A Practical Look At The Future Of BeOS.
Jun 16, 2003 21:40 UTC, by Jess Tipton, Contributing Journalist
From the timeout department...

BeOS is in a state of identity Limbo. Each user has their hopes set on a certain project to pull them through and into the future, but until the winner emerges and in many cases picks a name BeOS has a somewhat confusing future identity. This has little relevance to a functional and flourishing OS platform of the future. It must be stable and feature-rich for developers to bring applications to before a name is truly relevant, unless you are trying to "pre-release promote" a retail product. 
 
So as things stand I think it is time we stepped back and looked at the contenders in a straight forward and honest manner. We cannot say who will emerge the winner nor can we say there will be a clear winner in the race to move the BeOS community into the future but we can take an intelligent look at the pro's and con's of the projects as they stand.
 
First let's line up the main projects people are focused on. In no particular order we have Blue Eyed OS, Sequel & OBOS. Each are very different from each other & have their own strengths and weaknesses.
 
OBOS (open BeOS).
OBOS is a project to clone the Be Operating System. It has come far and commands what would seem the largest audience from the BeOS Community. Projects like OBOS have a strong advantages as long as at least one person is working on it to keep it alive. There is no disappearance due to financial pressures or massive ties ups over IP rights. Instead, real life & hardware information are the two most dangerous hurdles that OBOS faces. It also faces the same uphill battle that Linux faces. Tons of bin tools and applications as BeOS has now will not move the community into the future. They have a massive task to rebuild an elegant user interface while still keeping things neat, organized, and user friendly. To recreate BeOS you must be closer to Mac OS theory than Windows or Linux and thus demand ease of use and polish.
 
Anything short will simply feel like a possibly cleaner "Linux like" effort. OBOS has lost some star players on the development teams but still wields some heavy hitters. It has progressed far and has no sign of slowing down but the realistic view is it will be some time before it is ready to truly step in to replace the BeOS as it is now. When that day comes the application base will still be very lacking, but with dedicated developers working hard the BeOS may manage to keep up rather well, despite all odds.
 
This is not to say the efforts so far are wasted. It simply shows a total solution must be just that, totalistic. If the car has an amazing paint job and powerful engine it will still go nowhere without tires. Functional, up to date and feature rich software is a huge gap for success. The nature of OBOS would seem to lead to success on the OS front. The only questions really facing the OBOS teams is time and if they can bring the applications needed to make the final OS worth their struggles and hard labor. For these projects to succeed they must to some degree compete at a "Windows" level. By this I am not saying to clone windows or copy windows but an equal level of functionality must be achieved through productivity applications and software. Computers were developed as tools. They must have the software "tools" that allow you to do you work or they are nothing more then a platform with the functionality of a painting. Pretty to look at... and that's about all. Applications such as Open Office are vital to the final success of these projects.
 
Sequel.
Sequel must be looked at very carefully now. With Xentronix publicly stopping development of it, the future for Sequel is uncertain. Originally a commercial project with binary compatibility not a priority it was to become a solid and dependable platform for Xentronix to develop their products' future on. Now that Xentronix has left the picture the development team has to look at how best to proceed and this may mean the project becomes open and free as opposed to a retail focus.
 
Sequel as a retail product had some advantages as retail generally means you are going to get real support with the product. It also means polish and perfection if the product is to be easy to use and be appealing to customers. However, today people are less likely to want to pay for software and it would be an exponentially harder sell if it did not have the software to make the platform relevant. With that in mind Sequel has another strong point in that it was not going to alter good design to keep binary compatibility. The focus was much like Be Inc's original focus in that it was to start fresh and be forward looking with no limits imposed by old technologies. This is also a weakness which could possibly land Sequel dead last for a chance at survival as the main point of this round up is about functionality.
 
There would be no 3rd party developers for Xentronix to have competed with. This in turn means no software unless they developed it and this being another massive task requiring possibly years to develop a fully function office suite to add to their image application the OS would not have very much functionality. I would hope in time this scenario would turn around as Microsoft does compete, often putting 3rd party developers out of business. It would be nice to see smaller companies not tied to quarterly earnings and shareholder pressure for revenue to carve out a market where the competition is virtually non-existant. In the end this all boils down to whether Sequel could have been a wonderful OS (depending on the developments teams decisions for the future) but in the end without the functional software to do day-to-day chores or enjoy media it becomes a lost cause.
 
The lack of binary compatibility with the current BeOS means it may cut out the major part of existing applications the Be OS has now and reduce it's chance to bring these applications to it's software list. The quality of the OS being developed by professionals and career programers alike could have brought down some of the conventional ideas behind these scenarios as the product could have (possibly might be) good enough to bring in serious yet smaller 3rd developers with software products in a mature useable, and "in demand" state. 
 
Blue Eyed OS.
Now on to Blue Eyed OS. I saved "BlueOS" for last as for some time I scoffed at this project. Building off the Linux kernel seemed ridicules. Why not just use "Linux" as most have come to associate "Linux" with an OS even though it simply the kernel. While Linux is only the kernel and all the mentioned projects are using prefab kernels it seems a tad more out of focus than the others as using the Linux kernel is somewhat perceived in a manner equal to "Let's Clone BeOS with Windows!". In the end this project makes the most sense. It's goal is to have both BeOS and Linux binary compatibility.
 
Porting is virtually unneeded beyond possibly a few changes in configuration before compile time. This means a clean, fast, and "BeOS-like" equivalent with productivity and command line application wealth pre-built into it's evolution. This eliminates a massive step in the development process to make a project OS complete for the end user. The problems here are also the same with Linux. Applications are not quite as polished as say their Windows counterparts. There are problems with consistency and integration between the OS and the application.
 
This is where the Blue Eyed OS must clean house. As most projects are using pre-made kernels Blue Eyed OS is building on years of development, giving it a definite edge. If the project can clean up the directory structure & keep the User Interface fast and clean it can focus on bringing the wealth of applications available for Linux to Blue Eyed OS in a cleaned up and sleek manner. This is also a good move in part due to developer attitudes. Linux has many shortcomings as well as strengths.
 
Many of the BeOS applications being brought into the BeOS Community are Linux ports as many developers find porting is more reasonable then starting an equivalent project natively in and for the Be OS. With this in mind if most of our applications are destined to be sourced from the Linux base of applications then this project is moving in the right direction to bring applications to the user faster, easier and possibly cleaner than in a traditional Linux environment.
 
In Closing...
Given time I believe OBOS will become relevant & reside on the hard drive as a respectable Operating System but for many of us time is running out. More & more users are not interested in dual, triple, or even quad booting their machines to get work done. New users are saying BeOS is difficult to set up when it is one of the easiest modern OS's ever to configure.
 
Despite the dedicated work of developers, we are falling behind in a difficult area due to lack of time, API limits, and reluctance of hardware vendors to give out spec for drivers. I would say the lack of a driver for a GeForce 4 is now the #1 most annoying question. While it's great to see new people trying BeOS out virtually ever one of them seems to have purchased a GeForce 4 card. This must mean nVidia has one hell of a marketing campaign.
 
BeOS as an OS is fast, powerful & beautiful, but has become dated, and as incredibly easy to use as it is, the methods used to keep it up to date are of a "cryptic" nature and quite literally undo the ease of use it once had, prompting comment after comment about how difficult the OS is to now configure. It is a sad day when the once closest thing to "It just works" has become cryptic, "ify", and bewildering. I wish each project the best of luck as there are more than the three discussed here. The few alternative projects also underway are relevant but do not command enough "lime light" to really mull over at this time.
 
I hope that one day I may return to find a useful & up to date system that carries the beauty, possibility, and sheer love I saw in BeOS. Blue Eyed OS appears to have the upper hand as it has paved a rather logical path to the final application base that will make the OS functional and relevant whereas Sequel is now in a major transition and OBOS has a long hard battle ahead of them to bring about the application base and hardware support that will prove their platforms worthy of moving onto.
 
For now I am leaving BeOS... some day I may return to see how things have progressed.
 
- Jess Tipton
 

This article is the expressed opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions held by The BeOSJournal.