TR Forums

This really doesn't fit under the Linux theme but since there's no place for "misc. OSes" I stick it here. So Anyone still using BeOS?

I'm sure it fits under the "Assorted Madness" category . I tried it out ages ago on a Power Mac and was amazed at how much faster it was than the MacOS. More recently I tried the free version of BeOS 5 on my PC and it was nice (saw both procs in my machine even though all the docs said it wouldn't), but the best OS in the world is still useless if you can't run the programs you want on it.

Well, I'm using Be's bootloader, but that's about it; I'm sufficiently lazy that I'd rather have a ~500MB partition for BeOS (and thus Be's easy-to-configure bootloader) than muck around with Lilo or the like. Sad, I know, but 500MB just isn't enough to make me feel like it's a real waste of space.

I haven't used it for actual work in two years, though; unaccelerated video (VESA 2.0, yay) and poor PCMCIA support (I'm not going to leave my PCMCIA controller in PCIC mode just so BeOS can see it...) keep it from being practical for me. On the other hand, the lack of application support never bothered me much, since I spend ~90% of my time in a web browser or text editor.

I do wish that I had a BeBox, though, just like I wish I had an SGI Indy (the difference being, of course, that I can pick up an Indy for ~$500, but BeBoxes are essentially impossible to buy).


Derek Andersen

Well, if you ever feel the need to update your boot manager, give XOSL a look.

Anybody still using GEM?

BeOS is something i'd like to give an extended trial with..you can't really 'use' it in good conscience given its developers aren't..developing anymore or for the past 1 1/2 years. Of course, the reason I'd "like to try" and have not "actually tried" extensively is that it won't run on either of the 2 computers that actually have monitors, keyboard etc. No device drivers .

Hrm.

No decent OpenGL support.
Network stack sucks.
Not multiuser, and no security model.
No great applications.

I have a 2 GB BeOS 5 partition that I haven't booted into for several months now, and for good reason.