mcc, 10 months ago

This thought triggered by looking at this and wanting to post "This is me. It's me. I'm the OS/2 Grandma" but then I realized I have absolutely no qualifications to self-describe as an OS/2 Grandma. https://botsin.space/@postcardware/110750191405897940

kkarhan, 10 months ago

@mcc that's sad...

Remembers to buy @fuchsiii a copy of #ArcaOS some time

mcc, 10 months ago

I've never even got around to installing ReactOS

harik, 10 months ago

@mcc It was very cool and some of what it accomplished still can't be replicated to this day.

their version of GLcube let you drag usable media players and web browsers unto the faces.

whitequark, 10 months ago

@harik @mcc ... Compiz?!

whimsy, 10 months ago

@mcc I owned a boxed copy at one point during the period when it was almost but not quite dead, but never owned a computer capable of running it 😢

syllopsium, 10 months ago

@mcc It was useless. Interesting sound engine, programming model that was incompatible with everything else (so porting networking software was a pain).

Booted into it, multimedia playback was worse than OS/2. OpenGL was interesting, but unaccelerated. Printing and network systems pathetic. Hardware support really dire (and that's coming from an OS/2 user!).

That was BeOS x86. BeOS PPC is even more useless, and ran on about five systems. Have it here on a Powermac 4400/200.

QNX was probably more interesting.

kotinotter, 10 months ago

@mcc i used it in 2006 in my college radio station and fell in love. It sucks how useless it was outside of the automation software, sadly, just because of the modern internet at the time. Said software switched to using Haiku around 2014 but still has a weird license where you can't use it if you promote witchcraft or anything "new-age"

GabeMoralesVR, 10 months ago

@mcc best thing to come out of BeOS was the icons, honestly

pcbeard, 10 months ago

@mcc I was one of the folks who bought a BeBox. Kept it a couple months and then returned it. A lot of hype, although some of it lives on in macOS. The choice of C++ as the application programming APIs would have come back to haunt them.

aubilenon, 10 months ago

@mcc IDK the more different operating systems or programming languages I use the more I hate all operating systems or programming languages. Every time something shows up with a good feature it just makes me able to stand using the other ones less. So in a sense you dodged a bullet!

jesscanady, 10 months ago

@mcc Closest I got was running BeOS R5 Personal -- it shipped as maybe a VM? You ran it from Windows line an exe and it booted you into the OS. No developer tools or codecs, so super limited.

To this day I want tabbed window titlebars and nobody does it.

mikaeleiman, 10 months ago

@mcc there’s always Haiku - runs in your VM and possibly directly on your hardware. https://www.haiku-os.org/

ackack, 10 months ago

@mcc You can try out @haiku which is close!

https://www.haiku-os.org/

I run it in a VM and it's pretty neat.

#BeOS

johnluther, 10 months ago

@mcc Wow, you triggered a lot of fond memories for me.