Alternative Operating Systems: Why BeOS represents the future of computing over Linux and Windows
By Sean Rose
There are many things that determine the best software for any given application. Ease of use, speed, reliability, and scalability are all factors in determining which application to pick. These factors are compounded when considering an operating system, because all the applications that run on the PC are going to interact with the user and the hardware through the operating system. So what makes one operating system better than another? Well, the application of course. Windows is bar far the most popular and recognizable operating system available today. Linux has made waves in the computer industry because of its extremely low cost to implement. So, do you pick one of the high profile operating systems or do you turn to new technology and a new OS?
Be Incorporated, founded in 1990 by Jean-Louis Gassée, has developed a cutting edge operating system for PowerPC chips from Motorola and IBM, as well as for the x86 chips from the likes of Intel, AMD, Cyrix, and IDT. Be calls their operating system “The Media OS” in that it is designed to handle high-bandwidth media on typical workstations. Unlike Apple, Microsoft, and the Linux community, Be started from scratch and wrote the fastest, most intuitive, user-friendly, and scalable operating system on the market today.
Reason 1. Installation.
Installation of an operating system should be a straightforward and simple process; however, this is not the case with Linux and Windows. Linux, in all versions prior to Red Hat 6.1, uses a text based installation utility that asks cryptic questions about mounting drives, network card memory address ranges, and number of sectors to use in partitioning the drive. Also, in early versions, the user might have to create as many as four partitions of differing file system types. Then, the user has to use separate utilities to set up any Plug and Play hardware that might be in his machine. The user must go through all of this to get to a command line interface operating system. Wow! Windows 95/98 is somewhat better, providing a fairly simple graphical interface, but still requires the user to stay at the machine and click or answer questions through the entire installation process. Windows NT and 2000 suffer from the same problems as Linux, a rather unfriendly text based installation utility that requires knowledge the average user doesn’t have.
BeOS’s design is much better, with simplicity being the number one priority. Insert the CD and BeOS boots directly from the CD-ROM launching a very simple graphical interface. Be then asks the user three questions. First, BeOS asks which partition to install to. If the user needs to create a new partition or resize existing partitions, it can be done right here in the install utility. Once the user has selected the partition, BeOS asks the user’s language preference. The final question asks if the user would like to install the optional content, which consists of some desktop images, music, and movies. That’s all there is to it. There is no further action required from the user and the installation process takes approximately 10-15 minutes.
Reason 2. Hardware.
BeOS is designed to run on Pentium and 686 level computers and higher unlike Linux and Windows, whose binaries are compiled to run on 386 level chips that are over 12 years old. Be immediately is faster just in the fact it’s code has native support for MMX instructions, AMD’s 3D-Now, and Intel’s Pentium III optimizations. Windows NT 4 with service pack 5 or higher only allows applications to take advantage of the Pentium III instruction set, not the operating system itself. Unlike Linux, Windows 95, and Windows NT; BeOS supports USB, Plug and Play, and symmetrical multi-processing right out of the box. Adding another processor is as easy as inserting it. Unlike Windows NT, there is no reconfiguration needed after adding the additional processor and all BeOS applications are compiled to run on multi-processor systems. BeOS also supports all cutting edge hardware, Ultra-DMA hard disks, graphic accelerators like the 3DFX Voodoo 2/3 and RIVA TNT for games like Quake 2, and media capture cards for editing video and audio.
Reason 3. Software.
BeOS is a new operating system but there is no lack of software and developer support. BeOS ships with many applications, including a text editor, a media player compatible with QuickTime and Windows Media, a web browser with Secure Socket Layer transmission and JavaScript support, a full email client, a television viewer, contact management software, built in support for Zip files and Tar balls, 3D audio mixing that supports creating audio for quad and 5.1 surround systems, a FTP server, a HTTP web server, a Telnet server, and a full version of Metrowerks Code Warrior C/C++ IDE for BeOS. Be also lists over 1000 freeware and shareware applications that are available for download from their website, including applications from MetaCreations, MGI, and Id software.
BeOS, like Linux, is also UNIX compatible. Most applications only need be recompiled under Be, with little or no modifications needed. The BeOS terminal also supports different shells and the BASH shell is standard. UNIX and MS-DOS commands are supported at the command prompt so almost any user is at home with BeOS.
Reason 4. Performance.
BeOS excels over Windows and Linux in almost every way. The simple fact that BeOS isn’t dragging around 16-bit legacy code to be compatible with 1980’s hardware, allows the memory footprint of the operating system to be smaller and faster. BeOS boots up in less than 20 seconds on all supported machines. BeOS is designed from the ground up to support multi-processing and therefore all of the system services, daemons, and applications are pervasively multi-threaded. This approach to programming can make writing applications more difficult, but it allows the system to break down processes so small that the task of switching from application to application is not noticeable even under 100% CPU load. The system stays responsive to user’s mouse and keyboard inputs no matter what the system is doing.
Windows 2000, like BeOS, is a preemptive multitasking operating system that supports multi-processing and multi-threading. In an idle environment, Windows 2000 has approximately a dozen processes and 20 or 25 threads running, with each subsequent application launched adding one process and usually one, maybe two threads. BeOS at idle has over 100 threads running and each application adding from one to a dozen or more threads. The attached screenshot of BeOS shows the operating system running four AVI movies, five OpenGL based 3D demonstration programs, two kaleidoscope graphic windows, and two simulated star fields, all the while playing back a full rate MP3 audio stream with zero skips. None. The system at this point has 261 threads running and the response of the mouse and keyboard is almost exactly the same as if no applications were running. Even under this load, BeOS maintains timing down to 1/100,000th of a second. Playing an MP3 back under these conditions in Windows 95,98, NT, or 2000 does not give the same results. The audio skips to the point of not being enjoyable.
Under the hood, BeOS has done away with the limitations brought on by maintaining compatibility with decade old code and hardware. File sizes in Windows are limited to 2GB, with some versions limiting the size of partitions to 2GB. BeOS has a 64-bit journaling file system that supports files and partitions up to millions of Gigabytes in size. The file system also tracks every change and incomplete transaction to the file system, so problems cause by hardware failure and loss of power don’t corrupt the data on the disk. No more waiting for Scandisk to check the hard drives for errors after stepping on the surge protector.
Reason 5. Cooperative.
BeOS is a fantastic operating system, but in today’s world there may be a need to have multiple operating systems on a PC. BeOS is completely compatible with Windows and Linux, it even comes with it’s own boot manager and shell scripts to add BeOS to Windows NT’s boot manager or Linux’s LILO. BeOS also has native file system support for Mac HFS , FAT16, FAT32, vFAT, and ISO-9660. Free third-party support is available for Linux file systems, NTFS, and Joliet.
Windows is a bloated and aging product, not without great features, but hampered by the lack of true multi-user network support and the relentless drive to make it backwards compatible from the day the PC was created. Linux is simply a fad, a twenty-five-year-old idea for a command line operating system with a mediocre graphical interface. It has no user-friendliness what so ever, and comes with software that claims to “cause random X crashes.” It doesn’t belong on the standard user’s desktop PC; it is a low overhead server platform that should stay on the servers. BeOS’s extreme ease of use, low cost, speed, robust file system, and lightning fast kernel services make it ideal for daily office tasks, media creation in real time, and file serving on LAN’s and the Internet. BeOS’s scalability also allows it to power Internet devices such as refrigerators and Web TV boxes all the way up to $100,000+ eight processor XEON based servers. At a retail price of less than $100, how can Linux and Windows compete?
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