Re: [school-core] School Software and OS Choice

[Simon Gauvin <gauvins@cs.dal.ca>]

Karl Sarnow,


 >>> > Yes, there are many alternative OSs that are far more usable and
 >>> > useful
 >>> > to students than Linux or BSD. Namely, BeOS and its open source
 >>> > variants
 >>> > (see http://www.beunited.org ). I was wondering why these systems
 >>> > have
 >>> > not found their way into the public domain or school systems. BeOS
 >>> > offers superior performance on older machines than Linux, has a far
 >>> > more
 >>> > integrated and user-friendly user interface, and supports all the
 >>> > APIs
 >>> > needed to create rich media for education.
 >>> >
 >
 >>
 >> I wonder if BeOS is OpenSource?


Currently there is no "complete" open source version of BeOS. There are
several parts of BeOS that are open source (window manager called
Tracker http://opentracker.sourceforge.net/main.html, File system http:
//www.bug-br.org.br/openbfs/index.phtml?section=general, media system
etc), and more being developed all the time to replace the current
closed source version. BeOS itself (and software) is freely available
as a download from various places, namely http://www.bebits.com which
sports multiple distributions of BeOS.

The main open source project creating BeOS is OpenBeOS http://
www.openbeos.net and this project is under the MIT license. It is
completely free and you can use it for both commercial and open
development. At the current rate of development the project should be
complete in about a year.


 >> Can you give me some pointer?


I assume by 'pointer' you mean URL here.

Look at http://www.beunited.org which will point you to all the current
project creating clones of BeOS called OSBOS's (Open Standards BeOS-
compatible Operating Systems). Some are closed, like Zeta, and the
others are all open. Some are actually using the Linux kernel (Cosmoe,
BlueEyedOS, BeFree), but OpenBeOS does not. It uses a new kernel based
on NewOS.

beunited.org is a standards organization that is organizing the
creation of standards for the OSBOS clones of BeOS. This is primarily
to prevent the fragmentation of API's that we now see on Linux
distributions.

--
Simon Gauvin,
Dalhousie University
http://www.cs.dal.ca/~gauvins