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VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

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191–200 of 234 posts

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren’t alone: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/working-defini...

This is me. It's like a super power.

Buy whatever you want! Buy what makes you happy and buy two if it makes you happier! Do tell all your friends of your keen finds. But remember to buy some put options with each of your Lovely New Products! Thank me later.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#192
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.

This post is really bringing me back! I knew talk of BeOS would stir up all us old heads. I think what we're all really nostalgic for is the days of tinkering with computers. When things lacked polish, and people put real effort into making their system nice. I remember corrupting my family computer hard drive trying to get a Linux dual-boot setup. Good times!

Have you seen Genode (1) ? An operating system framework with a pretty usable OS built on top. Last I heard, it was getting pretty close to being usable as a daily driver. lots of cool tech (micro kernel(IIRC), capabilities, sandboxing as a first class citizen, GUI system, posix compatibility layer, etc). Its been around for ages, has full time developers (its used as the basis for some (all?) of their products.

From the website: "Genode is based on a recursive system structure. Each program runs in a dedicated sandbox and gets granted only those access rights and resources that are needed for its specific purpose. Programs can create and manage sub-sandboxes out of their own resources, thereby forming hierarchies where policies can be applied at each level. The framework provides mechanisms to let programs communicate with each other and trade their resources, but only in strictly-defined manners. Thanks to this rigid regime, the attack surface of security-critical functions can be reduced by orders of magnitude compared to contemporary operating systems."

1 https://genode.org/

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS/2 Warp was out before Windows 95, and better.

I ran OS/2 Warp and was a fan of it... But to say that it was simply "better" than Windows 95 is a bridge too far. It had its strengths (rock solid multitasking) but also plenty of rough edges.

Honestly any OS with real multi-tasking, real security, and real memory protection was better than Windows 95 (and 98).

OS/2 was better. BeOS was better. Linux was better. Windows NT was better.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#195
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pick a nit, I highly doubt you bought your OS/2 hardware with euros. :D

If I used Escudos it would be useless for the folks reading my comment.

Not so, now I know the pre-EU denomination of Portguese currency

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it was a freak occurence, but I actually had incredible luck running Haiku on an old laptop back in the day. It was incredibly fast, and just about all the amenities you'd expect worked with no or minimal intervention.

Even running from an HDD?

Yeah. I installed it to HDD and it worked great. You'd think the thing had an SSD ot was so snappy. No issues with compat on the drive or anything.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^this, plus being able to play 3-4 quicktime videos at the same time smoked everyones brains around me. Using mac os 8/9 was a several times a day cursor freezing up and having to reboot. win95 was even worse

I think I'm remembering this correctly - couldn't you move the window while the video inside continued to play?

Yes you could! Windows did have (at some point) "show window contents while dragging" option, but it was quite slow at the time, and I don't remember if it supported showing (overlay) video content while moving or not.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#199
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…

What does not work? You can install Ruby version 3.2.9 (2025-07-24) with a point-and-click package manager HaikuDepot and it works perfectly fine.

Re: VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS

#200
post #4

So this is a lighter weight alternative to other Linux desktops?

Well, it can't run X or Wayland apps, so I wouldn't call it an alternative to those. An alternative to Haiku maybe.

https://github.com/X547/wayland-server
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