One of the most prominent ex-Be engineers back in the “golden days” of Be, Inc., Jean-Baptiste Queru, comments (and here) on beta 5 of YellowTAB‘s Zeta, an upcoming commercial version of BeOS based on a 2 year-old unfinished Dano/EXP codeline (that was supposed to be ‘BeOS 6’ if Palm hadn’t bought the Be IP). JBQ finds the bloat & the lack of innovation dissapointing compared to what older versions of BeOS offered in their own timeline: “BeOS was about being one step ahead, not one step behind“.
Ex-Be Engineer Comments on YellowTAB’s Zeta Beta5a
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The OBOS people won’t refuse their help, but the legal of Be and PalmSource will. NDAs still apply you know, so don’t be so much worked up as to why this or the other Be engineer doesn’t help out your OBOS. Especially when they know that it is a project that will take years.
i have a simple question, what do you currently use as your desktop platform?
Windows XP PRO and Windows 2000.
>If any of them gave more than a rat’s ass about it,
>they’d offer help to OBOS.
Well, unfortunately for OBOS, I currently care more about my current company’s product than about a BeOS clone. I do care more about my company’s product, because I think that it can make a bigger difference for users than any BeOS (original or clone) ever will. I don’t have enough time to work on my current company’s product as much as I would like, so I don’t have time to spare for OBOS or any other such project.
> Well, unfortunately for OBOS, I currently care more about
> my current company’s product than about a BeOS clone. I do
> care more about my company’s product, because I think that
> it can make a bigger difference for users than any BeOS
> (original or clone) ever will. I don’t have enough time to
> work on my current company’s product as much as I would
> like, so I don’t have time to spare for OBOS or any other
> such project.
JBQ,
A bit off topic, but I am curious: what does your company do and what products does (or will?) you offer that will make such a big difference to users?
Care to provide a URL?
Koki
Me too
I am disappointed to see those kind of comments from a person who say “I don’t care about BeOS”.
if JBQ doesn’t care about BeOS why he comments YT, he didn’t even play with Zeta.
IMHO the Dano code is too old to compete with other operating systems, so YT won’t have a future until they develop some new code, maybe OBOS based, but as I said I found this osnews story very stupid.
>if JBQ doesn’t care about BeOS why he comments YT,
Because someone ASKED for his opinion, that’s why. Check the original link!!
even if Gnome has such look, hehe,
http://www.gnome.org/~uraeus/wasp.jpg
it isn’t BeOS
Hmm… just to let y’all know… There is more to yT than Zeta, the BeOS Distro. It is just a matter of time, organization, and funding.
–The loon
>http://www.gnome.org/~uraeus/wasp.jpg
The widgets and window manager in that theme is beyond “crap”.
> IMHO the Dano code is too old to compete with other operating systems …
Really?
Then because you have decided to inspire your BeFree project in something that still older?
In your country they would say that the code is like the wine, in fact too much new code must ferment before being distributed to the final user.
I am not inspired by the Dano code.
Only YT and Palm can read the Dano code.
I am inspired by BeOS, by its APIs, the kernel I use is Linux or FreeBSD.
B.E.O.S., Cosmoe and BeFree are not operating systems.
They are different implementation of the same APIs ontop of a operating system (Linux).
Yes, I know!
I have written an other thing in fact:you have decided to inspire your BeFree project in ***something*** that still older.
To my opinion the code can be good or less and we have software (in Linux case too) that they contain old code.
Mmmh too hot to write what I think, sorry
I meant that Dano (and even BeOS 5) cannot compete with modern operating systems because it is too old.
Linux has grown in the last 2 years but not Dano.
Linux has a better VM, and the latest changes seems to be very cool, such as the anticipatory I/O scheduler, the ALSA drivers and I found the 2.5 kernel a lot faster than 2.4.
Hmm… just to let y’all know… There is more to yT than Zeta, the BeOS Distro. It is just a matter of time, organization, and funding.
What more?
PLF wrote:
> I am not inspired by the Dano code.
> Only YT and Palm can read the Dano code.
> I am inspired by BeOS, by its APIs, the kernel I use is Linux or FreeBSD.
Salute!
B.E.O.S., Cosmoe and BeFree are not operating systems.
They are different implementation of the same APIs ontop of a operating system (Linux).
PierLuigi, I don’t know the architecture of your implementation (and the site is down right now!),
but was thinking… wouldn’t it be possible to share at least the implementation of the InterfaceKit between the three?
At the lowest level of the AppServer they are different for sure, as B.E.OS is based on X and Cosmoe is based on DirectFB/SDL, but once you have a BWindow/BView, the rest of the GUI toolkit code would be “platform independant” and easily shareable (or am I oversimplifying?).
Tom
wouldn’t it be possible to share at least the implementation of the InterfaceKit between the three?
By default it’s shared. It’s LGPL.
Tom: Me and the authors of BEOS and Cosmoe are part of the beunited.org standars committe so we will work together on some RFC (at least we will vote the RFC of others).
I am going to release a BeFree alpha with a new design (a patch for the Linux kernel, a kernel module and a new libroot), when I will have a stable BeFree 0.3 version I will start with an app_server, then I will be able to start the Interface Kit.
I think I will use a part of the OBOS code, as the Cosmoe author did and I know that the BEOS’ Interface kit author shares his code with the OBOS team.
I also want to write an RFC for a HIG in the beunited.org context.
Our common denominator will be the OBOS Interface kit and being part of beunited.org we will work together.
I forgot to mention that the BeFree new architecture will be KGI/GGI based, but this project is too young to think on the graphical part
Good to hear that the projects are working together!
I am going to release a BeFree alpha with a new design (a patch for the Linux kernel, a kernel module and a new libroot), when I will have a stable BeFree 0.3 version I will start with an app_server, then I will be able to start the Interface Kit.
Just being curious, what’t the design of your app server?
Do you plan to reuse drivers from other projects, something along the lines of what Massimiliano Origgi wanted to do with the X drivers?
Ah, se vuoi possiamo passare all’italiano, magari in privato
Tom
whoever he may be married to, I’ve been hanging around in the same IRC channels with him for about 2 years during his time at Be. He certainly knew what he was talking about back then and I don’t doubt that the same is true nowadays. Hell, looking at Zeta it’s hard to deny that the points raised in his comments aren’t right on the target. Zeta is just another example of too little too late while BeOS was the last viable project to really bring a new good OS to the desktop.
Read it for yourself…
http://www.lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0403.html“>Why
>what does your company do and what products does
>(or will?) you offer that will make such a big
>difference to users?
The product I’m working on http://www.openwave.com/products/device_products/mobile_browser/ind… (that’s only one of our many products). It’s a “big” product because it is used by millions of people who rely on it to get the data they want on their phone. And the work I do makes a difference by allowing more and more content it be usable on phones, turning phones into lightweight wireless always-on internet appliances.
>B.E.O.S., Cosmoe and BeFree are not operating systems.
>They are different implementation of the same APIs ontop
>of a operating system (Linux).
I have a bad habit of calling an “OS” pretty much any kind of framework that provides any level of abstraction, possibly with some level of resource management. This allows to include C or Java in the family of OSes, along with web browsers (Yes, this is very different from what Tanenbaum calls an OS). It makes e.g. a huge difference for Tanenbaum whether a graphics system is implemented inside the kernel or not. For me, it makes absolutely none. When Xfree crashes (or the app_server for that matter), Tanenbaum doesn’t “care” as his vision of the “OS” is unaffected. I do care, as all my apps are gone, and in some cases I’ll even have to power-cycle my machine to get it back in a usable state.
The drivers will be done by the KGI project
List of changes in Zeta (compared to R5Pro)
– new network stack, sockets are file descriptors (needed for POSIX)
– new media kit (multichannel audio)
– support for USB2, pen devices etc
– SVG tracker
– bug fixes
– themable GUI
– v-sync based screen redraws
– auto-update bugfixes
– GCC 3.2 support
– rootless X Server
– and others
And which of these addresses any of the problems I mentioned? (Both the list JBQ provided and the things I explicitly mentioned?)
– Network stack: nice. (Almost) brings it up to par with competing OSes.
– New media kit: nice. (Almost) brings it up to par with competing OSes.
– New devices support. I explicitly mentioned this. That’s a surface-level thing, as I mentioned.
– SVG icons/Themeable UI: definitely a surface-level thing, if you can even consider it good at all.
– GCC 3.2 support: You mean, three versions of GCC support. Nice and clean for the user, of course (end sarcasm).
Now, of course, you (unsurprisingly) never addressed my point. Let’s see, from 10.1 –> 10.2 alone, OS X gained hardware-accelerated graphics composition, Rendezvous, extremely updated underlying libraries, new device-driver classes and features, iChat, iSync, Inkwell, Sherlock 3 (adding “services”), a radically revamped Address Book, Bayesian junk mail filtering for Mail, a move to GCC 3.1, and a crapload more. How does what you mentioned even come close to the same amount of updates? That was my point and, of course, you completely ignored it.
>>>>I’m buying a copy of Zeta when it comes out simply for reviewing it — if for nothing then I think the developers need to eat (I know RMS thinks coders don’t have to eat).
That’s precisely why you hear BeOS developers go into deep financial trouble or that their girlfriends left them — they think that all those people who paid the $5 for an alpha release are actual customers, instead those are charitable donations (and when the time came with a 1.0 release, nobody showed up to pay the full price).
You think that you are doing yellowtab a service by paying for software that you have no intention of using — you are absolutely wrong.
bkakes….nice try idiot. It’s always amusing to see you show your lack of knowledge on anything BeOS.
We shall see.
you say “queries don’t work on non-BFS partitions”….
you cant run them on non-BFS partitions you fuckwit so you can’t even say they dont work.
You’re saying exactly the same thing I did; you’re just pretending there’s a difference.
All my important files are on BeOS and therefore easily searchable.
Exactly my point. As I explictly said, most people cannot use the BeOS for everything, and thus cannot keep all their important files on BFS partitions. Thank you for confirming my point.
If that is so important for you, why not petition the OpenBFS crew and ask them about it.
Ah, so you’re “refuting” my point (saying that you can’t do) by saying, “you could ask the OpenBFS team to write it for you.” Nice refutation.
Or adopt a better naming convention for your files stored on non-BFS filesystems.
And naming conventions have exactly what to do with queries?
Something like “video-of-bkakes-looking-like-a-moron.avi” would be an obvious choice.
Clearly, since you have so far failed to refute a single point of mine.
attributes: you *can* add user defined attributes to all similar file types. At least TRY and search the appropriate forums for how to do this.
Sure you can. And as I said, the attributes are not automatically added to existing files. So, for example, say you add a “Rating” attribute to all MP3 files. Your existing MP3 files will not automatically get even a “null” value for that attribute–they won’t have the attribute at all–until you copy the files. Then, they’ll get blank “Rating” attribute for each file. What this means is, say you do a query for all MP3s for which you have not defined a rating. Unless you’ve copied every single MP3 you have, only some of them will show up in the results. This is clearly incorrect behavior. There was a program on Bebits you could use that used a facet of BeOS internals to properly “repair” a single file, and when I was working on a FileTypes replacement for OpenTracker, we were going to incorporate that functionality. But as it stands, the implementation is broken to an end-user. Thank you for arguing against the wrong thing. Boy, I must really be a moron, huh?
replicants: you’ve obviously no concept on how cool and useful this is on BeOS.
I’ll note that rather than giving an example where it’s useful (you’ll note that I explicitly said the technology was “cool, but not shown to be useful”), you’ve chosen to insult me. This could imply something about your ability to provide such an example. But please, if you have one, I would be thrilled to have you provide it; I’d hate to have overlooked something.
BFS accessible under Windows: Why should have Be Inc have provided that? write a driver.
Easy. The advantages of BFS are completely unrealized unless users can actually put their files on BFS partitions. Be played the “peaceful coexistence” card, but didn’t provide a Windows driver, meaning that if you wanted to have BeOS “peacefully coexist” with your Windows partition, you were forced to put files on FAT32 drives. In this situation, you might as well not even have BFS or live querying, because it’s useless to you–all your files are on non-BFS drives!
even if it isn’t the quantum leap from R5 you mistakenly think it should be.
I never said it “should be” anything. My main point was simply that it’s obviously increasing at a lesser rate than its competitors. Where does that lead you in the long run? My secondary point was that for the few cool features the BeOS has that other OSes still don’t, YT hasn’t focused on actually making them useful (as I documented).
So you succeeded brilliantly at insulting me and misunderstanding a few things, but failed to refute a single point I made. You might find that it would behoove you in the future to spend more time with your thought and your actual points and less with the insults; you’ll have a much stronger argument.
“Be’s team was second to none so it will be difficult to keep up with them ”
If they were second to none why did they put in all the crap (spinlock around semaphore etc) that JBQ was suggesting that Zeta needed to fix.
Sounds a little too much like a developer reeling off a list of bugs that their boss wouldn’t let them fix. Sorry JBQ no offense.
>If they were second to none why did they put in all the crap (spinlock around semaphore etc) that JBQ was suggesting that Zeta needed to fix
Because some of these design decisions were made in the past, way before the “second-to-none team” came to Be. Back in 1994-5 these design decisions made ABSOLUTE sense and they were already way ahead of the competition. But as the years go by, technology is revised. And to revise your own legacy, takes a LOT of engineering time. And in 1999-2000, the Be team was working night and day to keep the company alive making changes that people “see” with naked eye and understand, just in case they will actually buy the damned product. That is not to say that they were not doing engineering on the backend. They did. But these things do take time, as JBQ said, to fix/update a few of these things, it will take 2 engineers 2 years of work. And at that point, Windows and OSX will have gone into new lands introducing other innovations!
The point is, BeOS back then was innovative. Today, is not. And if you try to catch up, you simply don’t have the time to catch up. Especially when MS and Apple have 500-1000 engineers perfecting their products and YellowTAB has 5. It is a war you can’t win.
Especially when MS and Apple have 500-1000 engineers perfecting their products and YellowTAB has 5. It is a war you can’t win.
Fair point Eugenia, assuming all developers are equal. And I’m sure that Apple and Microsoft can pay enough money to get the very best, no question about it. But here is the thing which I’ve observed about life in general, and I’ll use the Bazaar analogy – it takes 9 months to create a baby, 9 women will not create a baby in one month (but you can get more babies with more women). YellowTab has hired the geekiest of developers, who eat, sleep, dream BeOS. This is RAW enthusiasm at its finest. They are dreamers, inspired to do what they must, out of love, not because a sales manager asked them to.
When you love a project, you dont hack and slash away to get a product out the door to appease marketing and management. You sweat away looking for the most elegent solution, and take pride in your work. The yT employees are 100% commited to their project, they understand that if they pull Zeta off, they can be part of a growing hi-tech company. Remember, BeInc started out with a handfull of engineers working from a warehouse next to an airport. At its hayday, it had over 50 engineers. Everyone thought they were foolish to do what they did, yet they inspired so many people with their software. Why dont you think that another group of visionaries and enthusisast can pull of the same thing – they have an easier job than what BeInc had, since they’ve inherited a user base, and have a head start of over 1000 apps (no matter how crappy, this is but a start).
In any environment you work in, there are only but a handfull of true visionaries, people who get stuff done (80%). The rest are just fodder, lint, they do the rest of the menial work (20%). Having over 1000 developers working on a product doesn’t guarentee genious or superior products. It’s just a brute force approach, overwhelm the opposition with shear numbers. But it only takes one talented, commited individual, to change the outcome of any event. One person can change everything.
People, I’m willing to give YellowTab a chance. Perfect or not, at least they’ve create a buzz around them. I dont get that buzz from Apple, Microsoft, Amiga, Linux or FreeBSD. But I do get it from the BeOS world. Its a strange thing. Who cares about imperfections (covers ears and closes eyes – I cant hear you, NA NA NA NA)
>This is RAW enthusiasm at its finest.
It might take raw enthusiasm, but it also needs refined talent. Except the Be engineer who helps YTab, none of these guys have experience in kernel or app_server development. It takes more than enthusiasm to deliver a good product out.
>People, I’m willing to give YellowTab a chance.
I will support YTAB and I will buy their first product as support. After the R1 version though, I EXPECT innovation, no catching up anymore.
I will support YTAB and I will buy their first product as support. After the R1 version though, I EXPECT innovation, no catching up anymore.
Agree 100%
We just got new PC’s here at work, its the first time I’ve got to play with WinXP (SP1). Very nice, and fast. But in 2 days I’ve already had exporer crash on me 3 times. But the thing that really quirks me is that I cannot rename a file / directory which Windows thinks is in use. Most alternative OS’s allow this since god knows how long. You have no idea how much this annoys me.
>>>YellowTab has hired the geekiest of developers, who eat, sleep, dream BeOS. This is RAW enthusiasm at its finest. They are dreamers, inspired to do what they must, out of love, not because a sales manager asked them to.
>>>But it only takes one talented, commited individual, to change the outcome of any event. One person can change everything.
You should read this Fast Company article on the computer software programming staff for the space shuttle. The secret to good programming is a steady 9-5 working hours, no mid-night hacks and no “one person” inspirational/creative programming talent.
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html
>If they were second to none why did they put in all
>the crap (spinlock around semaphore etc) that JBQ
>was suggesting that Zeta needed to fix.
Because when that code was written, the engineering team was actually very small (I could probably count on my fingers), and that code was “good enough”, since it worked, and since adding features was more important than solving architectural issues. Years later when I started at Be myself, the whole team was still in “feature” mode, and stayed that was until BeOS got sidelined in 1999.
Also, because those are hard issues to solve, and they often come with a high level of risk. Because they take lots of time to solve properly, more than the usual time that Be had between releases, meaning that suddely you have to manage multiple simultaneous codelines for very long periods of time, and that’s a very inefficient way to use engineering time.
That’s quite the core issues here: those issues aren’t quite broken enough to be fixed, not until they really become critical. And most of the working-but-sub-optimal code stays in forever.
I’m wondering if the yT group is going to keep submitting her beta’s when the end up with a mess like this stuff in forums, people screaching “Move on and use something else!” when it’s none of their damned buisness what OS I use (I’m typing this in XP, for those of you who are wondering) and anyone that messes with peter “mooooooo” better bring a bigger knife next time.
[i]Easy. The advantages of BFS are completely unrealized unless users can actually put their files on BFS partitions. Be played the “peaceful coexistence” card, but didn’t provide a Windows driver, meaning that if you wanted to have BeOS “peacefully coexist” with your Windows partition, you were forced to put files on FAT32 drives. In this situation, you might as well not even have BFS or live querying, because it’s useless to you–all your files are on non-BFS drives!
Wait, when Be was around, NTFS wasn’t in large use (perhaps on workstations that ran NT, or later on 2000.), or am I wrong about this?
Who cares? I just do my job. If this situation was for an MS OS, or a Linux OS, I would still report in the same way. The fact that I have a BeOS past, doesn’t mean that I will favor it against the other OSes. BeOS and Zeta will have to stand up against the competition, I am not going to babysit anyone.
Yeah, but it’s not like they’re going to search out negative press. I don’t think your review of Zeta beta5 was a bad review, but this kind of forum responce is what I would be unhappy with were I a member of yT. And this wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t reviewed it. Now I’m not saying this kind of responce doesn’t happen with other OS reviews; I don’t really get too interested in other OS reviews enough to check their respective comments section out.
I’d think you would care if yT wants to keep sending you stuff to review. I mean, this is OSNews and if they don’t give you anything to look at ahead of time, all you can do is link to some other site’s review. That’s not too far away from just going to that other site more often in the first place. You can of course purchase shipping products and review them, and that would be valid, but 9 times out of 10 someone would have beaten you to the punch. I know you can’t control much of the reaction to a review once it’s up and people are commenting but it’s your site, they’re going to hold you accountable in the end, right? Just something to think about.
It is a risk that I am willing to take.
As I said many times, I support YT 100 times more than I support OBOS, simply because they have something that… boots and works. But YT has inherited a lot of history and people are expecting a lot from them. That is a risk that they took willingly, so that’s not my fault.
If MS would sudenly stoped doing Windows and another, much smaller, company would buy their IP to continue development, you would see trolling and unhappiness 1000x fold in all forums. It is normal in such situations when you have to live off a reputation and inheritance. You can’t shrug off the comparison.
I think JBQ tackled the problem very well here:http://www.osnews.com/phorum/read.php?f=8&i=3864&t=3842#reply_3864
You might not want “bad popularity”, but if things are not done right, you can’t avoid it. And neither myserlf or JBQ are known to hide behind their own fingers. Whatever it has to be said, it will be said. Even if we make a few people sad or angry at us. It is NO personal attack or anything like that, I feel for Bernd and all his work and money and time he put on this project! I really do. But on the other side, when something doesn’t smell right, I will be a Vulcan. No feelings. Just logic.
People love me for this. People hate me for this. It is my curse, it is my best feature. There are no so-so people towards me. They either understand the situation and like me, or they don’t get the real deal and completely and utterly hate me. I am used to it now.
Nothing still comes close to the user experiance of BeOS 5 JBQ. Windows 2k and XP is shit, Linux is shit and so is OS-
X.
Place any of these OS’s under intense media loadings on standard PC hardware and they all bog down to utter crap. I never noticed that under BeOS. Sure things need improving but I would be happy with a version of BeOS that supported current hardware and was stable then fix the stuff as you go with point releases. This would be a strong signal to the Developer community, one Be Inc fucked up. I will never forgive Be Inc for the way they screwed over their user/developer base and just when there were some great things happening with BeOS in media content creation (Nuendo, Editrol, Tune Tracker, and other stuff for Video and Audio processing).
Let Zeta or Open BeOS rise this OS up from it’s sleeping place and give us a decent alternative.
Piers, you only talk about good user responsiveness. This is what BeOS is good at. But BeOS is NOT good on SMP and it is not good on services under the hood, e.g. fast compilations, serving dbs or webpages etc.
The best SMP on consumer OSes today comes with XP and Win2k3. On big iron machines, Solaris and IRIX are the best. BeOS doesn’t come even close to these performances on SMP. Neither Linux or OSX.
Windows XP is not exactly as responsive as BeOS is, but BeOS takes a lot of dangerous shortcuts and losing functionality elsewhere in order to achieve these user “wows”. XP doesn’t, and it is still pretty responsive.
The best SMP on consumer OSes today comes with XP and Win2k3. On big iron machines, Solaris and IRIX are the best. BeOS doesn’t come even close to these performances on SMP. Neither Linux or OSX.
Having taken note on the word ‘consumer’ in this sentence I fear you’re right. Snappy UI’s are great, but if it comes at the expense of stability or ‘real’ speed they’re not so useful.
Can we still expect to see Sequel? I like the idea of someone writing an OS to show what Beos might/should have been, fixing all of the things that were broken before.
I know BeOS was not good for Iron Horse work like Web Serving, Database Serving but for Multi Media handling which I personally believe is what Personal Computing is about, BeOS is still great. I don’t want BeOS or it’s derivatives for anything like “Iron Horse” work. I am interested in media and that is why I am still looking towards Zeta and Open BeOS because Irix, XP, OS-X and Linux don’t cut it.
I will wait for Zeta to be released and then judge it on it’s final code. YellowTab are probably not handling themselves well on the PR front and Beta 5 probably should have been more like near the final product instead of a testing concept base (which is what it seems) so my judgment is still reserved.
Eugenia, have you done video or audio work on OS-X or Win 2KSP3/XP?
I have and without dedicated hardware for effects processing these OS’s are slugish pieces of crap. On the same hardware (at least Windows based) I know BeOS can realise a hell of a lot more work. This also seems to be true for Zeta given the CBIT demonstration given. Let us see what comes but if it is an improvement on BeOS 5.03 with support for my hardware (AMD MP on K7D Master mb, GF4, Hoontech DSP24 C-Port) and Multi-channel audio, then I’m laying my cash down and getting a copy.
I will be laying my cash down and getting a copy too.
But that doesn’t mean that Zeta will even _have_ the applications needed to do the kind of video editing you want to do.
Speaking for myself, no, I don’t do video editing, and to be honest, BeOS wouldn’t fare as well as XP or OSX with its semi-broken Media API. Yes, and this is yet another marketing victory for Be’s marketing dpt. The raw power for doing media apps was there, latency was pretty good, but the Media API was UNUSABLE. Zeta/Dano code offer a bit more fixed media API, but the main *architecture* issues of the Media Kit are still there. You obviously don’t even know half the truth about the BeOS you are bubbling about.
BeOS is still great and _feels_ fast to the user (as opposed to really be fast under the hood). Fast, if you don’t want to do much with it that is.
It seems that if you’re Eugenia’s husband, you get mentioned on OSNews. But does it work vice versa? Would one get married with the webmistress if he gets mentioned?
> People love me for this. People hate me for this.
I think I know what Bernd is wanting to do to Eugenia atm
))
http://fastar.detonate.net/ftp/images/matrixse/8/5.jpg
Btw, people talk about XP without taking into account the worst: XP takes away user freedom, with all its DRM thingies, ugly EULAs, … I’d prefer running Linux than an OS that tries to control me.
I fully agree with you, mmu_man. Unfortunately, people seem to care less day by day.
> Linux has grown in the last 2 years but not Dano.
You seem to forget that the Linux kernel, although it is improved regularly, is very old. You can compare it with Windows 9x/ME/XP: All versions are based on that old crappy DOS kernel which wasn’t even able to handle things like multi-tasking. If you pay for Windows, you actually pay for a slightly updated DOS with a GUI. So does a GUI make it any better? Same goes for Linux, I’m afraid. BeOS has been written from scratch, so it’s not based on old garbage, and because of that it’s must faster and more stable. You’re right, there haven’t been any updates to Dano, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t better than Linux.
not XP.
XP is based on NT via 2K.
So it’s not based on DOS… Only VMS
And NT was based on the OS/2 technology..
Well I dont know how far we are ( BeOS/ZETA ) from modern technology, I use the system becuase I like it. BeOS workes much better on my computer than any other OS, and I like the way BeOS was designed, with ease in mind. If you are geek, which JBQ is you might think more of the underlaying tehnology before you start to use an OS, but as an user you dont care.
Thats why Windows 3.0 – 98/Millenium is still a major OS, ppl dont care if they have the latest Kernel tehnoglogy, as long as it workes.
( Iam talking about the nongeeks ).
Ask you self, why does ppl buy new cellphones all the time, is it becuase it supports new technology or that they are easier to use and with a better GUI, I would say both, but “Look” and “marketing” is more important then the technology to the end nongeek user.
So keywords: Look, ease of use, NonGeekUser.
Remember that maybe less then 1% of all the Computer users never heard of BeOS, so the potential market is huge.
I think there are more DOS users then BeOS users.. Should we talk about technology =)
/Konrad
“Eugenia, have you done video or audio work on OS-X or Win 2KSP3/XP?
I have and without dedicated hardware for effects processing these OS’s are slugish pieces of crap”
You’re just telling bullshit. A lot of people do professional audio workd on… mac OS 8* and WinME. As Konrad said, people don’t care about which kernel is used, etc… They want to do their work ( music, sounddesign here ) without having to bother about the hardware/software behind.
Doing its job is more a plateform issue than an OS issue, and for that, mac OS ( and before atari ) were lot better than windows, beacause no big firms support their software on it. Now, it is really different. I think half musicians are doing music on PC, half on mac, and a few on linux. Nearly none on BeOS.
> not XP.
> XP is based on NT via 2K.
> So it’s not based on DOS… Only VMS
Don’t think so. Ever wondered why all these old DOS apps are still working under XP? They wouldn’t if it was a different kernel. You shouldn’t believe everything M$ is telling you, nothing but lies.
> And NT was based on the OS/2 technology..
OS/2 was a big competitor back in the good old days. M$ doesn’t use a rival’s code, they are into stealing ideas. Remember the M$ way of life…
PLEASE Glarandel, don’t rant around about things you obviously have no clue of.
MS bought out VMS to start designing NT and in the beginning OS/2 was NOT rival code to MS. MS and IBM started the OS/2 project together.
And I use BeOS from the release 4.5.2.
I think that Eugenia and JBQ opinion are important for YellowTAB.
I remember the Steve Sakoman letter after the release 5.0.3 and I remember too what the BeOS user ask!
At this moment I think that user demands are more important for the operating system and user ask for better networking, newer driver, more apps and better interface.
People need solution, not data sheets and I’m sure that the new company will be better than Be, for the user.
Microsoft Windows NT (Windows “New Technology”) is an operating system produced by Microsoft Corporation. It was originally based on OS/2 NT, a joint project between Microsoft and IBM. The collaboration fell apart, and IBM continued to market the previous version OS/2 NT while Microsoft renamed their version to MS Windows NT, changing the main API to a 32-bit version of its MS Win16 API.
Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation to build a new system. Many elements of NT reflect the earlier DEC experience with VMS and RSX-11
NT enjoyed more success than OS/2, due to its feature promises that were never fully realized and to Microsoft’s market prowess.
Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP are later versions of Windows NT.
Read more at http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Print.cfm?ArticleID=4494
What I am trying to say is that high end audio is done on these OS’s with a lot of very expensive hardware not just amature hobby tracker crap. BeOS does much more with generic hardware and media than Windows/Mac any version any day period. Anyone thinking otherwise really is living in a Job’s instilled reality distortion field.
Want some proof, have a look at what people were saying about Steinbergs Nuendo beta’s on BeOS compared to Windows 2K. How about getting your hands on Personal Studio and look at the transitions and effects you can achieve on modest hardware in real time compared to any video editing software on either same hadware under Windows (incert version here) or a modest Mac Power PC with standard consumer hardware, and yes, I’ve used and seen Final Cut Pro, Premier and Avid Systems and although Personal Studio isn’t a pro vid editing app it definately showed the underlying promise of BeOS in this field as did Rolands EditRol which was based on BeOS. How about the recent CBit demonstration by Yellow Tab on an AMD XP2400? Try that in Windows, shit, try that under your beloved professional OS X systems. Won’t happen will it? Not unless you invest some major capital on dedicated hardware. Again maybe try Tune Tracker (radio automation software that runs under BeOS) and compare that to anything on any other OS platform, hmm $5000 system/software compared to $70,000 for the nearest competitor.
I call a spade a spade and BeOS is a bloody good spade for Media with great potential which hasn’t been realised yet due to the screwed business practices of it’s founding company Be Inc. Sort of reminds me of the Bismark, great hardware but hampered by idiots and thier stupid decisions. You think I’m full of shit, so be it but I stand fast to my statements and I’ve been around computing and the arts for a good many years and realise the potential of BeOS in this area.
Have another look and open your eyes before dissing someone.
> PLEASE Glarandel, don’t rant around about things you
> obviously have no clue of.
> MS bought out VMS to start designing NT and in the
> beginning OS/2 was NOT rival code to MS. MS and IBM
> started the OS/2 project together.
I know what I’m talking about as I’ve been with M$ since the old DOS days. Windows XP is as crappy as Windows 9x: Crashes as often and is as slowly as 9x. I don’t understand why people always think they know anything about an OS only because they read something on a website. Did you have a look at the kernel itself? Of course you didn’t. So how do you know it’s not based on the old DOS thingie? Of course you don’t. And please stop arguing and attacking me personnaly.
press, I have to disagree with you about the review and response. Naturally, nobody wants to read negative stuff about their product, but I think yT knows their shortcomings. But, my main point is that, if I was part of yT, I would be very happy that a review generated so many posts (so much interest).
… that I think Eugenia did a decent job reviewing Zeta b5. I have my own issues with Mozilla on BeOS (it steals focus like a mother, while it seems fast enough for my tastes) which are different from Eugenia’s. I don’t think she personally did a bad job on this specific review. Oh, and Jay? There’s only one “s” in pres589.
“PLEASE Glarandel, don’t rant around about things you obviously have no clue of.”
That goes for you too … MS bought VMS …. pfffft. They might have bought Dave Cutler….
>>>I’m afraid. BeOS has been written from scratch, so it’s not based on old garbage, and because of that it’s must faster and more stable.
>>>>I don’t understand why people always think they know anything about an OS only because they read something on a website. Did you have a look at the kernel itself? Of course you didn’t. So how do you know it’s not based on the old DOS thingie? Of course you don’t. And please stop arguing and attacking me personnaly.
Since you are such a kernel expert — you must have also known that the BeOS kernel talk is all pure marketing fantasy. BeOS is a macrokernel, written in plain old C (not C++), with all sorts of broken api’s written in C++ (I rather have working api’s written in BASIC) and basically hand-tuned all audio/video api’s to the highest kernel priority — not much of a revolutionary OS. If you know how to set Windows 95’s windows media player to the highest kernel priority, you basically have the famed BeOS media OS.
Ok, more correctly: they bought out VMS technoology by hireing VMS engineers, not the source code itself afaik.
I know what I’m talking about as I’ve been with M$ since the old DOS days. Windows XP is as crappy as Windows 9x: Crashes as often and is as slowly as 9x.
Ooh, that experience certainly must mean it’s the same kernel base, MacOS classic too then I guess…
I don’t understand why people always think they know anything about an OS only because they read something on a website.
That NT was very inspired by VMS is “a known fact”, it’s designed similarily and designed by ex-VMS engineers.
Did you have a look at the kernel itself? Of course you didn’t.
Of course not, did you?
So how do you know it’s not based on the old DOS thingie? Of course you don’t.
No, and I don’t know the earth is round either. I’ve just read so on a website…
And please stop arguing and attacking me personnaly.
Sure, the day you start basing your comments on facts…
Besides, how do you explain the sudden partial POSIX compliance Windows gained with the NT-series?
And about the OS/2 code… well, there’s plenty of official docs on the net about this when OS/2 NT splitted in two and MS renamed it to Windows NT.
This was before aquiring VMS technology.
Actually MS paid DEC $150 million for steeling VMS code after loosing in court… maybe that is some proof if it’s not enough that MS hired VMS chief architect Dave Cutler together with a big dev team directly from DEC, to have in their NT dev team…
“Ok, more correctly: they bought out VMS technoology by hireing VMS engineers, not the source code itself afaik.”
Or more correctly: they bought out VMS technoology by hiring VMS engineers WHO TOOK SOME CODE WITH THEM … I can’t see how this would be legal but hey .. never stopped MS before.
Or more correctly: they bought out VMS technoology by hiring VMS engineers WHO TOOK SOME CODE WITH THEM … I can’t see how this would be legal but hey .. never stopped MS before.
How much code was “stolen” from VMS we can only speculate in. You can’t find the SAME code in both systems, only code bevaing similar when compiled(since NT is written in C and VMS in VAX). But truth is MS got sued and paid DEC for stolen Mica code. Mica was supposed to be the next generation VMS at DEC, but was abandoned.
Zenja said: “We just got new PC’s here at work, its the first time I’ve got to play with WinXP (SP1). Very nice, and fast. But in 2 days I’ve already had exporer crash on me 3 times. But the thing that really quirks me is that I cannot rename a file / directory which Windows thinks is in use. Most alternative OS’s allow this since god knows how long. You have no idea how much this annoys me.”
MY GOD I HATE THAT!!!! That happens to me CONSTANTLY!! For crying out loud, WHY hasn’t MS or Apple solved this problem yet?? Windows has been doing this for YEARS and Mac OS X just introduced the problem with their feable prettying of that unixything. These problems happen in BASIC DAILY USE! You’d think they would solve these F@^&ing problems within a release or two instead of ignoring them like they do. I literally had to boot to Mac OS 9 to delete a file that OS X refused to delete, claiming it was in use, across multiple reboots, which was NOT in use. Oh, and the other SIMPLE and BASIC function that is INHERENTLY BROKEN is the drag/drop/copy/paste/rename of things in the Start menu in Windows. FIX THIS STUFF, DAMN IT!!!!!!!!!
(this happened to me ONCE with BeOS, due to FS corruption, but this happens almost DAILY to me with WinXP and OS X – it is disgusting – more security should not mean less reliable basic functionality!!!!!!!!!!!)
“But truth is MS got sued and paid DEC for stolen Mica code. Mica was supposed to be the next generation VMS at DEC, but was abandoned.”
Abandoned or not, at the time it belonged to DEC.
Read this .. http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mader/delta/deltoidslist/1998-06/msg0005… and check out the bit that says
Afterwards, some people still
at DEC pointed out that their initials were still there in the edit history
and that they’d been had. Cutler was quoted in some article as saying that
DEC could have had it but now they’ll have to pay to get it.
Iers said
“What I am trying to say is that high end audio is done on these OS’s with a lot of very expensive hardware not just amature hobby tracker crap. ”
100% truly false. It is right for digidesign stuff, but it exists only on mac computers. DSP cards are just marketing claims; general CPU are bad for audio DSP, sure, but they are increasing their speed so far that you can do a lot more on a PIV@3Ghz than on ANY dedicated audio card which cost 10,20 more, with just a few old DSP. See the archive on VST developper list to see professional thoughts about this.
On my former PIII800, I could use ~40 stereo tracks with Nuendo, EQ on. On a today PC, I reaaly think you can do the same with 5-6 Wave truverb, one or two good compressors, etc… And Pro tools cannot do more, specially on rather old G4 Mac. Every audio engeneer I spoke with told me that they are fed up with digidesign, bad support, exepnsive hardward that PC don’t need. Nuendo, if it can resist to piracy, has a fairly good future, I think. And is based on native processing.
See for exemple :
http://ardour.sourceforge.net/native-processing.html
I am also tired about people who claim you cannot achieve good latency on W2k/WinXP. You can play a virtual synthetiser with ~3-4ms of latency, which is fairly good.
BeOS was a good OS in its time, the API was fairly good, compared to this win32 crap and so on, was ( and IS ) the simplest OS in the world but now… BeOS doesn’t support my laptop’s GeForce4, has no good WebBrowser, and has no good Sequencer/audio editor. The only professional plug in I know on BeOS are Ohmforce ones.
It can NOT take the comparison against windows, apple and even linux ( maybe soon ) linux.
I don’t like apple for their expensive hardware, and if Digital performer existed on microsoft plateform, I wouldn’t even care about apple computers for audio.