.
Everyone here does realize that nothing they do, no threats of boycott from the Linux market, no jihad against closed source is going to do anything for their core business. Most people could care less about Open Source, and most people don't use Linux. Their core business is high-performance graphics. Something that Linux is not asociated with. When it does become associated with it (if SGI pulls through) then they will release closed source drivers for some kick-ass hardware, and no-one except the Open Source fundementalists will care. If its the fastest hardware, they'll use it. I've made this arguement before. Long as the drivers exist, the company could care less about open source. Think about it, what good do open source drivers do for nVidia? You think you hackers could write better drivers for nVidia hardware than nVidia? A graphics drivers is not like regualar programs. The intracies of the PC arch. are well understood, thus programming Linux with a bunch of hackers works. But if I came up with a brand new architecture, and asked you to code an OS for it, are you saying you could do it better than the guys who designed it? If so, why don't the Voodoo linux drivers whoop the voodoo windows drivers? Same source, they've had as much devel time, so where's the beef? I get the sad feeling that when the NV25 comes out with awesome binary only linux drivers and a tweeked OpenGL service, I'll be sitting here enjoying it while the Linux OSS fundementalists sit their with the voodoos refusing to give up their religious belief in open source software. C'mon guys, its a driver! Also, and I've made this arguement before, Linux is being used by these companies to get some kind of competetive advantage. Thats why dead/dying/tiny companies are jumping on the bandwagon. Market leaders have no use for it until it becomes mainstream (a place were OSS won't matter. Free will, but OSS won't.) Matrox, ATI, 3Dfx, all companies who have seen better days. Proof: Linux people are about the only people who bought the Voodoo3, an inferior product to the TNT2, after the TNT2's release. Without Linux, there would be no reason to even consider Voodoo3.
This is not only great for embedded systems, but for desktops.
A) The whole X server over network paradigm isn't really needed for a local desktop (most of the time) by utilizing the framebuffer and hardware acceleration, this is provide an increadible peformance and memory usage boost. One reason I use BeOS that its GUI is so ridiculously responsive. Meanwhile KDE on a PII300 and TNT chugs along. Ever open up SysV init editor and resize the window? Talk 'bout major redraw.
I really hope they put in support for writing directly to the framebuffer. That way OpenGL could be put on it and we'd be in desktop heaven.
B) Its X compatible so no re-writing apps to support a next Gen interface!
C) It dumps all the X stuff that is in qt and is redundant anyway on a Qt system.
I think they seriously have the right idea with this release. Finaly, a great kernel like Linux gets a good windowing system to go along. If this is GPLed, it will not make its biggest splash in the embedded market. It will make a splash in the desktop market, because even if Trolltech doesn't have the right focus for this product, I'm sure lots of media obsessed users pissed of by poor interactive performance do. This is seriously cool. This also bodes well for a DirectX type API on Linux. Think about it! It support hardware acceleration, so SDL could be put on it and have a very direct route to the graphics hardware. If basic SDL-style input services are put in, and OpenAL plays nice with it, you have a Direct, low-overhead API that is cross platform to boot!
Nobody is yet making money off Linux. All above companies are losing millions on Linux products.
Whoa boy, outdid me in the comment length department. You're wrong on most counts however.
1) Being a set top is a specialized job. Nothing in a GPOS makes it any easier than a specialized set-top OS.
2) I know UNIX guys want to stuff in every feature under the SUN, but face it. 99% of the consumer base has no clue what MIDI is!
3) Don't get too cocky with the GPOS thing. QNX can do everything that Linux can do yet fits in like 1/50th the space. Mainly because QNX is optimized to do these, and leaves out a lot of cruft Linux keeps in.
4) Where do you get all these technological marvels? AGP 8X will not be out anywhere near Q3. More like Q3 2001. (AGP 4X is barely out NOW.) DDR SDRAM is still nowhere near as fast as embedded VRAM. Latency is lower. It has special grpahics functions, and the bus width is about 8 times wider. Even if the DDR-SDRAM runs at twice the clock, the Embedded VRAM is 4 X as fast. Take a look at what you're saying. A 2GHz PIII with a GPU capable of beating the PS2 is nowhere near Q3 this year. Even if chip power continues at its present astronomical rate, a chip cheap enough to put into a console at 2GHz is a year away. Computers evolve quick, but not THAT quick.
Ahem, here's my findings:
X - 8 MB
vtwm - 1.5 MB
Linux - 3 MB (And that's a FAT kernel)
Various bits of "glue" - 1 MB.
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A) How did you get X to fit in 8 meg? Mine hogs damn near 24 meg normally. Second, it probably won't use something like vtwm. If they wan't compatibility with normal Linux apps like Mozilla, they'll use something like GNOME or KDE. I doubt something like vtwm would fly with the general public.
The other bone I have to pick: You don't need to shutdown Linux if it runs from a Read-Only partition.
>> Whats the point of a read-only Linux disc drive? People have to mount the hd to write to it don't they? People shutdown consoles, people pull the plugs etc. You still have that problem.
How about once every two hours? That's how long the original Playstation went without crashing for a lot of people... 3 times a year would sound DAMN good.
>> Don't know about you, but I have the 2nd gen model. My claims about stability stand. Maybe some of the first gen models had heat problems, but thats only if you put it on a carpet and not a hard surface. Second and third gen models didn't have heat troubles that I have ever encountered.
I can't see the fact that people are willing to be WITHOUT their console for WEEKS when they have to send it back for repair (which, as we have seen with the PS/2 and original PS, is OFTEN).
>> Again, I don't hear to many statistics on repairs needed. After the first gen glitches, the PS was very reliable, and aside from the memory card and heat issues, I haven't heard to much about the PS2. Rest assured that these will sort themselves out by the time this hits the US.
Time for a Paradigm shift...
>> You call having to update an app that should have been coded properly in the first place a paradigm shift? Sorry, but I like our paradigm better. People bitch all day about game companies releasing unready software then patching it and you think it is a paradigm shift?!
Well, turn off that feature then. Let the game be as buggy as released. You think that console games have no bugs? Hahahahahahahaha...
>> Console games in general have far far fewer bugs than PC games do. Mario 64 has crashed on me once. Thats it. Even Blizzard games, which are extremely well polished, have crashed more often on my PC.
>It can't be difficult, it can't be unstable (reletivly), it can't take energy to maintain. It has to be transparent to use, and be easy to use as your toaster. Literraly.
>> The tivo doesn't try to do anything NEAR what this console is. It streams video to a TV and uses Linux as data manager. No interface to speak of, no X, no nothing. Certainly no web-browser and gaming services.
[sarcasm] Yeah, I mean, like TiVo NEVER released their patches and stuff. And the TiVo crashes daily. And the TiVo has 64 MB RAM. And the TiVo has swapping capabilities. And the TiVo has multiuser capabilities. [/sarcasm]
>> Excuse me? What does this comment have to do with Linux being fat? The TiVO is an entirely different beast from this machine.
A) It can put up with the overhead of UNIX, for the cost cut associated with having a working off the shelf kernel. Streaming video to a TV is not exactly a terribly tasking job, thus the proc doesn't really feel the burden of the system that much. I doubt the TiVo guys took out all the GPOS (General Purpose OS) stuff in Linux. It still has a VM, still has the concept of swap space (even if you turn it off, it is an integral part of the VM) still has security, still has multi-userness, still has a lot of concepts that a console doesn't need. Linux has something like 5 different types of IPC, different file systems, etc. Even if you compile out some of these features, the core code needed to support the is still there. (IE. Linux can't write to a raw file system. Something in its file manager must pass it off to a fs driver.) Stuff like that puts an inherant strain on the system that doesn't need to be there in a console. There is nothing so great in Linux that they put it on the TiVo for. They just did it for the hype and for the fact that it was free and off the shelf. It is not as good an OS as the PS2 libraries for a console, so whats the point of using it aside from the hype aspect?