BeOS
Encyclopedia
BeOS is an operating system
for personal computer
s which began development by Be Inc.
in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox
hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing
by utilizing modular I/O bandwidth, pervasive multithreading, preemptive multitasking and a 64-bit
journaling file system
known as BFS
. The BeOS GUI was developed on the principles of clarity and a clean, uncluttered design. It used Unicode
as the default encoding in the GUI, yet support for input methods, such as bidirectional input was never realized. The API
was written in C++
for ease of programming. It has partial POSIX
compatibility and access to a command-line interface
through Bash, although internally it is not a Unix-derived operating system.
BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform which could be used by a substantial population of desktop users and a competitor to Mac OS
and Microsoft Windows
. However, it was ultimately unable to achieve a significant market share and proved commercially unviable for Be Inc. The company was acquired by Palm Inc. and today BeOS is mainly used and developed by a small population of enthusiasts.
The open-source OS Haiku
is designed to start up where BeOS left off. Alpha 3 of Haiku was released in June 2011.
-based hardware, BeOS was later modified to run on PowerPC
-based processors: first Be's own systems, later Apple Inc.'s PowerPC Reference Platform
and Common Hardware Reference Platform
, with the hope that Apple would purchase or license BeOS as a replacement for its then aging Mac OS. Apple CEO Gil Amelio
started negotiations to buy Be Inc., but negotiations stalled when Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée
wanted $200 million; Apple was unwilling to offer any more than $125 million. Apple's board of directors decided NeXTSTEP
was a better choice and purchased NeXT
in 1996 for $429 million, bringing back Apple co-founder Steve Jobs
.
In 1997, Power Computing
began bundling BeOS (on a CD for optional installation) with its line of PowerPC-based Macintosh clone
s. These systems could dual boot
either the Mac OS
or BeOS, with a start-up screen offering the choice.
Due to Apple's moves and the mounting debt of Be Inc., BeOS was soon ported to the Intel x86
platform with its R3 release in March 1998. Through the late 1990s, BeOS managed to create a niche of followers, but the company failed to remain viable. As a last-ditch effort to increase interest in the failing operating system, Be Inc. released a stripped-down, but free, copy of BeOS R5
known as BeOS Personal Edition (BeOS PE). BeOS PE could be started from within Microsoft Windows
or Linux
, and was intended to nurture consumer interest in its product and give developers something to tinker with.
Be Inc. also released a stripped-down version of BeOS for Internet Appliances (BeIA
), which soon became the company's business focus in place of BeOS. BeOS PE and BeIA proved to be too little too late, and in 2001 Be's copyrights were sold to Palm, Inc.
for some $11 million. BeOS R5 is considered the last official version, but BeOS R5.1 "Dano
", which was under development before Be's sale to Palm and included the BeOS Networking Environment (BONE) networking stack, was leaked to the public shortly after the company's demise.
In 2002, Be Inc. sued Microsoft claiming that Hitachi
had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq
had been pressured not to market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. Be also claimed that Microsoft acted to artificially depress Be Inc.'s initial public offering
(IPO). The case was eventually settled out of court for $23.25 million with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part.
After the split from Palm, PalmSource
used parts of BeOS's multimedia framework for its failed Palm OS Cobalt product. With the takeover of PalmSource, the BeOS rights now belong to Access Co.
The BeOS user interface was notable at the time for being almost completely unthemeable
, even with third party hacks. The BeOS theme of yellow, changing length tab
s on the top of windows, and relatively plain grey interface widget
s was enforced. This UI remained relatively unchanged from 1995, but had been completely overhauled by the time of the leaked Dano release. An Easter egg in the OS allowed changing the title bar look-and-feel to a few others (Mac OS 8, Amiga Workbench
, and Windows 98
appearances) and in Dano, this had been extended to be a feature allowing changing of the title bar and scroll bars. No other interface widgets could be changed. There is a pre-Dano third party program WindowShade that allows the colors of the title bar and window frame to be changed, but the appearance remained the same.
The plain BeOS R5 GUI is commonly cloned, for example with themes for the GNOME
or KDE
desktop environment.
. The modular nature of the original BeOS facilitated recreating the operating system a piece at a time, inserting the newly coded modules into a working BeOS system to test compatibility. Eventually, all of the "servers" (interworking modules of code) were to be replaced with original, freely licensed code.
Within a few years, some of these projects lost momentum and were discontinued. The Blue Eyed Os website is back online after being missing for 2 years but hasn't had a release since 2003, the most recent release available on the Cosmoe web site is from 2004 and active development on E/OS
ended in July 2008, BeOS Workstation picked up where Be. Inc left off but that too seems to be dead as well. Development however continues on Haiku
, a complete reimplementation of BeOS. The first alpha release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 1", was released on September 14, 2009. The second alpha release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 2", was made available on May 9, 2010. The third alpha release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 3", was released on June 18, 2011.
, the operating system was then distributed by magnussoft
. During development by YellowTAB, the company received criticism from the BeOS community for refusing to discuss its legal position with regard to the BeOS codebase (perhaps for contractual reasons). Access Co.
(which bought PalmSource
, until then the holder of the intellectual property associated with BeOS) has since declared that YellowTAB had no right to distribute a modified version of BeOS, and magnussoft has ceased distribution of the operating system.
which run on top of a modified BeOS and the TuneTracker radio automation software that runs on BeOS and Zeta, but is also sold as a "Station-in-a-Box" with the Zeta operating system included.
The Tascam SX-1 digital audio recorder runs a heavily modified version of BeOS that will only launch the recording interface software.
iZ Technology sells the RADAR 24 and RADAR V
, hard disk-based, 24-track professional audio recorders based on BeOS 5.
Magicbox, a manufacturer of signage and broadcast display machines, uses BeOS to power their Aavelin product line.
Final Scratch
, the 12″ vinyl timecode record-driven DJ software/hardware system, was first developed on BeOS. The "ProFS" version was sold to a few dozen DJs prior to the 1.0 release, which ran on a Linux virtual partition.
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
for personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s which began development by Be Inc.
Be Inc.
Be Incorporated was an American computer company founded in 1990, best known for the Be Operating System and BeBox personal computer. Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée with capital from Seymour Cray....
in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox
BeBox
The BeBox was a short-lived dual processor personal computer, offered by Be Inc. to run the company's own operating system, BeOS. Notable aspects of the system include its CPU configuration, I/O board with "GeekPort", and "Blinkenlights" on the front bezel....
hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
by utilizing modular I/O bandwidth, pervasive multithreading, preemptive multitasking and a 64-bit
64-bit
64-bit is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s and in RISC-based workstations and servers since the early 1990s...
journaling file system
Journaling file system
A journaling file system is a file system that keeps track of the changes that will be made in a journal before committing them to the main file system...
known as BFS
Be File System
The Be File System is the native file system for the BeOS....
. The BeOS GUI was developed on the principles of clarity and a clean, uncluttered design. It used Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
as the default encoding in the GUI, yet support for input methods, such as bidirectional input was never realized. The API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
was written in C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
for ease of programming. It has partial POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...
compatibility and access to a command-line interface
Command-line interface
A command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
through Bash, although internally it is not a Unix-derived operating system.
BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform which could be used by a substantial population of desktop users and a competitor to Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. However, it was ultimately unable to achieve a significant market share and proved commercially unviable for Be Inc. The company was acquired by Palm Inc. and today BeOS is mainly used and developed by a small population of enthusiasts.
The open-source OS Haiku
Haiku (operating system)
Haiku is a free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first alpha release in September 2009, the second in May 2010 and the third in June 2011....
is designed to start up where BeOS left off. Alpha 3 of Haiku was released in June 2011.
History
Initially designed to run on AT&T HobbitAT&T Hobbit
The Hobbit is a microprocessor design of the early 1990s from AT&T. It developed from the company's CRISP design that was in turn developed from the C Machine experimental efforts in the late 1980s at Bell Labs. C Machine, CRISP and Hobbit were optimized for running the C programming language...
-based hardware, BeOS was later modified to run on PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
-based processors: first Be's own systems, later Apple Inc.'s PowerPC Reference Platform
PowerPC Reference Platform
PowerPC Reference Platform was a standard system architecture for PowerPC based computer systems developed at the same time as the PowerPC processor architecture...
and Common Hardware Reference Platform
Common Hardware Reference Platform
Common Hardware Reference Platform was a standard system architecture for PowerPC based computer systems published jointly by IBM and Apple in 1995. Like its predecessor PReP, it was conceptualized as a design to allow various operating systems to run on an industry standard hardware platform,...
, with the hope that Apple would purchase or license BeOS as a replacement for its then aging Mac OS. Apple CEO Gil Amelio
Gil Amelio
Gilbert Frank Amelio is an American technology executive. He grew up in Miami, Florida and received a bachelor's degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology...
started negotiations to buy Be Inc., but negotiations stalled when Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée
Jean-Louis Gassée
Jean-Louis Gassée is a former executive at Apple Computer, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He is most famous for founding Be Inc., creators of the BeOS computer operating system. After leaving Be, he became Chairman of PalmSource, Inc. in November, 2004.-1980s: Apple Computer:Gassée worked for...
wanted $200 million; Apple was unwilling to offer any more than $125 million. Apple's board of directors decided NeXTSTEP
NEXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube...
was a better choice and purchased NeXT
NeXT
Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
in 1996 for $429 million, bringing back Apple co-founder Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
.
In 1997, Power Computing
Power Computing
Power Computing Corporation was the first company selected by Apple Inc to create Macintosh-compatible computers . Stephen “Steve” Kahng, a computer engineer best known for his design of the Leading Edge Model D, founded the company in November 1993...
began bundling BeOS (on a CD for optional installation) with its line of PowerPC-based Macintosh clone
Macintosh clone
A Macintosh clone is a personal computer made by a manufacturer other than Apple, using Macintosh ROMs and system software.-Background:...
s. These systems could dual boot
Dual boot
Multi-boot or Multi-booting is the act of installing multiple operating systems on a computer, and being able to choose which one to boot when starting the computer. The term dual-booting refers to the common configuration of exactly two operating systems...
either the Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
or BeOS, with a start-up screen offering the choice.
Due to Apple's moves and the mounting debt of Be Inc., BeOS was soon ported to the Intel x86
X86 architecture
The term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of such designs...
platform with its R3 release in March 1998. Through the late 1990s, BeOS managed to create a niche of followers, but the company failed to remain viable. As a last-ditch effort to increase interest in the failing operating system, Be Inc. released a stripped-down, but free, copy of BeOS R5
BeOS R5
BeOS R5 is the final version of BeOS from Be Inc.. It was released in March 2000, and came in two varieties: Professional and Personal.R5 was the 4th major release of BeOS for a public audience, and the 6th since it left developer-only stages. It changed only slightly from the previous release,...
known as BeOS Personal Edition (BeOS PE). BeOS PE could be started from within Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
or Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, and was intended to nurture consumer interest in its product and give developers something to tinker with.
Be Inc. also released a stripped-down version of BeOS for Internet Appliances (BeIA
BeIA
BeIA, or BeOS for Internet Appliances, was a minimized version of Be Inc.'s BeOS operating system for embedded systems.The BeIA system presents a browser based interface to the user. The browser was based on the Opera 4.0 code base, and was named Wanger...
), which soon became the company's business focus in place of BeOS. BeOS PE and BeIA proved to be too little too late, and in 2001 Be's copyrights were sold to Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
for some $11 million. BeOS R5 is considered the last official version, but BeOS R5.1 "Dano
Dano (BeOS)
BeOS R5.1d0 or Dano/EXP is the build codename and most commonly used name to refer to a leaked R5.1 prerelease of the Be Operating System. Dano's build date is 15 November 2001, the day of Be Inc.'s closure...
", which was under development before Be's sale to Palm and included the BeOS Networking Environment (BONE) networking stack, was leaked to the public shortly after the company's demise.
In 2002, Be Inc. sued Microsoft claiming that Hitachi
Hitachi
Hitachi is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology.Hitachi may also refer to:*Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan*Hitachi province, former province of Japan*Prince Hitachi and Princess Hitachi, members of the Japanese imperial family...
had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
had been pressured not to market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. Be also claimed that Microsoft acted to artificially depress Be Inc.'s initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
(IPO). The case was eventually settled out of court for $23.25 million with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part.
After the split from Palm, PalmSource
PalmSource
ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. is a subsidiary of ACCESS which develops the Palm OS PDA operating system and its successor, the Access Linux Platform, as well as BeOS...
used parts of BeOS's multimedia framework for its failed Palm OS Cobalt product. With the takeover of PalmSource, the BeOS rights now belong to Access Co.
Access Co.
, founded in April 1979 and incorporated in February 1984 in Tokyo, Japan, by Arakawa Toru and Kamada Tomihisa, is a company providing a variety of software for connected and mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, video game consoles and set top boxes....
Continuation
Despite the end of Be Inc., BeOS has devoted followers. The BeOS community still develops free software and has even released patches, drivers and various updates to BeOS. The main source of BeOS-related software can be found at BeBits.The BeOS user interface was notable at the time for being almost completely unthemeable
Theme (computing)
In computing, a theme is a preset package containing graphical appearance details, used to customize the look and feel of an operating system, widget set or window manager....
, even with third party hacks. The BeOS theme of yellow, changing length tab
Tab (GUI)
In the area of graphical user interfaces , a tabbed document interface is one that allows multiple documents to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents...
s on the top of windows, and relatively plain grey interface widget
Widget (computing)
In computer programming, a widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a widget is to provide a single interaction point for the direct manipulation of a given...
s was enforced. This UI remained relatively unchanged from 1995, but had been completely overhauled by the time of the leaked Dano release. An Easter egg in the OS allowed changing the title bar look-and-feel to a few others (Mac OS 8, Amiga Workbench
Workbench (AmigaOS)
-Overview:Commodore named their Amiga computer's first operating system Workbench 1.0 and continued with the Workbench name until version 3.1, when it was changed to AmigaOS, prompted by Apple renaming their propriety OS from "System" to "MacOS"...
, and Windows 98
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
appearances) and in Dano, this had been extended to be a feature allowing changing of the title bar and scroll bars. No other interface widgets could be changed. There is a pre-Dano third party program WindowShade that allows the colors of the title bar and window frame to be changed, but the appearance remained the same.
The plain BeOS R5 GUI is commonly cloned, for example with themes for the GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
or KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
desktop environment.
Version history
| Release | Date | Hardware |
|---|---|---|
| DR1–DR5 | October 1995 | AT&T Hobbit AT&T Hobbit The Hobbit is a microprocessor design of the early 1990s from AT&T. It developed from the company's CRISP design that was in turn developed from the C Machine experimental efforts in the late 1980s at Bell Labs. C Machine, CRISP and Hobbit were optimized for running the C programming language... |
| DR6 (developer release) | January 1996 | PowerPC PowerPC PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM... |
| DR7 | April 1996 | |
| DR8 | September 1996 | |
| Advanced Access Preview Release | May 1997 | |
| PR1 (preview release) | June 1997 | |
| PR2 | October 1997 | |
| R3 | March 1998 | PowerPC and Intel x86 |
| R3.1 | June 1998 | |
| R3.2 | July 1998 | |
| R4 | November 4, 1998 | |
| R4.5 ("Genki") | June 1999 | |
| R5 PE/Pro ("Maui") BeOS R5 BeOS R5 is the final version of BeOS from Be Inc.. It was released in March 2000, and came in two varieties: Professional and Personal.R5 was the 4th major release of BeOS for a public audience, and the 6th since it left developer-only stages. It changed only slightly from the previous release,... |
March 2000 | |
| R5.1 ("Dano") Dano (BeOS) BeOS R5.1d0 or Dano/EXP is the build codename and most commonly used name to refer to a leaked R5.1 prerelease of the Be Operating System. Dano's build date is 15 November 2001, the day of Be Inc.'s closure... |
November 2001 | Intel x86 |
Projects to recreate BeOS
BeOS was well respected by a small but loyal user base, which was disappointed when Be Inc. failed commercially and no further enhancement of the operating system would be possible. In the years that followed a handful of projects formed to recreate BeOS or key elements of the OS with the eventual goal of then continuing where Be Inc. left off. To ensure that the OS could not be "taken away" from the Be community again, and to attract the efforts of volunteer programmers, these projects were all free and open source softwareFree and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
. The modular nature of the original BeOS facilitated recreating the operating system a piece at a time, inserting the newly coded modules into a working BeOS system to test compatibility. Eventually, all of the "servers" (interworking modules of code) were to be replaced with original, freely licensed code.
Within a few years, some of these projects lost momentum and were discontinued. The Blue Eyed Os website is back online after being missing for 2 years but hasn't had a release since 2003, the most recent release available on the Cosmoe web site is from 2004 and active development on E/OS
E/OS
E/OS is a virtual machine emulation system.E/OS is primarily based on the Linux kernel, QEMU, XFree86, and Wine, and is intended to be a replacement for operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, BeOS, OS/2, DOS, and Linux...
ended in July 2008, BeOS Workstation picked up where Be. Inc left off but that too seems to be dead as well. Development however continues on Haiku
Haiku (operating system)
Haiku is a free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first alpha release in September 2009, the second in May 2010 and the third in June 2011....
, a complete reimplementation of BeOS. The first alpha release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 1", was released on September 14, 2009. The second alpha release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 2", was made available on May 9, 2010. The third alpha release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 3", was released on June 18, 2011.
Projects to continue BeOS
ZETA was a commercially available operating system based on the BeOS R5.1 codebase. Originally developed by YellowTABYellowTAB
yellowTAB was a German software firm that produced an operating system called "yellowTAB ZETA". While the operating system was based on BeOS 5.1.0, the company never publicly confirmed that it has the BeOS source code or what their licensing agreement with BeOS's owners PalmSource was. The company...
, the operating system was then distributed by magnussoft
Magnussoft
magnussoft Deutschland GmbH is a pan-European computer game developer and publisher. The company is seated near Dresden in the eastern region of Germany...
. During development by YellowTAB, the company received criticism from the BeOS community for refusing to discuss its legal position with regard to the BeOS codebase (perhaps for contractual reasons). Access Co.
Access Co.
, founded in April 1979 and incorporated in February 1984 in Tokyo, Japan, by Arakawa Toru and Kamada Tomihisa, is a company providing a variety of software for connected and mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, video game consoles and set top boxes....
(which bought PalmSource
PalmSource
ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. is a subsidiary of ACCESS which develops the Palm OS PDA operating system and its successor, the Access Linux Platform, as well as BeOS...
, until then the holder of the intellectual property associated with BeOS) has since declared that YellowTAB had no right to distribute a modified version of BeOS, and magnussoft has ceased distribution of the operating system.
Products using BeOS
BeOS (and now Zeta) continue to be used in media appliances such as the Edirol DV-7 video editors from Roland corporationRoland Corporation
is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on April 18, 1972, with ¥33 million in capital. In 2005 Roland's headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. Today it has factories in Japan,...
which run on top of a modified BeOS and the TuneTracker radio automation software that runs on BeOS and Zeta, but is also sold as a "Station-in-a-Box" with the Zeta operating system included.
The Tascam SX-1 digital audio recorder runs a heavily modified version of BeOS that will only launch the recording interface software.
iZ Technology sells the RADAR 24 and RADAR V
RADAR (audio recorder)
RADAR is a product line of professional digital multitrack recorders capable of recording and playing back twenty-four tracks of audio.-History:...
, hard disk-based, 24-track professional audio recorders based on BeOS 5.
Magicbox, a manufacturer of signage and broadcast display machines, uses BeOS to power their Aavelin product line.
Final Scratch
Final Scratch
Final Scratch is a DJ tool created by the Dutch company N2IT with input from Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva that allows manipulation and playback of digital audio sources using traditional vinyl and turntables...
, the 12″ vinyl timecode record-driven DJ software/hardware system, was first developed on BeOS. The "ProFS" version was sold to a few dozen DJs prior to the 1.0 release, which ran on a Linux virtual partition.
See also
- Access Co.Access Co., founded in April 1979 and incorporated in February 1984 in Tokyo, Japan, by Arakawa Toru and Kamada Tomihisa, is a company providing a variety of software for connected and mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, video game consoles and set top boxes....
- bootmanBootmanbootman is the Haiku and BeOS boot loader on x86 systems. It resides solely in the master boot record and does not require installing Haiku or BeOS, although it must be installed from Haiku or BeOS....
- Comparison of operating systemsComparison of operating systemsThese tables compare general and technical information for a number of widely used and currently available operating systems.Because of the large number and variety of available Linux distributions, they are all grouped under a single entry; see comparison of Linux distributions for a detailed...
- Gobe Productive
- Haiku (operating system)Haiku (operating system)Haiku is a free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first alpha release in September 2009, the second in May 2010 and the third in June 2011....
— an open source continuation of BeOS - Hitachi Flora PriusHitachi Flora PriusThe Hitachi Flora Prius was a range of computers marketed in Japan during the late 1990s. The Flora Prius was preinstalled with both Microsoft's Windows 98 as well as BeOS. It did not, however, have a dual-boot option as Microsoft reminded Be of the terms of the Windows OEM license...
— a computer that shipped with an installation of BeOS, but with Windows as the only boot option - KDLKDLA KDL is a term used on BeOS/Haiku and possibly other operating systems for a serious kernel error which causes the computer to drop into the kernel debugger...
- List of BeOS programs
- NetPositiveNetPositiveNetPositive is the default browser that comes with the Be Operating System . It has partial support for JavaScript, but no Java or CSS support. NetPositive originally was the only web browser available for BeOS, but that is no longer the case. The last official version of NetPositive before the...
— Default web browser of BeOS - OpenTrackerOpenTrackerOpenTracker is the open source version of the Tracker file manager for BeOS-compatible operating systems.Be Inc. developed the original Tracker for their operating system, BeOS. In 2000, prior to selling all of their assets to Palm, Inc., Be Inc. open-sourced some of their software, including Tracker...
— File manager from BeOS, officially and freely licensed - Pe (text editor)Pe (text editor)Pe, short for Programmer’s Editor, is an open source text editor for the Be Operating System . It is targeted towards source-code editing, and features syntax highlighting for a large number of programming languages...
External links
- BeOS 5.0 (Personal Edition) as a free download (Most likely to be documented for early 2000-01 hardware.)
- Mirror of the old www.be.com site
- BeOS Celebrating Ten Years
- BeGroovy A blog dedicated to all things BeOS
- BeOS: The Mac OS X might-have-been, reghardware.co.uk
- YouTube videos A brief overview of BeOS's features
- Programming the Be Operating System — An O'Reilly Open Book (out of print)
- BeOS 5 Max Edition (OSvirtual) — BeOS 5 Max Edition, installed in VMWare virtual machine (BeOS)