4 ms·

Hitachi to Release PCs with Preinstalled BeOS for the Consumer Market (1998)

44 points by Lammy 2y ago

jasongill 2y ago
I miss BeOS. I ran it as my full time desktop OS at home and work for a good 1.5-2 years and there has never really been anything like that feeling - it was so "fast" and had so many nice little touches.
- jm4 2y ago
  It really was good. From a user perspective, it blew Windows and Mac out of the water. The performance and reliability were unmatched on the desktop. I remember being able to change network settings without a reboot, which no other desktop OS could do for another couple years or so. The boot speed was also something to behold. It was something like 7 seconds to a login prompt. BeOS was ahead of its time. The only real problem with it was software availability.
- mysterydip 2y ago
  Have you checked out Haiku? https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/
  - dleslie 2y ago
    Does Haiku still have unaccelerated software rendering of the UI? Edit: yes, seems their nvidia drivers don't have 2d acceleration.
    - mysterydip 2y ago
      Yes, I believe that's correct. There's some work on vulkan and a discussion about pulling some stuff from openBSD, but either doesn't seem to be a priority for the project at the moment. I'm sure supporting modern graphics cards isn't trivial, not a task of theirs I envy.
    - snvzz 2y ago
      There is 3d acceleration, but just AMD Radeon, not NVIDIA. NVIDIA does not document its hardware, thus why the open source driver situation is bad.
- jwells89 2y ago
  I only ever got to play with BeOS 5 PE in Be's twilight years, but it was incredibly zippy on the 800Mhz PIII Dimension 4100 tower that was the family computer at that point in time. It handily beat Windows 98SE (what the Dimension shipped with) and was a solid step up from even Windows 2000 (which itself was a step up from 98SE). The vaguely Mac-like yet unique feel of its UI was also fascinating (and unsurprisingly worked well as a Kaleidoscope scheme on classic Mac OS). Never was able to run it full time though.
- 0x1ceb00da 2y ago
  If windows failed and BeOS succeded, you would be saying the same thing about windows 98.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Win98 and contemporary Linux felt dog slow on identical hardware. I ran all three. BeOS was special. (Actually QNX Photon came really close)
    - RajT88 2y ago
      Ditto. Ran all 3, BeOS was really special. Like lightning in a bottle.
  - Scramblejams 2y ago
    It ain’t rose tinted glasses at work here. BeOS’s pervasive use of non-blocking message passing made its UI smooth like butter, almost no matter how much you loaded the machine up. There was nothing like it then, and outside of Haiku I’m not aware of anything like it now.
wmf 2y ago
Wasn't this the one that was sabotaged by Microsoft so that BeOS was installed but you couldn't boot it? https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/ https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/
- whaleofatw2022 2y ago
  > fine print in their Microsoft Windows License agreements They negotiated like trash and wanted to keep their margin. IIRC those 'agreements' for larger vendors often included a per-unit discount compared to a mom and pop shop getting OEM licenses from a reseller. And frankly at the time more were fearful as intel than microsoft...
geocrasher 2y ago
*3: Multi-thread: A given function of the program is individually configured (thread); two or more threads can be executed simultaneously. *4: Multitasking: A method that enables a computer to simultaneously execute two or more programs by switching the CPU to each of the programs at certain intervals. It's funny, the definitions we take for granted now.
andrewstuart 2y ago
People look back with fondness at BeOS but the reality is that NextSTEP was a MUCH better operating system. Built on a Unix foundation meant it really was ready to be the basis of the next 50 years of Apple operating systems including on mobile. BeOS was cooked up from scratch and never had this solid basis. Apple (obviously) made exactly the right move by choosing NextSTEP over BeOS. Chances are the browser you are using is running on NextSTEP even as you read this.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
  There's something to be said for throwing everything out and starting from scratch every once in awhile. How many decades old is Unix now? How many is Windows, even? You lose the years of battle tested code, sure, but you'd also lose decades of baggage, tech debt, obsolete code for things no one has had to worry about for 20 years, etc.
  - andrewstuart 2y ago
    I think you underestimate the amount of functionality in something like the Linux kernel and how much work it would take to recreate even a small percentage of it.
    - wmf 2y ago
      I was a huge BeOS fan at the time, but in retrospect it was more like a vertical slice demo of an operating system. There was so much missing features and technical debt that fleshing it out would have been 90% of the work.
  - msla 2y ago
    From the perspective of the company, you also have a moat in the form of a proprietary system that doesn't have to compete with anything else because little software your customers depend on will run on anything else. Your business decisions become the Word Of God to people and companies with no real alternative. BeOS never got successful enough to do that, but A Particularly Loud stock would argue this can work fairly well.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

44 points by Lammy 2y ago

I miss BeOS. I ran it as my full time desktop OS at home and work for a good 1.5-2 years and there has never really been anything like that feeling - it was so "fast" and had so many nice little touches.

jm4 2y ago
It really was good. From a user perspective, it blew Windows and Mac out of the water. The performance and reliability were unmatched on the desktop. I remember being able to change network settings without a reboot, which no other desktop OS could do for another couple years or so. The boot speed was also something to behold. It was something like 7 seconds to a login prompt. BeOS was ahead of its time. The only real problem with it was software availability.
mysterydip 2y ago
Have you checked out Haiku? https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/
- dleslie 2y ago
  Does Haiku still have unaccelerated software rendering of the UI? Edit: yes, seems their nvidia drivers don't have 2d acceleration.
  - mysterydip 2y ago
    Yes, I believe that's correct. There's some work on vulkan and a discussion about pulling some stuff from openBSD, but either doesn't seem to be a priority for the project at the moment. I'm sure supporting modern graphics cards isn't trivial, not a task of theirs I envy.
  - snvzz 2y ago
    There is 3d acceleration, but just AMD Radeon, not NVIDIA. NVIDIA does not document its hardware, thus why the open source driver situation is bad.
jwells89 2y ago
I only ever got to play with BeOS 5 PE in Be's twilight years, but it was incredibly zippy on the 800Mhz PIII Dimension 4100 tower that was the family computer at that point in time. It handily beat Windows 98SE (what the Dimension shipped with) and was a solid step up from even Windows 2000 (which itself was a step up from 98SE). The vaguely Mac-like yet unique feel of its UI was also fascinating (and unsurprisingly worked well as a Kaleidoscope scheme on classic Mac OS). Never was able to run it full time though.
0x1ceb00da 2y ago
If windows failed and BeOS succeded, you would be saying the same thing about windows 98.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Win98 and contemporary Linux felt dog slow on identical hardware. I ran all three. BeOS was special. (Actually QNX Photon came really close)
  - RajT88 2y ago
    Ditto. Ran all 3, BeOS was really special. Like lightning in a bottle.
- Scramblejams 2y ago
  It ain’t rose tinted glasses at work here. BeOS’s pervasive use of non-blocking message passing made its UI smooth like butter, almost no matter how much you loaded the machine up. There was nothing like it then, and outside of Haiku I’m not aware of anything like it now.

wmf 2y ago

Wasn't this the one that was sabotaged by Microsoft so that BeOS was installed but you couldn't boot it? https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/ https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/

whaleofatw2022 2y ago
> fine print in their Microsoft Windows License agreements They negotiated like trash and wanted to keep their margin. IIRC those 'agreements' for larger vendors often included a per-unit discount compared to a mom and pop shop getting OEM licenses from a reseller. And frankly at the time more were fearful as intel than microsoft...

geocrasher 2y ago

*3: Multi-thread: A given function of the program is individually configured (thread); two or more threads can be executed simultaneously. *4: Multitasking: A method that enables a computer to simultaneously execute two or more programs by switching the CPU to each of the programs at certain intervals. It's funny, the definitions we take for granted now.

andrewstuart 2y ago

People look back with fondness at BeOS but the reality is that NextSTEP was a MUCH better operating system. Built on a Unix foundation meant it really was ready to be the basis of the next 50 years of Apple operating systems including on mobile. BeOS was cooked up from scratch and never had this solid basis. Apple (obviously) made exactly the right move by choosing NextSTEP over BeOS. Chances are the browser you are using is running on NextSTEP even as you read this.

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
There's something to be said for throwing everything out and starting from scratch every once in awhile. How many decades old is Unix now? How many is Windows, even? You lose the years of battle tested code, sure, but you'd also lose decades of baggage, tech debt, obsolete code for things no one has had to worry about for 20 years, etc.
- andrewstuart 2y ago
  I think you underestimate the amount of functionality in something like the Linux kernel and how much work it would take to recreate even a small percentage of it.
  - wmf 2y ago
    I was a huge BeOS fan at the time, but in retrospect it was more like a vertical slice demo of an operating system. There was so much missing features and technical debt that fleshing it out would have been 90% of the work.
- msla 2y ago
  From the perspective of the company, you also have a moat in the form of a proprietary system that doesn't have to compete with anything else because little software your customers depend on will run on anything else. Your business decisions become the Word Of God to people and companies with no real alternative. BeOS never got successful enough to do that, but A Particularly Loud stock would argue this can work fairly well.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]