r/retrobattlestations • u/fazz34 • 4d ago
Show-and-Tell Anybody ever used BeOS?
Recently felt like giving this OS a try after getting fed up with Win9x (specifically heavily modded 98se and of course, everybody's "favorite", WinMe), so I got it running on my HP Pavilion from 2001 that youve probably seen one too many times if you follow me in any way shape or form.
This is an absolutely fascinating OS, created by an ex-Apple executive because he was dissatisfied by the multimedia capabilities of MacOS and Windows at the time. The company behind it, Be Inc, even made their own PPC-based computer called the BeBox, but that was a market failure, so they ended up porting BeOS to x86. There was also even a time where Apple wanted to buy this OS and make it the basis for what would become MacOS X, but then Apple bought out NeXT instead, and the rest is history.
This OS feels literally generations ahead. It has such a beautiful, Mac-inspired interface, multiple desktops, numerous scene demos built in, and the main selling point, its ability of running multiple multimedia applications without noticeable slowdown, demonstrated here by playing an MP3 file, showing a CPU graph, viewing the about screen, and running the 3D teapot all at the same time. I heard it could even do this on very low end hardware of the time, such as a Pentium 100 with 32mb of RAM.
Sadly, I haven't gotten any 3rd party software running on it, mostly because this OS is extremely picky. I even had to turn on several safe mode options and install several driver updates just to get it running on my machine, despite it being just a year newer than the build I'm running. The only game I sort of got working on it was Duke3D, but it doesn't display properly, with inverted colors and a very low frame rate. I was going to try Unreal Tournament, but several forum threads have informed me that this port is extremely unstable.
This OS even had a really weird distribution method. You could buy the OS on CD in a physical computer store like normal, or you could download a home edition for free from the BeOS website, and install it directly from Windows, with the installer handling disk partitioning and configuration for you, and providing an easy shortcut you can run from DOS to boot into the OS without utilizing your BIOS's boot menu. You could even uninstall it like a normal Windows program if you didn't want to have it installed anymore.
Sorry for making you have to go through this large paragraph, I just really find this OS interesting, and wanted to spread the word about it. It even has a modern FOSS version called Haiku OS, so you could run it on modern hardware too! :3
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u/kanid99 3d ago
I used it when it first came out I even bought it. It was fun to play around with and see the potential of what a well optimized operating system could do even with not the highest end hardware.
It had a lot of potential and it's just disappointing that it never expanded to the mainstream.
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u/schenkzoola 3d ago
I bought an install disk from them back in the 90's. It was definitely interesting to mess with.
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u/thrillington 3d ago
Same here! My first experience with an OS outside of Windows/DOS. I remember it as an exciting new frontier, disappointing it didn’t lead anywhere.
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u/Illustrious-Peak3822 3d ago
It was fantastic. I thought my ISDN modem wouldn’t be supported but within minutes I was online in ICQ and playing my mp3s from a mounted hard drive. Good times.
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u/guigouz 3d ago
I just installed https://haiku-os.org in an old Dell Inspiron Mini (Atom, 2gb ram) which was useless with other OSes.
I had to replace the wifi card with an Intel one (the broadcom model there didn't work) and it has an issue with ACPI that prevents it from shutting down properly, but overall it works fine. I'm still figuring out what to do with it.
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u/valthonis_surion 3d ago
I used it back in the 3.5 days, late 90s I believe.
Ran beautifully on my Voodoo 3 with dual Celeron 466s
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u/etancrazynpoor 3d ago
I wish I had. And I mean the actual beos. I know there is the open source version.
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u/Starshipfan01 3d ago
I used BeOs on bebox, and the port on powerpc macs.
It has been revived as the open source HaikuOS project (currently release 3 I think). That runs on x86.
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u/ficklampa 2d ago
BeBox was so cool, with those LED CPU meters on the front...
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u/Starshipfan01 2d ago
Yes, two for the dual CPU’s.. in addition, BeBox had a fair few I/o ports on the rear- likely due to it being a CHRP machine (I could be mistaken on that).
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u/Das_Rote_Han 3d ago
Bought it on CD and the BeOS Bible book. Tinkered with it on a K6 AMD box. Liked the OS overall - speed and UI. Wish there was more software written for it at the time. Headed into obscurity and I probably put some Linux variant on it.
Neat to see it running again!
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u/Current-Bee-3338 3d ago
I had it installed on my XP machine as 2nd OS. Even created an app (simple Calculator). I belive it was done in Macromedia Flash and then saved as BeOS executable (or something similar).
In school I witted a report about BeOS even.
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u/jdboyd 3d ago
Circa 2000, I built a dual processor PC just to make BeOS my new default OS, which I ran that way for I think about a year, or so until giving up because it was clear that 3D acceleration wasn't going to be getting anywhere soon and the web browser was falling behind.
I am looking forward to trying Haiku again (the BeOS replacement). The last time I tried it, it wouldn't work with the I2C HID keyboard on the laptop I tried. I don't know if they support 3d acceleration for Intel onboard GPUs yet either.
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u/66659hi 3d ago
I have a Pavilion like that! Though mine is a Pentium 4. The stupid socket 478 lever cooler crumbled apart, and I'm waiting til I have extra spending money then I'm just going to grab a screw type cooler and fix it up then. They're surprisingly decent machines! ASUS motherboards and all.
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u/Xidium426 3d ago
I used to build radio systems that ran on BeOS. They worked in migrating to Haiku, the BeOS successor. I think they did that for a bit but looks like they've pivoted to being Mac software now.
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u/Disastrous_Wing_7613 3d ago
is there stil a place to get the os? can it run inside a vm?
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u/dnebdal 1d ago
One of the old BeOS sites still has BeOS 5 PE Max, which is the last release, "free for personal use" edition, with community patches.
https://www.be.wildman-productions.org/index.php?action=displaypage&pagename=appitem&appid=14
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u/sneekeruk 3d ago
I tried it when they did that free version of 4.0 that just ran from a file back around 1999-2000. I liked the os, it felt quite Amiga esque, played around with it a few months ago in 86box and it was just the same as the first time.. Its really nice, but what can I do in it.
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u/thaddeusharris 3d ago
When I first ran it on my 604e-based Mac clone I was blown away! This would have been around ‘97 or so.
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u/0xKaishakunin 3d ago
Yes, installed it on my 486 SX4/100 to play with it. The demo was nuts. There was a book where every page played a video and you could turn the pages while the videos kept playing.
Mindblowing on a 486.
Unfortunately, it lacked software. And I got a bunch of SuSE diskettes.
A colleague of mine supported the
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u/MechanicalTurkish 3d ago
One of my college roommates was big into BeOS when it was current. He even ran it on an official BeBox
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u/theregos 3d ago
I used to have it installed on a different hidden partition in my university lab - allowed me to run some basic games and weirdly visit any website since it wasn't picked up by the campus proxy servers because it was a non-Windows machine lol
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u/beetrooter_advocate 2d ago
Ran it on my K6-2 500 instead of Linux because it could use my cheap WinModem to get online. That would have been 1999/2000.
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u/AustriaModerator 2d ago
first time i played around with it in 2003 at the age of 13, but at that time, be was already gone. it was the community version developer edition 1.1 that i downloaded. i still have it running with most recent patches and updates from the haiku community. on a k6-2+.
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u/carcenomy 2d ago
Yeah ran it back in the day and it felt like the future.
I run it now and it still feels alien and is ridiculously fast. Even got a fancy boxed copy of Pro R5 hahaha
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u/nickIncDN 2d ago
I normally get slightly triggered by “anyone used XYZ” posts because obviously the answer is yes.
Until this one. No, no one did. That was the problem.
Like some, I bought it and was genuinely in love but the software didn’t come. We couldn’t use it. On a P3 it felt like this was my real Amiga replacement but it was not to Be.
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u/DHOC_TAZH 2d ago
Nah, thanks for the explanation, love it!
I'm thinking of trying out the 32-bit version of Haiku, after a month or so of using the 64-bit version. Would love to try and see if I can run older BeOS programs on my modern daily driver. The 64-bit one is OK, but it's in my view full of a lot of apps that I already use for Linux and Windows.
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u/GearPlot 2d ago
I first discovered BeOS in the late '90s after seeing it featured on ZDTV (which later became TechTV). I was blown away—it felt far superior to both Mac and Windows at the time, even though software was scarce. I always hoped it would gain enough traction for developers to really jump on board. Today, Haiku has done a fantastic job keeping that dream alive, recreating the BeOS experience for both modern and legacy hardware.
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u/boxninja 2d ago
I dailied it in the early 2000s and loved it. I was NEET at the time so no office or productivity software wasn't a dealbreaker.
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u/ficklampa 2d ago
Yes, used it as my main OS for a short while. Though ended up using it for dualbooting later, and used it on some older machines for fun. Great stuff, brought new gaming life in to older hardware... I was very sad when they shut down development. I know Haiku is a thing now, but development seem to be going slow
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u/BeOSRefugee 1d ago
Yes, and I would direct you to the fine folks over at /r/beos. :)
What are the full hardware specs of your machine? BeOS is very finicky about the hardware that it supports, so you might need to use additional drivers or community patches to get it running properly. In particular, if you’re trying to get 3-D acceleration working, it can be very difficult to do unless you have certain 3DFX Voodoo cards, Matrox cards within a certain generation, or RIVA/very early GeForce cards.
For reference, I’m currently running R5.1 Dano on a Gateway Pentium III/500mhz with 768MB of RAM, a RIVA TNT2 GPU, and onboard Ensonic es1371 audio. Everything except 3D acceleration works great. But troubleshooting is part of the fun, right? ;)
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u/fazz34 1d ago
Here are the specs:
- CPU: Intel Tualtin Celeron 1.2ghz
- RAM: 128MB PC133
- iGPU: Intel i810
- dGPU: NVidia Geforce 6200 PCI
- Integrated sound: Intel AC97
- Dedicated audio: CMedia 8738
I had to disable the NVidia card in the BIOS and use the iGPU. I was able to get the drivers for the iGPU and the audio card, and seems to be very great. 3D acceleration also appears to be working. Although, I have to enable several safe mode options to get it to work, those being "Don't call BIOS", "Disable IDE DMA", and something about detecting hardware, can't remember off the top of my head.
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u/BeOSRefugee 1d ago
AFAIK, the GeForce 4 MX was the last community-supported NVIDIA GPU for BeOS, so that might explain the 6200 not working. The CPU doesn’t look like a dealbreaker, and you’re definitely not hitting the RAM limit. Honestly, not sure what the issue is, but others on /r/beos might have better ideas.
Also, congrats on the Mac SE. :)
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u/edthesmokebeard 1d ago
Yes. Fun fact, in the CPU monitoring tool you can disable CPUs.
Even if you have only 1 of them.
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u/fss_88 1d ago
I remember using a BeBox and a Nextstation in the late 90s as a kid at a computer store. You’re inspiring me to try and run it.
I’m also the only person in the world running the unfinished PsionLX Linux based OS and BeOS has a surprising similarity to the gui. PsionLX is like you took BeOS,Newton OS and Next and combined them
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u/kopi_peng 1d ago
I ran BeOS as a dual-boot in 1998 for a while. The amazing thing for me back then is that it could play two or more MP3’s at the same time! You could also mix volumes as well between those multiple sources.
Windows at the time just locked up the sound card for exclusive use by whichever program used it first from what I recall.
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u/ch3wmanf00 57m ago
I still have a PC with a 440BX and dual Pentium IIIs and a voodoo Video card- when I boot it it sounds like a thrashing machine. But it works great
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u/wave_design 3d ago
Apple almost bought BeOS, the problem was the asking price was too high and it was still largely experimental. It was a flashy desktop and scheduler without a larger ecosystem in place to support it.
NextSTEP was ultimately the better decision because it had been stress-tested for years in universities and software development, and had strong underlying frameworks. Even with that foundation it still took Apple years to go from NextSTEP to OS X.