BeOS sold to Palm. Palm developed WebOS and sold that to LG. I wonder if any of BeOS ended up on my current WebOS powered LG TV. I bet someone here knows.
tchbnl · 6m ago
AFAIK the only thing carried over from Be was Binder (from BeIA), which made its way to Android before being completely rewritten later on.
sockboy · 1h ago
Emulating extended attributes for a filesystem is a fascinating approach. It can significantly streamline lightweight OS customization without needing a full port of the filesystem driver. Has anyone experimented with this in open-source projects? Would love to hear about practical results or challenges.
tialaramex · 2h ago
One thing that's fun about this is that BeOS isn't going anywhere.
If you decided to do this for, say, Windows, Microsoft is going to release a new Windows version with new stuff you can't do and too bad.
But BeOS itself is dead, and the Haiku project (to basically make BeOS again, once named "OpenBeOS") is about a quarter of a century old yet seems barely closer to releasing anything. A lethargic snail could sleep walk to the finish before Haiku ships version 2.
i80and · 1h ago
Haiku is in genuinely good shape. I contributed some code to it years and years ago and even back then it ran nicely even on bare metal.
About the only thing I think you miss out on is GPU acceleration and maybe wifi? I haven't kept up with the current state.
calvinmorrison · 1h ago
Haiku is pretty conservative with their versioning. You can definitely daily drive it.
tmountain · 1h ago
BeOS is the Latin of operating systems. LOL
leonheld · 4h ago
Haiku/BeOS to me is simply peak computer design. This is beautiful!
90s_dev · 2h ago
It gives me so much nostalgia for certain Trillian 0.7x skins that I can't put my finger on. Skinning apps was one of the things I wanted to bring back.
dkh · 3h ago
Finally, the killer app to checkmate the Wayland naysayers: BeOS API implementation
em-bee · 3h ago
from BeOS/Haiku i am actually most interested in two things:
the way windows are styled/handled. so i'd like to see a BeOS styled compositor/window manager.
the database like filesystem, and of course gui and commandline tools to use it. (can the filesystem features be emulated with extended attributes, or is a full port of the filesystem driver needed to get a filesystem with the same features? (i am not looking for compatibility, just the feature set))
tialaramex · 2h ago
BeOS only actually had a "database like filesystem" in very early versions, so most likely you're thinking of BeFS, the filesystem used in BeOS R5 (which was given away free) and in Haiku.
But all BeFS has in the way of being "database like" is arbitrary named & typed btree indices, chosen by the owner. You can have a btree of filenames, a btree of "sent by" email addresses, maybe one of file types for example. If enabled (which is the default) you pay for this feature with a significant perf overhead on operations because those tree indices must be updated, but if it's disabled (common for disks with lots of small files) you lose the facilities enabled by having such an index.
Compared to full text indexing, which was also popular on some systems at about the same time, this doesn't produce very impressive results, yet you're paying for it everywhere. No surprise then that even the text indexing remains a niche feature, I know people who care about it a lot and others who've never been interested.
It's probably one of those niche features like wall switches for floor lamps (a socket is run off the lighting circuit and switched just like ceiling lights, but a floor lamp is plugged into that socket). A few people love it, most people aren't bothered, so, it's usually not done.
em-bee · 1h ago
the performance issue sounds like an implementation/design problem rather than a feature issue. most linux filesystems have extended attributes, and i am sure feature wise, the fields could just be mapped onto those.
indices are a standard feature in databases, and yes, they can slow down some queries while speeding up others, so you should use them judiciously. maybe BFS has an issue there, but that does not negate the concept.
practically speaking, what i want is a gui filemanager that lets me set arbitrary keys and values on files, display them and filter for them. indexing them is not required.
btw: UK style power sockets all have individual switches to turn them off or on. maybe elsewhere people aren't bothered because they are not used to the idea.
tialaramex · 1h ago
I live in the UK, so I'm aware our power sockets have switches. However, if I walk into a darkened room I certainly don't want to crawl around in the dark looking for a switch - so better that (as I believe a friend's home has in some of their guest bedrooms when I had reason to visit) there's an ordinary light switch, near the entrance door at a good height - to activate the distant socket.
Since you live in the UK you may also be aware that, unlike ordinary appliances, smaller low power (5 amp) connectors are authorised for lighting, so in that particular house because of its age the floor lamps literally can't plug into a conventional socket, the plugs are the wrong size, this has the further advantage that you can't accidentally plug an appliance such as a vacuum cleaner or television into a socket controlled from a light switch.
Right? Why wouldn't you want to expose your mailbox in the same file explorer as everything else it's so nifty
jbverschoor · 3h ago
Interesting.. back in the early ‘00, I implemented the BeOS api on top of the win32 api. Naive me thought that would make people adopt programming for BeOS and in turn would make it a popular OS.
netdoll · 3h ago
Was this an independent hobbyist reimplementation? Gobe did something similar in order to port their productivity suite (sorely missed) from BeOS over to Windows and Linux.
jbverschoor · 1h ago
Had juist a hobby. Never released it, but it worked quite well. It was remarkably easy to add the events and controls etc after I got the initial version working.
NonEUCitizen · 3h ago
Do you own the rights to it? Can it be published on github? Thanks.
jbverschoor · 1h ago
I’ll see if I can find it :)
jchw · 4h ago
Now this looks interesting. I am not familiar with the BeOS APIs, but the UI design is very pleasing.
One thing I don't see mentioned anywhere including the plans is accessibility though. Not having basic accessibility support would be a serious issue, so I'm hoping it is either already there and just not mentioned or at least planned in some way.
mouse_ · 3h ago
In a very real way, Windows XP was more accessible than anything made since, due to it being more friendly to hacks. There's a reason you see so many disabled people who refuse to abandon their ancient setups.
Smaller, simpler, more hackable software is inherently more accessible.
jchw · 3h ago
Okay. But in practice you do still need basic keyboard control and screen reader support. If Windows XP didn't have robust support for that I suspect it would be a very different story, but it did.
Edit: Of all the comments to disagree with, I am blown away that this is today's. You guys desperately need to explain what you're disagreeing with here. Seriously, leave a reply.
snozolli · 1h ago
and screen reader support
If you look at how classic Win32 applications are constructed, I don't think you need anywhere near the support for screen reader software that you do with modern applications. All of the elements of a dialog box, for example, are constructed from a standard set of controls, and can be interrogated programmatically for their text.
I don't know anything about the internals of BeOS software, but I would bet that it's closer to Win32 in this regard than it is to more modern UI systems.
jchw · 1h ago
Just to be completely clear I'm not suggesting the BeOS APIs are insufficient to implement robust screen reader support, just that Windows XP actually did implement it, from the ground up, and integrated it into Win32. I would love it if Cosmoe (and in general, more niche toolkits) would do this, too. It's non-trivial work so it's not like I expect it, but it makes using this toolkit for real programs intended for a general audience much more reasonable.
Apocryphon · 2h ago
More exciting UI news than Liquid Glass
imchillyb · 3h ago
“There are several sample applications included which demonstrate what it is capable of.”
This was the mantra of BeOs. Here’s a technology preview. Watch videos on a cube, now a sphere!
The OS was sold as a technology preview that was easy and accessible and the users only needed to wait for developers…
…that never showed up.
Similar occurrence with Microsoft phones and lack of developers. Pebble watch and lack of developers…
What these projects all lack are meaningful engagement instead of a few ‘oh wow’ moments.
cjbgkagh · 2h ago
Microsoft Phone was a giant pile of unforced errors on Microsoft’s part, it wasn’t the developers fault, that thing was a POS that never got better.
chipotle_coyote · 2h ago
I mean, I get that argument, but I actually ran BeOS full-time for over a year. It had a great Works-style office suite (GoBe Productive) written by the people who wrote ClarisWorks, a few good graphics programs including an amazing competitor to Macromedia Fireworks (e-Picture), a solid BBEdit-like programming editor (Pe), a few music programs that did things that I’m not sure I’ve seen other systems do to this day like SoundPlay’s wacky ability to act as a mixer, with speed control, between multiple MP3 files or ObjektSynth’s…object-oriented synthesizer (it’s very hard to describe). There was a stage control system for live performances whose name I forget now—the company is still around, as far as I know—that was used, running on BeOS, for several Broadway shows and Circue de Soleil installations. And an animation program that started on BeOS, Moho, is still around today.
The engagement was certainly starting, and I think there’s a chance—a small one, to be sure, but a chance—that if Be, Inc., hadn’t clearly decided that carving out a comfortable niche just wasn’t enough, BeOS might have succeeded. (Instead they decided to go all-in on “Internet Appliances,” which ended up dealing them the death blow rather than a big success. Ironically, I think that market effectively succeeded a decade later, but in the form of the iPad.)
Apocryphon · 2h ago
Microsoft making it difficult for users to run BeOS didn’t make things easy.
> The Flora Prius was preinstalled with both Microsoft Windows 98 as well as BeOS. It did not, however, have a dual-boot option as Microsoft reminded Hitachi of the terms of the Windows OEM license.[4] In effect, two thirds of the hard drive was hidden from the end-user, and a series of complicated manipulations was necessary to activate the BeOS partition.[5]
What are the practical benefits of this library?
We have gtk,qt,fltk,wx, and a long list of others some cross platform some not..
linguae · 1h ago
1. Cosmoe is a native C++ library, which may be of interest for C++ programmers.
2. Cosmoe is under the MIT license, which may be of interest for those wanting pure MIT/BSD-licensed solutions, as well as for those who want to use a C++-native toolkit but are concerned that their use cases may subject them to having to pay for a commercial Qt license.
3. BeOS appeal.
0x445442 · 2h ago
Go read the following and draw your own comparisons.
Got it. The practical benefit is that you have a library that you want to use, now? Good for you, sir.
But seriously, why have another native c++ gui library?
Disposal8433 · 2h ago
Because that API is nice. Why have a Linux when you already have Windows?
kosolam · 1h ago
The reason that I started using Linux more than 20 years ago wasn’t a nice API for sure.
bboygravity · 2h ago
Because it looks (way) better than any of the others?
palmfacehn · 2h ago
Fair question. It feels like GTK is entrenched as the default these days.
If you decided to do this for, say, Windows, Microsoft is going to release a new Windows version with new stuff you can't do and too bad.
But BeOS itself is dead, and the Haiku project (to basically make BeOS again, once named "OpenBeOS") is about a quarter of a century old yet seems barely closer to releasing anything. A lethargic snail could sleep walk to the finish before Haiku ships version 2.
About the only thing I think you miss out on is GPU acceleration and maybe wifi? I haven't kept up with the current state.
the way windows are styled/handled. so i'd like to see a BeOS styled compositor/window manager.
the database like filesystem, and of course gui and commandline tools to use it. (can the filesystem features be emulated with extended attributes, or is a full port of the filesystem driver needed to get a filesystem with the same features? (i am not looking for compatibility, just the feature set))
But all BeFS has in the way of being "database like" is arbitrary named & typed btree indices, chosen by the owner. You can have a btree of filenames, a btree of "sent by" email addresses, maybe one of file types for example. If enabled (which is the default) you pay for this feature with a significant perf overhead on operations because those tree indices must be updated, but if it's disabled (common for disks with lots of small files) you lose the facilities enabled by having such an index.
Compared to full text indexing, which was also popular on some systems at about the same time, this doesn't produce very impressive results, yet you're paying for it everywhere. No surprise then that even the text indexing remains a niche feature, I know people who care about it a lot and others who've never been interested.
It's probably one of those niche features like wall switches for floor lamps (a socket is run off the lighting circuit and switched just like ceiling lights, but a floor lamp is plugged into that socket). A few people love it, most people aren't bothered, so, it's usually not done.
indices are a standard feature in databases, and yes, they can slow down some queries while speeding up others, so you should use them judiciously. maybe BFS has an issue there, but that does not negate the concept.
practically speaking, what i want is a gui filemanager that lets me set arbitrary keys and values on files, display them and filter for them. indexing them is not required.
btw: UK style power sockets all have individual switches to turn them off or on. maybe elsewhere people aren't bothered because they are not used to the idea.
Since you live in the UK you may also be aware that, unlike ordinary appliances, smaller low power (5 amp) connectors are authorised for lighting, so in that particular house because of its age the floor lamps literally can't plug into a conventional socket, the plugs are the wrong size, this has the further advantage that you can't accidentally plug an appliance such as a vacuum cleaner or television into a socket controlled from a light switch.
One thing I don't see mentioned anywhere including the plans is accessibility though. Not having basic accessibility support would be a serious issue, so I'm hoping it is either already there and just not mentioned or at least planned in some way.
Smaller, simpler, more hackable software is inherently more accessible.
Edit: Of all the comments to disagree with, I am blown away that this is today's. You guys desperately need to explain what you're disagreeing with here. Seriously, leave a reply.
If you look at how classic Win32 applications are constructed, I don't think you need anywhere near the support for screen reader software that you do with modern applications. All of the elements of a dialog box, for example, are constructed from a standard set of controls, and can be interrogated programmatically for their text.
I don't know anything about the internals of BeOS software, but I would bet that it's closer to Win32 in this regard than it is to more modern UI systems.
This was the mantra of BeOs. Here’s a technology preview. Watch videos on a cube, now a sphere!
The OS was sold as a technology preview that was easy and accessible and the users only needed to wait for developers…
…that never showed up.
Similar occurrence with Microsoft phones and lack of developers. Pebble watch and lack of developers…
What these projects all lack are meaningful engagement instead of a few ‘oh wow’ moments.
The engagement was certainly starting, and I think there’s a chance—a small one, to be sure, but a chance—that if Be, Inc., hadn’t clearly decided that carving out a comfortable niche just wasn’t enough, BeOS might have succeeded. (Instead they decided to go all-in on “Internet Appliances,” which ended up dealing them the death blow rather than a big success. Ironically, I think that market effectively succeeded a decade later, but in the form of the iPad.)
> The Flora Prius was preinstalled with both Microsoft Windows 98 as well as BeOS. It did not, however, have a dual-boot option as Microsoft reminded Hitachi of the terms of the Windows OEM license.[4] In effect, two thirds of the hard drive was hidden from the end-user, and a series of complicated manipulations was necessary to activate the BeOS partition.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Flora_Prius
2. Cosmoe is under the MIT license, which may be of interest for those wanting pure MIT/BSD-licensed solutions, as well as for those who want to use a C++-native toolkit but are concerned that their use cases may subject them to having to pay for a commercial Qt license.
3. BeOS appeal.
https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/bebook/ClassesAndMethod...