What do you guys think of BeOS?

[Zorba]

I am thinking about getting BeOS and trying it out. Is it worth it? Are there good applications for it? Anything I should know?

Thank you,

 

[Wizkid]

Well, don't buy it until you try it. Goto www.be.com and download the personal edition first to try it out. I found it to be a very nice OS (if your hardware is supported) but like any other OS, if you rely on certain windows programs and like playing games, then windows is the only real way to go. Sure, some games will work in linux/beos, but do the ones YOU play work? BeOS has some great software including an ICQ client and a AOL Instant Messanger client. It also has word processors, spreadsheets, databases, web browsers, tons of multimedia programs, etc. Just download it (45 MBs) and give it a try. It doesn't need it's own partition, just 512 MBs of space on your windows drive. You can have it setup and running in 5 minutes (seriously)

 

[cpebbles]

I've been wanting to try it out for a while, but I couldn't get BeOS 5 Personal Edition to run on my system. If you can take the time to D/L BeOS 5 PE, do so. I'm not sure what guarantees there are that it'll run on a standard Win-compatible system.

cpebbles

 

[Blayze]

I have used Personal Edition 5 and I thought it was a very nice operating system
if you have the time download it and try it out

 

[Zorba]

Wizkid: I was planning on trying out PE first. But everytime I try to dl it the servers are busy . I very rarely play games, and there are no real apps that I have to use (and if I need to use a winblows prog I can always reboot).

 

[pyr]

if you are interested I just put up a copy of my ftp server for you to give it a go:

ftp://mininger.user.msu.edu

login: beos
PW: beos

 

[DAM]

another good word for beos, nice little OS, it reminded me of the good ol days of the mac






dam()

 

[mjquilly]

BeOS is turning into an awesome OS, and I totaly expcect it to keep getting better. The Hardware support is kind of limited, so make sure your system is compatible before getting it. Once more major SoftWare manufactureres start pumping out new stuff for BE, it will have to take a run at winblows.

 

[slicksilver]

i dunno much about this OS but one of my friend says that it sux bigtime coz. it does not support most of the hardware...

Raj

 

[Zorba]

Thank you all. I downloaded it last, haven't had a chance to install it yet. I think I will have to buy a new video card, though (this computer has a pretty old one in it).

rajkanneganti: Well all my hardware is supported, besides my video card. That is because it is old, and not really well known (Hercules Dynamite 128). Everything else, including my CDR, is supported.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Zorba,

I don't know your particular video card, but I think it uses the NVIDIA Riva 128 chip which is supported. If so, then you can use BeOS.

 

[cpebbles]

Hm, just d/led BeOS PE again... All my hardware seems to be supported, but I get some kinda "Can't mount" error whenever I try to run it. No big deal, I figure the potential causes are too numerous to cover, I'll try with a boot disk. But the Boot Floppy program isn't working. It's doing the same thing it did the last time I installed BeOS--it gets about 60% done and then just disappears, leaving my floppy blank. Any clues what's causing this?

cpebbles

 

[easternerd]

hi there,
Good to see someone who wants to expirement with a new OS
It is a good OS ,But it still doesnt detect my Graphics Card
But my Soundcard was kicking well ....and so i had to remove it.
It has some good applications ,But well its worth a try......

 

[Workin']

Just my $0.02 -

Every piece of hardware that I own (7 computers' worth) is supposed to be supported by BeOS. Not a single machine of the 7 would successfully run it.

If you want to play with an "alternative" operating system, try Linux. At least it works and can do some useful things.

 

[Zorba]

Workin: I do run Linux. Not as often as I'd like though, because it doesn't like my modem. As soon as I can get DSL or Cable, I will probably run Linux all the time. I would just like to try out Be, if you don't experiment you never know what you are missing.

sciencewhiz: Heh, thanks. When I bought it, I didn't even know what a video card chipset was (~4 years ago), and I never looked after I did know.

 

[sciencewhiz]

The first time I tried to install BeOS, I got the error about not being able to mount the drive. My problem was that I tried to install the OS on my f: drive. BeOS needs to be installed inside a primary partition.

After I figured that out, it took me 20 minutes to setup BeOS, where it took me 2 days to get Linux working.

 

[Elledan]

I had BeOS running perfectly on my system, it only didn't recognize my videocard (VoodooIII 3000 d'oh) so I had it running at 640x480, but I could do anything with it.

After a while I got bored of it and removed it. Especially the lack of good software is bad. The OS is good, the number of available progs is bad...

DIE M$ DIE! Spoiling our fun with Windoze so that we can't use those beautiful, stable OSs as much as we want...

 

[pyr]

the hardware support is coming along very slowly since Be has to do everything themselves. still once you get it going it is amazing. very fast and responsive... ftp is still up if anyone else wants to grab it.