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Any Fellow BeOS Users Here?
- Thread starter tjwett
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Sun Baked
macrumors G5
They are more realistic about the prospects for the future of BeOS than the Amigans.
With Amiga, Inc. still in bankruptcy and the saving grace OS for the next generation machine sold off to another company... it definitely makes for interesting reading on how these forums will be interacting with court cases in the future at the very least.
With Amiga, Inc. still in bankruptcy and the saving grace OS for the next generation machine sold off to another company... it definitely makes for interesting reading on how these forums will be interacting with court cases in the future at the very least.
mkrishnan
Moderator emeritus
Sun Baked said:
I loved Amiga OS, so don't get me wrong, and I always think fondly of it, but I want it to come back like I want 80s feathered hairstyles to come back. Its best left in the wistful past. 🙂 It is amazing how there seems to be a news article about it being resurrected every year or so. They should just open-source it and be done with it. 😀
alex_ant
macrumors 68020
Your chances of achieving perfect hardware compatibility with BeOS are best if you have a machine that was top of the line in 1999. There are patches and workarounds for the Athlon and P4 but Be never officially supported anything made after early 2001. BeOS has been dead for about 3 years now and you can only tack so much onto a rotting carcass, or whatever. You can find a list of drivers at: http://www.bebits.com/browse/14 but a lot of them are hacky and low-quality (opensores). I would recommend not aiming for the fastest possible PC to use - BeOS is really fast even on a 400MHz Pentium with Matrox G400, and since there is very little useful software available for it it's not like you'll be using it as your primary workstation (I hope!) so save some money.
I still have BeOS running on a 450Mhz Pentium II in my rack. It's a great OS. It runs great on that hardware, but I haven't bothered putting it on anything newer because there would be hassles finding drivers, and it already runs pretty fast on that machine. You could save yourself some money by just going down to the local Goodwill/St. Vincent dePaul/thrift store and buying a PC with the 440BX chipset and supported sound/graphics/Ethernet hardware for $25 (that's what those machines cost in my town). Toshiba Equium series and Dell OptiPlex GX1 are what I've run it on, neat small-form-factor boxes with the 440BX and ATI Rage Pro Turbo (I think) graphics.
Sadly, I don't use BeOS all that much any more. I mostly keep it around for nostalgia and because it's fun to use. I mostly use my Mac now.
Didn't I read that someone is trying to clone BeOS as an open source project, with support for modern hardware?
Crikey
Sadly, I don't use BeOS all that much any more. I mostly keep it around for nostalgia and because it's fun to use. I mostly use my Mac now.
Didn't I read that someone is trying to clone BeOS as an open source project, with support for modern hardware?
Crikey
Sun Baked
macrumors G5
The company went bankrupt AGAIN when the OS was supposed to be going beta, it just hit the Golden Master of the beta not long ago.mkrishnan said:
Right now Amiga OS 4.0 is the PPC version of the OS, it's closer than many OSs to being released but is mired in court.
The thread from the current holder of the distribution rights to the OS certainly is entertaining, especially on how public forum interfere in today's court process.
Duff-Man
Contributor
Duff-Man says....I used Be on my pre-G3 Mac for a while, and continued up until v5 on my Dell PC at work...but I ditched it a few years ago when the Dell needed a rebuild and I've not had the time to re-install it - nor any real reason to anymore. was cool when it first came out but was never really ready to use as a "primary" system. Gobe Productive was a nice little suite that had potential though - still have my boxed copy of v2 of that one....oh yeah!
One of the earlier versions of the BeOS made my old 6500 feel like I always imagined Copland would--I could even run multiple simultaneous quicktime movies smoothly on that old 250Mhz 603e!
Glad I waited, of course, but it was a heck of an OS when it was new. Personally, I'd get my hands on a version 3 or 4 era copy and install it on a pre-G3 Mac--probably a bit more expensive than a cheap x86 box, but more fun, too.
Glad I waited, of course, but it was a heck of an OS when it was new. Personally, I'd get my hands on a version 3 or 4 era copy and install it on a pre-G3 Mac--probably a bit more expensive than a cheap x86 box, but more fun, too.
hey, there they are! i knew there were some of you left, if even in memory. up until now i've been running BeOS on a 350mhz AMD Frankenputer. and it was FAST FAST FAST. quite amazing what a good file system can do for an OS. i just got my new Be machine up and running; 2ghz HP Pavillion with an Athlon XP. the fix was so simple too, just edited the kernal_intel file and put the hard drive in the new machine. voila. talk about speed! OS X is robust, secure, and stable but BeOS is a whole 'nother monster. as for the numerous open source and hacked distributions, they are indeed making great progress. Zeta is doing well, and BeOS Max edition continues to beef things up. i still prefer to use the "legit" Personal Edition though. if any of you out there want a taste of a simple, and well thought out OS (other than OS X of course) and you have a Windows puter i highly recommend downloading the Personal Edition for free. it'll launch just like a program within Windows. and after you fall in love with it i'll help you get it running on a real HD in full force. diss that Windows and make a BeBox, you won't regret it. it can be depressing at times. it's so good you might want to make it your primary OS. but you'll always be unable to find that one last driver. 🙁