Article by Oliver Thylmann (BeNews)

BeOS the OS for the Future?

A lot of you have, hopefully, heard of BeOS by Be Inc. by now. With Windows dominance and Linux hype, BeOS is still just a sideline contender but as Be puts it, seeing a demo will make you a believer. And this is how it is with many people from the Press. Leo Laporte from ZDTV's ScreenSavers is a big BeOS fan. At the moment he is building his new computer and as he puts it he is building this machine for the future. Worst case that means Windows 2000. Best case, BeOS (Example).

This already brings us to the topic. Is BeOS the Operating System for the future? I truly think so. You might call me bias being an editor of BeNews, but believe me that I would not put the time I do into BeNews if I would not believe in BeOS. Nuff said. I will try to make my point.

Hardware and Software Support

The magazine articles about BeOS mostly end by saying that BeOS is a truly great OS but that the hardware support and applications are still missing. While I cannot fully deny this I cannot agree either. The hardware support list is always growing and Be is doing their best to provide the support for the biggest names out there. Sadly not a lot of hardware manufactures provide their own drivers for now, meaning Be has to write them on their own, but this is starting to change. If you have a more or less standard system you are likely to have BeOS running without a problem. And if you want to make sure just check the hardware compatibility listing. If your graphics card is VESA compliant you can run BeOS at 1600x1200 and 16bit, though not accelerated even if the card is not supported. Once your hardware is supported you will be able to install BeOS within 15 minutes including a running network, modem or anything else. You can keep windows or Linux on another partition of course and BeOS will be just fine confined to 500 MB of space.

And the fact that there is no software available is a plain lie, sorry. Just go to BeBits for a good picture of what is there or search on BeNews for software you are looking for as someone might already have talked about it. For example, there are not as many office applications available as for Windows of course, but me personally, I only need one kick ass office suite and not 10 or more. And take a look at Gobe Productive, which should be out latest for Comdex as version 2.0 and have Word and Excel import and export features. And this application just rocks. If you want to have a good idea about BeOS R4.5 you can take a look at the BeNews Extra, which was published for PC Expo, when R4.5 came out. There are too many to talk about here, but stay on the lookout as things are hotting up in the Be World.

A closer look at graphics hardware.

This being a hardware site concentrating on Riva hardware I will try to fill you in on the support of those cards. First of all Riva128 (which I run myself), TNT and TNT2 are well supported in 2d and the people that I have talked to are VERY happy with them. This means that you will have a wonderful screen but will not be able to run Quake2 with hardware OpenGL support. But this is not that bad as the OpenGL drivers, which are available for Voodoo2 and Voodoo3, are still in a very beta stage and frame rates are still relatively poor and you can dual boot into any other OS for your games if you want. A good thing to remember is that the initial port of quake2 was done in only 1 week by a Be engineer on his spare time. Now either BeOS just rocks, or Quake2 is coded well, or the Be Engineer is just amazing. Probably a mixture of the 3. But you can see the room for improvements by running the GLTeapot inside BeOS with a Voodoo3. You will get a frame rate of over 200fps, which is... goooood. :)

The next big thing for BeOS in terms of graphics will most likely be hardware OpenGL support for more cards which might come as soon as next year. Voodoo4 will most likely be supported due to all drivers being open sourced. The GeForce is another matter and I have not had any confirmation from Be yet about drivers for that card, but this is just how Be handles such things. They do not like to announce anything until they are 100% when some feature or driver will be available. Another nice thing to note is that BeEurope has just been to ECTS in London, which is something like the European E3, and they have talked to a lot of games makers and a lot of games makers came to the booth. The interest is there, the games just need to be ported or written from scratch for BeOS. One thing that should be noted also is that Quake3 is coming and has already been demoed by Be Inc. at tradeshows. It is still slow due to the beta OpenGL hardware support, but it is working and, strange as it might seem, people say it is looking good (read better than somewhere else, though no one can explain that ;)). And Quake3 will be using multiple processors, which is something BeOS excels at. If windows NT improves in performance by 70%, Windows95 not at all, BeOS will almost hit the 100% mark due to very effective threading and the superior architecture of BeOS. Again, things are looking bright.

You want to know more?

Well if you want to know more, which I hope you do, then this is the right time. From October 7th to 8th, BeEurope will hold a BeDC, Be Developer Conference, in Frankfurt following by a free BeGeistert meeting. This will be attended by a lot of interesting people and will be a wonderful place to get all your questions answered. You can stay tuned to BeNews for more reports before, during and after the show.

If you want to try out BeOS then you will find a way. In the us, check BeDepot for the easiest option. And in Europe go to the Reseller pages at BeEurope. And then remember one important thing. Have Fun! I for one can now understand why MacOS users defend their OS so vividly. Seeing a BeOS Demo will make you a believer!

Copyright: RIVA Station 1999 - Lars Weinand / Oliver Thylmann
No Copy without Permission!