A few years ago I bought my BeoS Pro R5 and Gobe Productive CDs. I iinstalled them and fell in love. As luck would have it, Be Incorporated sold to Palm about a week later. I thought I saw the handwriting on the wall and dumped BeOS and went back to Windows about a month later.
After BeOS, Windows just plain sucked. And Linux, well … I just couldn’t love it.
From time to time I would search the web or visit the forums for any news about BeOS in hopes of seeing any signs of life or a possible future. I saw a few projects going on, but only two seemed to really have a chance … Haiku and Zeta.
From what I read, it looks like Zeta is not a whole lot more than BeOS PE with some extra drivers and decor. And it looks like Haiku is on the road to building an OS for the future.
Haiku’s road looks a lot slower, but it looks like its the road that will really build an OS to be proud of.
I was torn between dusting off my old BeOS and Gobe Cds and installing them again and between grabbing a copy of Zeta.
More than a few people suggested that I use my BeOS R5 and replace existing components with those from Haiku as they come available and wait for Haiku to make a release.
This seems to be the right way to go, but I wouldn’t mind some feedback from you.
If you have an honest opinion, please share it. You have all been more involved with the community than I have and you all know more about what’s going on than I do.
I do not want to sound biased, but Zeta is no PE with a few extra drivers.
Zeta is actually based on what was supposed to be the next version of BeOS, plus it has some stuff developed by YT, such as the locale kit, an a new USB stack . YT is also working a ona new media player and native decoders for the media kit.
Welcome back, ReflectedLight!
IMO the sensible way to go is to get BeOS PE (or some driver-enhanced distribution like Max or the Developer Edition) to run on your hardware. If that works, stay for it for a while to see what features/software you’re missing and try to investigate if and to what degree Zeta provides them.
Consider if these possible extra features are so vital for you to spend your money on Zeta. In the log run it may be better to financially support Haiku.
I do not want to sound biased, but Zeta is no PE with a few extra drivers.
Zeta is actually based on what was supposed to be the next version of BeOS, plus it has some stuff developed by YT, such as the locale kit, an a new USB stack . YT is also working a ona new media player and native decoders for the media kit.
Koki
Actually zeta is more like dano with a few extra’s…
