Post your comments on the article entitled: "BeOS Impressions"

Article: http://www.systemlogic.net/articles/01/1/beos

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Very nice article, very well written. However, I have one addition. The hardware compatability list on Be's website isn't near complete and hasn't been updated to reflect the new driver support offered by the point upgrade v5.0.3. There is another hardware list at http://www.thebesite.com/3/hardware/ that isn't official, but it's based on users' rating how their own system hardware runs in BeOS. You'll find many more supported devices there.

Good article. I have a BP6 with Win98, Gentus Linux and BeOS Personal installed; I boot Linux and BeOS with boot floppies. However, I want to reinstall all three plus add Win2000, and want to install a boot manager. I've been considering this for sometime, and you probably understand the complexity involved.
Relevent parts of my system: BP6, one 466 MHz Celeron @ 525 MHz, one 20 gig Diamondmax Plus 40 (UDMA66), one 4.3 gig Western Digital (UDMA33), TNT2.
What strategy should I follow in installing the four OSes? I know how to install all four OSes on a drive or drives on the IDE33 controller without much difficulty. I want to utilize the ATA66 drive to the max. I have the latest BIOS and drivers for the ATA66 controller.
Any suggestions on (1) partitioning the respective drives; (2) installation sequencies (Win98, Win2K, Linux, BeOS); and (3) the most efficient SWAP partitions, boot partitions, OS partitions, and data partitions.
Rereading this post, I may be asking too much.

ok it's always hard when you're installing multiple OSes... god knows how many reinstalls I had to go through to get it right... I'll offer some advice here...

which operating system will you be using the most? Will you be sharing files between operating systems a lot? if sharing files between OSes is your thing then you probably want to make a large common fat32 partition. Win98, Win2k, and BeOS will be able to access it...

I'm thinking it's better to place the swap partitions on the 4.3 gb hard drive to increase performance through parallelism but I'm not sure if the speed of the 20 gig hard drive will make up for that...

The order in which you install the operating systems will pretty much determine your partitions... personally, I like to separate my operating system partition and my program files partition. This way if I need to reinstall the OS, I don't lose the data in my program files.

as for the order of installing... I'd try this order, linux, beos, win98 and win2k... make sure you with Linux that you install LILO at the beginning of the partition and not the MBR... win2k has a built in boot manager that should detect the other bootable partitions. Remember that bootable partitions need to reside at the beginning of the hard drive... I think with in the first 1024 cylinders...

so build small partitions for each operating system, have one or two large common data partitions, and swap partitions on the other hard drive. Also be careful when installing on the ATA66 controller of the BP6... some OSes might not recognize it... I often have to install on the regular ata33 connection...

If this is the first time you're doing something this massive, prepare to be there for awhile... if things don't go exactly as planned, then just try other things... have fun with it... and make sure you document your installation process when you get it right so you can do it again


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Hardware Editor - SystemLogic Network (www.systemlogic.net)

I discovered BeOS this past year and love it. So much so that I became a BeOS investor as well when it dropped around $1/share (as much because of their move into hand-held devices). I was primarily a Windows user frustrated trying to do much with various versions of Linux over the years without the time to make it my life. BeOS was easy to install configure, and I especially love that it does away with the long bootup/shut down time sillyness. Also bought Gobe Productive (Office Suite). I'm a corporate Systems Engineer and have been able to open and work with the most compex "Word" documents from work with Gobe Productive. Spreadsheet looks good too but I've had less call to use it. Planning to buy Opera as my browser though the included Net Positive has been fine for general surfing. I'm not a Mac fan, so that easter egg mentioned in the BeOS bible, to change the look & feel of the OS to look like other Operating Systems was very much appreciated. Would like to next see the necessary support for Quake III to come to BeOS, and a good Java VM.

Hi, just wanted to say that i liked the review. I've been using BeOS for almost a year now and i'm totally in love with it. I hardly boot into windows anymore, only to play some games. One item i do disagree with, or, i'm wondering why it was like it was. It's the performance rating you gave BeOS. I think 8.5 is not enough to show the true power of BeOS. It's faster than anything out there, like you said yourself, you can watch several movies w/out lag. Try that, and play some mp3s and play Quake 2 I have only a Celeron 400, don't think i have dual PIII's ) One other thing, yes it requires a bit of getting used to with minimizing the windows because it's different than Windows, but what i do is, each workspace for each thing. 1 for beshare (great app, u have to try it), 2 for jabber, 3 for Opera's windows, 4 IRC, etc etc. It really is a great way to work

Well, that was it, thanks and take care,
DaaT

I just wanted to correct a statement in the otherwise excellent review:
BeOS PE (Personal Edition) does indeed support multiple processors. You must, however, boot from a floppy instead of Windows to take advantage of them.

Also, BeOS (Pro only) runs on pre-G3 Macintoshes as well.