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AtheOS Fork Brings BeOS on Top of Linux 420

Posted by timothy from the bwa-ha-ha dept.
Eugenia writes: "Yup, Bill Hayden has forked AtheOS by using its app_server and Interface Kit (along with some other of its kits, like the filesystem layer) and ported it on top of the 2.4.x Linux kernel, without the need for X11. He already has the graphical environment working, and he also has some BeOS apps recompiled and working under Linux. Why BeOS applications? Because that was the reason of the fork. Exactly because AtheOS and BeOS have similar technical principles (highly multithreaded, truly preemptive, similar C++ API etc), by modifying AtheOS's API to match BeOS, Bill is trying to resurrect the BeOS. By doing so this way, Bill is already way ahead from the other two efforts to ressurect BeOS, OpenBeOS (dependant on the 'clean' NewOS kernel) and BlueOS (which depends on Linux and X11)."
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AtheOS Fork Brings BeOS on Top of Linux More

AtheOS Fork Brings BeOS on Top of Linux

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  • Rid of X (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BlackSol ( 26036 )
    Just the thought of being rid of X and into the uber sweet arena of Be's font handling would be swell.

    But what about somesort of compatibility for existing X apps? There's way to many great apps out there to just junk....

    Or do we have to run X for that?
    • As long as there is X-compatibility, what incentive do apps have to get off X?

    • Re:Rid of X (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DocSnyder ( 10755 )
      But what about somesort of compatibility for existing X apps?


      Simply run a rootless X server (AFAIK XFree 4.2 can operate without a root window) or replace your graphical toolkits (Qt, Gtk+, Tk, FLTK) with their non-X variants.

    • I mean for a desktop OS, you dont really NEED X.

      Sure its nice if you could have it, but what you need is a nice looking gui, you dont need the x protcols esoteric features that only geeks and servers need.

      Direct Frame Buffer is good, and there may be other ideas, but really, I hope linux gets rid of X, or at least the desktop linux's such as mandrake, lycoris, lindows and all of them get together and help fund directfb or berlin project or something

      • Re:X sucks anyhow (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:06PM (#3232357) Homepage Journal
        Right now I am running XFree86-4.2.0 on FreeBSD-4.5. I have to interact with a Solaris-8 box. With X, I am able to run Clearcase, Rational Rose, Framemaker, etc. under FreeBSD. That's awesome.

        If all you're doing is running some game under Wine under Linux on a standalone box in your dorm, then you don't really need X. But the rest of us appreciate the power and simplicity that is X.
    • Sure, X has things that aren't cool, and it may be easier to ditch it than to try to undo the cool parts or hack new cool things in. Whatever.

      But whatever you replace it with, it had better have network transparency!

      The last thing I want to see is some great new "desktop" windowing system that requires that the screen I'm using has to be attached to the same machine the binary is running on. Or some horrible hack like Terminal Server that traps all the remotely running apps inside a little desktop window on top of my current desktop. The fact is that X gives you a wonderful flexibility and any replacement that drops this is as much a step backward as it could possibly be forward.

      Hrm. Before I rant too much, maybe I should ask... Does BeOS do this? Is the Be GUI system network transparent? I don't think it is, but I could be wrong.

      • Re:Fine, get rid of X (Score:4, Interesting)

        by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @07:43PM (#3231974)
        Actually, network transparency is an interesting issue. In theory, Be's windowing system could be network transparent. It's not based on TCP sockets (which are usually slower than stuff like SysV IPC, even locally) but on a messaging system. It wouldn't be too difficult to route those messages to a remote server instead of the local window server. In all reality, X's heavyweight socket mechanism really isn't needed for network transparency. The minimum required abstraction would probably be something COM. In that case, local communication would just be a C++ virtual function call, and remote communication could be achieved via a proxy object.
        • Ah. So it doesn't, but it could. That's interesting.

          Though I'll add that eventually COM and what not boils down to RPC, and what does RPC use? Wait for it... sockets. :) Though I'm all for making the overhead of sockets something that is only needed if running remotely, so long as the system is smart enough to switch at runtime.
        • A BeOS developers newsletter once mentioned a very cool demonstration of this. A drag and drop message was captured, emailed to another machine, and reconstructed on the other machine's desktop. Hot stuff!

  • Heh... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Daniel Wood ( 531906 )
    So much for 'Was'.

  • Software (Score:2, Insightful)

    by geogeek6_7 ( 566395 )
    I think the BeOS platform is excellent, and I think the lack of X11 is mostly a good thing, but most BeOS software projects have been abandon. Where are we going to get the third-party software base to support this?

  • Kurt is not pleased (Score:3, Informative)

    by InterruptDescriptorT ( 531083 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @06:39PM (#3231591) Homepage
    Kurt Skauren(sp?), progenitor of AtheOS, cannot be too pleased about this. I remember the first mailing list discussion where this had been announced and he replied with a sad smiley.

    The AtheOS kernel has always been Kurt's baby; his goal of developing an OS targetted solely to desktop applications where the kernel remains under tight control is severely compromised with this split.

    I like AtheOS and have even contributed a couple drivers to it, and it just kinda saddens me to think of Kurt's reaction.

    • Re:Kurt is not pleased (Score:3, Informative)

      by dinivin ( 444905 )
      No offense intended to Kurt, but Atheos has been stagnating for quite a while now due to his feeling that only he should modify the core of the operating system combined with the lack of activity from him for the past three months (or more).

      Dinivin
    • Forks happen. One of the goals of the GPL is to ensure that sofware doesn't stay under the control of the original author. If you want to write GPL'ed software, you need a thick skin.

    • Re:Kurt is not pleased (Score:2, Informative)

      by phyxeld ( 558628 )
      he replied with a sad smiley.

      Where did you see that?

      I was looking for a response from Kurt in the thread here [geocrawler.com], and I didn't see anything.

      There is some sort of funny "you've got no right" vs "read the gpl sometime" comments in there though (from other people, not kurt).
    • As long as Bill Hayden doesn't call this AtheOS, why should Kurt care? Did Kurt even bother to trademark AtheOS to prevent that? If not, Bill is even free to call his new creation AtheOS, although I doubt he would in any event -- why would he want anyone to confuse his creation with Kurt's? (note that he can't call it Linux, even though he uses the Linux kernel -- that name is trademarked)

      The only thing Kurt has to fear is that Bill's fork is so much better that all the people working on AtheOS shift to it. If that happens, then it should happen; if AtheOS is good enough, it won't happen.

      This is what the GPL is for; if you don't like it, use another license.

    • Kurt Skauren(sp?), progenitor of AtheOS, cannot be too pleased about this.


      If I was Kurt, I would be very pleased about this. Someone reusing your code is about the highest praise they can give it. If you're thinking that Kurt is worried about AtheOS losing mindshare.... well, he has said himself that he doesn't hope that AtheOS will take over the world; it's more of a personal plaything for him. Given that, what's the problem with another GPL'd OS using its code?


      Let a million flowers bloom, I say. :^)

  • 'Way ahead'? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @06:47PM (#3231643) Journal
    That depends on how you define 'way ahead.'

    People like me who really like BeOS admire the entire structure of the operating system, from top to bottom. I have zero interest in running FrankensteinBeOS, which is what this sounds like. Therefore I am content to work on the OpenBeOS project, which may be 'way behind', but should have a nicer outcome (for people who like BeOS). The project is coming together quite nicely for something so young.

    (It's easier to see really far when you can stand on the shoulders of great engineers.)
    • I'd rather have FrankensteinBeOS than deadBeOS R5 that can't run on my new hardware. Perhaps you should help him rather than just bitch about it being a patchwork of different projects
      • He's not just bitching; he's working on OpenBeOS, which is architecturally far closer to BeOS than this bastard child of AtheOS, Linux and Be. By your argument, all of the GNOME people should have quit "bitching" and joined KDE. OBOS and this Linux-AtheOS-Be hybrid have very different goals (a true clone of BeOS including the architecture vs. pretty much just the user experience), and they will suit very different groups of people (OBOS will hopefully be practical for very heavy media processing, whereas this will be more suited to areas where Linux already excels). Personally, while I view this as a nice stepping stone, I am looking forward to OpenBeOS very eagerly.

    • Re:'Way ahead'?~ (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That depends on how you define 'way ahead.'

      People like me who really like BeOS admire the entire structure of the operating system, from top to bottom. I have zero interest in running FrankensteinBeOS, which is what this sounds like. Therefore I am content to work on the OpenBeOS project, which may be 'way behind', but should have a nicer outcome (for people who like BeOS). The project is coming together quite nicely for something so young.

      Yes, but there's something to be said for taking the middle road, too. It may be true BeOS was a radical departure as opposed to Linux's adherence to legacy POSIX. But I suspect this new fusion may have more success as a desktop OS than either Linux or BeOS had alone. While not as radical a departure as Be, it is still a very significant departure for Unix/Linux. As nice as Be was, commercialy it went over like a lead balloon. Perhaps a more incremental approach to innovation will have more success.

      This is the beauty of open source - you can mix and match as you please, and the cream rises to the top. And now that one of the nicest desktops has migrated over to one of the most advanced (and popular) kernels, I expect to see some interesting developments going forward.

  • Copy of the message (Score:5, Informative)

    by benmhall ( 9092 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @06:48PM (#3231647) Homepage Journal
    Originally found on:

    http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/msg.php3?msg_id=8 21 5112&list=2311

    FROM: Bill Hayden
    DATE: 03/26/2002 06:59:50
    SUBJECT: [Atheos-developer] Atheos Fork Announcement

    Well, it was not my intent to announce this quite this soon, but given
    the recent conversation on the list, I feel that it's best not to wait
    any longer.

    I forked Atheos about 6 months ago and have been continuously developing
    it since that time. I've taken it in some very new directions. I
    should warn you that some of you will absolutely love the changes, and
    some of you will perhaps feel that the "dream" of Atheos has been sold out.

    The new project has had a name since the beginning, but I'm going to
    hold off on releasing that until I can verify that the domain names and
    trademark are secure. So I'll call it "New Atheos" for the purposes of
    this e-mail.

    New Atheos has the following major new features:
    o Runs on top of the Linux kernel, not the Atheos kernel
    o Atheos API has been merged with the BeOS API
    o PowerPC support
    o gcc 3.0.X compatiblity
    o OpenTracker/Deskbar desktop manager

    These features give the following benefits:
    o Most BeOS programs compile and run with little or no changes
    o Linux kernel means that CD-ROM, CD booting and installing, DHCP, etc.
    work
    o Linux kernel means that driver support is excellent
    o Mac users get a piece of the action

    Things I haven't even started on:
    o Printing
    o Media Kit
    o Replicants

    Existing Atheos programs will need changes to compile. I haven't found
    one that took me longer than a few minutes to "convert". Where Atheos
    and BeOS use different semantics, I chose the BeOS method.

    I am going to hold off on a release until I can successfully compile and
    run OpenTracker and Deskbar. They use just about every obsolete and
    goofy BeOS construct that exists. I'm most of the way there, though,
    especially for Deskbar. Kurt wasn't lying when he said it would be a
    nightmare to port them. Of course, I'm doing an "anti-port". When some
    BeOS program won't compile, I change the API to match it instead of
    changing the program itself.

    The first BeOS program that successfully came up was Pulse, and there
    was no small amoung of satisfaction to see good ole' Pulse running on my
    new system. Nostalgic BeOS users can perhaps understand.

    I'm writing in a hurry, so hopefully I haven't forgotten something
    important. And no, I can't give a release date yet. I hope to have a
    CVS server up at the time of release.

    Thanks,
    Bill Hayden

    • Re:Copy of the message (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here's how I read this.

      "I began to suspect that others would fork this project first if I didn't do it fast enough."

      Is that what open source is coming to? Don't we have any respect anymore for the people that innovate? If open source development continues to be a race to see who can stab the other person in the back and take credit for his/her work it WILL NOT improve quality.

      The people who say "that's how the GPL is designed to work" really don't have a clue in my book. This seems to be a recent development of the past 2 or 3 years. Linux would never have gotten off the ground had this been the prevailing attitude back in the day. "In my day..." Gosh, I'm sounding old, but here on Slashdot, I feel old.

      (Posting anonymously so the darn kidz don't fork my project)

      • Re:Copy of the message (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CrosseyedPainless ( 27978 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:15PM (#3232388) Homepage
        Here's how I read this:

        After evangelizing the hell out of his baby, the developer
        has completely lost interest in the project. He has
        totally abandoned all the people who became interested
        and contributed code, and furthermore,
        his ground rules say that no one else can touch his
        core code.

        One of these people said, "Enough!", took the code as he
        has *every* right to, and made his *own* project out of it,
        leaving the original project firmly and safely (albeit very
        lonely) in the hands of the original developer.

        It is somewhat of a misnomer to call this process "forking";
        the new project is completely different from the base code.
        Different in implementation, different in goals.

        You feel old on Slashdot? I remember when anonymity
        wasn't just for trolls and crapflooders. You really
        don't have a clue in my book.

      • Re:Copy of the message (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EricLivingston ( 162103 ) <eric@thelivin[ ]ons.org ['gst' in gap]> on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:26PM (#3232418) Homepage
        Is that what open source is coming to? Don't we have any respect anymore for the people that innovate? If open source development continues to be a race to see who can stab the other person in the back and take credit for his/her work it WILL NOT improve quality.

        The people who say "that's how the GPL is designed to work" really don't have a clue in my book.

        I think it's extremely sad you feel that way. I feel exactly the opposite - events like this are what breath life into OSS and stand as shining examples of the power and strength of the GPL. That an individual can stand on the shoulders of great achievers and reach even higher ground, fully supported both legally and morally in an environment of innovation and creativity is incredible and should serve as both a warning and an example to companies mired in the morass of IP lawsuits and closed source development.

        This is darwinism at its finest - survival of the fittest ideas in operating system design and implementation. What we are witnessing here is pure evolution of thought and concept.

        Consider if natural evolution had the "attitude" you seem to espouse - what if the first organism to "figure out" replicating DNA had a lock on it, with "Mother Nature" prohibiting other organisms from taking the idea and running with it because it would "stab the other [protozoa] in the back"? Or worse, because the original organism "closed sourced" it and retained IP rights to it :) We wouldn't be here arguing about it, anyway...

        I say - Great Job Bill! This is what the GPL and OSS are all about. Let's see what he puts together and consider it valuable intellectual research and contribution into the world of OSS OSs. May the fittest concepts prevail in the end.

  • How close will it come to BeOS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ryu2 ( 89645 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @06:50PM (#3231660) Homepage Journal
    Wasn't one of the touted features of BeOS its low latency, single-user kernel optimized for multimedia stuff? Demos had multiple video players all playing smoothly, while 3-D animations occured in other windows.

    How well can the Linux kernel deliver such performance?
    • IIRC, the BeOS kernel actually had worse latency on various lmbench benchmarks than Linux. And that was before people started tuning the Linux kernel for low latency.

    • Re:How close will it come to BeOS? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @07:34PM (#3231927)
      Back when people used BeOS, Linux couldn't deliver that kind of performance. Linux users were trudging along with 200ms latencies and ext2 while BeOS users laughed at them from their journaled-filesystem, ultra-low latency machines. In a short period of time, Linux has come an extremely long way to becoming a kick-ass workstation kernel. In fact, it has even eclipsed BeOS in latency, filesystem, VM, etc. The only place where BeOS still has the advantage is in userspace, where BeOS totally whips GNOME and KDE in terms of speed, ease-of-use, simplicity, consistancy, etc. Apparently, this fork tries to take the best ideas from both sides.

      • Re:How close will it come to BeOS? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by foqn1bo ( 519064 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @07:49PM (#3232003)


        So can you open 42 versions of the same .avi movie on your Linux Desktop and play them simultaneously without dropped frames while surfing the internet on a PII450? If not then regardless of the impressive numbers your assessment of comparability of Linux needs adjusting. Not to diss Linux or anything, but I don't think it is time to proclaim Linux has eclipsed Be's technology.

        • Re:How close will it come to BeOS? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Adnans ( 2862 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @08:20PM (#3232170) Homepage Journal
          So can you open 42 versions of the same .avi movie on your Linux Desktop and play them simultaneously without dropped frames while surfing the internet on a PII450?

          Yes! Unfortunately (or fortunately) I don't have a PII450. BTW, most of those "cool" demos of BeOS running tens of player windows are done with a single avi (worthless to to test the real I/O), very low resolution, and without sound.

          Not to diss Linux or anything, but I don't think it is time to proclaim Linux has eclipsed Be's technology.

          You're right, that time has come and passed us! I'm playing 9 *different* avi's now (served over 100Mbit NFS btw), 3 mp3's *backwards* (haha, another stupid benchmark thrown in :), with xawtv in a corner, and typing this message in mozilla 0.9.9, and I still have CPU cycles to spare! Linux rocks ;-)

          -adnans (ex-BeOS user)

          • Which Linux kernel are you using? Are you using the low-latency or preemptive-kernel patches discussed earlier this week on Slashdot? That article claimed = 2 ms latency when using both Linux patches. I think that is on par or better than what BeOS promises..
            • Actually, none of those patches at this time. I do have a ll kernel handy for testing, but it has its problems (particularly in the disk I/O area, and VMware breaks with ll for now). Those things were done with "vanilla" kernel 2.4.19-pre3 :-)

              My el cheapo trident soundcard can do sustained 1.3ms max latency audio output for hours on end with the ll patches. Not in full duplex mode though, but that's a hardware limitation (read: brokeness).

              -adnans
            • I went and tried those two patches after reading that report. I must say, I'm impressed. Things like switching between desktops in KDE3 is very snappy, where as before there was a noticable flicker before all the apps on the desktop appeared. And it might be my imagination, but mozilla seems more responsive as well.

              I can also play 4 porn AVI's without any problems, where as before I... did I say porn? I meant mp3's... ;)

          • Re:How close will it come to BeOS? (Score:4, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @10:02PM (#3232588)
            You're right, that time has come and passed us! I'm playing 9 *different* avi's now (served over 100Mbit NFS btw), 3 mp3's *backwards* (haha, another stupid benchmark thrown in :), with xawtv in a corner, and typing this message in mozilla 0.9.9, and I still have CPU cycles to spare! Linux rocks ;-)

            Stop, you're scaring my Windows partition.
        • So can you open 42 versions of the same .avi movie on your Linux Desktop and play them simultaneously without dropped frames while surfing the internet on a PII450?
          >>>>>>>>>>
          It depends ;) Using proper drivers (NVIDIA, which allows the use of XVideo extensions), a lightweight WM (IceWM), and a good player (MPlayer), yes. Under KDE 2.2.2 and Noatun, no. It's all in the userspace! That's why these BeOS on Linux things are so great!

      • from their journaled-filesystem

        Hmm.. I was under the impression the only thing journalling was good for was quick recoveries after a system crash/reboot. I didn't know it directly affected filesystem performance...? Maybe I've been hittin the crack pipe too hard.

  • new name! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Arctic Fox ( 105204 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @06:58PM (#3231702) Homepage Journal
    that's GnuBe/Linux to you sir....
  • A long time ago, I wrote an article called "The Rise and Fall of OS Empires". It concluded on how with free software, the software lives on beyond its environment. Underlying the article, though very subtle, was an argument against the BeOS operating system. I've always been critical of any proprietary operating system since the control of the software always rests with the developer.

    Now first, a minor argument before I continue on. Names are like symbols in that they stand for something. So when people think of BeOS they think of a great many things, mostly good. But with software, these kinds of symbols aren't very useful and often serve to confuse things. To say that BeOS has come back from the dead is a definite misconception.

    Any software is a mix of algorithms and technologies--each which are more general than the code itself. So to reintroduce these things in another piece of software can be said to in a sense recreate that software.

    This new AtheOS, from my perspective, is welcome. Hopefully this software will provide interesting technologies which can be implemented in other software.

    Hopefully BeOS users and developers are more aware of the risks present in proprietary software. I'd hate to see the same mistake being made a again.

    Kudos.

  • Shouldn't there be... (Score:3, Funny)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @07:28PM (#3231891)
    A "Like OSNews except slower on the uptake" department?

  • Garage sale this weekend (Score:3, Interesting)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @07:42PM (#3231968) Homepage Journal
    My neighborhood is having a block sale this weekend. In my garage there is 10 pentium PC's with memory ranging from 24-64 megs and the processors from 60mhz to 233mhz. I was going to just toss them in a landfill to make some space.

    I thought of trying to sell them, but windows is way overbloated to run effectively on any of these beasts. I happened across a BE cd that I bought last year and thought I would try it. To my amazement these machines run REALLY nice!

    I haven't tried AtheO/S yet, but I plan to give it a spin tonight.
    • You had 10 Pentium class PC's, and all you could think of was to throw them away? Linux will run fine on them, as will Window95. I'd give you $20-40 for one, and I know a number of friends who probably would too. There are a number of charities that would take, and a lot of computer geeks that might like a new box to play with. Put up signs around the local college campus. Just don't fill our landfiles with stuff that still has life left!
    • A machine of that class serves as my mp3 jukebox/cablemodem firewall (I know...I know...but all of this stuff is in my living room and two pcs next to the desk is quite geeky enough......so I'll just have to do without a proper DMZ). For that matter, the guts from some of them could be reworked into a nice audio component for your stereo system. One could transparently handle mp3, ogg, various tracker modules, midi whatever. A cheap video card with TV out and and IR transciever would even give proper stereo component control over the device...with visualization going to the TV even.

      Configure them properly and give em away if you have to. Mine had a home once I accumulated enough spare parts to put it together. The point is these machines aren't trash by any means. Oh well, I'm glad you found a use for them after all.

  • very impressive (Score:2, Insightful)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 )
    i think getting rid of x is a good an logical step. There is no reason for a normal desktop user to have all the features that X provides.
    it would result in a serious performance infrease. i think Apple got it right when they implemented OSX without the X windows part. Linux shoudl follow that model.
    • Unfortunately, though not using X11 should result in a major performance increase, Aqua isn't any better. Even viewing pdfs (which MacOS X renders natively) is painfully slow. Try resizing a window under MacOS X next time you're by one and see how it performs.


      Aqua is nice. But it's certainly not fast.

      • Re:very impressive (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jeremi ( 14640 )
        Aqua is nice. But it's certainly not fast


        Keep in mind that Aqua is the all-singing, all-dancing, vectorized, resolution-independent, Altivec-blasting, next-generation UI engine. As such, it's doing a lot more work that your standard blit-the-pixels window manager. Whether you think it's worth it to do things at a higher level like this, is up to you; in my opinion, it is, or will be in a few months. If you've got a 5GHz G5 sitting in your Mac, you might as well give it some work to do....

  • No! No! OpenBeos! OpenBeos! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by foqn1bo ( 519064 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @08:01PM (#3232066)


    I appreciate what this guy is doing, but seriously folks, why the hell is everybody so intent on making some sort of BE/Linux hybrid? I support OpenBeos for the following very good reasons:

    1) Has over 100 developers now
    2) Intent on rewriting original Be api so that compile and eventual binary compatibility is attained
    3) Uses an alternate liscense to GPL so that open source is maintained without frightening away commercial developers due to fear of *GPL Contamination*
    4) Already has contacts with commercial developers and distributors (albeit kept well under wrap right now)
    5) Misc. Beos fans don't want to touch Gnome/KDE with a ten foot pole, and I know it would be way too tempting to port them for application compatibility purposes. Beos booted on my PII400 in 15 seconds, and was fast as hell. Would a BE/Linux combo keep Beos' vastly ease of use and configuration, or would it inherit Linux's most dreaded characteristics?

    I'm rambling like a rabbit with the flu. But these are some valid concerns. Check out OpenBeos right now and sign up if you have the time and skills.

  • Mirror! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @08:16PM (#3232147)
    Bill Hayden did the obvious: He forked AtheOS (which is techically-wise similar to BeOS) and used its app_server and Interface Kit (without the use of X11) and rest of its kits on top of the 2.4.x Linux kernel. While the AtheOS kernel has some very nice features, by being modular, semi-microkernel, with good preemptive/multithreading support etc, it lacks a solid VM and swap support and of course, it lacks a good driver support, things that the Linux kernel can provide. Bill Hayden accounced his fork on the AtheOS mailing list and made known that the " Atheos API has been merged with the BeOS API, there is PowerPC support, gcc 3.0.X compatiblity and OpenTracker/Deskbar as the desktop manager".

    Most BeOS programs compile and run with little or no changes and Bill has already ported the BeOS CPU monitor, Pulse, to the system. "Existing Atheos programs will need changes to compile. I haven't found one that took me longer than a few minutes to 'convert'. Where Atheos and BeOS use different semantics, I chose the BeOS method", Bill said. Deskbar and Tracker are reportedly difficult to port as they depend on very BeOS-specific APIs and behaviors, but Bill says that it is getting there, especially because the 2.4.x kernel supports node monitoring.

    The AtheOS community took the announcement a bit bitter as they would not like to see a forking of AtheOS, but reportedly, Kurt Skauen (the original author of AtheOS) hasn't touched the AtheOS source code in five months, as he is taking a break from development for now (which is a usual thing for Kurt, he has done so twice in the past). However the despiration and frustration from AtheOS coders who would like to see more AtheOS development is now at high levels (Kurt does not accept patches or new code for his OS, so everyone is dependant on Kurt when it comes on the AtheOS future).

    OSNews featured a review of AtheOS' latest version some months ag

  • Before anyone gets his knickers in a knot... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pschmied ( 5648 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @08:30PM (#3232208) Homepage
    ...remember the Slashdot karma whore:


    Choice is good

    This time it actually works.

    Personally, I really want to see OpenBEOS work. I have very little interest in using a BeOS that requires me to rebuild my kernel. (pernsonal rant: couldn't you have atleast used something clean and portable like NetBSD?)

    People who loved BeOS tended to love it for the user experience that BeOS provided---not the Linux user experience.

    That being said, this project is a _very_ good thing. If we have a number of compatible versions of app_kit, media_kit, that run on OpenBEOS or Linux, we would be moving towards a more standard Free desktop. We don't have an OpenSource desktop with a real identity yet (KDE comes close).

    It is clear that many people do not like X. There are arguements for and against, but I get the impression that overall X is not well loved by Desktop computing enthusiasts. X will always be here, but we don't necessarily like it.

    This is what I'd like to see:
    • First and foremost, a working Open BeOS that is atleast as integrated as BeOS 5.0.3. All bets are off without this. Joe six pack needs simplicity if he is going to adopt an OSS/Alternative desktop. I think BeOS fits this better than any other system by a wide margin.

    • A portable app/media/print/game/etc_kit similar to how OpenStep used to be. This would be portable to Windows/MacOS/Linux/*BSD etc

    • Finally an integrated set of kits for X to help transition people away from X, or it would allow people still interested in playing in the GTK+,GNOME, XForms, Motif, QT etc melange to continue.

    But, for now, I'll be interested in helping the OpenBeOS [openbeos.info] people. They have the easiest job. They are starting with r5.0.3 and replacing a kit at a time. Several kits are already quite far along.


    -Peter

    • Why on earth do you assume that you need to compile the kernel? This is just unnecessary. Use the default kernel, and upgrade it through a binary package (service pack if you like) if there is something wrong with it. On my laptop I haven't compiled the kernel myself, just upgraded via binary-packages from the distributor.

      The Linux kernel does have a concept of drivers as "kernel-modules" that can be inserted during operation without any compiling.

      There are some glitches. Mainly, there is no "frozen" API, so kernel modules will have to be compiled for each kernel version. This is however solvable. NVIDIAs drivers are mainly binary, but contains a "stub" that compiles very fast and cleanly, and could be automated.

      The last part should be fixed though, but it still doesn't mean a user will ever have to compile the kernel.

  • You've got this all wrong ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by AgtAlpha ( 314665 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @08:46PM (#3232277)
    You people all seem to have this wrong. This is not a port of BeOS to Linux, nor is this a port of AtheOS to Linux. What we have here is the bastard child of 3 different operating systems. Linux is providing the kernel (so in essence this is still Linux, just a different distribution), using the app_server of AtheOS (for windowing, etc., -- just think of this as a replacement for X), and the BeOS API, desktop, and filemanager.

    Linux (or GNU/Linux if you prefer) is just the kernel, and the set of GNU programs that run on it. That means that you can swap out those GNU programs for their BSD counterparts if you like. It also means that GNU/Linux includes no windowing system.

    AtheOS is the child of Kurt Skauen, which is an OS very similar in design to BeOS (but it is NOT BeOS!). This was a hobby project of his that he had been working on for some time, and actually started before BeOS was ported to x86 (IIRC). This is his pet project, that he has shared with us, and released under an open source license for all to share. Just remember that this is his project, and as such he wants control over the core of the OS, including its desktop, et. al.

    BeOS open sourced Deskbar and Tracker, which are the desktop and filemanagement components of BeOS a while ago. Some changes made in OT (OpenTracker) had trickled into the unreleased BeOS r5.1 beta (named Dano). Also, the BeOS API is available for all to read; just search for BeBook at bebits.com.

    This project that Bill has taken upon himself is just a native message-passing windowing system (as opposed to network/TCP communication of X) that he ported to Linux, and changed its API to match that of the BeOS as closely as possible, to allow the easy porting of an existing base of applications. However, please note that this is still Linux. It is not running on the AtheOS kernel, not the BeOS kernel. This is not a threat to OpenBeOS, as they are using NewOS as their base kernel (which was written by an ex-Be engineer), and re-implementing all of the BeOS kits; this is not a threat to BlueOS, as BlueOS is re-implementing the BeOS kits, but on the Linux kernel instead; this is not a threat to AtheOS, because this is not using the AtheOS kernel, nor it is even using the AtheOS API; this is not even a threat to BeOS, as BeOS is now property of Palm, and they have stated they will not license the code.

    I just thought I'd like to make a statement as to what this really is, because a bunch of you don't seem to really know what this is all about.

    I do have a bit of knowledge on where this all stands, as I quad-boot my machine Win2K, Linux, BeOS, and AtheOS.
  • There is a fundamental problem with all "alternative" operating systems...hardware support. AethOS, BEOS, Linux, *BSD all suffer from it. Now, of all of these, I think that currently Linux supports the most hardware and sees the most timely driver implementations. This is, of course, what makes this fork a smart move. However, the hardware support that Linux affords only goes as far as the kernel reaches. It can assign IRQs, IO Addresses, and DMA lines for our graphics hardware, but it will take carefully crafted drivers to support it.

    So, I really question the notion of "abandoning X" for the BEOS GUI. The look and feel, the antialiased fonts, and applications can all be mimicked by porting, skinning, or otherwise theming X/KDE/Gnome applications. But, the GUI does not bring widespread hardware support for the graphics subsystem. And, unfortunately, this looks to be a persistent problem for freely developed software. New Linux/AethOS/BEOS users will find themselves running plain-jane unaccelerated VGA modes. The more initiated users may instead dig into the XFree source looking for compatible hooks and start porting.

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