I bought BeOS in the late 90's and enjoyed it immensely like a breath of fresh air in a sewage pipe. BeOS died.
With my track record I really, really should've bought Windows. Twice, to make sure.
Still have it, last time I checked it worked well.
Of course, at that time, it was impossible to know which OS would win the wars, so BeOS became my favorite. However, Linux developed very quickly during those years, I got into college and started using UNIX there, winmodem drivers appeared, and that's what I ended up using.
But BeOS still holds a very dear place in my heart. It really was superior to anything else during that era.
But that's not what this is. Or not only:
Nexus Kernel Bridge
Nexus is Vitruvian's custom Linux kernel subsystem that brings BeOS-style node monitoring, device tracking, and messaging to Linux — making it possible to run Haiku applications on a standard Linux kernel.
It claims to run apps from Haiku, the current open-source implementation of a modern BeOS.
Demonstrated here (animated):
https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/images/gui-images...
Haiku retained all of this and bring something new like combining various windows into single tabbed one - not sure if any other system has such feature. Or... toolbar in file manager - which is something I really missed back then in BeOS.
Back then BeOS was much more stable and faster than my daily Win98SE, even working in that image file on FAT32 partition.
Kinda makes you wonder, how things would go if Apple would pick BeOS as their OS instead of Jobs' NeXT. Would it still looks same or it would go thru all stages we've seen - with glass, transparency and then flatness and darkpatterns producing minimalism.
It was uphill all the way before that point, and downhill ever since.
Nexus is Vitruvian's custom Linux kernel subsystem that brings BeOS-style
node monitoring, device tracking, and messaging to Linux — making it
possible to run Haiku applications on a standard Linux kernel.As some contrast, consider something like GNUStep. You are never going to get macOS out of GNUStep, no matter how hard you try, because it is too high level (Cocoa) while simultaneously too ambitious. Similarly, with alternate kernels like ReactOS you will never get full replacement of Windows because it is too ambitious and intractable.
The intersection of this project though, it is a cunning insight in using the hardware support of Linux and shedding the graphics layer for something a lot simpler with a minimal kernel module to support the existing mechanics of BeOS. This is more in line with wine, which is and has been useful for a long time, but is even easier. This doesn't mean it will achieve massive user base, but it seems like it will mature fast enough into something dedicated fans can enjoy and use productively.
I don't know exactly why, but child me thought that was so interesting, since every other OS at the time seemed unable to.
Another cool one that was around was QNX.
And of course you can just spin it up in a VM if you only want to play a bit.
I think Haiku got more traction because at the time people felt that it should run BeOS software without recompiling. I have long wondered what would have happened if BlueEyedOS would have gotten most of the effort.
Only be able to drag a window around the screen from the top left corner
Additionally, meta+middle-mouse-drag allows one to resize a window from anywhere in the whole window!! (it chooses the closest corner when the drag starts) and this, being able to resize a window without needing to put the mouse in a usually-very-thin window border, is extremely liberating in my opinion! To the point where I really miss it on sub-windows where the app is handling resizing/etc itself!
There's a Windows app I used to use that supports the same kind of thing for Windows (different key I think), no idea if there's one for Mac I'm afraid - or whether it can be configured to work that way, but there probably is one so it would be worth investigating if this sounds useful to you I'd say!
BeOS came up with “Binder” for doing inter process communication. Just before Be Inc. was acquired by Palm, some Be engineers somehow convinced management to release Binder as open source, which came to be known as OpenBinder.
After the Palm acquisition many Be engineers moved to a startup called Android Inc, and adopted OpenBinder for IPC. And the rest as they say, is history.
I don't think it makes sense for desktop applications, it may make sense if sound latency is a priority but even then stock kernel delivered lower latency in many cases.
https://www.desktoponfire.com/interview/846/an-interview-wit...
I'm not cool enough to run VitruvianOS either, but i'm glad it exists.
There is also a library version where you can use the Haiku API to write Linux apps.
I do have to say... in all my years of software development, as far as system APIs go, BeOS/Haiku has by far been the most pleasant and easy-to-use API I have ever seen, so this is a very welcome addition for me.
I wonder what they will do to support BeOS' MediaKit. It has packet streams with realtime delivery.
[0] https://v-os.dev/blog/2026/02/10/haiku-runtime-on-linux/
There exists at least one rootless X11 server for BeOS/Haiku that would run on top, that shouldn't be too difficult to port (knock on wood ...)
"VitruvianOS is an alternative Linux desktop with a singular philosophy: the human at the center."
> and adopts KISS principles. Anyone can rapidly feel at
>home and use V\OS. User experience, workflow and comfort
> is key.
What is more intuitive than a button to close a window without a X, in order to make people from every other OSes feel at home https://v-os.dev/img/photogrid.png
-- When words have no meaning
Cheers
