BeOS Ready for a Comeback as Zeta OS

Anil Kandangath writes "BeOS, the operating system that could have been the foundation for Mac OS X, but almost died, instead has returned as Zeta OS -- which is supposed to be fast, stable, media centric and boot within 15 seconds. Zeta is being released by yellowTAB of Germany and has applications such as an office suite and the Firefox browser bundled with it. Most BeOS applications will also run as-is. Screenshots are available." According to the NewsForge story linked there, the release could be as soon as next month.

Blessing in disguise?

[QQoicu2]

Seems like the Unix base for OS X worked out pretty damn well for them... I don't think the boom Apple is going through right now could have been any more significant with a BeOS-based OS.

Re:yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well sure, if you hate Apple and wished it had dropped off the face of the earth in the late 90s, picking BeOS would be the way to go.

Re:Well, yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows actually starts pretty fast, not much more than 15 seconds. This is because it is still loading stuff after it displays the desktop, while you are trying to start up Word, Firefox and whatnot.

IMHO it's quite annoying, I would rather the boot process take longer and it be ready to go the moment the desktop pops-up.

Re:yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Without Jobs Apple would be worse off and near death, and this project would not exist?

Re:Well, yeah...

[SecretAsianMan]

Doubt it. If there's any "supercomputer" running Windows, it's likely a grid of PCs. The bootup there is going to be at least equal to the boot time on a single PC.

Looks Promising...

[RedElf]

...but without the applications I need and use today it will either remain the OS of tomorrow, or never get off the ground.

Simple logic here folks, if I can get to work driving my car, why should I ride the bus which is more environmental friendly when it only goes half way to my destination?

Re:yes!

[2nd Post!]

The world seems pretty happy with iTunes, the colored iMac, the iPod, and the iPod mini.

How would the world be better off if Apple chose BeOS over Jobs? It's not immediately obvious to me.

Re:Say what now?

[jmunkki]

When Apple's Copland plans failed, they looked for outside help. Jean-Louis Gassée's Be Inc. was one of those possible sources. Steve Jobs was the one they eventually chose.

BeOS would have been more lightweight and probably more efficient, but OS X is maturing into something quite useable. The UNIX roots of OS X have helped lure new developers and new types of users to the platform. Having more developers is never a bad thing.

BeOS would also have been a cleaner start. It's difficult to say how much (or if) UNIX is holding back MacOS X. I find OS X somewhat bloated, especially in terms of the number of files that it is comprised of. I wish it took less time to make a backup.

BeOS is/was also advanced in terms of file meta data. That situation is still quite messy in MacOS X.

Way to kill it before it starts

[YrWrstNtmr]

"..it is expected that it will sell for approximately $100 plus tax."

What can I do with it that I can't do with a free Linux distro, or the Windows that I already have? Tell me why I should drop $100 on this.

Re:Well, yeah...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

My Linux box boots in 1.5 minutes. Once every year and a half. Also fast enough.

Re:15 Seconds?

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> That's pretty good. Does anyone else know of a fast booting OS? I personally hate waiting for my PC to boot up.

Most of the time my "boot up" is waiting 3 seconds for the monitor to warm up. I don't shut of the PC, just the monitor.

If you want a fast boot time, run linux and leave it running...

Re:Well, yeah...

[slavemowgli]

Actually, the rule of thumb is... the bigger the iron, the longer it takes to boot up.

Re:Well, yeah...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"IMHO it's quite annoying, I would rather the boot process take longer and it be ready to go the moment the desktop pops-up."

That's funny because I can't stand having to wait for every little thing to load before starting.

Maybe I'm just spoiled, but the difference is more startling when one uses a dual proc machine. My XP machine at work gets up to speed quickly. Almost as soon as my desktop is up, I can start loading my apps. On my laptop, I see that lag that you're describing. I'm reasonbly certain that the other processor is doing the work. Great stuff.

In any event, at least seeing that your computer is almost there is a psychological relief. Sort of like 2 minutes of commercials is usually better than seeing 2 minutes of black screen. (Which NBC likes to do here frrm time to time, don't ask me why.)

Re:Why Zeta?

[Bootle]

Yep, never saw a zeta used in math or physics, or ya know, greece

Riemann-zeta what.....

Re:Same failed OS, Zany new name!

[argent]

Hardware is fungible.

It doesn't matter what the processor is, it just matters what the software running on it is.

BeOS ... eh. It's got all kinds of nifty ideas, but it seems like it's also got a bad case of second system syndrome. When I was playing around with the first PC-compatible versions... they actually managed to require more and faster hardware than Windows to get comparable performance. Now that might have been pretty marginal hardware by today's standards, but still... given that it was built from a fresh start they should have done better.

I'm more interested in the reborn Amiga OS.

Is there anything new?

[teslatug]

Have they made any major improvements since Be went under, or have they just slapped some make up on the last version and are trying to sell that?

Re:Source Code

[agildehaus]

I am a little weary about the legality of it as they have not publicly stated anything (this could be due to a variety of things including agreements with the company that owns the code, Palm Inc).

But YellowTab does have the source. They have fixed problems with the kernel which as far as I know could not be fixed by spending some time with a hex editor. There are some disagreements as to how they obtained it, but it is accepted now that they have it (and all of it, I'd imagine).

Hee hah!

[Orion Blastar]

Sure, pay $100 for an OS that does not run the latest Windows applications, hardly has any applications it runs natively, has limited driver support, and it is an effort to revive an OS that already killed at least one other company. How can you go wrong?

On the plus side, it should have no malware available for it.

I think Mac support for BeOS was killed when Apple refused to release info on the G3 Macs to Be, Inc. Therefore Be targeted the X86 market, hoping to save the company that way, because that is what NeXT did. Only NeXT tanked and got saved by Apple, yet Be, Inc. tanked and nobody saved it, and Palm bought out the corpse and buried it, until this Zeta Zombie rose from the dead.

I think I'll take my chances with Linux, KNOPPIX/KANOITX seems to be stable enough, boots from a live CD, and has an option to be installed on a hard drive.

I mean unless most of the major OSS projects are being converted to ZetaOS/BeOS, I think you can forget convicing enough people to buy a copy to make it worth their while.

Re:For those who know...

[dysprosia]

To say that Objective-C is that ugly implies that you mightn't have had that much experience with the deeper aspects of Objective-C, or haven't really leveraged them to your advantage. Categories, for example, are a tremendously powerful tool and can be used quite beautifully to logically structure classes. There's other benefits of course, why don't you check out the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on the language and find out? Or if it's just the syntax, there's a good semantic reason why Smalltalk syntax would be advantageous over dot notation, if you have an understanding of how messaging works in Objective-C.

Objective-C dispatch is not really that expensive in any case. There is caching involved, so any costs are countered anyway. With judicious use of static typing as well as making use of dynamic typing, one can take these costs down further.

As in comparison with Java - well, trying to do certain things in Cocoa and Objective-C just can't be done in Java. Have a look at the Stepwise articles Categorically Speaking [stepwise.com] and Java Categories: A Modest Proposal [stepwise.com] to see some examples of what I mean.

If you understand the language fully, you'll come to understand why the way it is much better.

Re:right...

[ciole]

Even if this were true, I doubt the need for C programmers to port to BeOS would put even the tiniest dent in the supply of currently underemployed C/C++ programmers, so your friend may be out of luck.

On the other hand, like donating to charities, learning C is a worthwhile occupation no matter what ridiculous motive one has.

Re:Sadly

[Jeremi]

BeOS/Zeta still can't even boot on a machine with a gig or more memory. As the world upgrades to more modern machines, BeOS loses more and more potential users.

It's actually worse than that... trying to find a machine that has a supported video chipset AND supported audio AND supported networking AND support motherboard chipset all at the same time is a great way to spend a couple of weeks if you have nothing better to do. BeOS is a great OS, but not really worth the effort to get running on a new machine. In any case, I think OS/X has reached coolness-parity with BeOS now, so for those who want a cool OS and can afford it, I'd say just buy a Mac :^)

-Jeremy (posting with NetPositive running on BeOS on a dual P3/650, btw)

Re:Well, yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until your windows install craps out and starts stalling for over a minute at the welcome screen.

Re:Windows boot times

[renoX]

"PC's will take no longer then 10 seconds to boot into Windows XP on a clean install"

You're exagerating, I think that XP take at least 20s on a computer 10* more performant.

With BeOS, the computer was totally functionnal as soon as it gave you the hand.
XP cheats by displaying the desktop but not giving you the hand, so that its boot time appear lower than it really is.

Also on BeOS, the system felt very responsive, more than XP running on a much more powerful hw, granted the applications which have gained weight with eye-candy improvement doesn't help.
The bad part of BeOS is that there were very few applications, of course.

Re:Well, yeah...

[be-fan]

What the heck are you talking about? Lot's of desktops reboot only rarely. Fast boot isn't a very important critereon (though it's nice for laptops). Keeping the machine on all the time doesn't waste a lot of energy, because it goes into sleep mode which uses very little power.

Re:For those who know...

[nate nice]

Syntax is definitely an issue but the real problem with the syntax is the way it is interleaved with regular C. I don't see the advantage to it and think the language design should have been pure and focused on it's OO premise. It allows too much nonsense interleaved with everything else. Of course you can mainly program around this, as in not use many C libraries and function call style, but this also proves it shouldn't even be in the language. It's a good language built on a poorly chosen foundation. Why did it naturally cripple itself?

Re:Say what now?

[mabhatter654]

you don't understand the difference... in BeOS, the metadata was part of the file, not just something tacked on somewhere else. The whole file system was written around attaching metadata directly to the file...and updating it as you moved the file around.

The best example of this in Be was the Address book application. The only element in the file was the contact name... everything else was metadata... fields for address, email, phone, etc were directly searchable from the query in the filesystem. It's totally different than how everybody else uses "bundle files" [ala thumbs or .dat] or "quick readers" [ala MS office] Be was the perfect OS for the internet world... all the W3C "buzzwords" like XML and such would have thrived on a BeOS system. Be was just so far ahead nobody knew what to do with it.

BeOS suffered because it was far to radical for time... It had a nearly AS400-like "flat" system to it so you didn't [actually it even hindered] need development of 50 different helper apps... as soon as one "replicator" was created it could be used by any other program in the system. That turned off a lot of commercial people because you didn't sell an "application" you sold a set of "tools" for the OS to use. [imagine buying corel and adobe and working with both sets of tools on the same document at once! BeOS could have done that] It's a great base for OSS because the inter-module communication is well documented [and encouraged!]...you can replace parts at will as long as you follow the interface rules. That's how the Zeta and Hiakau groups have kept it going... slowly reworking each module to update the system.

Re:Wow...

[Repugnant_Shit]

OTOH, OsDir deserves it. Look at the screenshots! How many of them are actually useful? OsDir loves posting too many screenshots whenever they review something.

Oh hey! This OS lets you move the mouse to the RIGHT SIDE OF THE SCREEN TOO! Take a shot!!!

Re:Well, yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Linux can not match Windows with fast boot time, then it does not deserve to become a major desktop OS.

Wow. That is a really stupid comment for so many reasons. One of which being that Windows gets you on to the desktop before it loads everything up. I have a BBC Micro I want to sell you too.

A Floater

[borud]

Is BeOS going to be another floater that won't flush, like the Amiga? Every time you think you've heard the last of it, it pops back up again, and you have to listen to all the fans go on about how special it is.

Why can't they go after a market where it is needed? For instance, there are more and more ATMs popping up running windows and misbehaving in ways that you didn't think was possible for such a critical system.
Obviously BeOS, or whatever the marketroids call it this week, is stable, lean, fast, and seems to support media processing well. Why not go for the upscale embedded market? Why not go for set-top boxes, portable media players etc?

No business is going to jump ship and switch from Windows, OSX, Linux or whatever they run, to BeOS as their primary desktop OS. Come on.

Re:Well, yeah...

[Deslock]

Does it really matter if it takes 15, 30, or 45 seconds to boot? OS X *always* comes out of standby in 1-3 seconds and only needs to be shutdown now and then for a system update.

Not to sound like a Mac zealot, but this is in contrast to my Windows laptops (Dell Inspiron 8000, Sony SRX99, Fujitsu P2040, Panasonic W2, etc), which have all been annoyingly temperamental when it comes to standby. 80-90% of the time they resume in 3-6 seconds, but the rest of time they take 15-45 seconds (and once in a great while, they don't resume at all). It varies from model to model, but none of them have been as reliable and quick at resuming as the Macs I've used at home and at work (iMac, iBook, Powerbook, several Mac Minis).

Re:For those who know...

[gkitty]

I think your argument reflects your feelings on C. The object part of the syntax couldn't be simpler and expresses the messaging feature of the language clearly.

But you can't wish the C out of obj-C, that's one of the main attractions of the language. If you're going to write a codec (say) or an image filter, you use the object features to facilitate reuse of tight data munging code. Sometimes there are good reasons to prefer cstrings over string objects, and processor-native number types over number objects.

Objective-C is mostly about writing reusable C code. If you're big on OO dogma and objects everywhere it's a poor choice. But there's a good place for well structured, late-bound C too. Obj-c enables OO programming, but it deliberately does not impose it.

If you want pure and focused OO, you have your pick of a dozen flavors, but none will be the efficient system programming language the objc is.

Re:Well, yeah...

[Mr2cents]

My C=64 boots in 2 seconds. ;-)

Re:Well, yeah...

[Krusty_Klown]

You must work for Microsoft. "Look how fast it boots! We are number one!" I would say that Microsoft zealots should care more about security and stability. If Windows cannot match Linux in security and stability, then it does not deserve to become a major desktop OS.

Personally, I think it was a wise move

[theolein]

Considering the fact that Gassee apparently wanted $400 million in the end, I think it was a wise move.

Not only that, but the NeXT system had a significant userbase, and, more importantly, software. There was a large amount of software that was available on NeXT, some of which is still being added to OSX now (Apple's Pages software, for example, was once a NeXT app called, wait for it, Pages). Also, Next had the advantage of being used in research institutions (The WWW was developed on a NeXT by Tim Berners-Lee) and was one of the very first systems to offer a fully fledged web application server (WebObjects). The fact that NeXT also had the advantage of some 8 or 9 years of experience and development behind it didn't hurt its chances either.

Possibly, one of the additional factors in Apple's decision was the fact that basing the next Apple OS on BeOS would have meant using a completely untested system. Untested in the market, I mean. Given that Apple really was in dire straights at the time (1995-1996), I think Apple made a wise decision.

But who knows, perhaps BeOS would have made apple become the absolute killer in the OS world.

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[account_deleted]

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Interesting quotes

[beforewisdom]

"BeOS was a lighweight but full-fledged operating system designed from the ground up to be a desktop OS with strong multimedia capabilities. Its claim to fame was the real-time response of its graphical interface, even on low-powered hardware. Its minimalistic approach made it easy to use even for beginners. Its database-like BFS file system with indexed attributes made file searches a breeze. All of this in a system that could boot in 10 to 15 seconds on most hardware, and that was as stable as a rock."

AND

"... and a new non-destructive partition manager for easy installation of Zeta on machines that already have Windows or other OS installed. Zeta 1.0 will also come with numerous development tools, including Python 2.4 with a working Bethon (Python modules for Zeta), GNU bash 3.0, GNU coreutils (5.2.1), OpenSSH, and Bash autocomplete with Zeta-specific completion templates."

AND

"yellowTAB bundles many applications with Zeta, including an office suite called Gobe Productive that includes word processing, spreadsheet, graphics, and presentation applications; the Firefox Web browser; an instant messaging client for AIM (clients for MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, and Jabber are available separately); a CD burner and DVD player; numerous games; a PDF viewer and writer (you can create PDF files from any Zeta application that can print); a scanning front end; several emulators (BeBochs, DosBox, BeUAE, and others); and development tools. Zeta also benefits from the fact that most of the third-party BeOS applications found on Bebits.com can run on it as-is."

That last part is particularly interesting. It comes with an amiga emulator, a dos emulatior, and "bochs" which supposedly can run another operating system and that operating systems software within it.
If all of that works...I know a big "if"...there shouldn't any shortage of software.

Re:Well, yeah...

[drakken33]

The parent is probably posted as flamebait but I have some points to make so I'll put them here.

Assuming a fairly recent Linux distro (say from 2004 or even 2003) and the same hardware then you're comparing an OS that's over 6 years old and designed to run on the common hardware of the day with a far more recent OS. To make it a fair comparison you'd have to compare Win98 with a distro from '98.

This is a trap that a lot of posters are falling into. Even comparing WinXP with recent Linux distro releases is wrong. WinXP is designed to run on the hardware that was around in 2001. Linux moves far more quickly than Windows and software like KDE has had quite a few versions since WinXP was released. To make a fair comparison you have to compare WinXP with a distro from late 2001.

If you think comparing a recent Linux distro with WinXP (or even Win98) is fair then maybe you should compare the boot times of Win95 and Win98 with WinXP too because by extension that should also be a fair comparison.

Re:Well, yeah...

[Svet-Am]

actually, i'd be careful with comments like this. for people that use their computers every day, the thermal expansion/contraction that comes from cycling power from high-temp devices like modern CPUs can actually physically damage the device over the long run.

that, by and large, is why a lot of 'geeks' tend to leave their equipment on 24/7. Over the long haul, it is actually safer for the equipment to do this.

Granted, this argument requires several bits of information about the owner's usage habits. If one only uses the computer once a week for fifteen minutes, then it makes sense to power it off after each use.

However, if you use the computer everyday, from 5am until 11pm or midnight, it makes more sense to just leave it on because of the frequency of the power cycle.

I applaud the parent's concern for fossil fuels and protection of the environment (as most on /. would, I believe), but he neglected this kind of real-world concern.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Please MOD parent down or funny...

[NeedleSurfer]

It is funny and somewhat interesting in its funnyness but this value is totally irrelevant, your Linux, configured the same way as my Linux won't have the same result because the user is different and a lot of the reboots one experiences is directly linked to the usage he makes of his computer. I like to fiddle in my machine, I'm learning trough curiosity, I have a lot more chance to crash, hang or whatever and have to reboot than someone who's running the same server day in day out.

My last Mac on osX has been maybe rebooted 4-5 time because of something else than upgrades in its 5 years usage. However, since I'm now trying to make it an extension of my PC by integrating both computer togheter via networking stuff like VNC, DAVE et al. so they look like one machine to me, I've been rebooting it alot...

Same machine, same OS, same user, different results...

So I guess what I'm asking is don't MOD someone up just because he pulls a half decent joke about Windows unstability and Linux stability, what he said simply is irrevelant.

Re:NeXT was proven..

[LurkerXXX]

About point 3...

Apple actually made an offer for Be. It just wasn't as much money as the Be folks wanted. They didn't buy NeXT because of superior technology, but because they liked the total package (with Jobs) at that pricepoint better.

As far as JLG not having charisma, he had it, it was just that it was french charisma. How many American CEOs say that their product 'makes their nipples hard'? :)

Re:Offtopic, I know...

[izomiac]

I'm a newbie with Linux, so I didn't know that. I just get frusturated at how much effort it take to, for instance, mount a usb flash drive. In Windows it happens automatically, in BeOS it happens automatically or you can right click on your drive icon, go to mount, and click it. In Linux, after searching for the procedure for a while, the best method I found was to reboot into root, run a few (rather non-intuitive) commands on the command line, reboot again and essentially repeat that to undo it. While I like Linux's security and the power of the command line, I don't like it to hinder me that much, or have the command line compensate for something that should be in the GUI.

Electricity Usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us can't afford to have a 150W+ machine running 24/7. Mine has 4 fans, and a 380W power supply in it. Mandrake 10.0 doesn't seem to support low power mode on my AMD64.

If I had a Mac I would just put it to sleep like I do with my ibook. Mmmm Mac...