Hacker News Reader

Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

BeOS was really something of what the future 'could' have almost been. Too bad that it was killed by better competitors. But again I think its fair to compare with the lessons learned from its successor 'Haiku' that can be learned by many other OSes:

From what I can see from using Haiku for a bit, it has the bazar community element from the open-source culture with its package management and ports system from Linux and BSD whilst being conservative with its design from its apps, UI, and SDK like macOS. Although I have tired it and its surprisingly "useable", the driver story is still a bit lacking. But from a GUI usability point of view compared with many Linux distros, it feels very consistent unlike the countless confusing interfaces coming from those distros.

Perhaps BeOS lives on in the Haiku project, but whats more interesting is that the real contender who learned from its failure is the OS that has its kernel named 'Zircon'.

View on HN

I installed BeOS when it first came out. To me it was a cool tech demo, but it was fairly useless as it didn't have a usable browser (NetPositive was half baked at best), couldn't play a lot of video codecs and couldn't connect to a Windows network share.

I feel like if they launched a better experience for existing Windows users, it would have done much better.

There was a version of Opera 3.62 for BeOS around 2000. At the time, Opera was a great browser.

I actually licensed that version :)

- VLC existed for Be

- So was Opera

> the driver story is still a bit lacking

That's a hell of an understatement right there. It still doesn't have any capability for accelerated video, does it?

Unfortunately that's the story for any OS these days that isn't already firmly established. Which is a huge shame since they all suck in their own ways.

That's the case. I can't use Haiku til the video is sorted, and it looks like that's a long way out. I'd love to help but I don't know C++ and I don't have time to dive into something like that.

> Unfortunately that's the story for any OS these days that isn't already firmly established.

Maybe because we're coming at this from the wrong perspective?

I love the theoretical idea that I could build a generic x86 box that can boot into any OS I feel like using, but has that ever truly been the case? We certainly don't pick software this way—if you're running Linux, you're not going to buy a copy of Final Cut and expect it to work.

Well-established software will of course work almost everywhere, but niche projects don't have the ability. Unless you use something based on Java or Electron, which is equivalent to using Virtualbox (or ESXi) in this comparison.

It's long been said that one of Apple's major advantages with macOS is they don't need to support any hardware under the sun. Non-coincidentally, the recommended way to make a Hackintosh is to custom build a PC and explicitly select Mac-compatible hardware.

Now, if an OS doesn't for instance have support for any model GPUs at all, cherry picking hardware won't help. But perhaps this is where projects like BeOS need to focus their resources.

> The "correct" way to go about things is to choose the OS first, and then select compatible hardware.

Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if we weren't constrained by real world requirements? If I were to write an OS today, the hardware I'm targeting may become quite rare and/or expensive tomorrow. Or it may just go out of fashion. Regardless, very few people are going to buy new hardware just to try out an OS they're not even sure they want to use yet.

> very few people are going to buy new hardware just to try out an OS

We do have VM's and emulators, but yes, the cost of switching OS's is huge. That's true with or without broad hardware compatibility.

My point is this: I don't think the idea of OS-agnostic hardware ever really existed. The fact that most Windows PC's can also run Linux is an exceptional accomplishment, and not something other projects can be expected to replicate. You might get other OS's to boot, but not with full functionality.

> That's a hell of an understatement right there. It still doesn't have any capability for accelerated video, does it?

We do not. But that (and proper power management) basically all that's missing at this point; the rest are "just bugs".

That is to say: WiFi, ethernet, USB, SSDs, EFI, etc. should all work on the majority of hardware, both current and past.

Well it wasn't as simple as "killed off by better competitors". It was actually both much better than Windows 98 and Mac OS at the time.

But ultimately the deathblow came from Apple which, after struggling with low sales and poor quality software, almost chose to buy BeInc's tech but dropped it so they could bring in Steve Jobs. So it was more like vendor lock-in (Windows) and corporate deals (Apple) as well as failing partners (Palm).

Apple also dropped it because they couldn't come together on price, partly because BeOS was in a fairly unfinished state:

> Apple's due diligence placed the value of Be at about $50 million and in early November it responded with a cash bid "well south of $100 million," according to Gassée. Be felt that Apple desperately needed its technology and Gassée's expertise. Apple noted that only $20 million had been invested in Be so far, and its offer represented a windfall, especially in light of the fact that the BeOS still needed three years of additional expensive development before it could ship (it didn't have any printer drivers, didn't support file sharing, wasn't available in languages other than English, and didn't run existing Mac applications). Direct talks between Amelio and Gassée broke down over price just after the Fall Comdex trade show, when Apple offered $125 million. Be's investors were said to be holding out for no less than $200 million, a figure Amelio considered "outrageous."

> ...With Be playing hard to get, Apple decided to play hardball and began investigating other options.

http://macspeedzone.com/archive/art/con/be.shtml

Yeah, I feel saying "better competitors" really does Be a disservice. They largely failed due to an unfair playing field and very shady practices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com