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Also, the the familial relations of MacOS and Linux made it possible to share code fairly seamlessly between both (providing not talking about hardware integrat

by _red 7y ago

Also, the the familial relations of MacOS and Linux made it possible to share code fairly seamlessly between both (providing not talking about hardware integration). In a world where we there was 3 separate universes: Windows, BeOS, and Linux it's possible Linux would've become more isolated.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mongol 7y ago
Hmm possibly. But it could also have been to Linux benefit. It would be alone among these in having then advantage of Unix heritage.
- eloisant 7y ago
  Yes, I remember so many software developers switching from Linux to OSX in the 2000's because "it's a Unix too, but it's shiny".
danans 7y ago
BeOS had a regular Unix like (even posix IIRC) dev environment. I was able to do most of the CS course work projects normally done on my University's Sun workstations on BeOS instead. Most of these of courses were data structures, algorithms, compilers, etc projects in C, and not things that required platform specific APIs. But arguably, BeOS' overall model - a single user desktop OS built on top of but hiding its modern OS underpinnings like memory protection and preemptive multitasking - is far more similar to what eventually became MacOSX than Linux. Which isn't so surprising since it was built by ex apple folks. Remember that consumer OSs before this point had no memory protection or preemptive multitasking. Linux, though it had the same modern OS features, was far more closely aligned in spirit with the timeshared modern multi-user Unix OS's like what ran the aforementioned Sun workstations (it's "Linus' Unix after all).
- pjmlp 7y ago
  BeOS was as UNIX like, as Amiga was. Surely it had a cli, UNIX like directory navigation and a couple of UNIX command like utilities. But good luck porting UNIX CLI software expecting a full POSIX environment. If I am not mistaken, Haiku has done most of the work regarding POSIX support.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    It had a bash shell, and used glibc, and partially implemented POSIX. I was also able to get most my CS homework done in BeOS. But I definitely needed to keep FreeBSD around for when I hit a wall.
  - Joeri 7y ago
    It was ok. Back when I ran BeOS as my primary OS (2001 or so) I built half a C++ web application on BeOS, the other half on a HP-UX server logged in through an X terminal using ftp to sync between the two. Not much support in the wider *nix ecosystem though, so anything big would often fail to build. I regretted having to move away from BeOS, it was by far the most pleasant OS I’ve used, but the lack of hardware and software support killed it.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    In college I wrote a web server in beos and ported it back to Linux, learning pthreads along the way. Bonus achievement was making it multithreaded, so I got that for free, since beos makes you think architecturally as multithreaded first
  - runjake 7y ago
    AmigaOS was not UNIX-like in the least. Amiga UNIX, which shipped on a couple models, was directly System V UNIX, though.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      That was the point I was trying to convey regarding BeOS. Having a shell that looks like UNIX, and a couple of command line utilities similar to the UNIX ones, does not make an OS UNIX.

by _red 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mongol 7y ago

Hmm possibly. But it could also have been to Linux benefit. It would be alone among these in having then advantage of Unix heritage.

eloisant 7y ago
Yes, I remember so many software developers switching from Linux to OSX in the 2000's because "it's a Unix too, but it's shiny".

danans 7y ago

BeOS had a regular Unix like (even posix IIRC) dev environment. I was able to do most of the CS course work projects normally done on my University's Sun workstations on BeOS instead. Most of these of courses were data structures, algorithms, compilers, etc projects in C, and not things that required platform specific APIs. But arguably, BeOS' overall model - a single user desktop OS built on top of but hiding its modern OS underpinnings like memory protection and preemptive multitasking - is far more similar to what eventually became MacOSX than Linux. Which isn't so surprising since it was built by ex apple folks. Remember that consumer OSs before this point had no memory protection or preemptive multitasking. Linux, though it had the same modern OS features, was far more closely aligned in spirit with the timeshared modern multi-user Unix OS's like what ran the aforementioned Sun workstations (it's "Linus' Unix after all).

pjmlp 7y ago
BeOS was as UNIX like, as Amiga was. Surely it had a cli, UNIX like directory navigation and a couple of UNIX command like utilities. But good luck porting UNIX CLI software expecting a full POSIX environment. If I am not mistaken, Haiku has done most of the work regarding POSIX support.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  It had a bash shell, and used glibc, and partially implemented POSIX. I was also able to get most my CS homework done in BeOS. But I definitely needed to keep FreeBSD around for when I hit a wall.
- Joeri 7y ago
  It was ok. Back when I ran BeOS as my primary OS (2001 or so) I built half a C++ web application on BeOS, the other half on a HP-UX server logged in through an X terminal using ftp to sync between the two. Not much support in the wider *nix ecosystem though, so anything big would often fail to build. I regretted having to move away from BeOS, it was by far the most pleasant OS I’ve used, but the lack of hardware and software support killed it.
- dnautics 7y ago
  In college I wrote a web server in beos and ported it back to Linux, learning pthreads along the way. Bonus achievement was making it multithreaded, so I got that for free, since beos makes you think architecturally as multithreaded first
- runjake 7y ago
  AmigaOS was not UNIX-like in the least. Amiga UNIX, which shipped on a couple models, was directly System V UNIX, though.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    That was the point I was trying to convey regarding BeOS. Having a shell that looks like UNIX, and a couple of command line utilities similar to the UNIX ones, does not make an OS UNIX.