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Java For BeOS 33

Posted by timothy from the not-dead-yet dept.
Daniel Mark writes: BeUnited (beunited.com) today made it public that Java 1.4 will be released for the BeOS." It's an interesting interview for more than the Java angle, though.OpenOffice, ssh2 ... BeOS fans will have toys for a while yet.
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Java For BeOS More

Java For BeOS

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  • At this point, it's vapor. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Sunday October 06, 2002 @02:46PM (#4397899)
    Remember--a year ago, maybe eighteen months, Be promised its users that the J2SDK for Be was done. They basically committed themselves to a pact signed in the blood of their unborn children that J2SDK would be in people's hands by that year's end.

    Never happened. And up until the day Be folded, they kept on claiming J2SDK was on track and wasn't delayed.

    If BeUnited wants me to believe J2SDK is going to be released for BeOS, the way to do it is simple. Release it.

    Until then... no offense to the BeUnited guys. But like the song goes, "won't be fooled again."
    • But like the song goes, "won't be fooled again."

      Don't you mean the George W. Bush saying:

      There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.
    • Remember--a year ago, maybe eighteen months, Be promised its users that the J2SDK for Be was done. They basically committed themselves to a pact signed in the blood of their unborn children that J2SDK would be in people's hands by that year's end.

      Apparently, when Be folded, those same people went off to work at Apple -- whose Java 1.4 for OS X will be available at the end of September.

      Oops. Maybe they meant September of 2007.

      Actually, there's been no "blood of unborn children" pact -- Apple has been judiciously, maddeningly vague about the release of 1.4, and the September thing was only a guess from one of their project leads on a mailing list. Still, I can't help but feel that Apple did learn some lessons from the work done at Be after all....
    • Essentially (and sadly, perhaps), I think you're right. This 'big announcement' is really nothing more than a statement of intentions to support Java, which is something we have heard before.
      From the article:
      Simon (bu): Well I am happy to announce that beunited.org is officially working on porting the Java 2 Standard Edition to BeOS
      There is reason to be optimistic that we'll see it actually happen, though, as Simon claims that they now "have a full working build system under BeOS." (although what a 'full working build system' is is somewhat ambiguous). I don't suppose there's much to be done about this news except to keep watching. Like you say, I'll believe it when I see it -- but this news does give me hope.

      -Sou|cuttr
    • It's not just vapour, it's BeUnited vapour.

      BeUnited has attempted a great number of things, many times, but I'm yet to see anything actually be produced in all those years.

      A lot of well meaning people have put a lot of time into the organisation, each one trying to take it where they wanted it to go, but from where I sit, it doesn't appear to have ever actually gotten there. All they've managed to do is change direction a number of times, and issue some announcements.

      I wish them well, but the track record at BU is pretty horrible.

      Disclaimer: I was (very briefly) on the BU committee a number of years ago, and was a member of a couple of BU projects that never went anywhere.
      I have my own ideas about how BU should run, and they're just as likely to fail as anyone else's.
      I'm only slightly involved in the Be community these days, so my opinion is probably biased quite heavily by the past actions of BU rather than the current ones.

  • I used to run linux on PowerPC (apple G3) hardware, now they had claimed to port over java to ppc. However they haven't ported over the "Just In Time" compiler which basically compiles your java apps on the fly when you run them.

    Basically this leads to anything java being god aweful slow.

    Although BeOS is x86, I don't know how different the OS is... I seriously hope they do the JITC as well, otherwise java is just not useable.

    --noodles
  • Reading all the enthusiasm for BeOS users even after the OS became extinct, seems like BeOS was really an excellent OS.

    I just visited the OpenBeOS project site, and they have nowhere really mentioned the status of the project.

    Can anybody point me to a working version of BeOS? Where can it be obtained? I would like to give it a try.

    Thanks.

    • Re:what is the status of Open BeOS (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Download from here: http://www.bebits.com/app/2680
      45 MB for the OS, 17 MB for the developers tools, and 8 more MBs to update the 5.0 OS after installation, to 5.01 and then 5.03.

      Be aware that BeOS was never tested against Pentium4s and AthlonXPs (Be killed the product before these CPUs came out). BeOS wouldn't boot on most P4s, while it will never boot on XPs. There *are* patches and hacks for both these two CPUs, and while they are solving the problem, they are quite involved and if you do not know what you are doing, you won't get it boot properly...
      • Thank you for the info.

        I saw the site, and it offers a 43 MB download for Linux. Just put it into the boot parition, and then make a boot disk, and boot off it - It says.

        So does that mean, this is just the kernel? Where's the userland? So ok i will boot off the BeOS kernel, but I dont have any software binaries for BeOS...that BeOS may require to run - like the GUI manager, shell, setup files, etc etc etc.

        Where can I obtain that?

        Or that does not matter?

        (I know I should have tried this out before asking you...but I am a newbie so I just wanted to make sure :) )

        Thanks
        • i have n't seen the linux installation ,but if the windows installation is same as that of linux , that file is a "file systems with in a file" once you mount it , you will have the necessary apps inside that file system
        • Coming from the world of Linux/Windows and other mainstream OSes, you may not be familiar with an OS that is capable of this. BeOS is actually only 45 MB. That's right. The entire OS, GUI, and all apps that come with it (including web browser, e-mail client, sound apps, C++ IDE, media player, editor, etc) is only 45 MB. Try it out! Amazing, isn't it? :)

          It actually works by un-tarring into the /BeOS folder (it has to be that folder, afaik) on an ext2 (or ext3, possibly) FS. The total size is 500 MB after un-tarring, because the image file that contains the BFS partition (Be File System) has lots of free space. You can download programs and other stuff. I recommend BeShare. Read about it (in a writeup I wrote) at Everything2 [everything2.com].
      • That 45 Mb download gets you everything you need. I haven't tried it off of linux, but I've used the windows install before, and I've been running Be as my main OS for almost 5 years now with no problems. GUI, web browser, mail, etc all come with it. If you're running linux, you'll be fine in Be.

    • Where to look (Score:2, Informative)

      by eexlebots ( 203658 )
      Here is where you look for it's status:

      http://open-beos.sourceforge.net/status.php [sourceforge.net]

      They have quite a bit done, considering the task ahead of them. You can even use some of the replacement parts now (if you're brave ;) )

    • Alive, kicking and marching relentlessly. OBOS Status [sourceforge.net] To be frank, the project has progressed further than I expected; they have already achieved a fairly sound file system module, and there have been reports that the printing service works as well. Hopefully, they will make it to release before the OS starts to "age", avoiding the fate of GNUstep, which has faded to obscurity despite achieving compatability with most of the OpenStep standard.

      One major benefit of microkernel operating systems has come to light with the OBOS project: ease of reverse engineering. Since each of BeOS's modules communicate using a simple messaging API, it has been possible for the BeOS team to replace existing services in BeOS with new ones for testing purposes.

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