LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-04, 19:54:

Neither. BeOS is a multimedia-focused OS that almost became Mac OS X. In the 90s, Apple gave up on making their own next-generat […]
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Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-04, 18:14:

what is beos? unix? linux?

Neither. BeOS is a multimedia-focused OS that almost became Mac OS X. In the 90s, Apple gave up on making their own next-generation OS in-house (see the Copland debacle) and decided to acquire one instead. They were choosing between BeOS and NeXTSTEP - Be was run by Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive, and NeXT was run by a certain someone with a complicated Apple history named Steve Jobs. They chose NeXT, and Be found they couldn't compete with Windows or Mac OS and folded.

Near the end, they threw a Hail Mary pass and released a free-to-use version of BeOS for x86 machines called the "Personal Edition." That's how most PC users who heard about it got to try it. Compared to contemporary competition, it booted faster, ran smoother, and just felt very modern.

Enough people fell in love with BeOS that, when it died, an open-source clone project sprang up immediately called Haiku. 20 long years later, and Haiku is nearly production-ready. It runs most BeOS apps and has been modernized and updated.

all pretty and that, but haiku only supports 64bit processors from some time ago, so it's use is limited only if you can find a 32bit iso

weldum wrote on 2021-02-06, 06:34:

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-04, 19:54:

Neither. BeOS is a multimedia-focused OS that almost became Mac OS X. In the 90s, Apple gave up on making their own next-generat […]
Show full quote

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-04, 18:14:

what is beos? unix? linux?

Neither. BeOS is a multimedia-focused OS that almost became Mac OS X. In the 90s, Apple gave up on making their own next-generation OS in-house (see the Copland debacle) and decided to acquire one instead. They were choosing between BeOS and NeXTSTEP - Be was run by Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive, and NeXT was run by a certain someone with a complicated Apple history named Steve Jobs. They chose NeXT, and Be found they couldn't compete with Windows or Mac OS and folded.

Near the end, they threw a Hail Mary pass and released a free-to-use version of BeOS for x86 machines called the "Personal Edition." That's how most PC users who heard about it got to try it. Compared to contemporary competition, it booted faster, ran smoother, and just felt very modern.

Enough people fell in love with BeOS that, when it died, an open-source clone project sprang up immediately called Haiku. 20 long years later, and Haiku is nearly production-ready. It runs most BeOS apps and has been modernized and updated.

all pretty and that, but haiku only supports 64bit processors from some time ago, so it's use is limited only if you can find a 32bit iso

I downloaded haiku and tried it. Didn’t realize I had downloaded 64 bit. It froze at cd boot. Made me sad 🤣. No way haiku will run on this huh? No 586 version?

at some time it existed a 32bit version
even you can download the last beos personal edition from sites like Winworld

The 32bit version is still available on the download page.
As for running it on a 586, BeOS will happily run on a 1st gen pentium (and multiprocessor machines of course) but it may work with the cyrix 5x86 cpu, depending on other factors.

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-05, 18:51:

If you really want to use a truly modern OS on this platform, your best bet might be FreeBSD. The 32-bit version only requires a 486.

486 DX as the FPU is required.
They are going to bump that to 686 (Pentium Pro) in upcoming release 13 though.

Azarien wrote on 2021-02-07, 11:59:

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-05, 18:51:

If you really want to use a truly modern OS on this platform, your best bet might be FreeBSD. The 32-bit version only requires a 486.

486 DX as the FPU is required.
They are going to bump that to 686 (Pentium Pro) in upcoming release 13 though.

I tried the current release and it didn’t work for some reason

Btw, I finally did it. It is possible. I got windows 7 to work on the pentium 1 motherboard with a k6 3+ and 256mb of ram

It is of course slow but not as slow as you’d think if you use a lite version.

the three things required were first a bios update to make it acpi compliant which I got lucky on that a 1999? Bios was compliant enough with a 2005 jan patch for the k6+ (not sure if it was acpi compliant from jan or 1999 but I suspect it was from the company release in 1999

Second, a hex edit to the iso image someone else was able to do to a win 7 lite iso. Whereas I tried and failed a few times to do this.

Turns out that you need to use a sp1 version (not only that, it has also has to work with the hexedit as the hex edit doesn’t always work) you need sp1 to make it work with 586 in a odd twist the later version of 7 works with older processors whereas the earlier one doesn’t.

weldum wrote on 2021-02-06, 06:34:

all pretty and that, but haiku only supports 64bit processors from some time ago, so it's use is limited only if you can find a 32bit iso

Not at all true. On their download page, it has two columns, one for 32-bit, and one for 64-bit.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-07, 13:23:

Turns out that you need to use a sp1 version (not only that, it has also has to work with the hexedit as the hex edit doesn’t always work) you need sp1 to make it work with 586 in a odd twist the later version of 7 works with older processors whereas the earlier one doesn’t.

well, that's exactly what it said in the description of one of the videos you initially linked...

auron wrote on 2021-02-08, 21:28:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-07, 13:23:

Turns out that you need to use a sp1 version (not only that, it has also has to work with the hexedit as the hex edit doesn’t always work) you need sp1 to make it work with 586 in a odd twist the later version of 7 works with older processors whereas the earlier one doesn’t.

well, that's exactly what it said in the description of one of the videos you initially linked...

It was like the tenth time we tried doing exactly that that it finally worked on a specific iso

I wonder how bad windows 7 would run on a 6gb bigfoot on a P1.

update: tried a new version that doesn't really have a whole lot removed it's win 7 pro and it actually works pretty good. haven't done much with it yet though but running through windows is going pretty good in fact it's sitting around 160mb of ram right now it's a version someone hex edited and ran through nvlite but didn't take a whole lot out of.
I'm disabling more stuff mainly related to ssd wear prevention.