Have you tried BeOS personal edition?

[Brazen]

I'm curious about this BeOS, and thinking about downloading and installing it. Anyone have any thoughts on BeOS? Did it work? Do you like it? Is it good? etc.

 

[potz]

it's an awesome os. too bad be isn't really working on it anymore, since they're not going to make any money giving it away for free. but it's great for smp. also, there's not many useful apps on it.

 

[Workin']

I thought it sucked and was totally worthless. It wasn't even fun to try, since no matter what it would not work correctly on any of the 12 or so computers I have. Either the mouse wouldn't work, the sound wouldn't work, the network wouldn't work, or nothing would work. And this is all on "mainstream" hardware.

Just my $0.02.

 

[MGMorden]

It's very fun to tinker with. It's not quite as good for development as Linux, but the Gui's design and responsiveness are VERY good. It has more or less been abandoned, but I think I can say that Be was more or less the "fastest" os around. I never could figure out how to make a folder open in the same window you you clicked on it though.

 

[Brazen]

Does any apps work on it? Do games or anything work on it?

 

[MGMorden]

Of course apps and games work on it. If there were no apps and no games what would be left besides your cursor?

 

[Suppafly]

its cool.. get it and play with it some.. make your own decisions.. it works fine on my computer which is exactly all mainstream hardware but its pretty generic stuff..

if you have problems learning how to get around find someone who knows it and bug the hell out of them.. beos people dont mind explaining stuff as much as some other people.. try #beos on any irc server..

 

[Brazen]

Well, MGM, BeOS comes with many apps built into the OS. For many people this may be all they want. This is worthless to me however. If I can not install my third-party apps on this OS, then it is no good.

I did not think I should have to spell out that I am talking about THIRD-PARTY APPS.

 

[danielshoes]

Another BeOS goodie:

It mounts all partitions on my system: NTFS, FAT32, FAT16 and EXT2.

I think you should try it. It worth a shot!

 

[Schola]

BeOS is a great OS, just a little low on the third party apps list but there are some good programs around to get most of what you need done. There is even some games for it like Corum III and Civilization:Alpha Centuri to name a few. Also there is Gobe Productivity which can read your MS Office files. Overall it is a really nice OS but as with most any alternative OS it lacks a lot of third party apps.

Schola

 

[najar]

It is the fastest GUI driven OS because it has so few features built in. The More functionality you put into a program or OS the bigger resource hog it becomes(in general).

 

[Blayze]

I have used it before and found it very easy to setup, etc...

I have had better luck with Be than with Linux

 

[Elledan]

Tried it, didn't saw any reason to keep it and uninstalled it.

Coolest thing was that I managed to configure cable internet with it and played Lufia I using Snes9x for BeOS.

That's all... I prefer (SuSe) Linux over it.

 

[Sunner]

Tried it, but I didnt like the GUI much, and there werent exactly a whole lot of apps for it.
Very fast though.

 

[MGMorden]

Brazen: I think you're confused on this concept of alternative OS's. Virtually all third party apps you probably have are for Windows. BeOS (just like Mac, Linux, or any other OS) runs it's own native apps. Now there are native apps out there to be had (freshmeat and bebits are great places to start), but baring emulation and really searching you're not going to be able to walk into Best Buy pick up a program and run it on BeOS.

 

[Brazen]

MGMorden: I think you are a little underknoledged in the concepts of OS's, or just not thinking clearly. You may have heard the term APIs, or Application Environments? To make a long explanation short, I will use Windows NT as an example. NT has subsystems for many APIs: MS-DOS, 16-bit Windows, and of course 32-bit Windows, but it also has subsystems for OS/2 and POSIX (UNIX). NT runs in the Win32 API, but the NT kernel can look at binary executables and determine which environment it needs to run in and switch control to the appropriate API.

Now, of course BeOS is not nearly as robust as NT, but it would have been very advantageous for them to include more popular APIs.

 

[MGMorden]

I'm VERY familiar with the concept of an OS (I've been programming for nearly 10 years), but what I think you're missing is that BeOS and NT (or any other os) have applications compiled for their native environments. Programs must rely on a file structure being a certain way and be able to make calls to the kernel etc. When you change OS's, you break that link. Now programs can run if there is a compatibility layer (such as Wine or Cygwin for example), but we diverge into the realm of emulation (which I mentioned in my previous post), which is unreliabe at best (well, Cygwin is fairly reliable since the programs are compiled into native win32 code, and are presented with a faux-Unix environment). There's also the issue that os's use different (and incompatible) executable formats.

 

[Chriz]

BeOS actually IS still being worked on, just at a much slower pace than before (because Be is concentrating on BeIA for internet appliances). Lack of apps? I don't think so. Check out BeBits and you'll see there are many apps and drivers on there, including Geforce 2D drivers. BeOS 6 or 5.5 or whatever it will be will have hardware OpenGL, networking that is just as fast as Linux or FreeBSD, and Mozilla will arrive on BeOS very soon. There is already a beta for it. Opera is there too. Good OS. Maybe not the best for productivity and games because of lack of apps and drivers, etc, but certainly has the potential.

 

[Brazen]

Where did you hear that BeOS is still being worked on, Chriz?

 

[PliotronX]

I tried it and the mouse cursor was a blur of colors or didn't show up at all. I like Linux much better..

 

[Tsaico]

I gave it a try, but it was mediocre. For me, since my main use for my comp is gaming, the games and shareware under beos wasn't enough for me. It did have decent support for my rig and work needs, like word processing and internet capabilities.

 

[Chriz]

Brazen:

[L=]http://www.benews.com/beos/[/L] Here it tells that more things are being developed for BeOS. You can find this info all over Benews if you do a little searching. There is also an interview with the CEO of Be somewhere in there.

If anyone has just recently tried BeOS or wants to try it, hold out for the next release. This should be out in the next couple months. Here are some of the improvements:

1) Hardware OpenGL support for 3dfx, ATI, Matrox, possibly others. I know for sure NVIDIA won't have it because they will not provide Be with any information on how to create a 3D driver since their driver code has licensed technology or some BS and refuse to write their own driver for BeOS.

2) 2D drivers for pretty much anything out there including Geforce 256/2.

3) BeOS Networking Environment (BONE) which will give BeOS a networking stack equivalent in speed to *BSD and lots more features than what BeOS has right now.

4) Latest version of Opera, possibly Real Player. Also Macromedia Flash and Java support.

5) New Tracker and Deskbar from the open source versions. This means a nice interface with new options like single window browsing, etc.

Once this shows up many 3D games will be ported to BeOS. There is also a Direct 3D to OpenGL wrapper being made for it, along with a version of WINE (Windows emulator).

 

[Brazen]

PliotronX: I had that same problem when I installed it on a computer at work.

I think maybe I'll go ahead and wait for the next revision of BeOS before I install it on my home computer. The interface just didn't impress me enough. It would be nice, though, to get a little competition in the OS market with an OS that is faster than Windows.

I also noticed that while I was playing around in it, it never did crash on me ....

 

[dcsonic2k]

I love BeOS....I had the boot-from-DOS version installed when I tried to install Linux. Well, Linux had a little fun, it deleted my Master Boot Record and some other stuff. To make a long story short, Windows wouldn't boot, but I could load BeOS through the DOS command prompt (glad I made that boot disk). BeOS allowed me to get on the net, see what was wrong and how to fix it, along with allowing me to see my entire primary hard drive that neither windows nor dos wanted to see...

I love BeOS

 

[BCinSC]

Considering Be laid off 27 people today, a fair portion of the company, one can assume that work on BeIA takes precedence over BeOS.