Reply 20 of 30, by weldum
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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 […]
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
DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
TC: Esther-1000/Esther-400/Vortex86-366
Others: Drean C64c/Czerweny Spectrum 48k/Talent MSX DPC200/M512K/MP475