Introduction
It's no wonder that the BeOS is comparable in ease of setup to the Macintosh operating system. Be Inc. founder Jean-Louis Gassée was a central figure at Apple during the company's late '80s heyday. Although the first releases of BeOS were developed for the PowerPC chip in a now-discontinued "BeBox" of the company's own design, the company later focused on mainstream PowerPC Mac and Pentium-class Intel hardware for its recent products and, after a rumored deal with Apple fell through in late 1996 (a deal that ultimately culminated in Apple buying NeXT and returning Steve Jobs to the company he co-founded), Gassée has recently steered Be's development efforts decidedly in the direction of the Intel platform. We tested the Intel R4 and R5 PE releases, and the older version for Power Macintosh.
We recommend taking a look at BeOS if you think you might enjoy an OS with future-thinking features such as a 64-bit Journaling File System supporting files and disks of multi-terabyte sizes (an FAQ at Be says that both file and disk sizes can be several petabytes -- a thousand terabytes!), anti-aliased type, solid multitasking (including support for multiple CPUs), built-in support for OpenGL and the Internet and, above all, a very, very good graphical user interface. Be has one of the best.
BeOS Release 4 runs on Intel Architecture, Linux and PowerPC Macs, although Be in Jan. 2000 officially discontinued support for the Mac version, citing Apple's refusal to release the technical info necessary to port the code to G3 or newer Macs. BeOS R5 requires a minimum of 32 MB of RAM; 512 MB hard disk or hard disk partition; CD-ROM drive; keyboard and mouse; built-in or bundled compatible video adapter; multisync monitor strongly recommended; and network connection via Ethernet or PPP. Be warned, however: Be's network interface card (NIC) and modem selection is extremely limited. If your NIC isn't an ISA-connected NE2000 compatible or 3Com EtherLink II 503 ISA, you're out of luck unless you can find a third-party driver.
Much of the appeal of BeOS is in its multimedia prowess. Indeed, a look at the list of shareware and freeware apps (affectionately known as "BeWare" by fans of the OS) shows a definitely leaning toward multimedia programming, with MPEG audio and video players, fractal generators, MIDI recorders and other multimedia apps on display and available for download in significant numbers. BeOS comes with some solid built-in media features, too, including a high-performance graphics mode called DirectWindow that is far more speedy and CPU efficient than the standard "DrawBitmap" approach to screen rendering. A MIDI player and sound mixer (with controls that, in a nod to Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel, go up to eleven!). We also got a kick out of the Haiku-like error messages that appear if the system's NetPositive web browser can't find a website. Instead of a boring old "404" error, it says something like, "Ephemeral site. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams." And, in case you're worrying, Be's Jean-Louis Gassée insists the browser isn't tied to the OS the way Microsoft's allegedly is. Says Gassée, "Our browser is an application, just like a word processor, and it is removed just as easily. I recall us jokingly referring to it in one of our press releases as DOJ-approved.'"
Installation
Installation of a recent BeOS release is sheer simplicity. The R5 PE version doesn't require partitioning or disk reconfiguration at all -- you just launch a file from your Windows desktop and it runs. Even the full version, with its additional options to partion drives and access foreign file systems, is a sanp to work with. We simply booted from the CD (or, if running Windows NT or 2000, a supplied floppy), answered 'Yes' to a few dialogs and that was it. It automatically detected our system's hardware -- even configuring the network correctly so that we could browse the web with no manual fiddling -- and the interface is gorgeous, in a evolved MacOS/OpenStep sort of way.
In a subsequent installation of the full R4.x release, we were also able to configure a dual-boot system, with Win98 and BeOS, with surprising ease. BeOS supplies a customized version of Partition Magic, and it makes a multi-OS setup a snap. If, for example, you are running Windows 95/98, the Partition Magic Special Edition installer automatically runs when you insert the BeOS R4 disc. It allows you to non-destructively re-assign a portion of your drive to BeOS. After your hard drive is set up and the BeOS installed, it optionally provides a boot manager to easily switch OSes. BeOS also allows you to mount Windows Fat16 or FAT32 partitions (or Mac HFS partitions on that platform), making cross-platform file transfers easy. All worked well.
Name-brand apps are in rather short supply, despite Be's Feb. 1999 announcement that 26 music and audio developers, including Arboretum Systems, emagic, Emu Systems and Steinberg, had confirmed plans to bring to market audio applications for the BeOS. (Steinberg has since dropped its plans to port its Nuendo application to the Be platform.)
So, don't be surprised if you can't find a well-known database or word processor here. That's not to say there aren't any decent programs. In fact, we were surprised at how many worthwhile applications we found once we started digging.
Our next step was to download a few apps. Browsing the "BeWare" section at www.be.com and the collection of links at www.beshop.com, we found many pieces of shareware and freeware. We downloaded Doom, the classic shoot-'em-up game from ID software, NetPenguin, a drag-and-drop FTP client that strongly resembles the Mac's Fetch FTP utility, and a BeOS clone of WinAmp for playing MP3 audio files. BeOS automatically offered to expand the ZIP archives using a function called "Expand-o-matic" that did just what its name suggested it would -- what a difference from the complexities of downloading and expanding files under Linux!
What's new in R5
As of version 4.1, BeOS began supporting the new SIMD (streaming instructions, multiple data) enhancements in Intel's new Pentium III family of processors. Version 5 adds more support for MP3 and other recent compressor/decompressor ("codec") standards, and the full release of BeOS R5 supports writing MP3 and Indeo media data. The Personal Edition lacks these features, and is also missing some of the other "royalty burdened" capabilities of the full release such as the ability to non-destructively partition hard disks, or play streaming Real Audio or Video.
BeNews has a detailed, 17-part BeOS 5 review. Notably, the new version does not require Windows users to partition or reformat their hard drives to test drive the new OS. Good luck getting it, though. As noted by News.com, the tiny company's web servers are struggling to keep up with demand for version 5 of the BeOS.
For Further Reading:
Resources:
BeOS News
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