In theory it would but apparently you can’t even compile the current source code that’s in the link supposedly I haven’t tried it myself yet it would also have to be on a 32-bit system
You can compile it, but because it is corrupt, half the code is missing from important chunks. This might be what yT used for some of the Zeta changes. No idea. But the same archive is on a few websites and the content is the same.
It can’t run anything. It’s an astoundingly basic bit of code displaying a few lines of text on screen.
It isn’t an OS. It isn’t a recreation of BeOS 4, or any version
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You will not see “another distro” based on BeOS because BeOS doesn’t run an any modern hardware at all. Not even Zeta is capable of easily being run on anything modern.
You will maybe see a Haiku distro, but what also is the point in that? Haiku has a centrally managed version and no one is doing anything that makes deviating from that very exciting. The only thing I could think of would be to change the package management, but that starts massive flame wars, so not worth it.
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However you can run BeOS is a virtual machine.
You can, but then you don’t really need a new version because it will just work with what exists.
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Absolutely not. This is a tiny community, and we cannot afford to split our efforts.
One day, maybe, there will be enough of us that another “flavour” or “spin” of Haiku will make sense.
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This is one of the weirdest scams(?) I’ve ever seen? So many problems here:
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Why bother to claim it’s BeOS 4? That wasn’t even the last released version. Even if it booted and worked perfectly, so what? It’s like being able to compile Windows NT 3.51 these days. Very limited usage.
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There’s so much “fake” code here:
I’m not an expert, but it looks like all this is is enough assembly to boot, get to a “prompt” and then respond to some simple commands, like “shutdown” and so forth. If you look in the assembly, all the boot up strings are just static. It’s just saying “keyboard detected, 64MB RAM detected, etc”.
The amount of people interested in BeOS is already pretty low in the world… what’s the point of making a totally fake project on GitHub?
The best I can guess is this is someone who doesn’t really know much who sat down with Visual Studio and asked it to recreate BeOS, but then doesn’t know enough to read the actual generated code and see it’s nonsense.
Needless to say, there’s a lot more to BeOS than just a text prompt after a boot. The UI, BeFS, etc. are all missing and not pictured.
AI has led to a LOT of weird stuff but this one takes the cake for me. I’m not even sure what the point is, and even if it was legit, you can’t just crib the BeOS code. It’s still licensed.
My guess is that whomever “generated” this already had their chuckles and the repo is just going to sit there. What an odd, odd, odd thing to find.
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I don’t think this is a bad or pointless thing. One thing is for sure, it shows interest in the BeOS legacy, and it will attract additional attention to Haiku. And that’s a good thing. Well, being angry or mocking really doesn’t do anyone any honor or benefit.
But it’s not real!
It’s like me posting what says it is Windows NT but it just says
println(“Welcome to Windows NT 4.0!!!”)
What is the possible point?
From what I can tell, this is an actual leak of the 4.x source code. Someone asked an AI to “make it buildable” and the AI shoved a bootloader into the repo that just says “Welcome to BeOS!” and then they claimed “I’ve brought it back to life!”
I don’t see any practical use to this, and furthermore, the BeOS 4.x code is not permissively licensed and if you are a Haiku contributor you can even be tainted by seeing it!
This whole thing is just WEIRD.
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Look at this weirdness:
ps_detail db 'Running Processes (BeOS):', 13, 10
db 'PID NAME STATUS', 13, 10
db '1 kernel_intel running', 13, 10
db '2 registrar running', 13, 10
db '3 app_server loading', 13, 10
db '4 input_server ready', 13, 10
db '5 net_server ready', 13, 10
db '6 shell running', 13, 10, 10, 0
That’s the “ps” command. Needless to say, there are no real processes.
Check out the “sysinfo”:
sysinfo_detail db 'BeOS System Information:', 13, 10
db 'OS: BeOS "Dano" 4.0', 13, 10
db 'Kernel: kernel_intel (Homeless Tech build)', 13, 10
db 'CPU: Intel x86 (i586+)', 13, 10
db 'Memory: 64MB physical', 13, 10
db 'Storage: 64MB BFS volume', 13, 10
db 'Build: Sep 18 2024 (resurrection)', 13, 10, 10, 0
It doesn’t look to see what kind of processor or how much memory you actually have. It just prints out “Intel … 64MB”.
I can’t tell if the author is really clueless and AI is deluded him into thinking this is actually something useful OR if he knows full well what he did and this is some kind of weird prank only relevant to the small crowd of Be enthusiasts left in the world.
Mark my words, you will never seen any more development in this repo, because writing a simple amd64 bootloader is far, far easier than resurrecting BeOS 4.x. (which isn’t even legal using the original sources…)
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May I humbly suggest that the forum admins close this thread? Everything that needed to be said about this has been said. We’re now just repeating ourselves.
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But I haven’t said my revolutionary ideas regarding the subject.
If people are still chatting about it, then maybe they’d like to. If everything is all said and done, eventually the topic will end up with all the others, unlocked and inactive. Closing a topic is just unneeded work. My response to your response is also probably a waste of time to read 
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Not a lawyer but I would like to add a potential legal warning/issue, if the code is the leaked ‘dano’ code looking at it could pose legal issues if that person contributes to haiku.
ReactOS had this issue a few years back if I recall and had to shutdown for a complete code review.
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Yes, in America, big money with big financial interests has a big or even too big influence (often the actual legality is secondary to that)… But, the code behind BeOS doesn’t have such a backer… Besides, Haiku has already gone far on its own path, probably, there is nothing in that “Dano” code that anyone would want to copy into Haiku. And again, even in the event of some scandal, it would benefit the Haiku project — it would attract public attention, the Haiku project is still little known.
The BeOS code is owned by a large enough Japanese firm that did enforce their ownership against Zeta (eventually).
There is no profit from BeOS. BeOS is a dead project. Those Japanese owners probably don’t even know, aren’t skilled, and aren’t interested in what they have. I guess most likely nothing will be done at all, that github project will go unnoticed and soon forgotten by everyone.
Well - it is real. You could actually pull out big chunks of actual BeOS code and recompile it. How useful that actually is is debatable. The CFS driver is there, so you could probably make that build on Haiku and then mount BeIA formatted disk images, I guess. Is that useful? Not really.
BTerm is also there and that might almost be useful. But BTerm is a bit cruddy. The actual Terminal app is more useful.
Sorry, I should be more clear. There ARE BeOS sources in there, but the part of the project that the user is taking credit for is entirely independent of that. I posted some of the source above. He basically implemented a bootloader that prints out “Welcome to BeOS!” and fakes some commands, like sysinfo, ps, etc.
The information on that page and on YouTube makes it seem like it’s a huge accomplishment and BeOS 4 is back, but that’s not what this is.
This is one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. I am not sure what the angle is, or why anyone would want to do this.
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My guess is it’s a bored teenager who thinks “AI” has actually done something useful for them.
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