Be prepares Be OS 4.0

Be Incorporated, makers of the Be OS, a multimedia operating system forcontent creators, are preparing version 4.0 of the product for a launchlater this year. Be OS 4.0 will run on Intel and PowerPC hardware, as doesthe current release, 3.x. The big news for this release, however, is themove to a new binary format which means that older Be applications will need to be recompiled before they will run on the new version. Other newfeatures include a new partition boot loader for compatibility with theexisting operating system, user interface improvements, FAT32 compatibility,expanded hardware support, new developer tools and more. For informationabout the switch to Be OS version 4.0, please visit the Be Web site.

The Be OS, like Linux and Solaris x86, represents an interesting alternative to Windows and I will be taking a closer look at it later thisyear as part of a survey of non-Windows operating systems that run on regular PC hardware