Being reminded of my first encounter with the BeOS operating system by a housemate the other I thought I would take a look to see whatever happend to this great little multimedia OS. Whilst doing so I came across the OpenBeOS project that has since been renamed Haiku OS. Although its not a complete replica of BeOS R5 yet it is getting there and should come into its own when the new features are added after Haiku R1 (yet to be released). One of the main problems with BeOS was the lack of hardware support and not enough programs for the tasks that users wished to perform. A quick look at BeBits.com told me that this was no longer the case and that there are infact quite a few good drivers and applications now available for this wonderful old operating system. It seems that at some point Be Inc. decided to stop production of the Be operating system and concentrate on their web technologies and that the BeOS source and licence was eventually purchased by Palm Inc. It now appears that a company in Germany called YellowTab (a reference to the yellow tabs in BeOS I am sure) has the source code for BeOS and have released a version called Zeta. Zeta is not however compatible with old BeOS drivers or software in some regards.
BeBits.com also has the last official release of BeOS Personal R5 available. Developer edition link available below.
Other links I came across while hunting for BeOS information: beosonline.de – BeOS community with BeOS developer edition available for free download. BeBug – BeOS news (use the drop down box to change language) BeOS Drivers – Dedicated to drives for BeOS. BeUnited.org – Open Standards BeOS-compatible Operating Systems information. Cosmoe – It runs on Linux and has an API very similar to BeOS. Mockup – Pretty much as above.