| BeOS | |
|---|---|
 | |
 BeOS R5 | |
| Developer | Be Inc. |
| Written in | C++ |
| Working state | Discontinued |
| Source model | Proprietary |
| Initial release | October 3, 1995; 30 years ago (1995-10-03) |
| Latest release | R5.0.3 / May 26, 2000; 25 years ago (2000-05-26) |
| Available in | English, Japanese |
| Supported platforms | IA-32 PowerPC |
| Kernel type | Monolithic[1] |
| License | Proprietary |
| Official website | beincorporated.com |
BeOS is a discontinuedoperating system forpersonal computers that was developed byBe Inc.[2] It was conceived for the company'sBeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed formultitasking,multithreading, and agraphical user interface. The OS was later sold toOEMs, retail, and directly to users; its last version was released asfreeware.
Early BeOS releases are forPowerPC. It was ported toMacintosh, thenx86. Be was ultimately unable to achieve a significant market share and ended development with dwindling finances, soPalm acquired the BeOS assets in 2001. Enthusiasts have since created derivate operating systems includingHaiku, which will retain BeOS 5 compatibility as of Release R1.
BeOS is the product ofApple Computer's former business executiveJean-Louis Gassée, with the underlying philosophy of building a "media OS" capable of up-and-coming digital media[3] and multi-processors. Development began in the early 1990s, initially designed to run onAT&T Hobbit-based hardware before being modified to run onPowerPC-based processors: first Be's ownBeBox system, and later Apple Computer'sPowerPC Reference Platform andCommon Hardware Reference Platform, with the hope that Apple would purchase or license BeOS as a replacement for its agingMac OS.[4]
The first version of BeOS shipped with the BeBox to a limited number of developers in October 1995. It supported analog and digital audio andMIDI streams, multiple video sources, and 3D computation.[5] Developer Release 6 (DR6) was the first officially available version.
The BeOS Developer Release 7 (DR7) was released in April 1996. This includes full 32-bit color graphics, "workspaces" (virtual desktops), anFTP file server, and aweb server.[6]
DR8 was released in September 1996 with a new browser withMPEG andQuickTime video formats. It supportsOpenGL,remote access,[7] andPower Macintosh.[8]
In 1996, Apple Computer CEOGil Amelio started negotiations to buy Be Inc., but stalled when Be CEOJean-Louis Gassée wanted $300 million[9] and Apple offered $125 million. Apple's board of directors preferredNeXTSTEP and purchasedSteve Jobs'sNeXT instead.[10]
The final developer's release introduced a 64-bitfile system. BeOS Preview Release (PR1), the first for the general public, was released in mid 1997. It supportsAppleTalk,PostScript printing, andUnicode.[11] The price for the Full Pack was $49.95. Later that year, Preview Release 2 shipped with support for Macintosh'sHierarchical File System (HFS), support for 512MB RAM, and improvements to the user interface.[12]
Release 3 (R3) shipped in March 1998 (initially $69.95, later $99.95), as the first to be ported to theIntelx86 platform in addition to PowerPC, and the first commercially available version of BeOS.[13] The adoption of x86 was partly due to Apple's moves, with Steve Jobs stopping the Macintosh clone market,[14] and Be's mounting debt.[15]
BeOS Release 4 had a claimed performance improvement of up to 30 percent. Keyboard shortcuts were changed to mimic those of Windows.[16] However it still lackedNovell NetWare support.[17] It also brought additional drivers and support for the most commonSCSI controllers on the x86 platform - from Adaptec and Symbios Logic. The bootloader switched fromLILO to Be's own bootman.
In 2000, BeOS Release 5 (R5) was released. This was split between a Pro Edition, and a free version known as Personal Edition (BeOS PE) which was released for free online and by CD-ROM.[18] BeOS PE could be booted from within Windows orLinux, and was intended as a consumer and developer preview.[19][20] Also with R5, Beopen sourced elements of the user interface.[21] Be CEO Gassée said in 2001 that he was open to the idea of releasing the entire operating system's source code,[22] but this never materialized.
Release 5 raised BeOS's popularity[18] but it remained commercially unsuccessful, and BeOS eventually halted following the introduction of a stripped-down version forInternet appliances,BeIA, which became the company's business focus in place of BeOS.[23] R5 is the final official release of BeOS as Be Inc. became defunct in 2001 following its sale toPalm Inc. BeOS R5.1 "Dano", which was under development before Be's sale to Palm and includes the BeOS Networking Environment (BONE) networking stack,[24] was leaked to the public shortly after the company's close.[25]
| Release | Date | Hardware |
|---|---|---|
| Developer Release 4 | Prototype | AT&T Hobbit |
| Developer Release 5 | October 1995 | PowerPC |
| Developer Release 6 | January 1996 | |
| Developer Release 7 | April 1996 | |
| Developer Release 8 | September 1996 | |
| Developer Release 9 (Advanced Access Preview Release) | May 1997 | |
| Preview Release 1 | June 1997 | |
| Preview Release 2 | October 1997 | |
| Release 3 | March 1998 | PowerPC andIntel x86 |
| R3.1 | June 1998 | |
| R3.2 | July 1998 | |
| Release 4 | November 4, 1998 | |
| R4.5 ("Genki") | June 1999 | |
| Release 5 ("Maui") Personal Edition/Pro Edition | March 28, 2000 May 26, 2000(5.0.3) | |
| R5.1 ("Dano") | Leaked | Intel x86 |
After the discontinuation of the BeBox in January 1997,Power Computing began bundling BeOS (on a CD-ROM for optional installation) with its line of PowerPC-basedMacintosh clones. These systems candual boot eitherMac OS or BeOS, with a start-up screen offering the choice.[26]Motorola also announced in February 1997 that it would bundle BeOS with their Macintosh clones, theMotorola StarMax, along with MacOS.[27]DayStar Digital was another licensee.[28]
BeOS is compatible with many Macintosh models, but notPowerBook.[29]
With BeOS Release 3 on the x86 platform, the operating system is compatible with most computers that run Windows.Hitachi is the first major x86 OEM to ship BeOS, selling theHitachi Flora Prius line in Japan, andFujitsu released the Silverline computers in Germany and theNordic countries.[30] Be was unable to attract further manufacturers due to theirMicrosoft contracts. Be closed in 2002, and sued Microsoft, claiming that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS. The case was eventually settled out of court for $23.25 million with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part.[31]
BeOS was developed as an original product, with a proprietarykernel,symmetric multiprocessing,preemptive multitasking, and pervasivemultithreading.[32] It runs inprotected memory mode, with aC++ application framework based on shared libraries and modular code.[8] Be initially offeredCodeWarrior for application development,[32] and laterEGCS.
ItsAPI isobject oriented. The user interface was largely multithreaded: each window ran in its own thread, relying heavily on sending messages to communicate between threads; and these concepts are reflected into the API.[33]
BeOS uses modern hardware facilities such as modular I/O bandwidth, a multithreaded graphics engine (with theOpenGL library), and a64-bitjournaling file system namedBFS supporting files up to oneterabyte each.[17] BeOS has partialPOSIX compatibility and acommand-line interface throughBash, although internally it is not aUnix-derived operating system. Many Unix applications were ported to the BeOS command-line interface.[34]
BeOS usesUnicode as the default GUI encoding, and support for input methods such asbidirectional text input was never realized.[citation needed]
BeOS is bundled with a uniqueweb browser named NetPositive,[35] the BeMailemail client,[36] and the PoorManweb server.[37] Be operated the marketplace site BeDepot for the purchase and downloading of software including third party, and a website named BeWare listing apps for the platform. Some third party BeOS apps include theGobe Productive office suite,[17] theMozilla project,[38][39] and multimedia apps likeCinema 4D.[40]Quake andQuake II were officially ported, andSimCity 3000 was in development.[41]
Be did not disclose the number of BeOS users, but it was estimated to be running on between 50,000 and 100,000 computers in 1999,[30] and Release 5 reportedly had over one million downloads.[18] For a time it was viewed as a viable competitor toMac OS andWindows, but its status as the "alternative operating system" was quickly surpassed byLinux by 1998.[42]
Reception of the operating system was largely positive citing its true and "reliable" multitasking and support for multiple processors.[43] Though its market penetration was low, it gained a nichemultimedia userbase[30] and acceptance by the audio community. Consequently, it was styled as a "media OS"[44] due to its well-regarded ability to handle audio and video.[45] BeOS received significant interest in Japan,[11] and was also appealing toAmiga developers and users, who were looking for a newer platform.[46]
BeOS and its successors have been used in media appliances, such as the Edirol DV-7 video editors fromRoland Corporation, which run on a modified BeOS[47] and the Tunetracker Radio Automation software that used to run it on BeOS[48][49][50] andZeta, and it was also sold as a "Station-in-a-Box" with the Zeta operating system included.[51] In 2015, Tunetracker released aHaiku distribution bundled with its broadcasting software.[52]
The Tascam SX-1 digital audio recorder runs a heavily modified version of BeOS that will only launch the recording interface software.[53] TheRADAR 24, RADAR V and RADAR 6, hard disk-based, 24-track professional audio recorders from iZ Technology Corporation were based on BeOS 5.[54] Magicbox, a manufacturer of signage and broadcast display machines, uses BeOS to power their Aavelin product line.[55]Final Scratch, a 12-inch vinyl timecode record-driven DJ software and 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.[56]
After BeOS came to an end, Palm createdPalmSource which used parts of BeOS's multimedia framework for its failedPalm OS Cobalt product[57] (with the takeover of PalmSource, the BeOS rights were assigned toAccess Co.[58]). However, Palm refused the request of BeOS users to license the operating system.[59] As a result, a few projects formed to recreate BeOS or its key elements with the eventual goal of then continuing where Be Inc. quit.
BeUnited, a BeOS oriented community, converted itself into anonprofit organization in August 2001[60] to "define and promote open specifications for the delivery of the Open Standards BeOS-compatible Operating System (OSBOS) platform".[61]
Immediately after Palm's purchase of Be, a German company namedyellowTAB started developingZeta based on the BeOS R5.1 codebase and released it commercially. It was later distributed bymagnussoft.[62] 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.Access Co. (which boughtPalmSource, until then the holder of the intellectual property associated with BeOS) declared that yellowTAB had no right to distribute a modified version of BeOS, and magnussoft was forced to cease distribution of the operating system in 2007.[63]
Haiku is a completeopen source reimplementation of BeOS. It was originally named OpenBeOS and its first release in 2002 was a community update.[62] Unlike Cosmoe and BlueEyedOS, it is directly compatible with BeOS applications. It is open source software. As of 2024, it was the only BeOS clone still under development, with the fifth beta in September 2024 still keeping BeOS 5 compatibility in its x86 32-bit images, with an increased number of ported modern drivers andGTK apps.[64]
BlueEyedOS tried to create a system underLGPL based on theLinux kernel and anX server that is compatible with BeOS. Work began under the name BlueOS in 2001 and a demo CD was released in 2003.[65] The project was discontinued in February 2005.
Cosmoe,[66] with an interface like BeOS, was designed by Bill Hayden as an open source operating system based on the source code ofAtheOS and later OpenBeOS, but using theLinux kernel.[67][68][69] ZevenOS was designed to continue where Cosmoe left off.[70] In mid 2024, Cosmoe was resurrected by its original author after 17 years, with a much improved codebase based on contemporary Haiku.[71]
BeFree started in 2003, initially developed underFreeBSD[72] and laterLinux.[73][74]
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