A quick look at BE (BeOS 5.0)

Member Name: nullpoint

Product:	BeOS 5.0
Date:	17/08/00 (163 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast , Streamlined , Easy to configure

Disadvantages: Clumsy user interface , lack of online help

I was interested to see what BEOS was like . For a company to try and push a new operating system today seems like a bit of a suicide mission with the Linux vs Windows people each sticking to their bunker in the middle of no-mans land.

I've only used the evaluation edition of BeOS which uses the same core as the final professional edition but is limited to working on a partition on an existing operating system .

After the install - which was very speedy and a reboot I was amazed to get the thing to boot first time . Sounds like the holy grail for an O/S . It detected all devices without annoying pop up messages telling me what it was doing and all that was left was to choose a good screen resolution .

Dial up networking was easy to configure with a wizard that similar to win95 & chums . Without having to edit any dial up scripts it connected first time and on a normal dial up line I've got to say the performance is very fast . Very fast . Although beOS only supports external modems ( like linux ) the internet perfomance couldn't be knocked at all .

The internet browser NetPositive included allowed easy access to the web , and although it didn't have as many features as netscape or windows explorer ( no java for example ) it's a nippy bit of kit and if you're more interested in searching the net quickly than pretty shockwave animations you'll be happy .

It's obvious to see that the people who have designed BeOS have done their best to be able to try and take the best elements from all operating systems . I think that the graphical interface is akin to MacOS - which is where it falls down as it seems quite non intuitive and windows are hard to organise ( minimise , resize ..etc ) . BeOS has a command line - using the bash shell from unix which works well and on paper sounds like the perfect hybrid - something with the ease of a graphical O/S with a powerful command line interpreter which y
ou can use if you have to.

If you don't like command lines you'll probably be happy to know that you won't need to use one . I was able to totally configure the system just from the desktop with no problems , but to cater for the people who love a bit of the old shell prompt it's only a click away . Also available for nothing is some of the gnu utils for development , make & gcc .

What I liked about BeOS above windows95 and linux is that system configuration isn't something that you really have to concern yourself about . There was no questions asked about devices or reams of shell files to edit - you just turn it on and it works . If you think about it - this is what an O/S should do , handle everything like this leaving you to get on with development or whatever it is you want to use it for without having to worry about configuration.

The other apps that were included were mostly demo apps but it does seem like BE are trying to encourage developers and users with a series of ports . Most open source software has been ported and since BE is posix compliant most unix apps can be recompiled with little problem . Now tucows provide shedloads of compiled apps I can't see why more home users with modest systems would try BE . If you just use the pc for email and browsing the net then BE would be ideal . Likewise for development although there are limited tools available at the moment .

What was a bit disappointing was the support for media , although BE is marketed as being a media O/S the applications included couldn't use certain file formats due to licence laws ( although they are included in the Pro version ) . The videos that I did get to play were incredibly slow even on a P3-500 and the sound broke up completely - I'm not sure if this was a fault of the O/S or some sort of conflict that I hadn't realised .

As far as stability I couldn't fault it . In the time it was up none
of the applications failed and the O/S seemed rock solid . As an added bonus startup and shutdown are incredibly quick compared to windows/linux . Booting takes a couple of seconds - and there's emphasis on a streamlined and fast system with the internals hidden from the user .

In all beOS could be a really good product . At the moment it falls down a bit from lack of online documentation - it still seems like it's a beta . It's a great hybrid though and I can't help thinking if it had come along a couple of years ago it would have taken over from the people moving on from OS/2 . Give it a try though - the download is only a small 50megs and the professional edition is priced well against windowsNT , although still a lot more expensive than linux .

Summary: