The Experiences of a BeOS Latecomer

If you want a quick overview, you can try here

Mind you there probably isn't a need for yet another BeOS-related website. After all, there's already news sites:

There's already a good apps site:

a good tips site:

A lot of older BeOS sites have disappeared over time. So I think it's important for there always to be new sites to keep it alive. My predecessor had an impressive setup. Sometimes when I visit the Greenboard, it's like walking through a ghost town. You can almost see the tumbleweeds rolling by and hear the coyotes howling. Nonetheless, it is a fixture in BeOs history. It may yet revive in time.

As for this site, it's entirely possible that few or no people will ever pass through here, and I'll just be rambling on to myself like some mad Malkavian.

Thing is, I almost completely missed the bus on this OS. What can I say. I didn't even get on the Net until 1997. In 2000-2001 when BeOS was at its height, I was spending most of my time in Star Wars forums oblivious to the idea that there was something besides Windows and Mac OS. I'm not a hardcore geek. The possibility of using other operating sytems hadn't occurred to me and wouldn't until 2003.

You see Be, Inc. came to a premature end in 2001 over a decade after it's initial inception. Apple opted not to buy BeOS when they had the chance so it was instead sold to Palm. Scott Hacker, author of the BeOS Bible, would refer to himself as a "refugee" and the name would stick to former BeOS users. Debian offered to take them aboard as if they were people fleeing some brushfire war in the Third World. Many did switch to other operating systems, but curiously some still remain. It's for this reason that websites like this are still around and new ones do keep appearing. Many said it was the death of an OS, but death can be a transformation rather than the end. So it has been with BeOS.

Life After Death

Luckily for me, it's better late than never because BeOS as both an operating system and an idea did go through a transition instead of simply disappearing from the scene completely. Versions 4.5 and 5.03 Pro, the last ones officially released by Be, and are still in use.

Back in the early days of Be, they put out their own machines which they dubbed "BeBoxes". These machines are still around. Of the free versions available, there are Beos Max, and a derivative called PhOS. There is also a BeOS/Linux hybrid called ZevenOS.

Most importantly, an open source version, Haiku, is almost here. There is also another OS called Syllable with similiar goals to BeOS.