ok guys.. stop cluttering the other topics and bring your discussion here. :)
What's good about BeOS, and what's not so good?
By tomi (darth.nls.fi - 195.156.38.2) on Sunday, February 14, 1999 - 11:40 pm:
what is a beos?
for me, sounds like a worthless circus of work for playing with it for nothing =)
like getting a faster computer, the new photoshop with all the latest plugs, more memory and stuff like that would make you a better artist =)
By God among Lice (bootp-231-230.bootp.virginia.edu - 128.143.231.230) on Monday, February 15, 1999 - 08:03 am:
hehe. good point Tomi.
I don't think the OS would have that big a difference on artists like us who are just doing 2d static pictures for the most part. From what I've heard, BeOS sounds like it's more useful for video and audio mixing and higher-end stuff in general.
ikarus: any chance you can explain to us why the average scene guy would want or need this OS, even when there is software available for it?
By ikarus (ppp24.ts6-2.newportnews.visi.net - 209.8.199.24) on Monday, February 15, 1999 - 09:26 am:
When there is imaging software available, which there will be in the near future. BeOS would offer a level of speed and stability that would revive the life in your PC's. You don't need the latest and greatest to run it, just a pentium pretty much. and Supported video card, etc. i've been running BeOS for 4 months now, and it hasn't crashed _once_. Typically, Windows freezes up 8 times a day for me. Most often when I'm working in Photoshop. A freeze is killer on any image I'm working on. Even if I *do* save it regularly, any flow of creativity is just BROKEN when your mouse cursor stops in it tracks. You have to wait 3 minutes just to get back in motion.
Personally, I despise working in Windows, every single minute of it. I shouldn't have to wait as long as I do for things like programs to load. In BeOS your typical app takes less than a second to load. Even the big bloated ones. True, it's aimed for audio/video. But it's also aimed at the "media" market, which last time I checked, includes graphics.
Blender3D and Cinema4D, two respected rendering apps are coming within a month or so. Plus some decent photo editing stuff, namely Tave Imagination aka Mozart aka =) There's other's out there now, ArtPaint and Becasso, they're not that great, probably on level with Photoshop 2.x. NaturalPaint looks promising too, it's going to be like a merge of Photoshop and Painter.
So, for the moment BeOS is not that great for your "average scene guy", but it's nice for people to have an open mind about it, and at least give it a try. When I'm in BeOS I feel my efficiency improves triple fold, maybe it's the lovely interface, or the speed that makes your jaw drop, I dunno.
And to those that think BeOS is hard to setup, think again. It takes a total of 12 minutes to install, requiring you to click about 3 buttons. Your desktop is immediatly up, ready for you to work. Want to add a device ? Simply put it in the case and restart BeOS. That's _true_ Plug'N'Play.
It's almost 100% GUI, it has a BASH shell for you guys that like UNIX/CLI's though. In my opinion, BeOS is the closest user experience to the MacOS on the intel platform. Which is a good thing if you've ever used a Mac for a decent amount of time. (The UI is awesome, the OS itself sucks).
So to sum it all up, you get the speed and stability (and more so) from the UNIX world. And the user friendliness of MacOS.
What is there for a artsy person not to like ?
By mongi (dialup237-2-3.swipnet.se - 130.244.237.67) on Monday, February 15, 1999 - 11:58 am:
I've used MacOS a longer time, and I don't like it a bit.. despite that BeOS seem interesting.. BUT, can you play games on it?! ;)
By Funbaby (ip192.pom.primenet.com - 204.212.52.192) on Monday, February 15, 1999 - 12:53 pm:
Well, I'm always up for something that'll help rid me of Microsoft. :)
Here's hopin'...
By ikarus (ppp42.ts2-2.newportnews.visi.net - 209.8.198.42) on Monday, February 15, 1999 - 04:11 pm:
Games are coming =) Quake 1,2,3 will be released with R5 of the OS (when hardware GL is introduced). We're hoping that other games will follow with Quake. Right now it's mostly ports of older games, and simple native games (Tetris, Solitare, etc.). Ports include Hopkins FBI, Doom, Hexen, Heretic, Abuse, Axia.
By keerus (ppp23-ts01.azbz.com - 207.204.0.123) on Monday, February 15, 1999 - 04:20 pm:
erm... uhh... BeOS owns!! yeah!!
By God among Lice (bootp-231-230.bootp.virginia.edu - 128.143.231.230) on Monday, February 15, 1999 - 08:41 pm:
ikarus: about the software being developed for BeOS... Are any of these graphics apps going to be freely available, like GIMP? Or are they generally commercial projects?
Having the current quake game of the moment available for BeOS would be great. Also, I assume anyone can have multiple boots for different OS's.. so people into gaming could probably just boot into windows to play.
Guess we'll just have to see what the apps end up looking like. It'll be interesting to keep an eye on Be over the next year. Sounds like this OS could be pretty revolutionary. I wonder how popular it'll end up being.
By tomi (darth.nls.fi - 195.156.38.2) on Wednesday, February 17, 1999 - 05:25 am:
why my windows98 crashes sometimes, not usually? maybe one or two times/month. simply because i keep all the shit open that is unworthy at the same time. mirc, ftp, quake, nscape, photoshop etc. with millions of software uninstalled but deleted or just doodle with not so stable DOS stuff like emags and stuff =).
i can't concentrate to single one good, it's always doodling and playing what we mostly do. now i understand well why my gf NEVER crashes the computer although she is doing same things like me..
and hey for speed, one writer said against computers when he was using typewriter that he doesnt need computers because he can't think so fast. that's what we basicly do, just play with the decent shit without generating (or concentrating to ) sumthing good =)
no need to mix 16 channels of audio in the same time (real time) if we can't do even one channel good. i bet 99% of us just play with the software, mix everything with effects and stuff and check what it makes without knowing what we are even doing =)
yeah, the best thing about BeOs is that it's not from mickeysoft
By ikarus (ppp42.ts1-2.newportnews.visi.net - 209.8.199.106) on Wednesday, February 17, 1999 - 02:59 pm:
Ok, as a response to Lice; GIMP IS COMING. even though it's shit, it's SOMETHING =) Guy by the name of Richard Hess of SGI is porting GTK, the API that Gimp runs on top of, after that, he plans on a Gimp port. The other audio apps are shareware, with demos. ArtPaint's demo is fully functional, Becasso's has saving disabled, NaturalPaint is still in beta. is unavailable. Quake and Quake II have been ported forever, and have been in the labs running fine. But, Be does not wish to release them at the moment for reasons known only to them. Screenshots of Quake II were released today, check www.benews.com. With a release date of after R4.1 is shipped, ~Spring 99.
Yes you can multiboot, Be includes partioning and bootmanager software, you can have it configured to multiboot in 30 seconds. 3 if you don't read =)
Games will probably follow this port of Quake, as Quake will break it into the mainstream as far as games go. When they *do* run, expect the highest framerates possible on all desktop platforms, including Linux.
And to tomi :
You must be very lucky for Windows not to crash often. You are apart of a very low percentage that this doesn't really happen to. But to the majority of us, Windows is pretty damn unstable =)
As far as the speed goes, it's not that everything happens to fast, it's that things happen *smoothly*. Which is how it should be. When I start drawing, I shouldn't have lagged redraw on the screen, it should flow as natural as it does on paper. This is what it is like in BeOS. Apps launch in a second too, who wants to wait 30 seconds for Photoshop to load ? I want to get out a great idea immediatly, as quick as picking up pen and paper, do I care about the color libraries needing to load ? Nope! hehe
The 16 channels of audio example is more useful for the musicians out there=) But it is a good example of the innovations the OS is making.
And yes, A great part of BeOS is the company that made it =) The culture of the company is so awesome. I mean their filesystem engineer goes around making bombs and microwaving CD's and xeroxing his ass in their office =) The CEO is this kickass french guy, Jean-Louis Gassee who when he sees something cool from an engineer, runs around shouting "MY nipples are hard! my nipples are hard!" They have a lunch room webcam at www.sakoman.com/codycam, you can frequently see their stuff on it, them putting up plastic lighted santas, BeBox's of lego's, Intel bunny people holding copies of R4, stuff like that =) Oh yes, you can also see the famed $10 couches from a flea market!
To put is simply, Be as a company ROCKS. BeOS as a OS ROCKS. Be as a community ROCKS.
Everything about it is perfect for those that want to have fun, and explore new things, without having to worry about technical issues, asshole users, and the usual things associated with computers. It reminds me alot of my computer experiences when I was a kid in the late 80's =)
By massive (ti18a22-0049.dialup.online.no - 130.67.225.49) on Wednesday, February 17, 1999 - 07:17 pm:
ikarus, when microsoft have a new idea, ceo b gates runs around the office saying: my nipples are hard, my nipples are hard! why doesn't that sound like a *good* thing ? because it's not. a company ran by loonies is doomed to go down:P hehe
-peace love and jah!
www.trueart.com
By filt- (proxy1-external.wyn1.pa.home.com - 24.4.252.2) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 08:20 am:
well, not to take anything away from beos, but as it has been said, in its current state, the hardware and software support is still lacking. posing a less worthy adversary im sure, what about NT workstation. yeah its micro$oft, but, its a surprisingly stable os. i ran photoshop for a year or two on windows 95, and i experienced the crashes you all have. i heard some good stuff about NT, and gave it a try, and its great. i dont have a super power pc (p90, 98 ram) but i have had it crash maybe a dozen times in the past two years almost, and i leave my pc on for two weeks at a time. and anyone who hates the same old ms gui, grab litestep or som eother program and get rid of the ms standard shell. so if programs loading in under a second is not your top priority, and your not to oposed to trying one of micro$ofts only decent releases give nt workstation a try, im pretty sure they still have a free 120 day trial offer thing they do.
on another note for mac users looking at beos. theres a program for beos called sheepshaver, which is a macOs emulator, and allows you to run mac programs(photoshop!!) through it, a major plus to the software downside of beos. you can check out all the info on sheepshaver at bedepot.com
By Funbaby (ip170.pom.primenet.com - 204.212.52.170) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 09:47 am:
I have to agree on the stability of NT. I ran it for about 6 months, and it only crashed twice. One of those times, I was trying to run a program that specifically said it WON'T run on NT. :P
But on a fairly modest system like mine (p166, 64MB), it's a MASSIVE performance drop from Win95. I'm willing to put up with a crash two or three times a week for the increase in performance.
By Funbaby (ip170.pom.primenet.com - 204.212.52.170) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 09:55 am:
By the way --
How does that "Sheepshaver" perform? Since it's emulating, is it really slow?
By God among Lice (bootp-231-230.bootp.virginia.edu - 128.143.231.230) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 12:16 pm:
it's weird.. My Win95 seems to crash a lot, but I can never recall any time that it did while I was using photoshop or painter.. I guess that's one reason I never even think about instability.. it doesn't really interfere with my crucial tasks..
I can remember using a program to draw .rip graphics with, that crashed a LOT. I know how absolutely frustrating that can be.
By filt- (proxy1-external.wyn1.pa.home.com - 24.4.252.2) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 01:34 pm:
from bedepot.com:
"SheepShaver is neither a MacOS replacement nor an emulator. It runs an unmodified PowerPC MacOS under control of the BeOS at full speed without any kind of emulation"
so it looks like it should keep the speed pretty good. if they came up with a program like this for intel systems, it would be a huge advantage.
By Ikarus (ppp38.ts4-2.newportnews.visi.net - 209.8.198.230) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 07:10 pm:
SheepShaver's nice, I've used it on a 604 Powermac before, ran only slightly slower than normal. Not even a noticable slowdown really, you had to really look to see the slowdown =) And yes, it's not an emulation, it's just allowing you to boot your HFS partion in some kind of runtime enviroment.
To filth, re: hardware support :
hardware support IS lacking in alot of areas, but Be's working on it. They shouldn't even NEED to be writing these drivers, but Microsoft's monopoly is making them. They can't get hardware manufactors to write the drivers, some won't even give Be technical information so they can write the drivers. Microsoft doesn't write any of it's drivers, the HW manufactors do.
Sound card suppory will be *much* better soon, Be is in talks with 4Front to get their OSS audio drivers ported.
Video card support is getting better, most popular cards are supported, or are on the drawing board.
Okay, and NT. you make a good point here, yes NT is not *that* bad. But it's not that *great* either. It doesn't bring much new to the table. More or less, Windows with a core similar to VMS, a OS over a decade old.
Slapping litestep on top of the UI doesn't improve that situation either. Using Windows to begin with is a pain in the ass. Almost as much as running Linux.
Be likes to say "It's Dark in the Box." and that's pretty true with BeOS. you can be a MORON and use BeOS. It's incredibly simple.
So anyway, if BeOS is not up to your needs right now, wait until R5 later this year. This will be the first major consumer release, and will be bundeled on computers from some top PC manufactors. You will be seeing all sorts of support for the OS coming this year too. So don't bury BeOS before it's even started going =)
By Funbaby (ip198.pom.primenet.com - 204.212.52.198) on Friday, February 19, 1999 - 09:18 am:
How is BeOS/intel compared to BeOS/mac? Is the intel version behind in development? Are there many big differences? I may be wrong, but I think the Mac version was first...
By ikarus (ppp38.ts6-2.newportnews.visi.net - 209.8.199.38) on Saturday, February 20, 1999 - 08:41 am:
Ok, here's a little BeOS history.
Back around 94 they had a version for a processer, now dead, the AT&T Hobbit. After hobbit croaked, they built the BeBox, a dual 603e PowerPC box, later dual 604's. They killed the BeBox, repositioning themselves as a software company, not a hardware company; therefore avoiding a dilemma Apple faces today. So, they migrated to Apple's PowerMac line, and it's clones. It was offered for free in 2 incarnations, PR1 and PR2. Preview Release 1&2. You could download it, or find it in magazines such as MacUser on CD's. This is I guess you could say was the OS's beta testing phase.
Enter R3, Be had been playing around with Intel ports for some time, but then Intel gave them support. With Intel backing and a few Intel engineers on loan, they ported the BeOS. Steve Jobs comes to Apple now, and thus Be's technical info flow stops. This means, no BeOS for G3.
The Intel release is only a year old, as opposed to the PowerPC release, which is 5-6 years old. But the PowerPC release has limited life to it. Who wants to run BeOS on legacy hardware ? Petitions have been made, but I doubt Apple's going to budge. Expect PowerPC support to end with R6, maybe even R5. BeBox support will end R5 definatly. If you buy BeOS right now, it's going to have more apps on the PowerPC side, because of the longer time obviously, and the change of compilers, PEF on PPC, ELF on x86. But this is changing rapidly, Intel has 80% marketshare, so there's a ton of more users/developers now.
There are no really big differences as far as using it goes. The UI is exactly the same across platforms. The only shortcomings of the Intel release is hardware/software support. Software is going to be out of the shortcomings category very soon. Hardware is to expected, there's TONS of hardware on the Intel platform. You can't expect them to support it all with 40 engineers, and a year-old port. So you want to be using the Intel release, not going out and buying a Mac for it that's not going to be getting new releases in a year =)