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VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

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Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#111

Post by yason »

peterashford wrote: post #83
yason wrote: post #54

I bought an Amiga in the early 90's and enjoyed it immensely. Commodore went under and Amiga died. I bought BeOS in the late 90's and enjoyed it immensely like a breath of fresh air in a sewage pipe. BeOS died. With my track record I really, really should've bought Windows. Twice, to make sure.

I think we were on the same track. I absolutely loved the Amiga and was about to jump on board BeOS when it went under. I never got to use BeOS as a daily driver (just ran their demo disk). How did you find it?

From them internets after the x86 version got out, I think. Played enough with what I found around, and I ultimately bought (with real money) the BeOS 5.0 Personal Edition, made it dual-boot my Linux machine and knew that this is it! It felt like an Amiga but on soulless PC hardware instead! The exhilaration was unlimited! It booted fast, no old cruft, unorthodox designs, everything one-in-a-thousand a true harbinger customer loves!

Eventually I think the setup gradually bit rot with no updates and unsupported hardware, so I reluctantly had to go back to Linux. I remember Ubuntu and Gnome 2 started to look pretty nice (well, for an inferior desktop environment) in the early years of 2000.

(Unsurprisingly, years later Gnome came out with Gnome 3 and killed all the good stuff that Gnome 2 had accumulated. I can only wait and see how long Mate desktop survives.)

I still keep a Haiku VM around and boot it every now and then.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#112

Post by InsideOutSanta »

WD-42 wrote: post #25

UI elements that have depth look so mouth-wateringly good now. So over the minimalism and bouncing back hard.

Late 90s visual design for operating systems - in particular Mac OS 8 and BeOS - is peak OS design. Aesthetically pleasing and a very clear, highly readable visual language based on well-researched human interface guidelines.

It was uphill all the way before that point, and downhill ever since.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#113

Post by mlhpdx »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #35
nico wrote: post #16

BeOS was such an amazing experience back in the day. It really felt magical. Too bad it got shutdown. I wonder what the evolution of it would be like today

I just found my BeOS 5 and BeProductive CDs from the late 90s. I wish I had something to run them on.

What would they run on these days? I mean other than my old Gateway 2000 dual Pentium Pro with 32MB of RAM and dual booting BeOS and NT4?

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#115

Post by numerio »

Thank you everyone for commenting! We are going to pubblish small articles on the website to clarify some of the common questions that are popping around. We will also do our best to improve our wording and marketing, thanks everyone for the suggestions and stay tuned!

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#116

Post by conception »

yason wrote: post #54

I bought an Amiga in the early 90's and enjoyed it immensely. Commodore went under and Amiga died. I bought BeOS in the late 90's and enjoyed it immensely like a breath of fresh air in a sewage pipe. BeOS died. With my track record I really, really should've bought Windows. Twice, to make sure.

Correction, BeOS was killed. I’ll never get over Microsoft getting in trouble for including a browser in Windows but not for forcing companies to not allow BeOS to be installed when it was getting legs.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#117

Post by 59nadir »

shevy-java wrote: post #55
pjmlp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And much better option, running the real deal, instead of some compatibility layer.

And things such as ruby don't work on it. Well, what shall I say? The "best" ideas get beaten when in practically already works very well - aka Linux. People need to compare to Linux and if there are failure points, they need to fix it. Haiku keeps on failing at core considerations. If you look at guides, they recommend to "run in qemu". Well, that is a fever dream. They need to focus on real hardware. And they need…

> I've been looking at it for many years - they are simply unable to leave the dream era.

Sit down and do the work needed to get Ruby running properly on Haiku instead of sitting here complaining and basically admitting that you're just being a noisy spectator... On HackerNews, no less.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#118

Post by jnovek »

erremerre wrote: post #100
yason wrote: post #54

I bought an Amiga in the early 90's and enjoyed it immensely. Commodore went under and Amiga died. I bought BeOS in the late 90's and enjoyed it immensely like a breath of fresh air in a sewage pipe. BeOS died. With my track record I really, really should've bought Windows. Twice, to make sure.

I am in the same boat, every time I like something, it is a commercial failure. They should really hire me to check if I like whatever project they got in mind and if I do, cancel immediatetly and save the losses from being a failure.

They should have me do that with television programs.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#119

Post by BirAdam »

ab5tract wrote: post #45
setopt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall directly, Apple was between buying BeOS and NeXT. Would be interesting what would have happened if they went the Be route instead of the Unix route. (But given that MacOS and BeOS were both fringe at the time, perhaps they would just have gone bankrupt…)

Considering that Steve Jobs came with NeXT, the general consensus has been that their recovery would not have been nearly as significant. The real what-if for me is pondering what might have been had HP and other vendors not caved to the Wintel cartel in abandoning their plans to include BeOS as a preinstalled OEM option. Microsoft was sued by Be in civil court and Be won their case, but it was too little too late.

Jobs worked on NeXT and Jean-Louis Gassée was working on Be. Gassée had brought the world the Macintosh Portable and the IIfx, and he started the Newton project which had the effect of keep ARM alive.

When Gassée left Apple, he took many of Apple's best with him. If we want to know what Apple would have looked like under Gassée, I think it's easier to look at how many products he killed. Much of Apple's leadership was trying to force budget computers like the PC industry was building. Gassée would have none of it. He was focused on exceptionally good hardware married to exceptionally good software, knew the handheld devices would be vital in the future, but he didn't like boring things. I imagine that Apple built around Be would have delivered many of the same things, but wouldn't have become just plain brushed aluminum everywhere.

The curious part would have been the OS. BeOS and NeXT are wildly different.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#120

Post by hrmtst93837 »

pjmlp wrote: post #20
rebolek wrote: post #14

If you like BeOS, take a look at Haiku https://www.haiku-os.org/ , it's very nice and very usable system based directly on BeOS.

And much better option, running the real deal, instead of some compatibility layer.

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