[HN Gopher] Running BeOS 5 in QEMU (i386) (2022)
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       Running BeOS 5 in QEMU (i386) (2022)
        
       Author : luu
       Score  : 63 points
       Date   : 2023-09-30 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (john-millikin.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (john-millikin.com)
        
       | daitangio wrote:
       | If interested, please take a look at its up-to-date evolution
       | 
       | https://www.haiku-os.org
       | 
       | I tested on real hardware too, and it worked well
        
         | Octabrain wrote:
         | Through the years, I've seen references here and there on the
         | internet about Haiku OS but never payed too much attention
         | assuming that was kind of a toy, however, after reading the
         | release notes of the beta 4 I have to admit that I'm impressed.
        
       | Baeocystin wrote:
       | BeOS was such a delight to use. It _respected the user_. No
       | circles of death, no beachballs. UI responsiveness considered an
       | actual priority. Gobe productive was my office software of choice
       | for a long time, too. Good times.
        
       | mdekkers wrote:
       | BeOS is the batmobile of Operating Systems.[1]
       | 
       | [1] https://www.hackneys.com/docs/in-the-beginning-was-the-
       | comma...
        
       | vkaku wrote:
       | Awesome. I loved BeOS back in the day. Waiting for Haiku to make
       | a release.
        
         | sillywalk wrote:
         | There are releases, they're beta, but quite usable.
         | 
         | https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/
        
           | dizhn wrote:
           | I was watching the Ladybird browser update yesterday.
           | Apparently it was ported to Haiku by people on the Haiku
           | side. Quite a nice match.
        
       | anotherhue wrote:
       | For older hardware I understand 86Box to be more "sympathetic" to
       | hardware quirks than QEMU.
       | 
       | https://86box.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
        
         | Narishma wrote:
         | But it has steep hardware requirements. If qemu or virtualbox
         | supports the OS you want to run it's better to use those.
        
       | mkovach wrote:
       | Ahh, BeOS. I used it has a daily driver for about 6 months. It
       | was fairly nice, but my job moved from Mainframe/VMS/Minicomputer
       | work more towards Web related work (it was along time ago for the
       | kids reading along) and I had to put away my toy and start
       | learning more on my Linux boxes when I wasn't working.
       | 
       | Spent a lot of time learning the kernel and support "kits" and
       | porting some of my large baseball related code to it.
       | 
       | Could'a been a nice little operating system despite forcing me to
       | learn C++ better.
        
         | notnmeyer wrote:
         | is "baseball related code" moneyball kind of stuff?
        
           | mkovach wrote:
           | At the time, I was interested in the physics behind pitches,
           | how the eye works when watching the flight of the ball, and
           | how that might be affected by pitch sequencing.
           | 
           | Lots of math with crude estimations for stuff. It's not
           | Moneyball-related, just odd things I like to wonder.
        
       | tpmx wrote:
       | This is a great HN thread about BeOS:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22002062 (Jan 9, 2020, 420
       | comments)
       | 
       | (Found it while writing a comment that was voided by that
       | thread...)
        
       | pavlov wrote:
       | BeOS went all in on mid-1990s C++ which was a terrible language
       | in many ways. It was a brittle and awkward foundation for
       | operating system APIs.
       | 
       | Oddly enough, Objective-C, which seemed like a loser at the time,
       | fared much better and still underpins the GUI classes in Apple's
       | operating systems. The simple syntax and dynamic nature of Obj-C
       | gave it much better longevity.
       | 
       | (In addition to BeOS, there was another major commercial
       | operating system created in the mid-90s with a pure C++ API. It
       | was called Symbian, and unlike BeOS it was actually very popular
       | for a while. In 2003-2011 hundreds of millions of Symbian devices
       | were sold, mostly Nokia smartphones. But even though these
       | devices supported native apps with advanced features like OpenGL,
       | few apps were made because the API was so baroque, and anyway few
       | users would discover the apps because there wasn't a simple app
       | store. Symbian is a great example of having the right ideas early
       | but a completely wrong approach to implementing them.)
        
         | tjoff wrote:
         | I don't know the details, but QT started in 1991, developed in
         | C++ and is a good solid foundation even today, without the
         | backing of something like Apple which would be a game-changer.
         | So while I agree C++ has warts not sure to what extent you can
         | extrapolate from that.
        
         | jbverschoor wrote:
         | The BeOS api was super nice. I was building a source-level
         | compatibility layer for windows in my late teens..
         | BApplication, BWindow, etc., but implemented in the win32 api
         | :-)
        
         | bluepizza wrote:
         | I am no C++ lover, but the success of Obj C is directly tied to
         | iOS, and the success of iOS is directly tied to the iPhone.
         | 
         | The iPhone made VB6 developers learn Obj C. It was a seismic
         | change.
        
           | diogenes4 wrote:
           | > but the success of Obj C is directly tied to iOS
           | 
           | That doesn't explain the massive gap between objective-c's
           | invention and the invention of ios/iphone. There's clearly
           | more to the narrative than that.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | sjm-lbm wrote:
             | I feel like it is the opposite - Objective-C existed for
             | more than a decade in realtive obscurity, and quite
             | suddenly became very widely used when a new and popular
             | computing platform forced developers to start using it.
             | 
             | IMHO, the massive gap supports the idea that iOS is the
             | main driver of Objective-C popularity.
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-30 23:01 UTC)