BeOS For Linux 309
Bob Gortician writes "The BlueOS guys have posted a few screenshots of their progress in porting the BeOS interface to Linux. Note that this is an intermediary step toward a BeOS clone OS. " I actually had a Be machine for a while, and played with it - nice OS, and well thought out, just a problem of very little applications for it.
More information on BlueOS (Score:5, Informative)
Also, click here [osnews.com] to read the Interview with the BlueOS project leader at OSNews.
Re:Not so much applications as... (Score:4, Informative)
Back in the day (Score:3, Informative)
IMHO it could have been more than a PDA or a toaster oven OS. Too bad more apps wern't produced. I actually think I still have a CodeWarrior CD that will let me compile on Mac to Be. Not that i even know where to find a Mac anymore,*besides the one at work that runs linux*.
And does anyone remember that app they had that bounced a ball from one window into another window. In the day that was cool.
ahhh.. misspelling blis! Maybe i should have the doctors remove that 6th finger, they just don't make keyboards with us in mind!
OpenBeOS (Score:5, Informative)
That's nice; Open BeOS is also coming along nicely (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What is this? (Score:5, Informative)
So, in a sense it is like KDE and Gnome, it is a full desktop & development environment on top of XFree & Linux (they plan to remove XFree completely in the future), however lots of things will change in order the system to "feel" more BeOS-ish. They also apply some additional patches to the Linux kernel for better UI response, as this was one of the strong points of BeOS.
Joe Sixpack (Score:2, Informative)
To save time, we should just symlink to the earlier desktop discussions. Here [slashdot.org] ya go.
I'm just sitting here wondering why we seek the acceptance of Joe Sixpack.
the *REAL* problem (Score:2, Informative)
Ummmm, try "just a little problem of a monopoly using illegal business practices to make sure it never reaches the market."
Hell, PC manufactures were offered the operating system for free if they would just put it on their machines! (Not even replacing Window$, but dual-booting along side it!)
To get the apps, it had to have some penetration in the market. It was penetrating the Microsoft controlled market that was the problem. Oh wait, are we talking about that anti-trust thing again!?!?!
For a time, I used (and loved) this operating system. It had enough apps to do *most* of what I needed to do.
-Derek
Re:More information on BlueOS (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fragmentation... (Score:3, Informative)
GUI without the GUTS (Score:5, Informative)
While BeOS had a nice GUI, its read strength was its highly efficient threading model, which made the OS very effecient and responsive. The OS was especially adept at efficiently utilizing multiple CPUs.
While it is certainly nice that Linux users will have the opportunity to benefit from a nice new GUI and API, the best part of the OS, alas, is being left behind...
Re:Linux's true way? (Score:3, Informative)
1. Power management: Darwin works very well with the hardware (iBook). This manifests in more than one place. Longer battery life, and sleep works well (by shutting the lid).
2. The option to go into Quartz/Aqua: One of the things I hated about using Linux/x86 (what I ran as my main OS for a couple years before getting a Mac) was having to reboot into Windows to play a game or use certain useful applications for which there's no equvilent in Linux. This was true back when I used Linux a lot more than it is now, though. But with OS X, I can play games and run real, useful apps. And if I choose to run XFree86 straight out of the text console in Darwin rather in tandem with Quartz, I can always quit X11, and go back into Quartz. A lot less hassle.
Re:Hours for iTunes? (Score:3, Informative)
But the consistency problems are hardly minor. They're part of a disturbing trend with Apple -- they're moving away from usability as their primary concern and going toward flashiness. Sadly, I've had much better out-of-the-box experiences with Linux (mostly Mandrake, but Red Hat is getting better and better) than I did with OS X. OS X is frustrating to use... Linux Just Works (tm). It's all a matter of taste. But I still wouldn't set up my grandmother with a Mac.
(I pick on iTunes because it's the single most frustrating end-user app I've ever used. It won't play OGGs, ignores some directories of MP3s at random, is a pain to reorder files in (I have them sorted by filename in subdirectories for a reason, thank you. If you're going to sort by ID3 tags, at least do it by track number instead of track name!), etc. etc. It's just painful to use.)