Chrome megaphone barks / Autumn presents First Alpha / The Spring of Haiku

filthy light thief — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:05:36 -0800

BeOS has been reborn a number of times, often without significant success but things are looking up. Starting in 1991 with the production of an all-in-one hardware/software home multimedia computer (the BeBox, the first of which was available to the public in 1994), the possible purchase by Apple was at the height of success for BeOS (instead Apple chose to buy NeXT in 1996), and the low point of being when BeOS was bought by Palm for $11 million in 2001, where it became part of the Palm OS Cobalt that nobody wanted. In 2002, news of BeOS' rebirth as yellowTAB came out, with another shift as yellowTAB became magnussoft ZETA, which finally folded in 2007, as their figures were far below expectations. From here, fans and enthusiasts took over, with a number of attempts to re-create BeOS from scratch. Most failed, but Haiku (previously) has survived, and today they announced that the first alpha version of the Haiku operating system is available for download (direct download or through torrent), and a preliminary review sounds positive. Starting on the AT&T Hobbit processor, the early BeBoxen then changed to two PowerPC processors running at 66 or 133 MHz. Be, Inc. made the decision to port BeOS to Intel chipsets in a hope to broaden their market with the R3 release in March 1998, finally giving away the OS for personal use (which was later modified by users after there was no official support), shifting gears and retooling the OS for internet appliances (BeIA). None of this helped enough, and Palm's final purchase price of $11 million was a fraction of the $200 million Be hoped to get from Apple in the years before (Apple was only willing to pay $125 million). The BeOS interface is well recognized, and many people have copied the design into themes and skins for modifiable programs. The release of this alpha was also covered on Slashdot, where a commenter noted it's usable, but lacking in wifi support. A follow-up noted [t]he wireless stack is a work in progress (see also: Haikuware Blog), based on the FreeBSD 8.0 WLAN stack. There is a bounty for this goal. Haiku was chosen as the project name because of the intended simplicity of the project, and as a tribute to the error messages from NetPositive (which also lead to the FPP title). Before anyone tells me it's not Autumn yet, I'm claiming this falls under the meteorological Autumn for the northern hemisphere.

haiku falls in place

kliuless — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:20:08 -0800

BeOS is back! Immortalised by Neal Stephenson as the Batmobile of operating systems, it's been reincarnated as Haiku :P

BeOS 5 will be free

frog — Fri, 18 Feb 2000 03:38:00 -0800

BeOS 5 will be free for download later this quarter. Smart move. I can't wait to try it out.

Now that Sun's Solaris 8 OS is going to be free,

mathowie — Thu, 27 Jan 2000 02:24:13 -0800

Now that Sun's Solaris 8 OS is going to be free, and the BeOS too, I wonder if it's too little, too late. Will we see jumps in their respective shares of the OS market? Or is this a last ditch attempt to compete with Linux?

grant — Thu, 09 Dec 1999 20:44:04 -0800

Ever noticed that the also-rans who have yet to be acquired by one of their peers seem to glom together like cornmeal in water? Take a look at who Be is partnering with for their Stinger internet appliance software: Bitstream - clearly a runner-up to Adobe in the typeface technology department; and Opera - who are trying desperately to be the alternative browser of choice. Who's next? Corel, and their latest BeOS port of WordPerfect?

MetaFilter posts tagged with BeOS

Chrome megaphone barks / Autumn presents First Alpha / The Spring of Haiku

haiku falls in place

BeOS 5 will be free

Now that Sun's Solaris 8 OS is going to be free,