03/13/98
When I began BeHive 16 months ago, the BeOS was seen largely as a
replacement or complement to the MacOS, while I was running BeOS
exclusively on a BeBox. Knowing what I did of BeOS' portability, I figured
there was a good chance of BeOS eventually making it to Intel. But the
concept of a cross-platform OS still seemed a little strange to some, and
so this site became a subsection of ZDNet's Mac channel.
Here we are, just over a year later, and the
BeOS is now running on its fourth hardware platform (including the
original Hobbit processor). I'm writing this in Pe for BeOS/Intel Release
3 (R3) on a dual-300 Pentium II, and the BeHive has moved to its new home
(please update your bookmarks) in ZDNet's Products channel alongside a bunch of other OSs. It makes perfect sense: Be wants
a little corner of your hard drive, alongside your other operating
systems, just as this site always wanted to live in a little corner of
ZDNet's OSUser. Also in keeping with
this evolution, this column has been renamed from BeBox Journal to BeOS
Journal.
As you might expect, one of Be's biggest challenges (aside from the fact
that they're a small company and their legions of fans want every feature
in the universe implemented on BeOS yesterday), is the huge array of
hardware to be supported in the Intel world. The same open, competitive
marketplace that has resulted in x86 hardware's superior bus and i/o
speeds has also yielded a Pandora's box of video, disk, motherboard, and
other chipsets begging for Be support. Be is working as hard as they can
to deliver on as much x86 hardware as possible as soon as possible, but
it's going to take time to develop the same kind of support that the Linux
or Windows worlds have evolved (you can help by writing to your favorite
hardware and software vendors and asking them to support BeOS from their end).
For now, Be tackles the most popular hardware first.
Unfortunately, my main machine was unlucky in this respect. I didn't own
almost any of the hardware listed in the Be Intel FAQs, and I wasn't willing to sit on
my thumbs waiting. Besides, it was time for a new box, I was ready to move
to dual processors, and the prices listed for those Ming Specials seemed
hard to pass up. The Ming Specials are Intel machines guaranteed to run
BeOS for Intel right now, since they're the same x86 boxes Be has been
working with all along. I went for broke and ordered a dual 300.
How long does it take you to install Windows, MacOS, or Linux? Not just to
install the OS, but to get the right video and sound driver installed, get
your Internet connection set up, and all that other blah blah woof woof? It
took me 90 minutes to get to that point with Win95 on this machine. Guess
how long it took with BeOS? 13 minutes, total. No lie. And that includes
creating a BFS partition on my hard drive. Here's how it worked:
- Boot to 95 and install the bundled PartitionMagic software. Fire it up
and you're in the partitioner. Establish a partition size (I chose 1500MB,
but 400MB and 800MB partitions are also options) and let it do its thing.
All very user friendly. When done, it prompts you to insert the included
boot floppy and restart.
- Machine boots from the floppy and begins the BeOS installer. I chose
the full install with all the optional media files and goodies. Prompted
to reboot with the floppy still in the drive.
- The next time I booted from floppy, it found a BFS partition on my
hard drive and took off running. BeOS was up and ready to operate eight
seconds later. I kid you not.
That's 13 minutes, right there. The rest is gravy:
To eliminate the boot floppy from the process, copy the BeLaunch
folder from the CD to your hard drive (from within DOS or Windows). This
gives you an icon you can click from Windows to launch BeOS. Even better,
you get a .bat file you can launch from DOS, so you can skip the agony of
ever watching the Win95 flag flying over sickly blue skies ever again
(okay, okay, you may still find some good reasons to boot into Windows for
a while to come, but you get the idea). Configure your 95 boot menu to
give you the option of booting straight to BeOS. I've put tips for
tweaking this menu, as well as instructions for NT users, on the BeOS Tip Server.
So installation turned out to be even easier than I had hoped. But what I
experienced next I liked even more: I'm having trouble finding anything to
do in BeOS that takes long enough to watch it actually
start. That includes selecting six movies at once, hitting Enter, and
watching them all spring to life simultaneously. I can turn off one
processor and the six movies just begin to tax the remaining processor.
NetPositive launches an HTML doc (on hard drive) in 1 second. StyledEdit
blinks open. Terminal blinks open. Everything blinks open. It's awesome.
Support for the SoundBlaster 64 is built in -- I didn't have to do
anything
special, it just worked automatically. And it even sounds better than
the
BeBox' sound card did.
Support for the Matrox Millenium II is built in -- didn't have to specify
video
drivers or anything. For the first time, I'm using BeOS in 1024x768 (and
higher), true color. Makes a huge difference over the 800x600 at which I
was running
the BeBox.
My Bitsurfr Pro ISDN terminal adapter is right there on the modems list in
the Network preferences panel. Not only did it work right the first time,
but it connects far more quickly than the same TA with the same
initialization string under NT. Go figure. I was surfing and checking mail
at 120K just minutes after booting for the first time. There is a bug,
however, with disconnects: if I get timed out by my ISP before
disconnecting manually, I have to click the Restart Networking button in
the prefs panel (gee, what a novel idea -- restarting network services
without rebooting -- you'd think Microsoft could learn a little lesson
there). Keep in mind that I'm using a pre-release version of R3, and this
kind of thing may be cleared up before the public release is handed out at
the Be Developers' Conference later this month.
There are several new movies included in the /optional folder of people
(Be
employees?) strutting around with a flame thrower. Blowing up a computer
with
dynamite. Turning the flamethrower on a loser computer. There must have
been a
lot of tension in Menlo Park over the past few months.
In general, the R3 UI looks pretty much like PR2's did, with a few
differences (details well-documented in the HTML docs). There are some
really nice functional differences,
like the "Open With" option on the right-click menus that let you send any
file to any related
application. There are some nice Tracker enhancements, and some much-
needed keyboard improvements.
Some of the prefs panels are improved. There's a new DiskProbe application
that gives you a view onto your disks that only a programmer could love.
Stability is great, speed is great (and I hear they haven't optimized the
code for Intel yet, which means that future releases will be even faster),
and responsiveness is great. But it's clear
that most of Be's energy has gone into porting to Intel over the past few
months. The important thing is that, yes, the user experience here is
exactly the same as it was on the BeBox, only a jilllion
times faster. Otherwise, there's no way to tell whether you're using a
BeBox, PowerMac, or Intel machine. BeOS is BeOS wherever it runs.
I'm one broke geek, but saved a ton over what comparable hardware would
have cost elsewhere, and I'm running BeOS on one of the fastest Intel
consumer machines on the planet -- a machine that will last me several
years easily. It feels awesome. Windows has never seemed so distasteful as
when it shares a hard drive with BeOS.
Since it only takes a few tweaks and a recompile to make BeOS/PPC apps run
on Intel, it's only a matter of time before the ever-growing software
library at BeWare is ported to
Intel. For now, and especially before next week's DevCon, I'm limited to
the apps bundled with the OS and the early Intel apps trickled out to me
by Be developers around the world. Every indication is that DevCon is
going to see a flood of exciting announcements for new and important BeOS
software that runs equally well on PowerPC and Intel hardware.
If you're excited to get BeOS running on your Intel box soon, there are a
few things to keep in mind:
- Make sure your hardware is supported before committing to a partition.
Check the BeOS Intel
FAQs and the
BeOS Ready List. If you want a 100% guarantee of having a machine that
will boot BeOS out of the box, pick up one of the Ming Specials
recommended there.
- As with any operation that involves creating partitions on your hard
disk, back up your system before beginning. I found the install routine
for my supported hardware painless and safe, but a pound of
prevention...
- Because Be has not yet optimized for Intel (as of 3/13/98), your
machine may not show the astounding performance I'm seeing here. That will
be rectified.
- It's likely that you'll fall in love at first sight. That's a good
thing, but don't overinflate expectations of deleting your existing
operating systems just yet. BeOS is out of beta now, but it's also just
been born. Have some patience, let it simmer on your hard disk alongside
your other OSs, and enjoy it. Let the coming tractor apps emerge from the
shadows. You'll probably have to reboot to Mac or Windows to do some
things for a little while to come. Be realistic.