When BeOS was still under active development at Be Inc, the project captured the hearts and minds of many who wanted to use a more advanced operating system. Though Be has since gone out of business, it hasn’t stopped many of those same individuals from wanting to continue using the operating system. The fact that BeOS is no longer under active development has caused a handful of developers to take on the task of picking up where Be left off. Alan Wilder submitted the following editorial which analyzes the current status of three BeOS projects that are currently under development.
Zeta is by default multilingual NOT German
Zeta is only available in German? Does he mean R1 or something? I have Zeta (earlier releases) and it is multilingual.
I must have missed that particular message on the boards…
As far as I understand it although it is slow going everyone knows what they’re doing and is getting on with it. What, the author thinks that someone can build a BeOS R5 compatible OS over a lunchbreak?
This article is a perfect example of misinformation (or whatever it’s spelt)
“Haiku progress is slow and plagued with internal political struggles”
Uh ? I could understand the “progress is slow” part, but I fail to see where are the political struggles. Really.
“Another bottleneck in the Haiku roadmap is that without hardware partners, the project is relegated to old garage-sale systems. For instance, the main development system is a dual-Pentium Pro system over-clocked to 233 MHz with 512M RAM.”
Er…. and where does this come from ?
Haiku people is silently doing a nice job imho. I’d like to see it succeed, even if I fear that it will be a “old-born” baby. Compatibility with RC5, a precise design goal, could be a serious pitfall
“Compatibility with RC5, a precise design goal, could be a serious pitfall
”
The way I see R5 compatability is that it offers a grace period. Upon release of a Haiku R1, developers who wish to carry on the BeOS journey can dust off their projects, recompile and optimize for Haiku and then keep themselves abreast of any API changes that Haiku’s R2, R3 bring.
Bear in mind, that one of the major annoyances people have with alt.OSes is lack of software (amongst other things), the Haiku proposal to enable the use of R5 software with Haiku R1 at least alleviates this irk…a little
Haiku R2 should, at least I hope, ditch the compatability and force devs/projects to recompile or be left behind.
Well, that’s my thoughts anyway…
expensivelesbian
I don’t know either; the author of the document claims that:
“The project hasn’t fully reached beta yet, with most of its components still in alpha or development stages.”
Interesting, and going by the Haiku-os website, most components are either 80-90% complete, or are stuck whilst waiting for dependent components to be developed so that development can continue.
The author seems to have great difficulty giving a truthful overview; now, I’m not going to say he is anti-BeOS, but it seems to be like he is a disgruntled fan boy with zero programming experience, demanding that all the coders should quit their job, and some how (god knows), focus 100% on developing their BeOS clones so that he can fullfil his dream.
He simply fails to grasp the fact that once complete, adding new features will only take months, not years, alot of papers have already been written on how to implement new features; as they say, once the hardest stuff – the foundation – is laid, life gets a little easier from then on.
According to yellow TAB’s store R1 is multilingual ‘This is a multilingual release, including English, German, French, Japanese, etc.’
Due to its Open Source development model, the same one the Linux kernel is based on, Haiku progress is slow and plagued with internal political struggles.
Uh? Plagued with internal political struggle? What exactle is the author talking about?
The project claims that through various community channels, many parts of the system are already complete.
This makes it sound as if Haiku is vaporware. The haiku project doesn’t have to claim anything,
because all source code is availible. Maybe you should check out the source through SVN and compile it.
Another bottleneck in the Haiku roadmap is that without hardware partners, the project is relegated to old garage-sale systems. For instance, the main development system is a dual-Pentium Pro system over-clocked to 233 MHz…
LOL? What is this guy talking about? This statement shows that this guy obviously has no
idea how operating systems work. It seems that he believes that an OS has to have special code
for every new processor released. This is not how computers work. I am currently booting
Haiku into a GUI (app_server), running simple apps on a AMD Sempron 3000+ bought 6 months ago.
Also, “main development system”? There are Haiku devs from several locations on the globe,
each with their own computers.
Another retarded article from OSViews.com. Oh joy.
Has-been or Will-be?
Well, how did this silly posting become an OS News article? Shouldn’t things that are posted on OS News (links or direct) be checked for some semblance of truthfulness to the point where OS News isn’t facing a high risk of propogating slander and libel?
The “article” is FUBAR. Please, OS News editors, do better than linking to uninformed opinions!
I see the good side of developing (partly) on a relatively slow machine. Code will be optimized even more! That makes me smile, I’m sick of development that delivers “fast enough” code for 3 ghz machines.
10 year old technology? Please, OS X, Next is way older, Unix is old as stoneage, There IMHO is no really “new” technology right now, bc. even new stuff is based on older stuff & knowledge, which isn’t bad at all.
The “new” stuff in BeOS is still quite new, because they mostly tried to do an OS from scratch instead of adding more and more crap on the shoulders of old technology. I don’t know a current OS with this approach besides BeOS.
Please correct me if i’m wrong.
I don’t want to read this tripe. Even I am skeptical about the future of Haiku and Zeta, but I know they are far better off than what this article would like to tell us.
Haiku has made ASTOUNDING progress for the number of active developers on the project. It aint easy making an OS, especially one that must be binary compatible with a closed-source OS, and they have come very far in the past 5 years.
This reviewer is telling us that Haiku will be behind because of what machine some developer is using, and that an OS that is being developed TODAY will somehow be 10 years behind current technology. Anyone with an ounce of sense in their head will know that is ludicrious.
I’m sorry, but this guy has no clue what he’s writing about! Too many “facts” are just plain wrong.
What a dumbass. I surely hope someone stabs him in the eye
I agree, and this is not the first OSViews article that has been linked here: http://www.osviews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=articl…
Again, this one is full of misinformation.
I can’t understand why this pile of garbage was posted on OSnews – its just pure rubbish and nothing else.
Anon
I must admit that I wouldn’t have linked to this article myself, but while it is here now, why not discuss BeOS, instead of the article?
I agree with some of you that the original content on OSViews isn’t always up to par, but hey, it’s not as if all my work is always up to par… Some articles linked to on OSNews might not always be the summum of article writing, please try to deal with that, and just discuss about the subject, leaving the original article out of the picture.
We editors are only humans
.
Keep in mind that the articles are typically written by novice writers.
What a crappy article.. get the facts straight before you write.. makan til bullshit… faen ta..
Before writing an article one should at least get the facts right.
Zeta has never been German only. For Christ sake it even has Japanese!
I won’t go into detail about Haiku, anyone who has been following this project simply know that what has been mentioned in this article is simply rubish.
Benix, honestly I’ve been in the BeOS scene for about 8 years and have never ever heard of Benix other than a name to identify efforts to create BeOS on a Linux kernel. There was Befree which has evolved into Mockup, there is B.E.O.S. which has halted. Closely related is Cosmoe although not exactly a beos clone.
You do realize that Zeta 1.0 is shipping already (of course in a multilingual version)? Several bloggers have posted their first impressions already, and there are reports in the yT forums. Why hasn’t OSNews picked up that story? It’s a new OS release!
What makes you think we haven’t reported in the 1.0 release?
Why hasn’t OSNews picked up that story? It’s a new OS release!
OSNews reported on the release of Zeta R1 weeks ago ( http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10800 ). The fact that it is now shipping is no news. Also, I haven’t found any reviews yet, only some small comments on some forums. If you have links to decent reviews, or want to submit one yourself, go ahead. Please use the submit news button to submit those reviews.
Get off your behinds, order a copy and then review the darn thing. A snippet on the release is nothing compared to obtaiing it and reviewing it with first hand experience.
Getting sick of the hackneyed news items on this site. Time for some decent journalism or just don’t bother. There is enough crap on the web as it is and we don’t need OSNews falling into the quagmire.
A short “goes gold” note is not the coverage that I would have expected for such a long anticipated release. If not a review (Doesn’t the press get advance copies? The German c’t print magazine had a 1.0 review in its last issue.), at least a sum-up of all the new features compared to Neo or R5 would have been helpful for those who haven’t been following the late beta cycle closely.
Please, STOP *assuming* things and blah-blah-ing over here. I asked Bernd for a 1.0-final review copy for over a month now and he keeps saying “I will let you know when”. I have access to their beta FTP site where I can get the latest beta ISO, but the deal is to send me a press version, but they still haven’t.
Ah, that was the missing piece of information
A short “we will have post an in-depth review as soon as we receive our reviewer’s copy” note in the GM-article would have been nice, so that we OSNews readers know what to expect.
In general, my impression is that the news about 1.0 release hasn’t reached most people yet – not only in the article linked by this news item I read about the “upcoming” 1.0 release.
For a moment there, I thought I was reading one of the Truth Media reviews on somethingawful.
This article was a bit interesting allthough it was a load of crap. The interesting part was to see what no-brainers think of BeOS and it’s derivates. I just wish the author would have taken the time to get the facts straight.
“Haiku has attracted many developers and fans, mostly desperate BeOS refugees”
Hey, i dont feel that desperate, and the part implying that the haiku project is plagued with internal political struggles is just bullshit.
—
http://bitsofnews.com Giving you the latest bits.
It’s nice to see that the tradition of posting any kind of inflammatory, uninformed and unsubstantiated opinions as “news” is still going strong.
Eugenia requested the R1 and we have it in shipment for her. So give us time until she got it and can make the review please.
Thx a lot
I agree substantially.
My fear, in the hope that Haiku will have it’s very own space, is that sofware avaible won’t be that up to date when it will run on Haiku.
Not even need to recompile, as they want to achieve binary compatibility. The advantage will be an open system.
The dis-advantage as i see it is to force to an old API, and this will be paid in future. Just as an example, look at the twirks Zeta has to do to achieve internationalization. And hopefully, the kernel won’t have BeOS’s one limits.
In the end, I would have loved more to see R2 ideas under work. But They have to start somewhere, and they’re doing it – so
Just my toughts, too
#429
Let’s see –
Zeta claims to be working off BeOS 6 code – which is already 4+ years old and STILL has not made any leaps to catch onto MacOS and Windows.
Benix – good luck – if Zeta is on square 6 and OS X/Windows are on Square 15 – Benix is not even on the board!
Haiku – same as Benix – but at least they are on square 1
Geeks do have a hard time letting go. And BeOS was never “all that” outside of the geek community. While it booted a bit faster than Windows and was more efficient, writing apps for it just plain sucked. And today, so many years later, it’s still basically the same. A small holdout of geeks who cannot let go and move onto other things.
Not to be contrary, but the Be API was the BEST of it’s day. Now, it may have been difficult if you weren’t used to writing multi-threaded code, but that just means you aren’t a particularly skilled programmer (not to flame you, or anything of that nature).
Soon dual-core processors will be mainstream, and as such, everyone will need to learn how to take advantage of it. All (every single BeOS app) BeOS apps already do this.
And really, it was starting to get somewhere outside of the geek community. PE had millions of downloads, big companies, like Real, were developing apps for it, it had a great office suite in GoBe, and it was starting to be sold in stores (including BestBuy).
Also, nVidia was actively developing video drivers for BeOS.
It’s a shame that nVidia isn’t developing open drivers now, ATi doesn’t too
I don’t usually comment on these types of articals. But, I can say with the upmost certainity that Zeta is not German only. I speak English, well American English anway and Zeta can use many, many different languages. They did a lot of work on localazation and to have that so poorly and completly misrepresented is a crime. Does this man claim to be a legitiment journalist? He obviously knows little to nothing about Zeta and even less about BeOS or Haiku. I say we send him a quarter so that he can go buy himself a clue.
You speak English but writing English seems a bit difficult for you 😉
http://www.zeta-os.jp/intro/
I can only say that I’m sitting out side this hot swedish summer and typing this on my Latidtude D600 connected to my Wlan from inside Zeta R1.. exactly like I can in Windows XP. I’m still waiting on longhorn that has more “BeOS” things than Windows XP has.. and yes this are old tecnology. (thinking of journal filsystem and microkernal).
Zeta gives me what I want and nothing else.
I don’t want to run a big truck if I do the I’ll install Windows or Linux (will probably install windows to be able to make ASP pages and MySQL databases).
offcource there are alot of program that are missing but so did linux.
so the os itself are not that far behaind but the application support are..
//Fredrik
BeOS did not have a microkenrel. Also, NTFS has been journaled since before BeFS ever saw the light of day.
Theres a difference between being journaled AND having meta data built in.
Nothing about meta data was mentioned in his/her comment… and yes, there is a big difference, being that they have absolutely NOTHING to do with each other.
It looks like HaikuNews has somethign to say about the article: http://haikunews.org/1082
The osviews.com article is lacking serious fact checking.
=John in NL=
This is the worst article I ever read…
This guy simply doesnt know anything related to BeOS and recent news about Zeta and Haiku.
FUD, fud fud fud. That article is pure bxxlsxxt..
Jack Burton said it also, and he is an haiku app_server developer, in team with DarkWyrm and others!
Any news about Mockup? I didn’t here anything for a while, and the website isn’t 100% yet after the problems with the hosting…
It’s not a BeOS replacement, but could be a good Linux Desktop!
About Haiku, I hear news from time to time about it’s App Server and a bit of other stuff, but how’s the other parts of the system going? how about the kernel code and drivers? any work in PCIe and other newer standards? (I’ve seen some work on SATA)
…because with dual-core CPUs coming, Haiku has a lot of potential to shine, like BeOS did with multi-CPU systems… Besides that, if the system gets some market-share in the future, drivers could be done by the big-guys as Haiku probably won’t have GPL-like issues as they could release binary only drivers without hacks and touching (and sharing the license of)the kernel.
I hope it’s not just a dream… still waiting for this system… still waiting for Haiku.
I noticed that this article has now been removed from the original site. I suggest it is removed from here also.
I was taking the Benix comments on face value, but after trying to google it nothing came up! Are there any websites with info? even if it is at archive.org 🙂
just to rehash:
Zeta is nice – I will give you that – but if you need to communicate with the outside world it’s not at all convenient because of the app factor.
My main problem with the clones is this: you are attempting to rebuild a 4+ year old API that was still under development when Be went south and obviously had errors in it, so it has taken people 4+ years and they still have not gotten to a point where it was when the Be assets were sold off – how can one hope to get a revolutionary rebirth of this onve great OS when the cloners are lagging behind?
btw: how come PhOS was not mentioned?
I’ll hold my hands up, in all honesty i’ve never used BeOS or followed it as it didnt interest me, some of you have said why dont we get off our “behinds” and do something to get ZetaOS.
Fact is i contacted yT 2 Months before Zeta R1.0 was released, and was promised a Copy for review, this still has not arrived, so Zeta R1.0 will be my first test of BeOS, once again its my fault, i should have left this for someone who follows BeOS, and its sucessors.
…
From the OSViews site:
This editorial has been removed due to too many factual errors
Hmmm, as if some people didn’t figure that out already 😉
BeOS R5 is not equal with ZETA R1 !
Yellowtab has implemented new features and in some corners completely new designed . ZETA R1 is the future trend of BEOS version “danO” .
It is small, very, very fast and simple.
Remember, the first version of Win95 and Win98 was very bad and instable.
ZETA R1 will be aged.
A new OS on X86 architecture is born and is a very good alternative to Linux or Windows.
No Spyware is included by Yellowtab. Thanks to the yT developer.
“Yellowtab has implemented new features and in some corners completely new designed. ZETA R1 is the future trend of BEOS version “danO” . ”
Yes, Zeta R1 does not run on SMP systems and does not support SCSI anymore! The future is really bright! “Thanks to the yT developer.”
“Yes, Zeta R1 does not run on SMP systems and does not support SCSI anymore! The future is really bright! “Thanks to the yT developer.””
AFAIK Zeta runs on SMP systems. SMP was disabled in Release candidates, but should be enabled in the version which is shipping right now.
Sorry, that’s wrong. Head over to http://www.debug.de where this problem is discussed in detail. Currently, you can’t run Zeta R1 on an SMP system without having to disable (n-1) CPUs… It has been confirmed by Yellowtab and ‘of course’, they fixed it already. So, wait for the next release!
It’s all on the reflexes, eh? 😉
Complete offtopic:
Is this Alan Wilder that left Depeche Mode?
But…SCSI rocks! 😮
Anyway – I looked at yT’s page (last time I looked at it they were marketing Neo) – and I could not find any descriptions about what is bundled (in detail) with the OS, and any screenshots. – any clues ?
Try “never-was and never-will-be”. Regardless of technical merit, it’s such a niche platform that Linux looks like a monopoly in comparison – it just doesn’t have any presence outside of the small number of fans who liked the original BeOS.
Why doesn’t the article voting feature work for little newsbits like this one, eh? It’d be interesting to see how an article voted 1 looked.
The question is already answered.
BeOS is a has-been operating system.
The day BeOS is the future is the day the Amiga overtakes Windows in the marketplace.
Dream On.