Even if you’re a moron, you can’t deny noticing the growing trend of alternative OS use. I can go down to my local Electronics Boutique and pick up a copy of Quake for Linux, a fact that would have boggled my mind a couple years ago. Recently, Linux has risen to heights many considered unachievable considering its small cult-like following. Somehow, however, despite its non-intuitive UI, its steep learning curve, and more importantly, its dreadful command-line interface, Linux has threatened the world with its serving power and low cost. I mean, really, how can you ignore something as versatile as Linux with a price tag of zero dollars?
If you’re not lying to yourself, and admit that Linux poses some threat (however small) to the OS world, then take another breathe of fresh air, ’cause I’m about to hit you with another revelation. Linux may be great, but it ain’t all that its cracked up to be. As a consumer OS, for the masses, it falls way short. If you think about it, though, which OS doesn’t? Windows 98 is a great consumer OS, but it’s troubled by instability. Windows 2000 Pro is a nice alternative, but it might very well scare the average person away with its user groups and network jazz. And what of MacOS? Heh, don’t go there, my friend.
If you assume for a moment that people are indeed willing to switch OS’s, (and who can really deny that, considering that some geeks switched from Windows to Linux?), then you have to consider for a moment that a new prize fighter has entered the ring. Imagine the stability of Win2k with the ease of use of the MacOS, with a versatility that even Linux afficionados can respect. We’re talking the best of the best, ladies and gentleman, and you won’t have to sell your soul to Microsoft to get your hands on it. There’s nothing sweeter than the taste of freedom, and in many respects, that’s what the BeOS will give you.
The BeOS has been around for some years now (R5 stands for “revision five”), and though still in its infancy as far as features and support, it has already received an interested following. To these chaps, BeOS R5 was long-awaited, and after playing around with it, I now know why. BeOS was built as a workstation OS for multimedia use, and since its public release, has been donned an effective and fast OS even on inexpensive hardware. Built from the ground up, BeOS isn’t based on Linux, FreeBSD, or any other OS buzz-word foundation, though in some respects is similar to some of them.
I originally heard of BeOS four years ago, and first saw it in action a year later. While my interest was piqued, it wasn’t until recently that I decided to take the dive into the BeOS world, and once I heard about the impending release date of R5, I decided to wait until I didn’t have to pay anything. That’s right: BeOS is free, and now downloadable from the Net. So, when the day came, I nabbed a copy from a local FTP site and got to work.
There are two current versions of the BeOS out there: the Personal Edition, and the Pro Edition. The former is the one we’ll be discussing, as it’s a free download, and practically identical to the Pro version. In fact, the only real differences between the two is that the Pro version has more bundled software, and needs to be installed on a separate partition on your hard drive. The Pro version costs around fifty bucks, and is available through Gobe Software, the publishers of BeOS in the Americas.
If you’re not sure if you read me right, you did. The Pro version, like most non-Windows operating systems, needs to reside in its own partition. The Personal version, however, does not. That, in fact, is one of the best things about it. The only file you need to download to get BeOS up and running is a single 43MB executable, which, I admit, seems insanely small. Once you have it, all you need to do is run it and a dialogue box will pop up, just as if you’re installing any other Windows application. And if you think that’s weird, get this: BeOS is easier to install than Microsoft Office. In fact, aside from pointing to the installation directory and popping in a blank 3.5″ disk to boot from, there’s not much else you have to do. Given that you can go about installing BeOS R5 from a Win95, Win98, or Win2k machine, there’s really not much of an excuse for not trying BeOS out. And, if you really don’t like it, then all you have to do is click your Start button, go to Programs, move over to the BeOS folder, and click the Uninstall icon. No hassle whatsoever.
While R5 can be run without a boot disk in Win9x, it isn’t advised. While some people have no problems doing so, others have reported strange but non-fatal issues, like the mouse cursor changing shape, the graphics appearing weird, etc. Using the boot disk, though, is hardly a hassle, and if you forgot to make one during installation, you can make one by clicking the respective icon in the BeOS folder under the Start menu. Be advised that you have to use this boot disk if you plan on running BeOS on a WinNT or Win2k machine.
Starting BeOS is simply a matter of restarting your computer with the BeOS boot disk in your A: drive, and waiting for the BeOS to load. It comes up much faster than Windows does, and boots right into a GUI. Unlike some other operating systems, the BeOS GUI is integrated right into the foundation of the OS, so you don’t need to get all squirmy thinking about windows managers, or learning a couple dozen commands.
Upon loading, I was presented with a blue desktop ala Windows, with a row of icons at the top of the screen, and a BeOS menu-thingy at the top right of my screen. Very similar to the start button in Windows, this menu enabled me to quickly access all my programs, recent documents, etc. And, just like the Windows taskbar, running programs can be minimized to “hang” from the BeOS menu, instead of filling a more finite space like on the Windows taskbar.
The first thing I noticed, of course, was that I was running at an icky 640×480 resolution, and this simply was not acceptable. My first instinct was to go to the BeOS menu, and once I clicked it, right under the applications menu was an area to set my preferences. As obvious as a smack in the face, I saw the “screen” icon and opened the baby up. Changing my resolution and screen color depth took a matter of seconds, and soon I was running at my standard 1024×769 res with 32-bit color. And to think, it took me ages to find out how to do this in Red Hat Linux.
So, with the screen set up and more manageable, the next item on my list of priorities was to get my network connection working. Again, doing this was much more simple than in Linux or Windows; I went down to the preferences menu, clicked on the “network” icon, and was presented with a small networking dialogue box. I saw my detected network card, hit the “settings…” button, and clicked on the “obtain settings automatically” check box. I hit “done”, clicked the “restart networking” button, and the network connection was up and running. No need to reboot, no need to fiddle with a TCP/IP driver, and no hair pulling whatsoever. If only everything was this straightforward.
Configuring other parts of the OS were just as simple. I mean, seriously, my grandmother could get BeOS working. I wouldn’t trust her to screw around with the network settings in Windows, let alone Linux, but I’d be comfortable enough to throw BeOS in front of her, a tutorial or two, and have her prep some oldskool kung-fu for some word processing action.
While screwing around with BeOS, I didn’t want to be completely out of the communications loop, so I quickly configured the built-in e-mail application with my respective information, and then hopped onto some BeOS web sites to look for software. It’s no secret that the software is what makes an OS successful; without being able to surf for pr0n, or finishing the report you need to give your boss, you may as well be twiddling your thumbs. BeOS, however, has most useful software available for it, despite the fact that it’s a non-mainstream OS.
The included web browser is called NetPositive, and loads without any sort of delay at all. It lacks some of the features of Internet Explorer, such as the way it sees DHTML, JavaScript, etc, but still displays most every page in a clean manner. If they could throw in some nice Java support, NetPositive could be a bright little browser, but for the time being, it certainly gets the job done.
Over at www.bebits.com, I scoped out some of the free applications available for BeOS. In a minute or two, I found BeAIM, a third-party version of AOL’s popular messaging client. There were multiple versions of ICQ also (which I have yet to check out in detail), but I decided that IM would hold me over for the time being. I downloaded the .zip file and looked for another important app: an .mp3 player. While BeOS comes with a media player that plays everything from movies, to waves, to .mp3s, I needed some playlist action, and that’s exactly what CL-Amp offers. Both apps I was downloading appeared in a small “download” window, which I found pretty damn convenient; a nice bar displayed the download progress of each respective file.
Jumping to the downloads directory (right off the “home” icon on my desktop), I double-clicked the BeAIM file, changed the destination directory, and uncompressed it. So much easier than WinZip, and included with the OS. Beautiful.
In a similar manner, I installed CL-Amp, then realized I didn’t have access to my .mp3s, as some were stored on a CD, and others were on my second hard drive. Unfortunately, BeOS can’t access ATA/66 drives, so if you want BeOS to read one, you’ll have to connect it to an ATA/33 port before loading up R5. This is apparently an issue with certain ATA/66 controllers, and the way they’re accessed in the hardware, but Be claims that a fix is underway.
So, I wanted to listen to some .mp3s, but they were on my main hard drive, and natively, BeOS only has access to a 512MB segment of that drive (where it was installed to). Not a problem, however. Right-clicking the desktop lets me access a pretty darn useful option: mounting a drive.
Now, for those of you who have lived in a Windows world all your life, I’m not talking about doing anything lewd with your system hardware. Mounting drives is synonymous with “loading” them, or “obtaining access” to them, something that Linux gurus are all too familiar with. Popping my .mp3 CD into my CD-Rom, I right-clicked the desktop, went over to the “mount” option, and saw the label of the CD I had inserted. I clicked on it, and a moment later, the CD appeared on my desktop. Opening it up, I saw all my wonderful music files. I immediately got my groove on.
BeOS not only lets you mount your CD-Rom drives, but most other drives you have attached to your system as well. For instance, I saw my primary hard drive in the “mount” menu, and proceeded to gain access to the sucker. I was now able to read any of the files on it, despite the fact that it was all in an NTFS partition. Another great thing about the BeOS is that you can read not only Fat and Fat32, but NTFS as well. I proceeded to import my IM contact list into my BeOS version, and also copied some of my WinAmp skins over to CL-Amp. It seems that the BeOS community has already ensured a smooth switchover between OS’s. Boo-yea!
Now, while you Mac-heads might very well be happy with this crazy GUI-lovin’, I’m sure there are some of you out there who have a twisted need to play around in a command console. Don’t fret; from the applications menu, you can launch terminal windows, where you can play around Linux-style. So, jumpin’ over to BeOS is a simple task for members of both the windows and command-line parties, and in fact, for the latter, your knowledge transfers back and forth. Heck, I even started playin’ around in vi just ’cause I needed my command-line fix for the day.
Since you can’t do much without a decent text editor, and since the idea of using vi probably scares half of you, you’ll be glad to know that BeOS comes with an excellent text editor called StyledEdit. It’s similar to NotePad or Nedit, only you can have different font sizes and colors in the same documents, align your text, and even choose different fonts. So, it’s versatile enough to do some coding, as well as writing up zine articles (like this one was). If you can’t live without a more full-featured editor, however, rest assured that you can get ahold of some free apps that can read Word documents. And, if you’re prepared to shell out some money (around 70 bucks), you can pick up Gobe Productive, an office suite similar to Apple’s old Clarisworks that should give you adequate office-suite lovin’.
Just pondering everything that BeOS R5 offers blows my mind. A quick look through the applications menu amazes me: a digital camera interface, a CD-Burning app, an audio CD player, a web-cam app, a TV tuner… the list goes on. Why didn’t MS ever bundle a burning app with their OS? And hot diggity, my Plextor is even supported. And all of this is only part of the Personal Edition. Imagine all the toys in the Pro version. And naturally, there’s more to look forward to: GeForce drivers on their way, Photoshop-level graphics utilities for free, ATA/66 support, and even ports of some popular games. We’re talking complete and total coverage for your computing needs, in a package that’s so damn slick and easy to use, that even a klutz like the AmericanHero can get his thang on with this baby.
Seriously, folks, after using BeOS for a day, it saddens me when I load up Win2k. I can seriously see myself using BeOS as my primary OS, jumping into Windows only for gaming or the occassional dev-tool. BeOS packs enormous punch, packed with awesome features from your favorite OS’s, and throws it all together seamlessly. It’s a great, cheap alternative to the Microsoft Empire, and if anything, using BeOS certainly raises your geek-factor. For some, that’s a good thing, and for others… well, they can keep bustin’ their balls with Win9x. The revolution has begun, folks, and I think I see a victor approaching.
Verdict: 8/10 Price of Package: Free Pluses: Practically everything you need for daily operations; fast, stable, and easy to use. Minuses: No ATA/66 support, no Java support, and few if any commercial gaming options. Final Words: You’re a fool if you don’t test-drive this badboy. MS, watch out, ’cause BeOS packs a hell of a punch.
Comments on this entry are closed.