In the last few years, BeOS fans have witnessed the beginning of what some say is a renaissance for the beleaguered operating system. Haiku, an open source re-implementation of BeOS based on a kernel by a former BeOS developer, and Zeta, based on official Be source code taken over by German firm yellowTab, are the two projects on which many place their hopes for a BeOS revival.
And then there's the focus of today's interview with Sven Jörg — BNX, a mating of Haiku's open source BeOS servers with a specially-licensed, real-time kernel from QNX Software Systems. Jörg, lead developer of the project, talks with us today about his team's unique approach to their BeOS successor. I corresponded with Sven over the course of several weeks regarding what led the BNX team to their idea and how they will implement it in the near future.
1. Why the need for another BeOS? With Haiku and Zeta, haven't all the bases been covered?
Sven: Some might be happy to accept that. But those two other approaches have some serious drawbacks. Haiku is working on recreating an operating system that at this point over six years without an update. By the time they have something to fully replace BeOS 5, it'll be ten-year-old technology. When it's done, it'll be like 2000 all over again. In 2010. You might be able to use it to run old BeOS apps for nostalgia, but that's about it.
With Zeta, yellowTab are amending the BeOS API to make it more modern, but as hardware is changing so much so quickly today, they must devote a lot of resources to getting Zeta working with USB 2, FireWire, multiple cores, 64-bit, etc. Zeta takes the same small/efficient approach BeOS did, and it's farther ahead than Haiku is, but it still has the same basic problem: They are a long way from what we consider modern hardware and operating system concepts in 2006.
2. What is the ultimate goal of the BNX project?
Sven: Our goal, simply, is to create a bleeding-edge BeOS that can be used for high-end production. We want BNX to be a Media OS
today, like BeOS was in the late Nineties.
3. What has changed that you must address in BNX in order to be a modern Media OS?
Sven: Two things. What an OS is expected to do, and the hardware it is expected to support.
Six years ago MP3 was coming into its own. Video-on-demand was also in its infancy. Now we have ways to manage tens of thousands of MP3s with just a few clicks and we're right on the verge of video-on-demand being ubiquitous. There's simply no BeOS solution to do anything like that. The Web has become richer and more complex, and has crept into the rest of the OS. Graphics standards have shot ahead as well. Everything is richer and offers more functionality.
As far as hardware goes, What was yesterday's high-end server or graphics workstation is now on the desktop and today's high end workstation includes 64-bit, four or more gigs of memory, two or more cores, larger and faster cache memory, real-time video encoding, etc. And here we have BeOS still choking on half a gig of RAM. This is the first thing that needs addressed in order to truly bring BeOS ahead to current times — modern hardware support.
4. How do you intend to take care of the hardware support problem without being bogged down in it like you say the other two BeOS projects are?
Sven: We asked which part of the OS that had to be upgraded in order to take advantage of these things, and that was the kernel. From that realization, we agreed that recreating it would take too long, as with Haiku. Licensing the actual BeOS kernel wasn't an option but still would have left us with too much work to do. So we began shopping for kernels.
5. What different options did you look at?
We looked at Linux first, of course, because it's everywhere nowadays. And we we weren't satisfied with what we found. Linux takes a very sturdy, monolithic approach. It's so sturdy and monolithic, in fact, that it's just plain bloated.
6. What about the real-time extensions to the Linux kernel that have received so much attention in the last year or so? Did you look at those?
Sven: Real-time Linux extensions are basically hacks. You can't expect it to be as good a product built to be real-time. Go with something built from the ground up to perform a certain way rather than a poorly kludged mess. This was the route the BlueEyedOS project had taken years ago. And looking to that project today, it is a footnote. Linux sucks.
7. Were there any other options worth noting before you settled on QNX Neutrino?
Sven: We looked at almost every popular Open Source kernel as well as a few commercial ones. None of them made sense, either because of their capabilities and performance or their licensing programs and prices.
8. So what was it about QNX that seemed right?
Sven: Adolf, one of the other BNX developers, dual-booted QNX for several years and had a lot good to say about it. And from there it was pretty simple. They have a proven track record and they aggressively support the latest hardware. Since they have a microkernel, you can choose which parts of the OS to license and which to leave out. We could just take the kernel and let QNX take care of the hardware while we focused on moving the BeOS API ahead.
9. So what parts go where? Are you licensing the whole QNX shebang?
Sven: No. All we want from them is their kernel. We'll throw Haiku's servers on top of it. In this manner, we get the tight fast kernel that supports new hardware innovations and the free time to work on the API of the system. We're also looking at taking some parts from elsewhere, like the TCP/IP stack from FreeBSD and and the XFS file system from IRIX. We will take whatever will give the BeOS API the best advantage, even if it means going beyond BeOS itself.
10. Where is the project now? What are your near-term goals for BNX?
Sven: We are running QNX Momentics 6.3 SP2 as our development platform and, thanks to QNX's modular design, are getting different parts going. While we test parts for our OS, the whole QNX OS is already there working. So for instance we can just fire up the TCP/IP stack and test it. Moving to XFS is another goal, a bit trickier but so far it still seems feasible. Before we do anything else, we want filesystem and networking support on top of our kernel. From there we will get Haiku's BeOS servers running, and that will take some work. They have to be modified to work with Neutrino and our new file system and networking stack. After that, it's pretty much all in place.
11. To get it down to a number, when do you expect to be able to run BeOS apps?
Sven: Within a year from now.
12. A year? That's a fairly short amount of time compared to the other projects.
Sven: We'll spend a year getting things together and still end up just about where the others are in terms of functionality. That's thanks to using Haiku and Neutrino. We can focus on sewing it all together rather than recreating anything.
13. What were the licensing terms with QNX Software Systems?
Sven: We aren't allowed to comment on any of the figures or stipulations involved, but I can say that their contract with us was very generous. It went a long way to making our decision with QNX final. :)
14. Do you find it ironic that many saw BeOS and QNX as rivals at one point and now you're dependent on one to realize the other?
Sven: There aren't really any feelings involved except the desire for a working BeOS successor.
As for the rivalry, I think it was misplaced. BeOS was a Media OS, and QNX was an embedded OS. While there are many common things between the two, they were targeted at different places. QNX only ran on the desktop as a development environment for itself anyways. BeOS ran laps around that incarnation of it.
15. What kind of PC will I need to run BNX?
Sven: You can get by well with a 1 gig Pentium III and half a gig of RAM, though BNX will in theory run on anything the Intel QNX Momentics system would run on, from Pentiums on up. Adolf is on a 450 MHz Pentium II system with 512 MB RAM while I use a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 with a gig of RAM. It will depend on what you want out of the system, really, that will dictate hardware requirements. The newer the better though. We're about to get a Core Duo system to develop on.
16. And what's the current status of the BNX project page at SourceForge?
Sven: Another project had the BNX name already, but since it was inactive, we took it over. Unfortunately that process takes about two or three weeks to complete. So we have our page, we're just waiting for it to activate.
17. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Sven, and best of luck on the project.
Sven: Thank you, Grant.