BeOS is probably one of the most exciting and frustrating pieces of software I've ever owned. I picked up the professional edition after playing around with it on one of my Linux partitions and decided to give programming on it a try.

The first thing you'll notice about Be is that it has some of the most immature hardware support out there. Strange, thinly documented issues abound. I built a new system as BeOS was coming in the mail after reviewing the hardware support list.

Issue 1: Sound Blaster PCI 128 is supported. Except the "Value" edition. They left that last part out in the documentation. Creative tweaked something and nobody has been able to get it to work. I'm now using a Sound Blaster Live! Value (which is a really nice card for the money), and it's all fixed.

Issue 2: Limited CDR support. There's no convenient SCSI emulation system like you find in Linux, so unless you have a top-brand burner, you're out of luck.

Issue 3: Want to use two network cards with the same chipset? You can't. It's a known problem. No known solution. I had to replace one of my DEC Tulip (great support and decent performance, by the way) chipset cards with an NE2000 card. NE2k is a well-supported way to go, but it's based on some pretty ancient ideas.

Issue 4: My Matrox G400MAX isn't very well supported. In fact, it barely does anything (aside from providing high resolution 2D at a good refresh rate). Matrox, as a company, has been a big disappointment lately, though. More on that in another review. =P

But wait! There's good stuff!

BeOS, if you can get all of your stuff working, has some of the most incredible UI design out there. The GUI is highly intuitive (if not terribly customizable), allows for multiple desktops (X11 style) and absolutely flies along. It reads many partition types and will even mount and *write to* my Linux partitions. Sweet.

The threading in the OS is as aggressive as you've heard. I have a dual Pentium III pushing it along at incredible speeds. Multitasking is absolutely seamless. I haven't written a threaded app with it yet, but it looks like their SMP support is top notch.

But there's more!

You get a bash shell! UNIX users rejoice! Bash! The directory structure is very UNIX-like and fairly easy to navigate. You'll be a bit thrown by the fact that there's only one user and no obvious permissions to speak of, but you'll get used to it. It comes with your favorite utilities too. GNU gcc, make, ftp, vim and company are (for the most part) there. Perl is installable (grab the binary at http://www.bebits.com and save yourself a lot of trouble). The Professional edition (the one you pay for) also comes with a development environment.

For all this, though, very few good UNIX programs compile correctly. Be addresses memory and hardware differently and the GUI isn't written like X, so you won't be seeing any of your favorite X applications compiling any time soon. :(

All in all, BeOS is an extremely cool toy. Unless you can fit into some graphics niche (check out the font support!), though, you'll be disappointed by Be as a workhorse. If you're a techie who wants to try something new and settle uncharted lands by doing some programming for an OS that needs coders very badly, it's worth bearing in mind. At least try the free version. What do you have to lose? If you're looking for a drop-in replacement for Windows with MS Office and Netscape, though, I'm afraid it's still a long way off. I think that Linux with KDE or GNOME will almost surely beat Be to the punch there.

Alas, it seems that BeOS is destined to be another great idea that simply doesn't take off the way it should based on its technical merits.



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