Back in the 1980s, a certain Apple executive in charge of Macintosh development was forced out of Apple, then went and founded a new computer company. They made a very advanced OS and their own hardware, but stopped producing hardware soon after to focus on software. Their OS was considered by Apple to be used as the basis of Mac OS X.
- Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox 1
- Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox Update
- Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox Update
- Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox Edition
The final release of the BeOS. Installation instructions. The Professional edition is installed from CD like other operating systems, and includes extras the Personal Edition does not include. The Personal edition is installed into a 500 MB virtual hard drive on a Windows (provided it is FAT/FAT32, not NTFS) partition and can only dual boot. Jan 09, 2020 Adafruit has written a guide that walks you through setting up BeOS R5 using VirtualBox. Latest version being BeOS 5.0 Personal Edition. Be personal edition that came with a PC Plus. VirtualBox Guest Additions and VMware Tools must be installed on the guest OS to enable shared folders accordingly. VirtualBox Guest Additions vs VMware Tools. VirtualBox Guest Additions is a set of drivers and system applications for guest operating systems, which can be used to improve VM performance and usability. Guest Additions are. Jul 05, 2012 Re: Is there any way to install BeOS in VMware VirtualBox et Post by Kernel86 » Thu Jul 05, 2012 1:20 am BeOS R5 and R4.5 at least work fine in VMware Workstation vers 5-7.
No, it's not Steve Jobs and NeXT, it was Jean Louis Gassée and Be. Gassée took over as the head of Macintosh development after Jobs left and also developed the Newton MessagePad. He left Apple and founded Be Inc. intending to make a modern operating system and powerful custom hardware to run it. Those became BeOS and the BeBox.
The BeBox aimed to be the ultimate multimedia workstation. It had dual PowerPC CPUs and tons of I/O options including four MIDI ports, multiple sound ports, and the 'GeekPort', a 37-pin connector that had power plus digital and analog I/O with a built-in ADC and DAC. Less than 2000 BeBoxes were sold so it's very rare to see one today.
The operating system, BeOS, was developed completely from scratch and had many advanced features for the time. Like NeXTSTEP it was object-oriented, but using C++ rather than NeXT's Objective-C. It had multithreading and supported multiple CPUs at a time when both were uncommon. The filesystem is 64-bit, journaling, and supports indexed metadata, features that wouldn't make their way into mainstream operating systems for years. It is POSIX-compliant so it's easy to port Unix programs to BeOS and it also has a Bash shell, even though it is not based on Unix.
Apple considered purchasing Be Inc. and using BeOS as the basis for OS X but didn't want to pay the price that Gassée was asking. Instead they went with NeXT (paying a lot more), Steve Jobs returned, and the rest is history.
Unfortunately BeOS never really caught on and Be ended up being sold to Palm in 2001.
Let's set up VirtualBox to install BeOS and see what it was like to use!
Before we get started we'll need a few things:
That's enough to get running, if you want to improve it and use networking you can get these:
Install Virtualbox, then start it up and create a new VM.
- Call it BeOS and select Type: Other, Version: Other/Unknown.
- RAM: 512MB
- Create a virtual hard disk now, VDI, Dynamically allocated, 8GB.
Now we have a VM but we need to do a lot more, BeOS gets very cranky if the settings aren't just right and will crash/kernel panic/etc. Click on Settings.
- System: Boot Order: Uncheck Floppy
- System: Acceleration: Uncheck 'Enable Nested Paging' and uncheck 'Enable VT-x/AMD-V'. See below if it's not there.
- Display: 32MB video memory, VBoxSVGA controller
- Storage: Controller: Change type to PIIX3
- Audio: Audio Controller: SoundBlaster 16
- Network: Advanced: Adapter Type: Intel PRO/1000 T Server (82543GC)
- Ports: USB: Disable USB.
- OK!
In Windows the VT-x/AMD-V options show up under System - Acceleration. Just uncheck Enable Nested Paging and uncheck Enable VT-x/AMD-V.
On macOS the VT-x option didn't show up for me but it's still there, we can get to it through a terminal. The vboxmanage utility should be in your path (/usr/local/bin).
vboxmanage modifyvm BeOS --hwvirtex offvboxmanage modifyvm BeOS --vtxvpid off
If you called your VM something other than BeOS just substitute that name above. These two commands will turn off the virtualization extensions that BeOS doesn't like. You can see it in the main VirtualBox window under System:
We're almost there but we need to make some changes to the CD image a bit before starting.
The BeOS install CD is not a standard ISO, it has several tracks using different filesystems and needs a little adjustment to make VirtualBox happy.
After extracting the BeOS 5.0 Professional.7z file you should have three files:
- BeOS_5.0_Professional.ccd
- BeOS_5.0_Professional.img
- BeOS_5.0_Professional.sub
These are from a program called CloneCD which reads the raw CD data and then saves it in its own CCD image format. The img file is the raw data and the ccd file contains information about where the various tracks are (we don't need the sub file for what we're doing). We need to convert this to a format that VirtualBox understands: cue/bin.
Luckily there's an open-source utility from GNU that can help us with that: ccd2cue. This will convert the ccd file into a cue file. If you'd like to compile it yourself and run it you're welcome to do that, but the file it generates is small enough to copy and paste:
Save that as BeOS_5.0_Professional.cue.
Now you can go back to the VM settings, Storage, click the CD drive, click the little CD icon next to IDE Secondary Master, Choose Virtual Optical Disk File, and find your new cue file.
If everything went well, it should look like this:
Click OK and let's install!
We're going to start up the VM but get ready to press space when you see the awesome purple boot screen.
Press space once you see that screen and you'll be able to change a few options. We want to select a fail-safe video mode. Navigate there with the arrow keys and press enter, then choose a resolution. A safe bet is 1024x768x16.
If you missed the menu don't worry, you can still install it just fine but your mouse won't feel as nice and it won't be in color. You can also reset the VM and try again.
Now select Continue Booting to get to the installer.
Time to install! First click Agree for the license agreement and then you'll arrive at the installer.
It doesn't see any BeOS volumes on our hard drive yet so we need to create one. Click to expand More Options and then click Setup partitions.
Select the first disk (with the hard drive icon), then go to the Setup menu, Partition, intel. Click the layout button about halfway down the page and select 1 100% Partition.
Select BeOS from the menu in Partition 1 (it says Empty right now) and check Active. Now click OK and click Proceed.
Now select the disk and go to Setup, Initialize, BeOS, Be File System. Make sure to choose 2048 for the block size, different block sizes can cause problems later. Pick a name, I called mine BeHD.
Click Initialize, then Initialize again, then click Mount when prompted to mount the partition. Now in the Mounted At column you should see a path for your drive.
Click the close button (the square at the top left) to close Drive Setup. The installer should notice the new partition and select it for you.
Select any additional options you'd like and click Begin to install BeOS!
Once it finishes you'll be prompted to install the Be Boot Manager. Click Install, then leave Install Boot Menu checked and click Next. Use the default MBR path on the next page and click Next. Click No when prompted to create a rescue disk. Leave BeHD checked, then click Next. Leave it as the default partition and select your preference for how long it should wait. Click Next, then Next again, then Yes to confirm installing the Boot Manager. Finally click Done.
Now we're back at the installer. Click Quit to reboot and get ready to press space when you see the boot screen after the boot manager.
When booting you'll first see the BeOS Partition Manager. Press enter to start booting from your new partition.
Press space at the boot screen again and select your fail-safe video mode. BeOS doesn't recognize the video card that VirtualBox provides so we have to specify a VESA resolution this way. In a bit we'll make it permanent.
If you select Continue Booting and then get a kernel panic, try going back to the VM settings and completely disabling USB and/or audio. Lightpaper for mac. That seemed to do the trick for me but the panic wasn't consistent and sometimes things would work fine with those enabled.
There are a few things we can do to make life easier, first let's set a default video mode so we don't have to select one every time we boot.
Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox 1
Let's try out some features of BeOS. Close the Read Me First window and then on the desktop press Alt+F to bring up Find. Remember earlier when we said Be's filesystem was really advanced? Type 'vesa' and press Search.
Wow, that was fast! That sort of search speed seems like a normal thing today, but remember that this was in the mid-90s. Searching on any other operating system was a very slow task and Be's filesystem was years ahead of its time.
Double click the path for the second entry, /boot/home/config/./drivers/sample/. That'll open the folder rather than opening the vesa file.
Now push Alt+F again and search for 'drivers'. We want the one in /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/. This time double-click the folder on the left side to open the drivers folder.
The goal is to have these two folders open:
Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox Update
Click and drag to select kernel and vesa, then right-click and drag them into the drivers folder and select Copy Here.
Now close the sample folder. We need to edit both of the new files, so double-click on vesa first and we'll set up our default video mode.
Any of the modes from the boot menu will work, for this I was using 1024 768 16. Add a new line in the same format shown in the comment:
Go to File, Save, and then close this window. Now double-click on kernel and we'll fix a cache bug.
Under the commented line that has disk_cache_size 2048, add a new line: disk_cache_size 16384
Save that file, close it, then go to the BeOS menu in the top right corner and click Restart. This time just let the system boot on its own and it should be in the video mode you entered.
Now you can explore! Check out the demos and applications and take a look at the resource page for some links to tons of BeOS software.
If you're using VirtualBox in macOS be careful of apps that use a lot of resources, like the GLTeapot demo. On my system they seem to take over all of the VM resources and make it unusable, I had to force-quit the VM. On Windows everything seems to work fine.
If you don't want networking you can skip this section.
Those extra files we got at the start have a network driver and some updates, but we need some way to get them onto the BeOS VM. It doesn't support VirtualBox's shared folders and we don't have networking, but we can mount a floppy image. If you like a challenge you can build your own image, or you can use the one I built:
Shut your VM down, then go to the settings and add a floppy controller. Choose the image as the floppy disk.
Boot into BeOS. Right-click on the desktop and go to Mount, then click floppy. Your new disk should show up on the desktop. Open it and copy the ipro1000_0.4.zip file to your home folder. The best of rhymester zip. Now you can right-click the floppy and unmount it.
Go to your home folder and double-click the new zip file. BeOS came with an unzip utility out of the box, of course. In the Expand-O-Matic window click Expand.
Close Expand-O-Matic and open the ipro1000 folder. Double-click install.sh (yep, it has shell scripts!) to install the network driver.
Open the BeOS menu and go to Preferences, Network. Under Network Interfaces you should now see the Intel PRO/1000 network card that VirtualBox is providing. Click settings, choose Specify settings, and give it the following:
- IP address: 10.0.2.15
- Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
- Gateway: 10.0.2.2
Click Done and then set a host name and DNS servers (you only need one, Google's 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 will work).
Click Save and restart networking when it asks.
Open the NetPositive browser in Applications and try navigating somewhere. HTTPS won't work so you'll need a plain old HTTP site, try www.google.com. Figrcollage 2 5 17 – photo collage maker. It's not pretty but it works! There are better browsers available to install if you'd like.
Now that we're on the network, let's get some more files and install updates.
Download these two files in NetPositive:
The files will open once they finish downloading, so expand them both in Expand-O-Matic, close everything and go to your Home/Downloads folder.
Both of the blue pkg files were corrupt when I tried to open them, so double-click each zip and expand it again to fix the problem. Then open the BeOS5-Update3-Pro file. Click Begin, then Continue to install the update. Restart, then do the same with the cpu_fix package.
Click 'Yes, I do have timing issues', then 'Yes, please enable the patch'.
Restart again and enjoy!
In the modern IT environment, desktop virtualization can be extremely useful. The ability to run multiple, simultaneous operating systems as VMs from a single device means you can:
Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox Update
- Evaluate new apps and systems in a safe, partitioned environment
- Deploy and test your own software on multiple operating systems without needing multiple devices
- Set up and regulate encrypted corporate desktops for remote employees or employees using their own devices
- Run legacy programs that require an older OS on a machine with a newer OS
- Transfer virtual machines between devices and servers
It's not surprising that roughly 80 percent of x86 server workloads are now virtualized, and the average server runs 16 simultaneous VMs.
ALSO READ: Top Five Security-as-a-Service Providers
If you're comparing VMware vs. VirtualBox, you're looking for a tool that will help you create and provision virtual machines (VMs) on desktop devices running an x86-based platform.
Pretty straightforward, except it's not. These two solutions, although both reliable, bear some distinct differences that make a lateral comparison complicated. It's not quite an apples-to-oranges scenario, but it is like comparing apples from two different orchards.
Overview
VMware isn't a single product as much an ecosystem of connected tools and applications. You can use VMware to set up a private cloud, to manage mobile devices in your corporate network, to protect endpoints, and of course, to virtualize stuff.
For the purpose of this comparison, we'll mostly be looking at VMware Workstation — their desktop virtualization tool for Windows and Linux — and VMware Fusion — their desktop virtualization tool for Mac. The latest release, VMware Workstation 12, came out in September of this year.
It would be an understatement to call VMware the market leader. In fact, they were the first to virtualize the x86 architecture and make the technology available as a commercial product. And Gartner's 2016 Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization listed VMware as the undisputed 'leader.' Of course, there's a difference between server and desktop virtualization, but it's not a bad accolade to have.
VirtualBox is Oracle's answer to host-based virtualization — a purchase they made from Sun Systems in 2010 to (hopefully) compete in the same market with VMware's Workstation. VirtualBox is a free and open-source solution that works with all x86 platforms including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris. The latest version (5.1.6) was released September 12, 2016.
It's important to note that not all manifestations of VirtualBox are free — only the core product. The extension pack that adds USB functionality, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), and Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) is available under a proprietary license, free for personal or educational use. If you plan to deploy for commercial use on more than one device, you'll need to buy a license from Oracle.
VMware vs. VirtualBox Comparison
VMware's Workstation offers a wide array of features for desktop virtualization, with slight variations between the 'Player' and 'Pro' editions — namely, that you can't run multiple VMs at the same time, create encrypted VMs, or share VMs as servers.
Workstation Pro is free during the trial evaluation period. After that, you'll need to buy a license and enter the product key. Workstation Player (the basic edition) is permanently free for non-commercial use, although paid licensing and support are available.
Here's a summary of some of Workstation's most beloved features:
- Mass deployment
- Host/guest file sharing
- USB smart card reader support
- USB 3.0 support
- Snapshots
- VM sharing
- Integration w/ vSphere/ESXi server
- Integration w/ vCloud Air
- 3D graphics with DX10 and OpenGL 3.3 support
VMware Workstation running Mac OS X on a Windows 10 computer.
In addition to the basic feature set, Workstation has a few of interesting capabilities that you might not find mission-critical, but are nonetheless convenient. Networking and printing, for example, require no additional setup. You can connect to the same devices and servers in your network from either the host machine or the VMs running on top of it. Another example is Workstations ability to create 'linked clones' that let you create the same VM over and over again without exhausting disk space.
Speaking of space and power, Workstation can support up to 16 vCPUs, 8TB virtual disks, and 64GB of memory in a single, virtual environment.
As previously mentioned, the core, open-source VirtualBox package is free under general public use (GPU) license, and its proprietary extension package is free indefinitely under a personal use and evaluation license (PUEL).
Despite hitting the market much later than Workstation, VirtualBox offers many of the same features, and couple of unique ones:
- Cross-platform compatibility (installs on Mac, Linux, Windows, Solaris computers)
- Command line interaction
- Shared folders and clipboard
- Special drivers and utilities to facilitate switching between systems
- Snapshots
- Seamless mode (lets you run virtual applications next to normal ones)
- Limited support for 3D graphics (up to OpenGL 3.0)
- Can exchange disk images with VMware
- VM video capture
- VM disk image encryption (with extension pack)
- Virtual USB 2.0/3.0 support (with extension pack)
You may notice a couple of drawbacks here, compared with VMware's feature set. For one thing, VirtualBox doesn't offer the same level of support for 3D graphics, which could be an issue if you plan to be a heavy user (i.e. have more than one or two VMs running at the same time). Furthermore, while VirtualBox can exchange disk images with VMware, it doesn't integrate with vSphere, ESXi, or vCloud Air, which may prevent you from enjoying a truly seamless hypervisor experience.
VirtualBox running Windows 7 on a Mac OS X computer.
That said, VirtualBox's cross-platform capabilities tip the scales back in its favor. Unlike VMware, which offers separate editions specific to one OS, the core version of VirtualBox can install and function on any x86 computer.
Snapshots
Both solutions offer a 'snapshot' feature that has proven highly popular as a response to one of the inherent challenges of virtualization: mistakes. Let's say you're using a VM as a test environment for an unknown piece of software, and something goes horribly wrong, and you can't seem to get the OS back to its correct configuration. Instead of installing a brand new VM and starting over, you can revert back to a previous image of the OS, or — as VMware calls it — a 'rollback point.'
If you decide to compare other virtualization tools, this feature should probably be one of your top criteria. Having the ability to start over without starting completely over will save any IT professional a lot of time and effort.
Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox Edition
Final Considerations
Choosing the right solution for your needs, in this case, is highly subjective. A lot will depend on your preference — for the security and assurance of proprietary tools, or the flexibility and customization of open-source. If you prefer one over the other, you may already have your answer.
If not, here are a few final considerations:
- Workstation/Fusion is obviously the better choice is you already work in a VMware environment, as it will provide better compatibility with VMware servers and data management tools. Overall, probably a better choice for enterprise use.
- VirtualBox is excellent if you only need to run VMs on a few machines and want access to a command line interface in addition to the GUI.
- The both start with the letter V, so if you're an alphabet person, that's something to consider.
Still can't decide between VMware vs. VirtualBox? Give us a call, or use our Product Selection Tool to compare other business solutions and get a custom recommendation based on your needs for free.
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