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May 26, 1999

BeOS Redux (Still A "Wow!")

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Is the BeOS on your company's "watch" list? Would you consider it for a general-purpose platform? What applications have you tried, and to what effect? If you're not familiar with Be, is that because of a lack of marketing, or is there something about Be that puts you off? If so, what? What would it take to get you to try the BeOS?

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Fred Langa is a senior consulting editor and columnist for Windows Magazine. Fred's free weekly newsletter is available via subscribe@langa.com. You can contact him at fred@langa.com or via his website at http://www.langa.com.

By Fred Langa

A few months ago, I told you about my initial reactions to BeOS 4.0, which was then in late beta form. It looked extremely promising. This week, I had a chance to try the shipping version and some new applications for the operating system. Once again, it was an honest-to-goodness "wow" experience.

The BeOS has a polish and slickness that's lacking in many of the current Linux distributions: Where Linux often feels rough-edged and unfinished, the BeOS feels like a full-blown, commercial-quality system.

I installed the BeOS on a middle-of-the-road Dell PII/266 with 128 Mbytes of RAM. The Be CD setup can be used on a clean system, on a Mac or BeBox, or on a system running Windows. My system had been set up with Win98; unlike the attitude you sometimes see in the Linux world (in which the more hard-core users either wish Windows would go away or pretend that it doesn't exist), the Be CD is designed to peacefully coexist with Windows -- a wise decision on the part of Be's engineers. The CD even contains a Windows Autorun.inf file so that when you insert the CD on a Windows system, the setup process begins automatically.

From within Windows, the Be setup begins by installing a custom version of PowerQuest's excellent PartitionMagic. If you follow the defaults, PartitionMagic will then run and create an appropriately sized Be partition for you, leaving your Windows data intact. (If you wish, you can override the defaults.) After you reboot, the rest of the Be setup runs: You simply point the setup at the newly created Be partition, then sit back for about 10 minutes.

The operating system itself is based on what Be calls pervasive multithreading, which slices tasks into large numbers of small tasks that can be juggled (preemptively) more smoothly and with less memory swapping than chunkier tasks or processes. The BeOS runs fine on a uniprocessor box, but will also live happily -- and make use of -- multiple processors in SMP boxes, too.

Be's multithreading helps it shine in handling high-bandwidth media -- the system ships with many samples of smooth animation and rapid OpenGL rendering that illustrate the system's prowess. The Be file system is 64 bits, so even extremely large media files aren't a problem; Be says the system can handle terabyte-sized files. In fact, the Be press kit calls Be "The Media OS." That may indeed be a true strength of Be, but it also sounds a little like a marketing department's attempt to pigeonhole it. Actually, I think this view may sell Be short because, while the system is good at media, it's also a very stable and attractive general-purpose operating system.

For example, networking is built into Be, and its native tongue is TCP/IP. Any Be system can act as a Web or file server; mail, browser, and remote-access applications are included as part of the basic Be bundle.

The Be graphical user interface is very polished and reminds me of a hybrid between the Mac or Next and perhaps one of the newer X-based interfaces. Although the interface is unique and not a simple clone of any other GUI, it doesn't do anything weird or require a steep learning curve. I found it a pleasure to use.

There still aren't a lot of applications for Be. I had one in hand: Gobe Productive 1.1.1, an $80 office suite for creating text, graphics, charts, images, presentations, and spreadsheets. Unfortunately, the Gobe CD arrived looking like the mail truck had backed over it (maybe it had!), and the CD was unreadable. So I tried the free trial version downloadable at www.gobe.com, and liked it a lot; I'll try the full version as soon as I get a replacement CD. You can see Gobe's and all the other applications available for the BeOS by browsing the BeDepot at www.bedepot.com. The list of available add-ons and applications is growing steadily.

You also can order the BeOS itself via the same link. It normally sells for $100, but there's currently a special in which you get version 4, a free upgrade to version 4.5 when it ships this summer, and a copy of the BeOS Bible for $80 -- which isn't bad at all.

The more time I spend with the BeOS, the more I like it. As more applications become available, it could turn out to be a dark-horse winner in the operating-systems race.

But what's your take? Is the BeOS on your company's "watch" list? If you're familiar with Be, do you think the "Media OS" play is wise, or too limiting? Would you consider it for a general-purpose platform? What applications have you tried, and to what effect? If you're not familiar with Be, is that because of a lack of marketing, or is there something about Be that puts you off? If so, what? What would it take to get you to try the BeOS? Whatever your view, join in the discussion of this operating-system contender!

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