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Tue Jul 22, 2003 2:02 pm

I know it's probably well over a year too late to be posing this question, but I still play around with this wonderful OS on some old machines around here, and follow the Max editionbuilds.

I don't recall seeing anything from Palm, who bought Be a while back. I'd still love to see a handheld based around BeOS.

Anyone else use BeOS much or have any news of this once proud OS being used down the road?

qazix · Tue Jul 22, 2003 2:55 pm

Supposedly Yellowtab is going to release an OS based on BeOS, named Zeta.

RandomNull · Tue Jul 22, 2003 2:56 pm

Last I saw was teh BeOS 5 Dev package which I downloaded and yellowtab's zeta http://www.yellowtab.com

Tue Jul 22, 2003 4:57 pm

Exactly how can Yellowtab and others continue development after Palm 'bought it'? How would GPL or whatever work in this case?

qazix · Tue Jul 22, 2003 8:16 pm

emkubed wrote:
Exactly how can Yellowtab and others continue development after Palm 'bought it'? How would GPL or whatever work in this case?

According to Yellowtab's site:

Before Be, Inc. sold its assets to Palm, Inc., we managed to close a deal allowing us to distribute the PE version and had started negotiations over the future of the Pro version. Koch Media was ready to reissue the copies of the Pro Version that they hadn't managed to resell, to make it a part of a new distribution first called BeOS NG (New Generation), now renamed to "Zeta".

...

In June 2001 while we went into the final negotiations with Be, Inc. over financing the development of a release of BeOS R6, we got the message from Be, Inc. that they were no longer able to negotiate with us. The reason was that they had a potential investor. We decided to wait till we got the name of the new investor or buyer of BeOS/IA. Once the shareholders of Be, Inc. had voted to approve the sale to Palm we established the needed contact with Palm, Inc. in November. We are most grateful for the help we have received from Be Inc., in providing us with contact information for Palm, Inc.

The GPL doesn't apply. Software licensed under the GPL can be ported to any OS.

Also, there's an open source project that's attempting to create a BeOS-compatible OS: http://www.openbeos.org/

slymaster · Tue Jul 22, 2003 8:51 pm

Anyone know where I can get a copy of the original BeOS before the company disappeared ? I have heard that the OS was very efficient, and had very zippy performance even on old hardware. I have some old hardware doing nothing at the moment (P2-233 class machines), and I would like to experiment.

Tue Jul 22, 2003 8:54 pm

slymaster wrote:
Anyone know where I can get a copy of the original BeOS before the company disappeared ? I have heard that the OS was very efficient, and had very zippy performance even on old hardware. I have some old hardware doing nothing at the moment (P2-233 class machines), and I would like to experiment.

http://www.bebits.com/

Look on the right side under "Most Popular".

This was linked in my first post.

ubersteve · Tue Sep 02, 2003 10:24 pm

what is BeOS? ive heard of it before and have wondered what it is. what is it usually used for? from the sound of it there doesnt seem to be much of a future for it, but what kind of things can you do with this os?

dolemitecomputers · Tue Sep 02, 2003 10:31 pm

Check their FAQ:

http://www.bebits.com/faq

Tue Sep 02, 2003 10:32 pm

ubersteve wrote:
what is BeOS? ive heard of it before and have wondered what it is. what is it usually used for? from the sound of it there doesnt seem to be much of a future for it, but what kind of things can you do with this os?

It's a Unix flavor, like Linux. It was known as "the media OS". Very nice. Try it out.

RandomNull · Tue Sep 02, 2003 10:48 pm

Actually BeOS is not a Unix or Linux flavor, it was built from the ground up.

Tue Sep 02, 2003 11:43 pm

All this stuff is dated, but WTH, so is BeOS. Most questions answered here:

http://arstechnica.com/beos/

Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:54 am

RandomNull wrote:
Actually BeOS is not a Unix or Linux flavor, it was built from the ground up.

Oops, thanks for the reality check.

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