To Be

Yesterday, I ran across an article on IBM's devWorks site regarding BeOS as a Web Development platform.

Trying to promote itself as an operating system geared toward broadband multimedia producers, BeOS was gaining popularity a few years ago until management screw-ups, an all-proprietary file system and sagging Internet Applicance sales doomed the company to a quiet exit.

However, like followers of the NeXT, Amiga and Atari systems, BeOS has a growing legion of zealots.

I jumped over to the BeOS site and discovered that the current version (BeOS 5) installs as an application on most Win9x/Me/2000 machines. Best of all, the Personal edition is completely free.

I installed it last night and, after some initial video card problems, got it running in less than 10 minutes. The interface uses some familiar componenets of Mac, NeXT and PC architecture to it, but the icons really set it apart.

If you're interested, BeOS Personal is available from be.com. A growing collection of applications, drivers and contributors can be found at BeBits.com, and for all the latest news and discussion on BeOS, go to BeNews.com.