[Davros]

Originally Posted by Blazkowicz

about that BeOS R5 edition, I didn't understand why it isn't a self contained OS,

it is your getting confused with BeOS R5 Personal Edition which installed and ran from windows it was suppossed to be a sort of easy introduction to BeOS so people could try it out /get a feel for it
(installed/uninstalled to a folder withinn windows. No need to mess with partitions ect)

[mrcorbo]

Originally Posted by nelg

QNX

I was pretty excited about the potential of QNX on the desktop at one time. Lack of drivers pretty much doomed it from the start, though. It just didn't ever support enough hardware to be useful (at least to me). That bootable floppy that contained everything you needed to boot up the OS with a full GUI and (if you had a compatible network card) get you onto the internet with a web browser was pretty damn impressive.

[Rodéric]

BeOS 5 Personal Edition used a security hole in Windows 9x to take over the computer. When you clicked the icon, it really wiped the existing OS from memory and loaded itself to entirely replace it.

There's Haiku (http://www.haiku-os.org/) which should enter alpha soon ^^

QNX was impressive, but lack of apps & drivers made it useless.

[Scott_Arm]

Originally Posted by Rodéric

BeOS 5 Personal Edition used a security hole in Windows 9x to take over the computer. When you clicked the icon, it really wiped the existing OS from memory and loaded itself to entirely replace it.

There's Haiku (http://www.haiku-os.org/) which should enter alpha soon ^^

QNX was impressive, but lack of apps & drivers made it useless.

QNX is owned by Harmon Kardon now. They do the real-time systems for all the new BMWs or something. A person I know from work's spouse works at QNX, and they get to drive all the fancy new BMWs before they hit the market. I guess they're doing alright.

QNX is pretty neat.

[nelg]

Originally Posted by mrcorbo

I was pretty excited about the potential of QNX on the desktop at one time. Lack of drivers pretty much doomed it from the start, though. It just didn't ever support enough hardware to be useful (at least to me). That bootable floppy that contained everything you needed to boot up the OS with a full GUI and (if you had a compatible network card) get you onto the internet with a web browser was pretty damn impressive.

Ya, that was very impressive. I am still of the impression that it would be the idea OS for a neural network simulation.

IIRC it is used for avionics, medical imagine machines, and a whole host of other vertical implementations. The fact that you could strip it down to such bare essentials was appealing from a support / debug perspective.

[_xxx_]

I can clearly remember that Quake III for BeOS ran way over 50% faster than the windows version. There we had a small glimpse of what's possible when the OS is not a bloated bunch of crap.

[suryad]

Have you tried Sabayon Linux? (spelling) I have heard good things about it.