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February 13, 2008

geekery

The BeOS just won’t die

Posted Feb. 13, ’08, 8:11 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Geekery

Haiku I’m not sure whether I should cheer its tenacity or be creeped out by the way it just won’t stay in its grave, but the BeOS is back yet again in open source for as Haiku. Back in the 90s, many thought Apple would replace the long in the tooth Mac OS (technologically speaking, natch). Of course, that never happened and the OS never found a suitable home.

While Linux has certainly shown the strength in an open source OS, it’s never had a consumer/end user focus. Haiku’s entire focus is on that market. Should they work out the bugs, it could be a real contender for that market of dissatisfied Vista users. They still have some real dealbreaking bugs to overcome, but in the meantime, you can try it out.

For those that, like me, rock VMware’s Fusion, there are disk images available for download. I might actually give it a try myself.


7 Comments

bwc8 said:

I was floored when I noticed that the digital recording system (can't recall the name of the software) in my bro-in-law's recording studio ran on BeOS. Wacky Stuff.

February 13, 2008 9:03 AM
imacpr0n Author Profile Page said:

I played with the BeOS a little many years ago, so I was excited to see it still alive. The latest VMWare image at the Files archive worked great in Fusion for me. And, wow, does it boot and run fast!

February 13, 2008 9:35 AM
imacpr0n Author Profile Page said:

I played with the BeOS a little many years ago, so I was excited to see it still alive. The latest VMWare image at the Files archive worked great in Fusion for me. And, wow, does it boot and run fast!

February 13, 2008 9:35 AM
sdkay said:

>While Linux has certainly shown the strength in an open source OS, it’s never had a consumer/end user focus.


1) Linux is the kernel

2) Have you not used a recent release of, say, Ubuntu?

February 13, 2008 12:08 PM
Dave-O said:

"Back in the 90s, many thought Apple would replace the long in the tooth Mac OS (technologically speaking, natch). Of course, that never happened..."

Yes it did, it just wasn't BeOS that replaced it.

February 13, 2008 2:42 PM
Scott Puopolo said:

to bwc8:

Probably was a Level Control System installation; their implementation is probably the best display of BeOS's potential. Was being used to digitally control audio / video / effects in museums, Vegas productions, concerts, etc. Very cool. Also check out www.tunetrackersystems.com to see how it is being used for radio station automation.

February 13, 2008 5:55 PM
Nutela said:

Roland sold a HW recording studio (basically a PC with a celeron cpu and BeOS on the HDD) called edirol or something.
There was also thing called Radar which was a multitrack recorder.
There is a huge (in beos terms ) app being created by MindWork right now.

Even Steinberg's Nuendo was seen running on BeOS.

Those were the days of dreams from which all were woken up from in a very nasty manner: Be Inc. 's famous focus shift to internet appliances.

Bye bye Be. Round 2: Haiku

February 14, 2008 3:11 AM

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