Haiku: BeOS Reborn

[Michael Haney]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 9:42 PM, Jonathan Dlouhy <dlouhy at charter.net> wrote:
> 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!
>

My first experience with Linux was back in 1998-99 with an early
version of RedHat.  It was pretty rough back then in those early days.
 Gnome back then didn't look like it does today.  Its looked a lot
like KDE with a Windows-ish start menu that had the Gnome paw-print
graphic on it.  That's what I remember at least.

I remember I also had to recompile the kernel to get sound to work
properly and add in the sound module.  There were no 3D acceleration
drivers for X Windows in those days either.  Despite how rough around
the edges and how non-newbie friendly Linux was back then you could
see the potential the OS had.  Compared to what Linux has become
today, especially with distros like Ubuntu, you can certain see that
its come a long way.  In many crucial areas Linux has surpassed
Windows, but lags behind in a few others.  Its only a matter of time
before those issues are ironed out though.  Its been a long time since
Linus released the first kernel source on the net.  What was that,
like almost 20 years ago now?  Linux has evolved farther than Windows
in that same amount of time.

Can't wait to see the next release of Ubuntu.  Shuttleworth is
promising some big improvements including a planned major facelift for
Gnome that's supposed to be on par with the facelift KDE received when
it went from 3.x to 4.x.  At least that's what I've read when
development of Karmic was announced many months ago.  We'll see come
October.

Does anyone here do alpha and beta testing of new Ubuntu releases?  Do
you have Karmic Koala installed now?

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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