Submitted by After a short period of development, today Vasper released a first beta of BeOS Max 4. Max is a ‘distribution’ of the free personal edition of BeOS R5, originally released 6 years ago by Be Inc. Vasper started working on BeOS Max long before Zeta came to life and in the years after Be closed down it was of the two actively developed systems, to other being Developer edition also based on PE. Get BeOS 5 PE Max V4 beta 1 here, a development report is viewable here.
Kinda funny too, I was just browsing and thought “Hey, I’ll check BeOS Max” and saw that 4 beta was released, thought cool, wonder when that came out…. oh it came out today just a few mins ago.
Too many people downloading it already
for me to download as everybody wants a peace of v4.
I would get a torrent going but my upload sucks. Any body else got some good bandwidth for this?
The server is being bombarded by requests. I am now uploading to rapidshare, but it will be a few hours before I have a link to post…
Will also try to seed torrent as soon as rapidshare is up.
Edited 2007-03-21 17:28
This is really awesome to see BeOS being kept alive like this. You know, there are very few OS’s ever that have had this kind of loyal community and I’m glad to be part of it
Look forward to first one who can post a torrent link here =).
Geee, why don’t devs who make wonderful software/software packages like BeOSMax realize that Torrents is the way to go if they wanna keep their server online….
I currently use BeOS Max 3.1 as my BeOS R5 install of choice, and I will probably update to V4.
I don’t like the hacking of libbe.so to change the reported info string… I think that’s somewhat petty and unnecessary – since this isn’t a new OS or anything.
I hope it will contain all the latest development tools required for getting/building Haiku. I also like the addition of the vmware drivers (video, network) as this will allow more people to get R5 running in a virtual machine side by side with Haiku
Torrent anyone? – the download is going to take all day at this rate
I’d download it and seed a torrent if the stupid wepage had direct links to the .zip file instead of some weird JS setup.
I’d download it and seed a torrent if the stupid wepage had direct links to the .zip file instead of some weird JS setup.
Edited: Removed URL. Sorry Vasper, I just read your post about your hosts rules.
Edited 2007-03-21 18:30
Cheers, just grabbed it from the download dialog box using Konqy.
Why does Firefox not show the URL too?
Or am I just stupid/blind?
Anyway, 2hrs to go at 40KBps using axel.
Cheers, just grabbed it from the download dialog box using Konqy.
Why does Firefox not show the URL too?
Or am I just stupid/blind?
Anyway, 2hrs to go at 40KBps using axel.
No, you view the source of index.php to find out the jump code. Look at functions to find out the URL syntax. Then paste it into wget and it resolved the absolute path for you. Sorry again Vasper, at least this time I didn’t post the path to the zip.
“No, you view the source of index.php to find out the jump code. Look at functions to find out the URL syntax. Then paste it into wget and it resolved the absolute path for you.”
Clicking on the url in konqy is easier.
“Clicking on the url in konqy is easier. ;-)”
Where’s your sense of adventure?
” Edited: Removed URL. Sorry Vasper, I just read your post about your hosts rules. ”
Well, i’m using axel to download it using 10 connections but I have visited the webpage too so i hope this is ok?
Actually programs use this to report different versions of the OS. True it is not of any significant use yet, but it isn’t a hack either. It is just an attribute change to report correct release of the OS. I don’t change every library… just the one that reports the system. For example this way MaxUpdater will know if it can update your system or not…
The setup of the page is required so it won’t be easy to just post a link to the outside world without getting to this page first. It is one of the rules of my host. I must have every person that downloads a file visit the page. It isn’t by choice.
Edited 2007-03-21 18:21
Thanks for the clarification.
So, does that make it just one of your own custom attributes then? Since MaxUpdater is obviously your code, I assume it doesn’t have to rely on anything built into BeOS PE when it’s trying to determine if the system needs updates.
Is a “distribution” of “real” BeOS even legal?
Probably not, but hey, who’s gonna sue?
Is a “distribution” of “real” BeOS even legal?
I don’t think distributing it is illegal. The issue of doing a native install to a HDD is what has always been in question. I own a legal copy of BeOS 5 Pro that I can install legally, but honestly I’d rather have someone else patch it for me, and thats why I use Max.
I don’t think distributing it is illegal.
Well that’s a different issue, though I somehow doubt it’s legal anyway. What I mean by “distribution” is a “modified copy of BeOS”. AFAIK only the people who bought the rights to BeOS from Be (at one point I think that was Palm, but now, God knows) would have the right to change the source code and distribute the changed versions.
Well that’s a different issue, though I somehow doubt it’s legal anyway. What I mean by “distribution” is a “modified copy of BeOS”. AFAIK only the people who bought the rights to BeOS from Be (at one point I think that was Palm, but now, God knows) would have the right to change the source code and distribute the changed versions.
I could be wrong, but I don’t believe any source code is being modified. Max Edition is just PE with updated drivers and Apps. It’s like downloading a freely available OS that happens to come with all the updates.
Good question.
BeOS PE was free version, BeOS PRO you had to pay for.
I don’t think a company could go after you if you modified PE *and* made it clear that it was a modified version of BeOS PE (which was free at the time).
Why would the company go after you if the distro was well done, based on the free version and helped to promote the OS? If it was buggy then it would be in their interest to get you to stop.
Even if it was illegal. Who would go after him? I don’t see Palm doing anything with BeOS. They don’t sell it or do anything else with it. They’ve gone over to using Linux instead in their devices. Costs them less than to maintain their own OS.
Why would the company go after you if the distro was well done, based on the free version and helped to promote the OS? If it was buggy then it would be in their interest to get you to stop.
Even if it was illegal. Who would go after him? I don’t see Palm doing anything with BeOS. They don’t sell it or do anything else with it. They’ve gone over to using Linux instead in their devices. Costs them less than to maintain their own OS.
I can name plenty of products that have fallen by the wayside on the “if we can’t sell it, nobody can” basis. Yes, it’s childish, but it’s also how many business operate.
Does this mean someone else has source code and is doing builds?
How about a review??
Only company using BeOS source to develop BeOS clone is Yellowtab (now Zeta team?). They are “supposed” to have the source code to BeOS.
MAX does NOT change the source code of BeOS. It is basically BeOS 5 with newer drivers, updated programs & some patches (to fix a couple of issues).
Edited 2007-03-21 20:27
& some patches (to fix a couple of issues).
And by patches, we’re talking about binary hacks on the bootloader/kernel, etc. to make it work with “too much memory” and newer AMD processors that the original R5 code couldn’t handle.
BTW, the torrent listed on the beosmaxfiles site doesn’t work for my in Bittorrent on Windows
Edited 2007-03-21 20:34
“BTW, the torrent listed on the beosmaxfiles site doesn’t work for my in Bittorrent on Windows
”
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3644324/BeOS5PEMaxEditionV4b1
“BTW, the torrent listed on the beosmaxfiles site doesn’t work for my in Bittorrent on Windows
”
Bittorrent didn’t work for me also. I uninstalled it but azureus does works…
Unfortunatly my current computer isn’t supported.
I tried it in both BitTorrent and G3 Torrent with no luck.
Apparently whatever tool was used to create that torrent was not compatible with either of these on Windows (ironic considering BitTorrent is supposedly the defacto standard).
I would say this is a major reason why you aren’t seeing more seeders, since very few people are actually able to get the damn thing!
Update: It appears to work in uTorrent
Edited 2007-03-22 17:53
That would be telling Some one did a PowerPC build about 2 years ago – with the new app server and other new stuff (but without BONE.) Someone somewhere must have the source to a post R5 version of BeOS. As to who.. I really couldn’t tell you. I honestly don’t know.
…I just posted a though on whether or not Zeta is still relevant :p
feel free to let your opinion known: http://www.club-admiralty.com
To clarify things, it is legal in my country and the country the host is on… I don’t know about the rest. :-). Actually legal is not the exact status. Lets just say it is not illegal…
And no, I don’t have the code, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do with it!!! I am a programmer but not a system programmer.
ps. Don’t worry about the reverse engineering the links. Just don’t direct post them on any site.
Edited 2007-03-21 20:32
Ok, I would have liked to have seen a Dano (5.1) release instead. I think it is better than BeOS PE.
Now, Dano is referred to as illegal, because it was never released to the public *and* had it been, there is good chance it would have sold for a price.
But the question is, if Palm isn’t selling BeOS or making money from BeOS, then would making a Dano distro be *enforceable* as illegal? And would it be enforced?
@ Vasper
Why not dano distro? Was it because issue of illegal status?
Edited 2007-03-21 21:05
I’m not so sure you can say that since something isn’t for sale, it’s not illegal to pirate it. I’m pretty sure this is black and white.
That said, whether it would be enforced is a different story entirely.
I bought the BeOS Bible back in the day and in the introduction it outlined how Be Inc saw the future of personal computing in systems with many cheap CPUs. Today, the vision becomes true and everybody can buy 8 cores in an SMP system – ideal for BeOS, but it was forgotten long ago.
Benews once had a cool screen shot, showing 4.5 (?) running on an 8-way 550 MHz Intel server – that seemed to be out of reach for eternity back then
Maybe Eugenia can dig it out for us?
http://qube.ru/gallery/item/beos_r45_on_eight_ip3_550mhz_2/
http://qube.ru/gallery/item/beos_r45_on_eight_ip3_550mhz_1/
Does this version come with BONE networking?
I did prefer that to the original one… when I used to run BeOS
Thom, is there any reason why you chose the “Haiku related” icon for the article? Besides that the legality of BeOS Max Edition is questionable (doubters should read the BeOS R5 PE License Agreement, particularly sentences 2 and 3 of the Limitations on Use section), I also see no relation to Haiku at all. I would recommend using the BeOS icon instead.
Note, that this is my personal opinion. I’m not speaking for the Haiku project.
[edited: corrected clumsy formulation]
Edited 2007-03-21 22:26
As pointed out to me in a previous article (when the “Haiku icon” first appeared on OSAlert): It merely stands for “BeOS and Derivatives” (but not including Zeta). I too find it somewhat misleading, but I guess they didn’t really want to maintain a separate BeOS and Haiku topic.
On the other hand, BeOS Max V4 does appear to contain some items from the Haiku repo, so it could arguably be “related” – but not any less so than Zeta.
Remember palm split into a hardware and a software side, with access eventually buying Palmsource.
So if anyone would stop Dan0 or Phosphuros, it would be Access.
A modified BeOS PE is a derived version and that makes it illegal to distribute but the burden is on the copyright holder to take action to prevent. In the case of mass distribution, it may be actioned by a state. However, a patch that modifies the original is legal.
As for Zeta, I haven’t seen any credible evidence of their rights to the BeOS code or their rights to distribute anything based on that code. Atari have the source to the DOS game Blood due to accident but don’t have the right to use it.
I’m fine with BeOS Max as it’s main objective is helping people run stuff they already have, but I have a real issue with Zeta. At best, its history makes it look like it’s a financial and intellectual property fraud, and their business is poorly run.
Edited 2007-03-22 00:10
“A modified BeOS PE is a derived version and that makes it illegal to distribute but the burden is on the copyright holder to take action to prevent. In the case of mass distribution, it may be actioned by a state. However, a patch that modifies the original is legal. ”
Except most of the world doesn’t live in the USA. Including the creator of BeOS MAX, who lives in a sane country with sane laws it seems.
“A modified BeOS PE is a derived version and that makes it illegal to distribute but the burden is on the copyright holder to take action to prevent. In the case of mass distribution, it may be actioned by a state. However, a patch that modifies the original is legal. ”
Except most of the world doesn’t live in the USA. Including the creator of BeOS MAX, who lives in a sane country with sane laws it seems.
The Berne Convention covers this. As of 2006, 162 countries were signatories. As for what individual countries do within their borders or negotiate at treaty level, that’s a whole different ballgame.
And as a proud owner of a BeOS R5 CD and the BeOS Bible I take a very real offense to the shenanigans the people behind Zeta seem to be pulling. Zeta’s only purpose for being appears to be in scamming the ignorant out of monies which would be better off spent supporting Haiku.
The liquidation of the old company, transfer of intellectual property, and starting again as if nothing happened smacks of investor stupidity or outright scam. Zeta lost millions the first time around. This time looks like a repeat run. I’m sure that if a fraction of investor and customer money was invested in Haiku it would be better spent.
Edited 2007-03-22 02:18
The liquidation of the old company, transfer of intellectual property, and starting again as if nothing happened smacks of investor stupidity or outright scam.
Are you even sure there was a transfer of intellectual property? Everything I’ve read simply states that Magnussoft is DISTRIBUTING Zeta… it seems there’s some intentionally vague language there.
Yeah, now you mention it, who’s the guy that jumped companies? Apparently, he’s the one who “owns” the rights to the BeOS code. When the first company went down in flames the investors were left with nothing, he whistles off with the “rights” to the BeOS code, and repeats the trick. I guess, that’s where the “distributing” thing comes in. Looks like a scam company to me.
Have they code the entire source or is Zeta just some Frankenstein monster of dubious provenance? I don’t trust a single word they say, and nothing short of an independent audit that proves they’ve got the entire source and a piece of signed paper that gives them the rights to sell it will get me to change my mind. If Atari patched Blood and distributed it they’d get prosecuted. How is Zeta different?
Edited 2007-03-22 04:54
Exactly!
And as a proud owner of a BeOS R5 CD and the BeOS Bible I take a very real offense to the shenanigans the people behind Zeta seem to be pulling. Zeta’s only purpose for being appears to be in scamming the ignorant out of monies which would be better off spent supporting Haiku.
BeOS Max– not so much so, because like you said BeOS Max is more or less just to help people run what they already have. It makes running an up to date system easy for those like myself who don’t really feel up to the task of patching the System to run on their hardware.
[Sighs] I really wish Be had managed to somehow survive…
–bornagainpenguin
… I’d be really pissed about this, as it means that volunteers have done for free (put togtehr a collection patches and drivers on top of the BeOS 5 kernel to make it work on newer hardware), what yellowTab is charging half a C-note for…
does anyone have the complete torrent ? ?
it shows only %78 availability with lots of missing chunks….
“does anyone have the complete torrent ? ?
it shows only %78 availability with lots of missing chunks….”
I left axel running overnight to find out it had given up at 80%.
Started the torrent which “resumed” the unfinsished archive at 25% but is downloading at 180KBps.
I’ll “superseed” it for a few days at least once it’s complete but I only have 64KBps upload speed.
For the time, only I have it up. My upload is 16Kb/s so it will take some time until someone else has it whole. But it should be out there today.
Vasper. Thank you for keeping up your work on this.
Although I have long gotten rid of my original BeOS Bible to a fellow collector – I own a legitimate copy of BeOS Pro, Gobe and TuneTracker.
I never felt comfortable with Zeta for some reason.
It would be great if someone purchased the Be Inc name and brought the company back to life for the sole purpose BeOS.
Just make sure `Focus Shift` is not in its dialog.
It would be great if someone purchased the Be Inc name and brought the company back to life for the sole purpose BeOS.
Deader parrots have squawked. I would like to see that happen if the original vision was developed, and if Microsoft’s vendor lock-in could be neutered, it might make sense for Dell et all, to get behind supplying BeOS as an option on equal terms. And if Microsoft played nice, I don’t see why they couldn’t supply a port of their applications. The game is up for them in the long-term in any case. Less if, more when. Would be nice if everyone could get along.
At least six of us had our torrent download stop at 94.5% complete. Over the next few hours, we’ve managed to crawl up to 95.2% complete. This is over a sixteen hour period. (All peers, no seeds.)
“At least six of us had our torrent download stop at 94.5% complete. Over the next few hours, we’ve managed to crawl up to 95.2% complete. This is over a sixteen hour period. (All peers, no seeds.)”
I’m “Force Seeding” it right now with BitTyrant, finished downloading it a coupe of hours ago.
edit:
Only one person is getting it from me, and they are in China.
Edited 2007-03-22 14:41
Well, there are still six of us who are now @96.8% after almost 24 hours now. The download rate is currently 0K. The tracker URL is http://tracker.torrentbox.com:2710/announce.
It doesn’t look promising.
I’ve now gone back to http://www.beosmaxfiles.org/ to see that the torrent link has now changed from [TBox] BeOS5PEMaxEditionV31b1.zip.torrent to BeOS5PEMaxEditionV4b1.3644324.TPB.torrent.
That’s most likely the cause of the problem: changing the links in midstream.
EDIT: The newer link pointing to Pirate Bay doesn’t work. Bad encoded data.
Edited 2007-03-22 21:44
”
EDIT: The newer link pointing to Pirate Bay doesn’t work. Bad encoded data. ”
Worked fine for me.
Still doesn’t work. I tried BitTornado and BitTorrent under Linux. BitTorrent gives error “BeOS5PEMaxEditionV4b1.3644324.TPB.torrent” is not a valid torrent file (not a valid bencoded string)”.
Now what?
Did you try renaming the torrent file to something simpler after download? perhaps it is a problem with the name. I have used 4 different torrent programs to test it, in Windows, Linux and BeOS and I didn’t have this problem.
“Did you try renaming the torrent file to something simpler after download? perhaps it is a problem with the name. I have used 4 different torrent programs to test it, in Windows, Linux and BeOS and I didn’t have this problem.”
vasper,
I’ve downloaded the torrent from Pirate Bay 3 times now, using FF, Opera, and Konqueror. None would start. Each errored immediately.
I tried renaming the torrent to something simpler, but that didn’t work. In the meantime, torrentbox.com shows 1 seed and 7 peers, but I’m now only seeing 2 peers and no seeds. Seems the other 4 peers have given up (to try again later, maybe). But we’re all still stuck at 96.8% completion.
EDIT: I’ve since downloaded a 3.1 GB iso using BitTornado. Total elapsed time was about 2 hours 10 minutes.
Edited 2007-03-23 04:46
vasper,
After installing ktorrent, I finally got the torrent download started. For whatever reason, neither BitTornado nor BitTorrent will open the torrent file.
I know. There have been problems reported with those two programs. μTorrent seems to work fine and every torrent client I have tried on OSes other than Windows work. Unfortunately I don’t have Windows (except on a corrupted vmware image), so I couldn’t test it there…
Edited 2007-03-24 22:45
i own a dedicated server and would like to mirror this release. vespers, is this ok for you?
sure alexorizor. Send me the links so I can place them on BeOSMaxFiles.org too…
The torrent is a standard created with KTorrent 2
Vasper
I need help, please.
I have a Pentium D 950 CPU (64bit capable)
There are four cues available, 2 for AMD and 2 for Intel.
Which one I am supposed to use?
Sorry, I have been looking everywhere for further info.
Also I tried to register at the forum, but it gives me an error (user name already taken, before I even enter one)
Thanks
Got it %100, thanks all who seed!
I guess any Intel cue would be fine. The one with 1024 in its name is for computers with more than 1GB of ram. However I don’t have access to a 64bit Intel, so i have no idea if it will work at all. Please tell me what happened.
Thanks for the report about the forum registration. Will check.
Thanks. I’ll try now and I’ll let you know.
Try this, it works ofr me on Kubuntu 7.04.
http://bittyrant.cs.washington.edu/#downloads
Or just install normal Azureus using your package manager.
OK, reporting.
So I burnt both 1024 images.
The AMD one booted for a second but then kept rebooting. I suppose it was to be expected, but I wanted to try because in Linux they often call AMD64 isos for all 64 bit processors.
The Intel one booted, but then stopped after a short while and was stuck. Clearly some of my hardware is not supported.
Then I tried the latter in VMware as a LiveCD, simulating 2 processors.
Everything fine, except that I haven’t succeeded in having network connection so far.
I want to thank you for working again at this project.
When you announced that you were going to stop I was sorry to hear that.
Hi Vasper, nice distro!
I have a Core2 Duo machine with 2GB of RAM, tried booting with the 1024 Intel cue burnt but to no avail. The system stops booting after about 5 seconds.
On VirtualPC it runs fine, even with Paravirtualization enabled (Vista 64 bit). The only issue I’ve had running with a VM is that Deskbar crashes when I want to shutdown or reboot. Not a big issue obviously, it only happened once at a random time (ie not when I was shutting down the system).
If you have somewhere I can send any bug reports I get, I would be more than happy to help out.
Thanks for your work, BeOS Max v4 looks like it’s gonna shape up to be a great OS.
There is no cooperation between Bernd Korz and Magnussoft Zeta anymore. This is also valid for all developers which have been paid by Magnussoft.
See here: http://www.berndsworld.com/
Nevertheless, Bernd and his team do not give up, they want to release the next update (on their own?).
So, Magnussoft Zeta seems to be dead. If this is the case for Zeta in general, well, we’ll see.
Thank God that vasper and his BeOS Max is still around. So BeOS will survive until Haiku will be released.
Anyone know of a free emulator for Linux that will actually install BeOS? I’ve tried both qemu and VirtualBox and neither seem to work.
It works with qemu, but only with the BeOS PE Edition:
http://www.apfelwiki.de/Main/QEMU
Although it is in German, it is understandable, I hope.
If you try to install Zeta or BeOS Pro in qemu via CD-ROM, it doesn’t work, because no access to the CD is possible.
VMWare Server is 100% free.
The Max forums seem to be broken I can’t register.
found the problem with the forums… will fix soon
Update: fixed
Edited 2007-03-24 07:59
Excellent news thanks.
I have downloaded it twice but the archive looks broken.
Anyone else ? I used direct download link.
Edited 2007-03-24 10:18
It is not broken. Try with a different unzip program, or check the md5 sum 7a1d6107643fc9d669c17ca04bb4610b
md5sum gives c2c5d334da01f956efea176314830d6a
So I’ve started downloading for the third time. Again direct download. But the speed is horrible. The torrent speed is way faster. Started KTorrent
Hope this time everything will be OK.
I have only run it as a LiveCD so far I need to free up a system to play with it but I like it so far.