In light of our world’s first preview of YellowTAB‘s Zeta OS many readers have completely misunderstood a few of the key points presented in the article. Instead of weigh the advantages and disadvantages of Zeta, they only kept in their minds the (so far) negative points. Zeta is still in beta and there is quite some work to be done to clean up before release. I compiled for you two sets of Top-10 reasons why all ex-BeOS users and all other OS enthusiasts should take a good look at Zeta and another set of 10 reasons of why Zeta might not be what you are looking for.Top Ten reasons to try out Zeta if you are an OS enthusiast:
10. Commercial, but affordable: $40
9. Modern object oriented and most importantly: elegant C++ API
8. Pretty good updated hardware support for an OS that has been paused for 3 years
7. Good choice from about 2,500 applications found on BeBits
6. Automatic SMP support for up to 8 CPUs. You can trun ON and OFF CPUs on the fly (useful for debugging)
5. Revolutionary concepts with the use of attributes in its 64-bit filesystem as a flat database
4. Dead simple installation. Can’t get simpler (especially Be’s installation procedure in comparison to Zeta’s)
3. Good latency (as its kernel has a microkernel-like design) which makes it great for multimedia apps! See multiple mp3s or videos playing at the same time without the UI getting sluggish!
2. FAST and extremely responsive UI-wise because of its extreme multi-threading architecture, stable OS. Clean, consistent user interface.
1. Simplicity in its finest form, at all levels. Hassle free. You upgrade your hardware? Cool. As long it is supported, it will not ask you for drivers, ever. The new hardware will work automatically! Most of the times, rebooting is not even required when installing new drivers. This OS is just SIMPLE and doesn’t require you to sacrifice a goat to do what you need it to.
Top Ten reasons to support Zeta if you are an ex or current BeOS user:
10. GCC 3.2 support, creates much faster/better code
9. Number of cool applications written specifically for Zeta/Dano that won’t work on older BeOS.
8. Font-sensitive UI. Window manager theming support. A modified SVG Tracker. Support for non-rectangular windows.
7. Support for bigger hard drives (BeOS 5 had a problem above the 64 GB), support for DiskDruid’s partitioning scheme (which made BeOS sometimes to not be able to “see” partitions created with RH or Mandrake)
6. Fixed Media Kit! New Printing Kit, many new printing drivers!
5. Bug fixes, bug fixes and more performance optimizations (mostly done by Be for Dano)
4. BONE! The new networking stack which makes the porting and performance of networking-based software (e.g. servers) a breeze!
3. Localization, for the first time.
2. LOTS of new hardware support. WiFi, much-much better USB support, better SCSI, full GeForce and ATi drivers, fixed sound drivers for SB128, Audigy etc. support and a lot more drivers not found on Bebits.
1. This is the BeOS 6. The real BeOS 6. The one and only which was coded by Be, Inc. The real thing, only updated. If that doesn’t make you support Zeta, then you are reading the wrong Top10 reasons, re-read the above ones.
Top 10 reasons why Zeta might not be for you (Disclaimer: Some of these issues might get addressed in the final Zeta R1 release, so make sure you check Zeta again by then)
10. The BeOS widget look (not themable) starts to feel a bit dated now. It gets more difficult to captivate the masses by the day.
9. No multi-user. No personal firewall. No Internet connection sharing (via a GUI at least). In these days we live in, security is important.
8. Basic development tools, no good/capable IDE or visual GUI creator. Choice of 3 compilers is a bad decision.
7. Some under-the-hood things need fixing, like better SMP support, support for more than 1 GB of memory etc.
6. No Java support
5. Most Zeta’s additions of options resemble the Linux model instead of the BeOS “keep it simple” rule. BeOS was always about having the best defaults possible, not the most options. For example, the Zeta installation should just have stayed the same, just add more partitioning options to the partitioning tool.
4. Overall hardware support is better than BeOS+BeBits combination, but still not ideal: Scanning support is spotty. No DVD-/+RW support, no good Firewire/video support, no Bluetooth support etc. But there is enough “normal” hardware support to get most of you by.
3. No major applications like an industry compatible office suite, home video editor, graphics app (note: Pixel32 is needed to be ready on Zeta’s launch); A rootless X server (+ Zeta UI theme for KDE/Gnome) could help the situation.
2. No hardware accelerated 3D support, no dual head, no native remote display. Current Font engine (as seen on beta5) is below par.
1. No usable/optimized web browser. Mozilla/FireBird’s ports are slow. NetPositive is old. YellowTAB tells me that they have something in the works, but the real question is how stable/finished it will be by the time Zeta hits R1.
(Disclaimer again: Some of these issues might get addressed in the final Zeta R1 release)
Conclusion
Surely, there are other reasons to consider Zeta or not, like the fact that YellowTAB is a very small company with limited resources. But if you are after a dead simple OS with great speed, updated hardware and software support, and if you had too much of Linux’s bloat, then Zeta is for you.
The open source alternatives of Zeta/BeOS, like OpenBeOS, BlueEyedOS and Cosmoe are nowhere near of offering a competitive desktop OS that works. They are still in their baby age, it will take quite some years before you get something workable from these groups, simply because re-creating a whole operating systems takes many-many years. Incidently, here is an ex-BeOS user today who is looking into the alternatives of BeOS and how far down the line they currently are to be useful to him as a user who needs a modern and functional system. He decides that he will leave the BeOS platform because these offerings are just not there yet.
But YellowTAB’s Zeta is here. Today. Surely it is not perfect and YellowTAB seem to not have experience with a few things, but no OS/startup company is perfect. And especially for an OS that has been resurrected from the dead, it fares pretty well I could say.
We should not forget that YellowTAB has inherited from Be one great gift and one big curse: They are the barers of the original BeOS but they have to live up to the name of Be, Inc. and its engineers who really knew their stuff like the palm of their hands. All they need now to move forward, is your support. Especially from ex-BeOS/BeOS users. Because if you don’t support them or think “I will buy the second version”, there will be NO second version. This is the reality of it. And if YellowTAB goes down, the original BeOS goes down. For good this time. PalmSource has absolutely 0% interest in BeOS. Their “execs don’t even remember they actually own the Be IP” someone in the know told me once.
We need more choice in our world. Today, everything is about Windows or Mac or Linux. It is getting boring. Zeta is not yet-another-unix-like-OS, it is an OS written from scratch resembling no other OS of its time. It is an OS that should live on. Will it change the world as we know it and bring Microsoft to its knees? Surely not. But it is here and its technology is worthy of our attention and support.
Well, I definitely agree with one thing: we need more choice and competition of operating systems. We would see more competition, and thus lower prices for more features.
Eugenia
This time you are dead on. I’m sure that things like firewire will change, as I’m willing to also suppose they want it done right from the core up. Anyone who discounted The Be Operating System was foolish to do so rather quickly.
I will definatly purchase Zeta when it comes out of beta.
All of these reasons are very good reasons, and some you can fix easily… LISTEN to them this time…
Other than that, great article Eugenia, nice to see so many for BeOS in such a short(ish) time
Not one of those reasons makes me want to support these guys. I like windows and it works for me. Not to mention the number of apps, tools and games that I can choose from.
10. The BeOS widget look (not themable) starts to feel a bit dated now. It gets more difficult to captivate the masses by the day.
>>>>>>>>>>
Only because the masses have no taste. The proliferation of seriously ugly cars (at least here in the USA) gives me zero faith in interfaces designed for mass-consumption. The only thing that allows me to use an XP machine for any length of time is Microsoft’s merciful decision to allow theming…
Great Article. I will definetly support Yellowtab when it comes out.
Sorry dude but that BeOS widget look is very old and dated. If you think it’s the best ub3r3st widget out there then fine that is okay. Yet don’t go insulting everyone because we don’t like your wierd sense of style.
It’s not because we see pastel-candy-like-buttons and toy-greenish-taskbars everywhere, including Linux, that it’s the best and we should go for it.
I personally HATE that aqua look, and the XP Luna mockup of it even more.
A gui I’d go for rather would be QNX’s if I had to.
I will buy it. I have spent 100 bucks on least things. I would be satisfied with R5 if it had a browser with all the plugins.
Mod me down, if you want.
I have always found OSNEWS to provide a good service of keeping me up to date.
Also I have found that 99% of the time everything is very balanced here at OSNEWS.
The 1% is just the shear excitement Eugenia or someone else may have of a new product, or new advancement in a product.
People don’t take things to seriously, and enjoy your lives, their is life away from your computers.
If Zeta has Visual Basic type language with great bindings to the networking and opengl graphics, then I’m game!
Why did you bother posting then if your only going to say that you neeed Windows
YT have confidence. I’ll buy the deluxe version.
Ok, a few thoughts, but I first want to say “Nicely done.”
Internet connection sharing shouldn’t be too hard to bundle as there is NAT software on BeBits. Is it BONE friendly, I dunno, but it’s possible for sure. There is working dualhead, through either Matrox or Radeon cards, the drivers again are on BeBits. That said, I wonder what can be done for the people with nVidia hardware on this front, and I’m still curious if/how we have working support for GF4’s and newer cards.
I hope they have a solid solution to the browser issue.
I’m with the Anonymous guy up there in saying I don’t care AT ALL about the widgets used in a GUI. They’re all basically the same. I care more about font AA which, yeah, Dano was “interesting” to use in this respect and Zeta sounds worse from the two reviews of it I have read. Or letting the user pick the size for stuff like window title bars. That kind of thing. Widgets? Please. Get as close as you can to Mac OS Classic widgets or something, I don’t care, just make it consistent.
> There is working dualhead, through either Matrox or Radeon cards, the drivers again are on BeBits
To have real, good, dual-head support, you need not only some driver support, but also app_server support. Today, Zeta/BeOS doesn’t have this support on its app_server, hence the mentioning in the top 10.
10. The BeOS widget look (not themable) starts to feel a bit dated now. It gets more difficult to
captivate the masses by the day.
My guess is that the Dano GUI changes were just something some dev was fooling around with but would’ve never made it past the UI designers — if any were even still employed at Be at the time.
The original R5.0.3 GUI is still the best: simple, elegant, clean, does what it’s supposed to without extraneous eye-candy.
They are the barers of the original BeOS but they have to live up to the name of Be, Inc. and its engineers
who really knew their stuff like the palm of their hands.
The best puns are the ones you make without even knowing it.
9. No multi-user. No personal firewall or connection sharing. In these days we live
in, security is important.
While there is no GUI for it, you can enable internet connection sharing using ipalias which comes with BONE (and thus Zeta). I use it on my “gateway” that runs Bone7A and 56k modem, works fine.
On the BeDrivers.com website, there is a notice from 4-28-2003 that nVidia driver development for BeOS has started again. Hopefully this driver will be ready by the time Zeta comes out.
YellowTab already have developed support for all nVidia GPUs into Zeta, the BeDrivers.com implementation isn’t relevant.
proof?
11. Doesn’t fall where Windows-UI often does – for example, BeOS doesn’t use Yes|No dialogs, but instead uses verb-based dialogs (as does MacOS) (see -a-)
12. Doesn’t have weird performance hiccups as Windows – e.g. no need to wait for the New> menu when creating folders (Alt+N creates them immediatly). Magnitudes quicker than OS X Aqua and KDE (Konqueror can takes ages just to spawn a window, and there’s no need to start bashing Aqua, we all know it crawls compared to BeOS)
13. Doesn’t use awkward keyboard shortcuts as Windows – for example, instead of having to lift your elbow while pressing Alt+F4, BeOS uses a much more convenient shortcut: Alt+W (yes, Mac roots again). BeOS also has better keyboard shortcuts compared to MacOS: pressing Enter (Return) is used as open/launch and not for the less used rename. Home and End buttons are more useful as they are sentence-oriented and not document-oriented.
14. Universal drag&drop (match that Linux!) -b-
15. Universal clipboard (again, nowhere to be seen in Linux) -b-
16. mnemonics, aka underlined keyboard shortcuts or triggers. The lack of this feature is one of the main reasons MacOS keyboarding sucks
17. x86 hardware. It rocks, and Mac users know it.
18. The best Trash implementation. Windows Recycle Bin doesn’t allow you to browse deleted folder, BeOS does. MacOS trash doesn’t remember original paths and doesn’t provide a restore option, BeOS does. No need to mention other OSes, they can’t even start to compete. -c-
19. The best right-click/right-drag implementation. MacOS can’t right drag, BeOS can. Windows can’t provide the ease of single rightClick->select->release (much quicker than rightClick->select->leftClick), well… BeOS can.
20. Many other fine UI details that aren’t available elsewhere, for example checkout BeOS’ titlebar/tabs implementation. Tabs are smaller and more efficient. Why waste precious screen real estate when you can see more with less in the way? even without the classic sliding tabs (yet), BeOS tabs are more powerful, try to right click one and see why. It is immediately thrown below all the other windows. I really miss that on other OSes.
21. A file manager that doesn’t suck. Unlike all other OSes, you don’t have to open windows to browse the file system, you can do it right from the context menu. If you hate that MacOS Finder doesn’t have an address bar and if you hate that Windows Explorer suddenly stops in the middle of moving 300MB worth of files (locked files means abort, right? No!), BeOS Tracker is the answer.
22. BeOS has no viruses
23. Searching for files is much more powerful and fast. Windows XP search is actually slower than Win95, but that’s another story
24. It doesn’t come from Redmond
25. It doesn’t come from Cupertino
I can think of many other features, perhaps I’ll add them later.
Prog.
-a- More about the utter stupidity of Windows’ Yes|No dialogs:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=48…
-b- Why Linux drag&drop and clipboard are so poor
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=48…
-c- Trash implementation. BeOS beats them all:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=48…
can i get java to go?
can i get a browser that is current, supports recent versions of ssl and has flash/swf support?
can i use it on our workstations that have more than 1GB of ram?
can i get a recent version of gpg, usb1+2 stack, clean room fw stack, drivers for the very recent audio and video cards? (no, rumours do certainly not suffice)
can i get a new scheduler that is on par with the new scheds is windows XP and linux/bsd?
surely you must realise that all os’s have their uses and all os’s are far from perfect.
and this zealotry is quite … unnerving to watch.
java? There is some personalJava support I believe.
Browser? There is Stripzilla/Bezilla/Firebird(Beonex). They’re a bit crashy, but run fine for me.
workstations? If you have >1 gig of RAM, you don’t need BeOS on that computer.
GPG? There is a port of GPG. There are USB stacks, though not USB2.0 yet. fw? Firewire? I believe the 1394 driver works, though I haven’t tested it. Drivers? GeForce 4 is plenty recent–that’s not a rumor, ask Eugenia. Audigy etc. recent enough for sound?
Scheduler? BeOS excels at scheduling. Much better performance under heavy load than Linux (ck patches) or WinXP(hah!).
It’s not zealotry. BeOS users are the first to recognize that their platform has problems. However, it is still alive and kicking. Your issues don’t seem valid.
>can i get a new scheduler that is on par with the new scheds is windows XP and linux/bsd?
BeOS has an _excellent_ scheduler. Where the kernel lacks is in its VM, not the scheduler.
As for the rest of the stuff, I agree that they are missing, and this is why I have already mention them on my third Top10, no reason to write them again.
Let me ask a question. Was the BeOS GUI ugly when it was released? No. So, then, what makes it ugly now? I can hardly believe that something only a few years old is some how already dated. Besides, I hardly think my sense of style is that out there. Like most people, I think OS X is quite pretty. I use a simpler style in KDE (dotNET), but I like Liquid. I really like the .NET look in Visual Studio and Office XP. WinXP, on the other hand, is a disaster of poorly-chosen proportions and glaring color schemes. It may be popular, but popularity says zippo about quality.
I second the statement about the Mac-like GUI in BeOS. BeOS is the closest thing you’ll get to using a Mac on x86 hardware. Absolutely phenomenal: clean, clear, and explicit without being verbose. The big impression that I get using BeOS (and classic MacOS, and to some extent GNOME) is that it was designed by human beings. Very verbal, very visual. On the other hand, Windows (or, to be fair, KDE) seems to be designed by engineers. Strong emphasis on foolish consistency (Ok/Cancel vs Verb/Cancel), excess relience on cryptic icons, too much pressure on the spatial skills of the user, etc.
I’ve already posted that there is a rudimentary form of connection sharing present in Zeta, you should update your article as it is inaccurate in this respect. If there was no internet connection sharing I’d be unable to post this right now!
/boot/beos/bin/ipalias device ppp0 on
That’s what I use btw.
>/boot/beos/bin/ipalias device ppp0 on
This is not the BeOS way of doing things. If a preference panel in the networking panel is added, then I will change the article. If that was Linux, I wouldn’t have this requirement, for BeOS, I have.
Is because I don’t currently own a computer old enough to install BeOS 5 on and I have always wanted to try it.
I know that but you were saying that there is NO way of doing connection sharing in Zeta/Bone, yet this is incorrect. No matter what you think the BeOS way of doing things is, it can still be done regardless and makes your article incorrect.
Zealotry…fine?
os/2 and amiga have been kept alive for years under the shadow of what some call zealotry…other find that there is a superiority at some point in the system that they prefer over the big three. Yellowtab has inherited and attempted to update a code base which has been dead for a much shorter period of time than the afore-mentioned and they are giving current Be enthusiats a glimmer of hope. I respect their efforts and I will support them until I find a reason not to…(such as if they decide to move to the internet appliance business, which as you all know is the future!)…
If you want to use windows mac, and linux, be my guest. I see valid and substantial reasons to explore the platforms.
For now, it’s my 40 bux? I’ll spend it as I please!
Please can somebody tell me why I should jump on the Zeta train instead of the QNX train?
Isn’t it better to go with QNX?
Why not use both?
Eugenia, you’ve hit the nail on the head this time. I also love Prognathous comments, well said man. I think that we all agree that the browser situation is the biggest hurdle the OS faces, and with Firebird progressing I think that issue will be resolved in time. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t ready on ship date, we all know where BeBits is.
Some things I’d love to find more info on:
– what is the secret browser news? Opera/Wagner clone?
– Eugenia said full nVidia and ATI support. Fingers crossed that this is true.
– Eugenia said USB2 and Firewire support are spotty. Is this true?
– Eugenia said no Java. I thought PersonalJava was included. Clarifiaction.
– GCC 3.2 support. Why dont YellowTab make a compatibility break and only focus on 3.2 support, while providing 2.9x support for legacy apps.
Anyhow, its Deluxe edition for me.
>Eugenia said no Java. I thought PersonalJava was included. Clarifiaction.
PersonalJava is only a small portion of J2ME. No one cares about java applets. What we do care is about full Java support.
>Eugenia said USB2 and Firewire support are spotty. Is this true?
Firewire support is spotty last time I checked, yes. USB-2 is not supported, USB-1 is. But remember, USB2 is backwards compatible with USB1. So if you have any USB-2 device, it will STILL work, just on USB1 speeds.
misza is right. If it can be done. It exists. It may not exist in the form that meets the standards that you have come to expect from Be. But, never-the-less, you should update your list to reflect that it is possible.
And, as you pointed out, since this is beta, it might meet your expectations by release. Meanwhile, you’re misleading alot of people.
How difficult could it be to simply write something kludgy in hey? Then it would satisfy the requirements.
Tis all very well saying buy this OS , but when alls said and done it hasn’t moved much from where BeOS was before and can be presently found to dl for nought.
First impressions, I expect for all those whom had hoped against hope, that BeOS would rise again are foundered upon sad realities.
So why compound and extend the misery of those who’d hoped for a rebirth…….we all now know Zeta is going to be still born
Interesting article, yet it fails to address one point: why should someone pay for YT rather than any of the more or less free OSes available around — OBOS, Atheos, Cosmoe, you name it… and especially the myriad of Linux distros?
And the eternal no-trolling question: the legality of the original source code. Sure “they” claim it is fine… They all do.
>yet it fails to address one point: why should someone pay for YT rather than any of the more or less free OSes available around — OBOS, Atheos, Cosmoe, you name it…
I DID write about them. They are nowhere near being usable. They are years before they become usable. YTAB has an OS that works, _today_.
> and especially the myriad of Linux distros?
Because BeOS is not yet-another-Unix. BeOS was unique in its archicture. BeOS is not one of these Linuces/unices, it is a legacy of its own, that deserves to survive.
As you can see, both points were addressed.
Of course, someone could also easily put a checkbox (“Enable ICS for PPP) in Boneyard(BONE prefs) that would control whether ipalias was on or not in the user’s ppp-script. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist if it’s not in boneyard though. And though this may sound as a “hack”, putting the checkbox in boneyard, the whole boneyard is actually an interface for editing all the text files that configure bone. Hardly the BeOS way hey eugenia?
>Hardly the BeOS way hey eugenia?
Indeed hardly. BONE’s GUI was NOT the final gui, it was a TEST the engineers were using to change settings quickly and test stuff. This is why BONE’s gui sucks so much, and is looking so different than the rest of the preference panels. Because it was a test and not the final work.
Eugenia has a fair point about the BeOS way to configure your system vs the Linux way. People, keep in mind that YellowTab aren’t finished when they finally release Zeta, there is still a possibility of point releases which address these shortcomings. I’m sure that we’ll get easier to use GUI’s in the future (either via Zeta Update or via BeBits). The point is, we finally get legit BONE, and a whole heap of apps which were dependant/waiting for it.
It All depends on what you want to do,I have dabbled with QNX a little and still have it on 2 of my computers, Here’s my opinion of it:
Hardware support can be just as sketchy as that for BeOS.
The GUI is very nice looking but nowhere near as functional as BeOS’,it behaves more Linux-like,
There Are very few apps for QNX and to my knowledge there is no site like bebits where QNX apps are posted,plus the package manager seems to be hard-wired to the browser,and if you do not have a supported modem ,I have no idea how one loads new apps,On the other hand there are thousands of apps available on bebits,plus there is beshare,which is an excellent source of older “dead” commercial BeOS apps and such,just go on the free servers and ask around,plus the main server is a great source of help to the newbe,and it doesn’t matter if you have a supported modem,because there are windows and linux ports of beshare(ozone.unizone)and you can drag your downloads across into BeOS or write them to cd or floppy and install,and the zip files run anywhere you unzip them, the packaged ones are as easy as win or Mac.
So there it is , if you want a geek-toy to tinker with I reccomend QNX,if you want a fully usable desktop OS go for BeOS.
(although I will say that QNX does have possibilities of being a great desktop OS and it’s sad to me that no-one seems to develop any stuff for it)
….sucked.
Agreed.
All GUI apps were designed by Be’s UI/graphics team. Boneyard was simply a gui app that the engineers created for quickly testing their BONE changes. It was never meant for public consumption. It was not the final thing.
Now you see the difference when you have an app designed by programmers — how its usability lacks and is comparable to what we get on Linux — and when an app is properly designed by UI engineers. You get that difference on BeOS as well. 😉
Can I buy it? Can I download it? Can I believe anything but what’s been leaked out in terms of information since this company released that they were actually developing the next great thing since BeOS?
No…
I don’t know it works…For all we know it’s vaporware. I’m sorry but until I see a product that I can try, I don’t believe this product will ever be finished and all the Be fans will have been led on to believe they will be saved by this company.
Sorry, I just won’t believe it till it’s finished.
It’s not usable if we can’t use it…
Yeah and Eugenia and Chris@beosjournal are in on it! WATCH OUT!
Oh yeah you forgot your tinfoil hat.
Oh, am I?
Why don’t you have a read here then??
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3792
Troll:
> Yeah and Eugenia and Chris@beosjournal are in on it! WATCH OUT!
Eugenia:
>Oh, am I?
Don’t get too upset. He was being sarcastic – basically calling the guy a conspiracy theorist.
doh – sorry – didn’t mean to label the comment from Wing “troll” – I meant that for the guy he was responding to. My apologies
Eugenia Wrote:
We need more choice in our world. Today, everything is about Windows or Mac or Linux. It is getting boring.
Getting boring?. Its REALLY boring. Windows has been dominate for so long now, that the general public isnt even aware that they have a choice. The geeks are the only people using the “other” OS’s. Its so bad, that I have to tell the sales people at Best Buy that I use linux just to get them to leave me alone. I used to say I was a Mac Person, but that would always backfire because apparently Windows “power Users” think that Mac’s are a joke. They can never give me reason behind their logic? I wonder why?
Paul, in the past, Windows was quite superior in damn near every aspect of an OS (pre OSX).
MacOS was on the level of a slightly glorified Win 3.11
CPU Guy said:
Windows was quite superior in damn near every aspect of an OS.
Compared to what? Are you HIgh?.
I’m not A Mac user in case you were trying to troll on that.
Paul:
SMP, multitasking, FS, networking, gaming, usability, application support, hardware support, …
Wait, this is the 95-98 kernel we’re talking about here. Are you insane? FS? I could corrupt VFAT/FAT32 in 5 minutes! Usability? Ha! Multitasking? Windows (95-98) wasn’t a true multitasking OS at all. You’re crazy.
Because BeOS is not yet-another-Unix. BeOS was unique in its archicture. BeOS is not one of these Linuces/unices, it is a legacy of its own, that deserves to survive.
I don’t know about the last statement.
That is does deserve to survive, sure it does. Every being does. That is worth the open source effort to try to fill in the dream that Be Inc. failed to materialize, I’m not so sure.
Today’s BeOS dream lacks a leader, like JLG was. As you mention, YT already gets linux-design syndromes, it start loosing cleaness. There’s no reason for this trend to stop.
I used and develop for BeOS since the very very beginning, as an outside developer. I’ve seen it grown, stuggle, and finally die. As an ex-BeOS lover, I don’t think the current post-BeOS movement learns from the past errors and I fail to see any light in the direction they take.
The strongest point of the BeOS dream was not its technical performances (wasn’t that only the geeky buzzwords?), it was being an alternative when there was no alternative. This is no longer a good cause — serious alternatives are here and they are as technically good or better. YMMV.
I did the whole “buy software to help corporations” thing. With a company called Be, Inc. Also with GoBe. Neither corporation survived. Neither was even remotely grateful for the charity I showed them, and both ignored me utterly when I occasionally requested tech support.
(In fairness, Be’s tech support was excellent before they went public. At some point they got a public relations “expert” who seems to have told them that PR wasn’t necessary, and neither was support. After Be croaked, he was picked up by Gobe, and their tech support was nonexistant when I needed it too. I figure he’s probably at Microsoft now.)
My point is, I’m not in the business of corporate charity. I don’t give a damn about their problems or their promises for better versions in the future. I lived on promises like that all the years I used BeOS.
(Just wait until Maui er Dano er Version N+1, where all the missing pieces will be included. We’ll get it out once we go public. Oops, we lied, we’re using our IPO money to do internet terminal software nobody wants now, but don’t worry, it’ll all be rolled back into BeOS. Oops, we lied again, none of it gets rolled back in, but we’re still working on Dano, and we’ll get it out to you when the good fairies help us. Oops, we’re dead.)
To hell with that. That cycle is how I became a Mac user. I’ll look at YellowTab, and if it excites me the way BeOS did, I’ll buy it. if not, I won’t. If they can’t ship a good product without selling a lot of copies of an unfinished product, then they’re undercapitalised and doomed to fail anyway.
I’m all for OS choice, but I’m not willing to do charity work to support it any more. Sorry. I’ve been lied to too much.
Of the top “ten reasons … if you are an OS enthusiast” how many also applied to the original BeOS. Ans: Pretty much all of them.
This is just not a big leap from the final version of BeOS to convince a lot of people to try it.
I’ve just rebuilt my home PC and, for the first time in years, have NOT installed BeOS. For me this was a really sad decision to take because there is so much about BeOS that I absolutely loved. On the other hand while I could surf, send email, access newsgroups etc there was little ‘power-computing’ I could do. I could create stunning documents in Gobe Productive but with only limited cross-platform compatibility (they’re now all converted to PDF for reference only).
I could create mp3 files for my iPod but could not upload them. I could perform fairly limited image manipulation on my scanned slides, but could only scan them in other OS. Similarly USB digicam connectivity remained a dream.
The real question is whether Zeta will ever grow to provide the sort of functionality users are now demanding more often. Maybe only OpenBeOS will provide a more radically enhanced version of the BeOS platform.
I’ll certainly be watching out for one. Contrary to all the stuff above, I really LOVE BeOS – nothing has ever come closer to my ideal OS!
Cheers
Steve (moving through the stages of grief)
> Of the top “ten reasons … if you are an OS enthusiast” how many also applied to the original BeOS. Ans: Pretty much all of them.
Yes. It doesn’t have to be any more than that. These 10 reasons are already 10 more reasons that Zeta does better than Linux or Mac.
Funk had it right!
I didn’t mean it seriously, Eugenia, I was being sarcastic.
Greg: Win9x had pre-emptive multitasking… how is this not a true multitasking OS? OS9 and lower had cooperative multitasking… and piss poor cooperative at that.
Yes, FAT32 can be corrupted, for the most part, all you relly need to do is shutdownt he system improperly and you’ll get bunches of files that are need to be repaired…. but Mac’s filesystem did the SAME thing. This is all besides the fact that NTFS was much much better than the mac FS, and still is today, no less.
I’ve always found MacOS’s UI to be fairly un-useable and very easily cluttered (much less so in OSX, but it still happens)… not to say that Windows is the king of all this, Explorer certainly isn’t (in fact, I’d say that The Tracker is the best UI to date.)
Just saying something and “Ha!” after them is nothing but showing you don’t really know what you are talking about.
Back on topic, I can’t wait to give Zeta a try once it’s truely ready.
Win9x did not have preemptive multitasking. It didn’t even have protected memory, only a weak parody on it. I’m not arguing Mac vs. Win here, because I have rarely used a Mac and never liked it because it kept too much from the power user. I use Linux and BeOS, and that works just fine for me.
XFS/ReiserFS/Ext3 are all superior to NTFS.
No one claimed it had protected memory, however, it did have preemptive multitasking, and much much much superior multitasking than in MacOS of the day.
Ext3 is also brand new, NTFS has been rather unchanged since Win2k.
Ext3 has been around since before W2K. So has ReiserFS (albeit unreliable before).
Win 3.1 had preemptive multitasking already… for DOS boxes
)
Win 9x had it for win32 apps, but win16 apps were still executed all in the same sandbox (win16 subsys), without protection between them.
> Ext3 has been around since before W2K. So has ReiserFS (albeit unreliable before).
I think XFS beats them all. Maybe it was here even before BFS.
BE sure i will purchase your OS.
to make simplier getting os please make a stock house in europe..i wouln’t like to much buy n os for 40$ and pay a billion $ of shipment
I might also note that win9x’s pre-emptive multitasking was subject to a ton of constraints, one of which being that if you did anything that involved invoking either a win16 call, or a 16-bit driver, or a number of other things, the system in effect stopped being preemptive until the routine in question was completed.
I thought, BeOS has a real microkernel? Since, you said it’s microkernel-like so what’s real kind of kernel by itself? Or, BeOS just wrote it from stratch by themselves?
Sorry to say that without file sharing even Zeta will have no success.. by the way i deeply love beos and beos community and developers who have reached the goal of make beos survive!! so i will surely buy zeta os when it will come out!
keep work on it!
BeOS does NOT have a microkernel. At least not by the Tanenbaum definition.
> the system in effect stopped being preemptive until the routine in question was completed.
Yes, because as I said the win16 subsystem is still in cooperative mode.
> to make simplier getting os please make a stock house in europe.
yellowTAB is in Germany btw.
> Sorry to say that without file sharing even Zeta will have no success.
There are more P2P programs being ported (including by me) at the moment to BeOS than I have fingers on my hand.
Eugenia, I think you’re wrong you do not support OpenBeOS as good as yTAB. I also think that ‘harcore’ people, like Marcus or Axel, from OpenBeOS shouldn’t join yTAB as you said some days ago. Of course, they should help yTAB with some things but I have a scenario for you: all hardcore OpenBeOS people will move to yTAB and OpenBeOS project will stop for a while. And then yTAB will have financial problems (who knows??) and Micro$oft will buy it with all yTAB’s code. And then there will NOT be yT nor OpenBeOS nor BeOS.
I think that it is good we have OpenBeOS and Zeta because if yTAB have any problems we still will have OpenBeOS. I also think that yTAB should help OpenBeOS in some ways (as making SVGTracker opensource in the future). And everyone knows that yTAB do not have all the Dano’s source code and Zeta R2 will be based in 50%-60% on OpenBeOS and Zeta R3 will be based in 90%-100% on OpenBeOS (I don’t remember but this was said at OSNews Forum/Comments or yTAB Forum by yTAB’s man).
And I have one question for you, Eugenia, about your review and today’s news: Does Zeta have drivers for GeForce4? do you use them? Does reviewed beta5 have this drivers? Because on yTAB’s forum was the poll with drivers planned for Zeta R2 and GeForec was listed.
Greets
demsi
I’m at the point where I’m willing to bribe myself into the beta test team – just because I want to see this in action..
Of course I would hate it if my GeForce4 TI4280 (Asus) wasn’t supported out of the box, that would really suck..
> Yes, because as I said the win16 subsystem is still in cooperative mode.
There’s more to it than just win16. Win9x allows things to trap back into real mode to make 16-bit BIOS calls as well, and that’s the real killer, since quite a few VxDs did that as a quick and dirty shortcut. That was the thing that really ground everything to a halt.
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t I read in the very early days of Zeta that they made some agreements with Opera to create an new up-to-date version of Opera for BeOS/Zeta???
What happened???
BeOS 5.0.3 wasn’t stable, before i buy it, i need a proof
that it has become stable or if kernel was patched. Power user could easilly crashed whole sistem, even win9x were more stable at heavy memory I/O. I had supported hardware, all licnces for software and support from Be, but in that time it was useless for power users, so i threw it avay and used IRIX and MS Windows NT4 as foundation, as work i had it has to be done in time. I don’t understand how could Yellowtab afforded to mix two different concepts BeOS/Mac vs. Unix/Linux. BeOS must be simple without pages and pages of configuration options, as we need only few basic options, with power behind. All work must be done transparently.
Wow, that’s a really nice program
I’ll gladly give Zeta a run on my computer, if and only if, they offer a non-commercial use evaluation version for $0 like QNX offers. I cant afford to pay for something that will serve only as my third OS.
Eugenia: “I find this to be BALANCE, but unfortunately, some people read only one or the other article (but not both) and then create their own wrong opinion. ”
Careful, opinions are not facts, there are no such things as wrong opinions, no matter how much they disagree with you.
I’m going to buy a copy of Zeta. As a BeOS lover it is just too irresistable to not buy it. And, when the final release is made, perhaps most of the negative things will have been fixed.
I agree. I already use WinXP and Linux, and have messed around with Be before. But paying $40 for it before you know how it’s gonna work on ur comp is a little risky. Besides, it doesn’t offer the functionality of linux, which is free. I know I know people are gonna start saying “IT’S A HOBBY OS, SO CHILL”…but paying $40 for a “hobby” OS is more than I go for.
Java, Good IDE, a good GUI Builder is a must for me. Without those I think I will be leaving this Zeta alone.
I’d like to see registered Pixel32 as part of the Deluxe Edition. Nudge nudge. Or at least a combo with Zeta and Pixel32.
It’s to much of a hassle for me to order when I hardly ever draw or retouch anything. Make it easy for me, the customer
Since KHTML has proven portable (konqueror, safari) why not use it as the base for the “standard” BeOS web browser, like Safari is for OSX?
It just seems to me that KHTML is more BeOSsy, being smaller and faster, and with cleaner code. Surely, if it can be ported to mac OS X, it can be ported to BeOS?
Erik
I would love to buy a copy of Zeta…if only they would start selling it. It would do great for an older machine I have. I loved BEOS back in its day, it would be great to see it finally finished.
This is what worries me. The original release date was supposed to be December or something like that, yes? And now it looks like they’re fooling around with new stuff instead of just shipping a good product. And their website is always behind, full of announcements for events that have already happened.
I hope they get their act together
Win9x had preemptive multitasking only in theory. 16-bit code was cooperatively multitasked. This doesn’t seem like something to bad, but you’ve got to remember that the GDI in Win9x was almost completely 16-bit. Also, the 9x kernel was not reentrant, so only one application at a time could be making a kernel call. Now, technically, the situation was better than Mac OS (pre 9.x) but MacOS never claimed to have preemptive multitasking and memory protection, so developers tended to be much more careful about those things.
I found using either OS pretty unpleasant, mainly because of the poor stability.
But my personal experience is that Win 9x’s buzzword compliance was worthless. I found it significantly less stable than Mac OS 8/9, despite it’s memory protection. Win 9x multitasking was certainly better than System 7, but Mac OS 8/9 managed to catch up, despite still lacking preemptive multitasking.
Given the choice I would have always used Mac OS, but that’s mainly because I much prefer it’s GUI.
At the time I was mainly using RISC OS, another OS without preemptive multitasking or memory protection. Yet IME it was significantly more stable and multitasked better than either Mac OS <10 or Win 9x. I think the quality of the implementation is often more important than the technology used.
Java, Good IDE, a good GUI Builder is a must for me. Without those I think I will be leaving this Zeta alone
Java 1.4 SE is still in development at http://www.beunited.org but no prediction as to when it will be complete though.
BeIDE is good, and there are others in development, like ReactoGraph you can see here:
http://www.cs.dal.ca/~gauvins/images/screen1.png
and get info about it here:
http://www.cs.dal.ca/~gauvins/
There is also a great GUI builder for BeOS called MeTOS you can see here:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/cvincent/logiciels/metos.html
and download here:
http://www.bebits.com/app/3066
Some times ago I wrote the Zeta crew asking if it was possible to send them a cashier’s check or a money order (I don’t have a credit card) for their CDs,… I never received any answer to my email.
For an OS touted as revolutionary as this one, I would have expected it to have a good networking stack. Obviously, they still have to live with BeOS Inc. misfortunes.
I am with you on this one.
I’ve got burned too much on Be hopes. I was stupid enough to buy BEOS stock. $40 is not a big deal but it will not take off this company anyway.
The only support they really need is to have developers writing software for Zeta. And with 3 C/C++ compilers and little Java they seem to miss this point.
I would expect OBOS to be more attractive to developers – open source, compatibility.
Even though I’m waiting expectantly for OpenBeOS, I will purchase and use a copy of the Deluxe edition of yT Zeta.
I would rather spend my money to support OS choice than to blindly give more money to Microsoft.
If BeOS couldn’t sell the OS what makes YellowTab think that they can? BeOS or Zeta is OLD. It *WAS* revolutionary back in the early 90s but now it’s antiquated. I still have r.5 and like it for a few things but cannot take it as a serious working tool. I cannot imageing that the fact that Zeta will include a few more drivers and a HUGE pool of apps, that I don’t want but if I did are freely available to be, will make Zeta worth $10 nevermind >$50. Sadly, I will be waiting a few years to see what happens with OBeOS but have my doubts about that too. All this time is getting spent catching up while other OSs are forging ground. Disappointing.
Some times ago I wrote the Zeta crew asking if it was possible to send them a cashier’s check or a money order (I don’t have a credit card) for their CDs,… I never received any answer to my email.
For an OS touted as revolutionary as this one, I would have expected it to have a good networking stack. Obviously, they still have to live with BeOS Inc. misfortunes.
Wow, those are totally unrelated statements. To answer the first, it’s probably because there is no publicly available preview/beta of Zeta yet (Eugenia got a leaked copy from what I understand)
Everyone agrees that net_server is crappy, hence why Be wrote (though never got to released) BONE.
Also my two bits: I will probably be buying a copy of this. I tried installing BeOS onto a PC I had laying around here, but the USB on the mobo was the non-intel un-beos-supported kind, so I had to give up. I’m definitely looking forward to Zeta, and hope that yT gets everything together in time for Zeta R1/v1.0.
Top things that need addressing for me PERSOANLLY:
– Browser – why is there no Mozilla browser using native BeOS widgets ala Camino on OS X?
– Disk size and RAM size limits
– BONE working at 100%
– Win2Be – from what I’ve seen so far of Win2BE (search BeBits for it), it looks like it could fascilitate the adoption of BeOS in a *big* way. (Almost) everything on Windows calls Win32 via DirectX, GDI, etc. at some point, and hooking those calls as BeOS native calls would give the coolness of Windows programs that run on BeOS at (almost) full speed, with a native BeOS look ‘n’ feel.
Glad you clarified your thought, Eugenia. I was thinking, after the last few pieces, that you were really against Zeta. Your criticisms are fair enough, and I’m glad that you still can see the strengths of the platform, even if it’s a bit dated.
Interesting, also, that so much of the complaints about Zeta/Be – whatever are kind of nitpicky.
Ugliness of the GUI? Wow, big problem. :^/ I can live with it fine, until they add themes/whatever PROPERLY, rather than just a flaky bolt-on approach for the sake of “looking different”.
Oh, and I MUST HAVE a file sharing application – wowee. Hate to have to burn my own mp3s…Damn, BeShare is pretty damn cool for a filesharing app – you just have to hook up with a community, rather than pull from the mysterious netherworld of KaZaa.(Personally, I’d hate to see KaZaa or LimeWire for BeOS – slow POS software.)
Browsers – yeah, it’s a pain to have no java, considering how much of it there is. But it ain’t out of the question – Personal Java hacked in the support for Macs maybe a year ago. Give it time, I’m sure it’ll make it in soon enough. Even with R5/Net+, though, I found that I could access the majority of sites just fine, and very few others did I feel the need to actually find another machine to view. (More time for me!)
Hey – if they (YT) do well, maybe Opera will release the newer browser that was to run on BEIA. After all, they put a fair amount of man-hours into it – if it looks as though there’s a profit to be made, they’ll release it.
A Flash update would be nice – there IS General Coffee Company’s flash player that, while it’s not a plugin, allows you to play SWFs.
What I want it for is for all the software that I CAN’T get elsewhere – and yes, there’s some pretty neat stuff for BeOS that I miss using (need to fix my x86 box).
So – when they have a release ready, I’ll buy it – and I’ll be happy about it, I expect.
>I thought, BeOS has a real microkernel?
No, BeOS has a micro-kernel-like design, it is not pure mk. It was mk back in the 1996 days..
>BeOS GUI Tools exist
Sorry Simon. These are just not good enough, neither industry standard, neither powerful enough. Nowhere near the power or usage of QT or QNX’s app or VStudio’s or Apple’s tools… To survive these days you really need some very powerful stuff, that people know how to use. Your app is really interesting, but not standard in many ways.
“A Flash update would be nice – there IS General Coffee Company’s flash player that, while it’s not a plugin, allows you to play SWFs.”
IT IS plugin. Drop that player in Opera or Mozilla/Firebird plugins folder, and you’ll see.
>I thought, BeOS has a real microkernel?
<<<No, BeOS has a micro-kernel-like design, it is not pure mk. It was mk back in the 1996 days..
I disagree that it was “mk back in the 1996 days”. While the definition of what a cutting edge micro-kernel contains may have shifted in the last 10 years (i.e. QNX6 kernel (32K) is physically bigger than QNX4 kernel (10K), but QNX6 kernel can run stand-alone whereas the QNX4 kernel must operate with a process manager which actually makes QNX4+proc larger than QNX6), the basic definition that everybody “informally” uses everyday has always been is that whether even a single line of the device drivers are in kernel space — and in this most basic definition, BeOS was never a micro-kernel ever, not in 2003, not in 1996, and not in 1990.
Everybody claims that their kernel is either micro-kernel or highly modular. Remember even WinNT kernel is marketed as a micro-kernel and highly modular.
The problem with BeOS is that demographics of their fans — 99% of them are technical writers and musicians who self-taught themselves on how to program. They don’t have a solid electrical/computer engineering background and with a little bit of anti-MSFT bashing — they bought the marketing BS. Just look at the slashdot postings — alot of them still think that BeOS is a micro-kernel.
Most of the BeOS fans STILL thinks that BeOS is a micro-kernel (false), kernel written in C++ (false, it’s written in C), kernel is 64 bit (false, only the filesystem is 64 bit), api’s written in C++ automatically is better one written in C (false, even the guy who invented C++ at Bell Labs says that C++ ain’t the magic bullet).
Just being to be a little faster than Windows95 DOESN’T automatically makes BeOS the world’s most advanced OS.
Sorry Simon. These are just not good enough, neither industry standard, neither powerful enough. Nowhere near the power or usage of QT or QNX’s app or VStudio’s or Apple’s tools… To survive these days you really need some very powerful stuff, that people know how to use. Your app is really interesting, but not standard in many ways.
Eugenia, I can’t understand how you can make a claim like this when you know nothing about them and I know you have never used ReactoGraph. You don’t know if they are as powerful as QT, ar VStudio, of Apple’s tools. In fact, I have evidence that ReactoGraph is more powerful, easier to use, and more standard than all of these. I have analyzed all these tools and they are far from being usable, or even designed for human beings. They are powerful, at being bad. In our lab we have analyzed each one and found many many problems with these. Tools today are still in the stone age when it comes to designing functional applications for human beings. Just because you can do something with them does not make them good…
Standards do not mean that you can’t use different approaches, or tools, to solve problems. Visual programming languages are not textual, but that does not make them non-standard. They employ object-orientation, drag and drop GUI creation, compilation, debugging, standard data-types, integration with other languages, versioning, documentation, and at the same time provide things other language types can’t like automatic syntax correctness, type free paramerters, concurrent run-edit cycles where you can change the code while you run the program, specialized attension to cognitive requirements of developers, and a host of other benifits.
the point remains Simon. BeOS/Zeta do not have full/powerful and READY to use dev tools. Where is purify? Where is quantify? Where is a better debugger? Where is a capable profiler? Where is the latest gcc that works and being compatible with older beos libs?
Nowhere.
Your ReactoGraph app might be all that great. But I see no download link or purchase link even.
“A Flash update would be nice – there IS General Coffee Company’s flash player that, while it’s not a plugin, allows you to play SWFs.”
IT IS plugin. Drop that player in Opera or Mozilla/Firebird plugins folder, and you’ll see.
Hmm…didn’t know that. When I last used BeOS Mozilla was just barely becoming useable, and I never cared enough for Opera’s old version to pay $40 for it. (I always thought that they had a bit of nerve selling an outdated browser for the same price as their new one for other platforms.)
When I get the new box up I’ll try that. Thanks!