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It seems it was just someone trolling, no code has surfaced at all. Still the discussion it generated was interesting.

• ashark 12y ago
  That's good, since I'd assume that if it were possible to deliver as nice a desktop experience as BeOS on an OS with the Linux kernel someone would have done it by now. Then again, maybe it really has been X's fault all along. I guess we'll find out with Mir and Wayland. [edit] fix broken sentence
• dnautics 12y ago
  It would have been interesting to create a version which was a Linux binary compatibility layer, essentially compiling libbe.so for Linux, with the intent of swapping it for a native kernel later. However, I think this might have been technically difficult since iirc beos uses the same interrupt for syscalls as Linux but does not use the odd Linux syscall standard (where short parameter lists are put into registers) versus the stack, like freebsd. I think freebsd might have been a better choice for that reason and also its performant kernel.
  • Torgo 12y ago
    One of the goals of Haiku is to be able to run BeOS software unaltered, and an unfortunate side effect of this is that the ABI for BeOS software is compatible with 1998 GCC, version 2.9 or thereabouts.
    • geon 12y ago
      I think that is only a goal until the 1.0 is reached, in order to focus the effort.
      • ab5tract 12y ago
        I can see the "focus the effort" part, but it has always seemed like a case of personal determination amongst core members. It's been argued that if the ABI compatibility were not considered a requisite, this effort would have shipped some really cool stuff by now. I just want to know which BeOS software these people have that they need to run. They've never made clear just which software requires this extend-efforts-by-a-decade-or-more requirement.