[dba-Tech] Another OS operating system

Hans-Christian Andersen hans.andersen at phulse.com
Fri Feb 1 11:37:02 CST 2013


Hi Mark,

You are correct. I do have some affection for it, in the sense that it saddens me when technology with great potential that is technically better than the competition dies prematurely because of market realities. BeOS was fast and a really well designed OS. It didn't have tons of legacy junk to complicate things and it was capable of proper multitasking. There are YouTube videos out there that demonstrate just how many system intensive things they were able to run concurrently without the OS breaking a sweat or slowing/stuttering and all on the modest technology we had back then (early pentiums etc).

BeOS was a chance for us to have a clean break - a well thought out OS that was designed to take proper advantage of the more modern hardware and CPU architecture of the time. Instead, what we got were legacy systems that were slowly brought up to modern standard (and, even then, not completely) by means of plugging and patching. And, as a software developer, that makes me sad.

- Hans


On 2013-01-31, at 1:03 AM, Mark Breen <marklbreen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Hans-Christian,
> 
> I can see that you had some affection for BeOS,
> 
> thanks for a nice email,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 28 January 2013 09:50, Hans-Christian Andersen
> <hans.andersen at phulse.com>wrote:
> 
>> Hi Mark,
>> 
>> No, Haiku is meant to be binary compatible with BeOS, so it does not run
>> Linux binaries from the outset (but it is entirely possible, of course).
>> 
>> Haiku is not a new OS. It has been around for a while actually. It's been
>> around since the early 2000's. The history behind BeOS was that it was a
>> new operating system that was designed to be heavily multi-core and
>> multi-tasking (remember back in those days when the Pentium Pro machines
>> were actually capable of multiple processors?). The company, Be Inc., was
>> trying to compete in a heavily Windows dominated market and they were
>> selling machines called BeBox's.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, no one was interested in buying anything that wasn't
>> Microsoft at the time, so BeOS never had any traction in the industry,
>> despite being vastly superior (in every way conceivable) to Microsoft
>> Windows.
>> 
>> When Apple was failing to produce an update to their operating system, Mac
>> OS 9, BeOS was one of the two options Apple was considering as being the
>> next update to Apple OS. Unfortunately for Be Inc., Steve Jobs had returned
>> to Apple and was pushing for NeXT, since this was his project prior to
>> (re)joining Apple.
>> 
>> Apple decided to go with NeXT. BeOS's last ditch effort to stay alive
>> among the sharks (Microsoft) failed and the company folded in 2001.
>> 
>> It's a shame. BeOS was an amazing operating system. It was far ahead of
>> everything out there from a technology point of view and it ran circles
>> around every other OS in terms of performance and stability at the time.
>> 
>> Palm then acquired Be Inc and did bugger all with it (as usual), so the
>> Haiku team took it upon themselves to rewrite BeOS and they called it
>> Haiku. It's been in alpha forever because it is enough of a forgotten OS
>> that few people care, but enough care to spend time working on it with a
>> passion.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, Haiku can only claim to be BeOS compatible. They had to
>> rewrite everything, so it isn't really the same OS underneath, but they've
>> done an excellent job considering!
>> 
>> R.I.P. BeOS.
>> 
>> - Hans
>> 
>> 
>> On 2013-01-28, at 1:15 AM, Mark Breen <marklbreen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello Jim
>>> 
>>> Do you think that Linux apps will install and run on Haiku?  If not, does
>>> it have future at all?
>>> 
>>> I do admire the vision of anyone that attempts to start a new OS.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 28 January 2013 07:10, Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> So here is something interesting...another OSS and it is not Linux
>>>> 
>>>> It is called Haiku. Whether the OS, based on BeOS, will make it past the
>>>> development stage is a question as they are still trying to put enough
>>>> funds
>>>> together to make the dream a reality.
>>>> 
>>>> Below is their site:
>>>> https://www.haiku-os.org/
>>>> 
>>>> Here is a Wikipedia oversight:
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
>>>> 
>>>> And a link to many images of the various product screens:
>> http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_rn=1&gs_ri=hp&cp=8&gs_id=
>> 4&xhr=t&q=Haiku+OS&biw=1174&bih=649&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&um=1&ie=UTF-
>>>> 8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=bSIGUaPJNpCUigLw7oHoDg
>>>> 
>>>> And finally a article from a recent product convert:
>>>> http://blog.leahhanson.us/falling-for-haiku-os.html
>>>> 
>>>> Jim
>>>> 
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