{"slug": "beos", "name": "BeOS", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 11, "commenters": 22, "warners": 1, "score": 11.546, "rising": 0.38, "first": "2025-11-29", "latest": "2026-10-31", "why": "To me BeOS was and is still the best looking desktop OS ever", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 12, "neutral": 8, "compare": 2, "warn": 1}, "spark": [1, 1, 0, 0, 3, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "To me BeOS was and is still the best looking desktop OS ever", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "nobius.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["BeOS"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 805031248, "item_id": 50314453, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50314453", "by": "hobo123", "date": "2026-10-31", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "To me BeOS was and is still the best looking desktop OS ever", "excerpt": "To me BeOS was and is still the best looking desktop OS ever, and it was so fast, it felt so good. I think in 2000ish (when it was released freely) I used it on my PC pretty much exclusively for a few months.", "context": "used it exclusively for a few months around 2000", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Infinite Mac: BeOS"}, {"id": 797356832, "item_id": 49834802, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49834802", "by": "Mister_Snuggles", "date": "2026-09-24", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "BeOS did the whole \"filesystem is a database\" thing that was pretty cool", "excerpt": "BeOS did the whole \"filesystem is a database\" thing that was pretty cool[0]. I think AS/400 does a similar thing, but I don't know a lot about it. PICK OS was also similar. [0] https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/24-scripting_the_bfs/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 794222272, "item_id": 49638892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49638892", "by": "hobo123", "date": "2026-09-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "check out BeOS in 1995 for comparison", "excerpt": "Indeed, on modern laptops and phones every UI interaction should be instant (check out BeOS in 1995 for comparison). For background stuff, add some progress indicator. Can't believe the crap OSes and frameworks add these days in terms of performance cost (and sadly, Apple doesn't exactly shine in that regard)", "context": "", "use_case": "example of responsive UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max"}, {"id": 792429712, "item_id": 49526857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526857", "by": "kemps4", "date": "2026-09-01", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It was a lot of fun while it lasted.", "excerpt": "I used BeOS around 1999/2000 or so. I remember using R5.03, then Phosphorus and Dano. I remember tripping up with the USB stack patch. Also used Max edition and eventually Zeta. It was a lot of fun while it lasted. But I don't think I have the desire to step into the Haiku realm. Too much time has passed.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Haiku R1/beta6 has been released"}, {"id": 770006160, "item_id": 48125385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125385", "by": "dleslie", "date": "2026-05-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Be made inroads in radio and sound production", "excerpt": "Be made inroads in radio and sound production; though I don't think they knew it.[0] There was a market starved for a stable, high quality and responsive operating system that would run on the x86 hardware that was abundant everywhere. Windows wasn't it, yet; recall this is years before XP, and Windows 98 was an unstable mess while NT was slow. 0: https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/27-tune_tracker/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Haiku"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 756162274, "item_id": 47260142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47260142", "by": "LargoLasskhyfv", "date": "2026-03-05", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "more or less useless, depending on your needs", "excerpt": "Apart from your repeated rants about the trauma you have suffered from early BTRFS, which goes against my (later) experience with it, and therfore against my grain, your comparison of the speeds of various distros triggered me the same way. > If you'd tried BeOS on x86 and you actually remembered,... I did, and I do remember. It was exceptional at its time, but more or less useless, depending on your needs, and avail", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bootc and OSTree: Modernizing Linux System Deployment"}]}], "who": [{"by": "hobo123", "context": "used it exclusively for a few months around 2000", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50314453", "date": "2026-10-31"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["desktop os", "retro os interest", "example of responsive ui", "driver development target", "desktop operating system"], "compared": [{"slug": "haiku", "name": "Haiku", "co": 10, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "debian", "name": "Debian", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "genode", "name": "Genode", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512816", "title": "VitruvianOS \u2013 Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46433035", "title": "Win32 is the stable Linux ABI", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50309029", "title": "Infinite Mac: BeOS", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50143536", "title": "PalmOS Lemmings", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49933869", "title": "The Forgetful CPU (Linux on M4)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49825642", "title": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"warn": 1, "compare": 1, "recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 805031248, "item_id": 50314453, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50314453", "by": "hobo123", "date": "2026-10-31", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "To me BeOS was and is still the best looking desktop OS ever", "excerpt": "To me BeOS was and is still the best looking desktop OS ever, and it was so fast, it felt so good. I think in 2000ish (when it was released freely) I used it on my PC pretty much exclusively for a few months.", "context": "used it exclusively for a few months around 2000", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Infinite Mac: BeOS"}, {"id": 802323761, "item_id": 50145235, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50145235", "by": "ktallett", "date": "2026-10-18", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My niche is more Mac Os System 7 -OS 9 and Be OS", "excerpt": "He sounds great! I love these characters that you find in programming. My niche is more Mac Os System 7 -OS 9 and Be OS but the same sort of people exist in those realms too.", "context": "", "use_case": "retro OS interest", "switched_from": "", "story": "PalmOS Lemmings"}, {"id": 799130849, "item_id": 49945678, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49945678", "by": "pjmlp", "date": "2026-10-03", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Note that BeOS wasn't POSIX compatible, that came with Haiku rewrite.", "excerpt": "You would have had a C++ userspace, and POSIX would likely not be as relevant as it is today. Note that BeOS wasn't POSIX compatible, that came with Haiku rewrite. However without UNIX/POSIX to sell Apple to those frustrated Linux users looking for shinny UNIX laptops, and the management skills from Steve Jobs (vs Gass\u00e9), probably Apple would be no more instead. Haiku has archived what BeOS programming looked like, h", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Forgetful CPU (Linux on M4)"}, {"id": 797356832, "item_id": 49834802, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49834802", "by": "Mister_Snuggles", "date": "2026-09-24", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "BeOS did the whole \"filesystem is a database\" thing that was pretty cool", "excerpt": "BeOS did the whole \"filesystem is a database\" thing that was pretty cool[0]. I think AS/400 does a similar thing, but I don't know a lot about it. PICK OS was also similar. [0] https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/24-scripting_the_bfs/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 794222272, "item_id": 49638892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49638892", "by": "hobo123", "date": "2026-09-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "check out BeOS in 1995 for comparison", "excerpt": "Indeed, on modern laptops and phones every UI interaction should be instant (check out BeOS in 1995 for comparison). For background stuff, add some progress indicator. Can't believe the crap OSes and frameworks add these days in terms of performance cost (and sadly, Apple doesn't exactly shine in that regard)", "context": "", "use_case": "example of responsive UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max"}, {"id": 792429712, "item_id": 49526857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526857", "by": "kemps4", "date": "2026-09-01", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It was a lot of fun while it lasted.", "excerpt": "I used BeOS around 1999/2000 or so. I remember using R5.03, then Phosphorus and Dano. I remember tripping up with the USB stack patch. Also used Max edition and eventually Zeta. It was a lot of fun while it lasted. But I don't think I have the desire to step into the Haiku realm. Too much time has passed.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Haiku R1/beta6 has been released"}, {"id": 792108512, "item_id": 49506782, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49506782", "by": "foft", "date": "2026-08-31", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "was able to make a driver for BeOS. It worked", "excerpt": "Memories! Back at university I got a G400 and, with the open documentation they released, was able to make a driver for BeOS. It worked but looking back it\u2019s stark how much I have learned since then. One feature I particularly love is a dual head setup app using combo boxes instead of menus! Th code is still online, in full early 2000s web styling. https://64kib.com/old_foft_site/", "context": "", "use_case": "Driver development target", "switched_from": "", "story": "Matrox: Graphics for Professionals"}, {"id": 784642881, "item_id": 49040180, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49040180", "by": "m0do1", "date": "2026-07-24", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "As a long time BeOS fan (and user back in the day)", "excerpt": "As a long time BeOS fan (and user back in the day) I really enjoy reading about progress on Haiku. Similarly cool as the Half-Life 2 port is the work on the ARM platform. With early support for M1 Macs (https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-haiku-arm64-progress/19044/30) and Raspberry Pi 500+ (https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-haiku-arm64-progress/19044/83).", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Half-Life 2 running natively on HaikuOS"}, {"id": 773340592, "item_id": 48333787, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48333787", "by": "Gud", "date": "2026-05-30", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used BeOS then Debian then FreeBSD", "excerpt": "It was not really \u201cdeployed\u201d by a lot of people in the same sense. It was forced upon most of us(not me, I used BeOS then Debian then FreeBSD). I deployed phoenix.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SQLite is all you need for durable workflows"}, {"id": 771056352, "item_id": 48191022, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48191022", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-05-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "> Windows 11's UI seems easier on the eyes than Haiku now. I feel the exact reverse. I find modern flat UIs ugly and hard to operate, which makes them more tiring. It is not just me: https://grumpy.website/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Haiku OS runs on M1 Macs now"}, {"id": 770006160, "item_id": 48125385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125385", "by": "dleslie", "date": "2026-05-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Be made inroads in radio and sound production", "excerpt": "Be made inroads in radio and sound production; though I don't think they knew it.[0] There was a market starved for a stable, high quality and responsive operating system that would run on the x86 hardware that was abundant everywhere. Windows wasn't it, yet; recall this is years before XP, and Windows 98 was an unstable mess while NT was slow. 0: https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/27-tune_tracker/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Haiku"}, {"id": 769733904, "item_id": 48108369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48108369", "by": "renox", "date": "2026-05-12", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Tabs aren't really new: look at BeOS which could \"tab\" windows..", "excerpt": "> - Tabs. Tabs aren't really new: look at BeOS which could \"tab\" windows.. That said I agree with you that tab are really nice, especially the way VSCode manage them with the vertical list of opened files (I switched from vim to VSCode due to this feature).", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes"}, {"id": 761773632, "item_id": 47610852, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47610852", "by": "rbanffy", "date": "2026-04-01", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "apart from that it was a nice OS and incredibly responsive.", "excerpt": "I hated the small title tabs for dragging windows but apart from that it was a nice OS and incredibly responsive. On Gnome I use the multiple workspaces extensively. When on my desk, I use an Apple trackpad for the gestures and it works perfectly.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Look at Some Retro Desktop Graphical User Interfaces"}, {"id": 760416720, "item_id": 47526045, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47526045", "by": "ginkgotree", "date": "2026-03-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I installed BeOS in the 90s as a kid. It was awesome", "excerpt": "I installed BeOS in the 90s as a kid. It was awesome, and I love seeing this.", "context": "", "use_case": "Desktop operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "VitruvianOS \u2013 Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"}, {"id": 760327136, "item_id": 47520446, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520446", "by": "chem83", "date": "2026-03-25", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It wasn't that hard to boot into Be", "excerpt": "I learned recently that Hitachi actually shipped computers that would dual-boot into Windows 98 and BeOS R4, except that Microsoft's license didn't allow for dual-boot, so the option was removed from the bootloader (or, rather, the Microsoft bootloader was defaulted to, instead of the Be bootloader). It wasn't that hard to boot into Be, but I suppose most users wouldn't bother because all games and applications were ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "VitruvianOS \u2013 Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"}, {"id": 760281952, "item_id": 47517622, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517622", "by": "kriro", "date": "2026-03-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My favorite part of BeOS is the file system.", "excerpt": "My favorite part of BeOS is the file system. The book can be found freely here: https://www.nobius.org/dbg/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "VitruvianOS \u2013 Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"}, {"id": 760247680, "item_id": 47515480, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515480", "by": "peterashford", "date": "2026-03-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "was about to jump on board BeOS when it went under", "excerpt": "I think we were on the same track. I absolutely loved the Amiga and was about to jump on board BeOS when it went under. I never got to use BeOS as a daily driver (just ran their demo disk). How did you find it?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "VitruvianOS \u2013 Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"}, {"id": 760220736, "item_id": 47513796, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47513796", "by": "donatj", "date": "2026-03-24", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "like in BeOS?", "excerpt": "The important question becomes can you stack the window decoration \"tabs\" of different apps into a single stack of tabs like in BeOS? Demonstrated here (animated): https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/images/gui-images/gui-s+t.gif", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "VitruvianOS \u2013 Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"}, {"id": 756162274, "item_id": 47260142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47260142", "by": "LargoLasskhyfv", "date": "2026-03-05", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "more or less useless, depending on your needs", "excerpt": "Apart from your repeated rants about the trauma you have suffered from early BTRFS, which goes against my (later) experience with it, and therfore against my grain, your comparison of the speeds of various distros triggered me the same way. > If you'd tried BeOS on x86 and you actually remembered,... I did, and I do remember. It was exceptional at its time, but more or less useless, depending on your needs, and avail", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bootc and OSTree: Modernizing Linux System Deployment"}, {"id": 743122640, "item_id": 46445165, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445165", "by": "draven", "date": "2025-12-31", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "a fun, snappy, single-user OS", "excerpt": "It was more about everything since the Amiga being a regression. BeOS was sometimes called a successor (in spirit) to the Amiga : a fun, snappy, single-user OS. I regularly install HaikuOS in a VM to test it and I think I could probably use it as a daily driver, but ported software often does not feel completely right.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Win32 is the stable Linux ABI"}, {"id": 743093152, "item_id": 46443322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46443322", "by": "dmacvicar", "date": "2025-12-31", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Not very likely, what if the BeOS API emerged as \"the standard\" on Linux? https://cosmoe.org/ It would not solve the ABI problem, but it would give at least an opinionated end to end API that was at some point the official API of an OS. It has some praise on its design too.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Win32 is the stable Linux ABI"}, {"id": 740520113, "item_id": 46282507, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46282507", "by": "coolcoder613", "date": "2025-12-15", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "normally, I run BeOS on that machine", "excerpt": "Indeed. The influences are prominent, but it is BeOS modernised, not BeOS reimplemented. It's hardware requirements are little, even overlapping with BeOS on the low end. I have personally run Haiku beta5 on a 666Mhz Pentium 3 with 256MB of RAM (normally, I run BeOS on that machine, with 512MB of RAM). I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here, besides a general call to give Haiku a try on that old thinkpad, in a VM[0", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999)"}, {"id": 737407136, "item_id": 46087946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46087946", "by": "fredoralive", "date": "2025-11-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "AFAIK most StarMax systems that were released (a prototype exists of a CHRP StarMax model) are based on the Tanzania / LPX-40 design, which is mostly a traditional PCI PowerMac[1], albeit with oddities like support for PC style floppy drives. PS/2 is handled by the CudaLite microcontroller which presents it to the OS as ADB devices for example. I've not heard of a version with ISA slots, although I assume you could j", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4"}]}