Haiku: BeOS Reborn

[Jonathan Dlouhy]

Michael Haney wrote:
> Just learned about this one.  When I worked in support for HP I
> remembered reading about BeOS.  In the 90's it was praised for its
> multimedia prowess and was a contender as a replacement to Mac OS
> Classic along with Next Step (a Steve Jobs project, which was bought
> by Apple and some of its features made it into Mac OS X).
>
> The company that developed BeOS, Be Inc., went under a long time ago
> but a small community of devoted users and developers are keeping it
> alive.  There have been past efforts to recreate BeOS since the OS
> never went open source (a company called Zeta owns the rights to the
> source now).  Haiku is the latest and apparently shows a lot of
> promise even though their code is still in the Alpha stages.
>
> While not Linux or Ubuntu related its nice to see vintage OSes like
> this one appearing again and getting attention.  Both Gnome and KDE
> have BeOS themes, BTW.  There
>
> http://www.haiku-os.org/
>
> Speaking of vintage OSes, I used to work for a company in Detroit, MI
> which sold IBM OS/2 Warp.  It was before Windows 95 made an
> appearance.  I used OS/2 Warp quite a bit and it was a very fast and
> robust OS which had impressive technology under the hood.  I compared
> it later to Windows 95 and there just wasn't any comparison.  OS/2
> Warp clearly had Win95 beat, but IBM just couldn't compete with
> Micro$oft's marketing department and the borderline illegal
> contractual agreements made with PC makers prevented them from
> offering anything else other than Win95.
Thanks for the great memories. I ran OS/2 until it became impractical. 
Same with BeOS. I loved both systems and was sorry to see them fall by 
the wayside. Mercifully Linux was there to cushion the fall!

Jon