What distro for AMD AthlonXP 2000+?

[roxics]

God I hate the way that sounds. It makes BeOS sound like linux and it's million different confusing versions available.

Last time I used BeOS was shortly after R5 was released and I tried it out for a little bit. Before that I had bought a copy of 4.5 and used it a little longer.

From what I've read looking around various Be sites, R5 won't work with an AMD Athlon XP 2000+

So I'd like to try BeOS again or some version of it just for a lark. Hopefully you guys can tell me what version I need.

Here is my system specs

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512 DDRRAM
ATI Radeon VE dual display
Built in AC'97 audio on my motherboard
Built in ethernet on my motherboard
Alright my mother board is a Gigabyte KT400 or something like that
Pioneer 105 DVD-RW drive
Old HP CD-RW drive 4X
ADS Pyro firewire card
Ultra100TX2 IDE controller
20 gig system drive with WinXP Home on it.
Two other HD's. a 120gig and a 60 gig
 

I'd like a version of BeOS that is free and I can install from clicking an icon inside Windows XP like you could with R5. I really liked that about R5. It made installing so simple.
Chances are good I won't keep BeOS on my system long. I really just want to play around with it for a while for old times sake. But for practical reasons I can't think of anything besides browsing the internet I could really accomplish with it. So I'll probably want an easy way to remove it as well and alot that HD space back to WinXP all as one partition like my computer is set up now.

I really wish BeInc hadn't gone under. It's been 5 years. I wonder what the landscape of beOS would have looked like now if nothing had changed.

Thanks guys.

P.S. Is there a version of firefox available for beOS or some version of it.

[mmadia]

R5 *will* work on those cpu's.   you'll need to patch the kernel to do so and maybe apply a cpu_fix to remedy incorrecty cpu timings, but it can run.

Firefox andMozilla are ported, always under development (small but a dedicated group of coders)

R5 PE is the easiest one to install inside the virtual image.be partition   ( though i'd image MAX, DevEd, and the other "distros" can, as they're based on PE) 

BeBits is your friend when it comes to drivers and cpu patches. 

IIRC, PE cannot reside on XP's NTFS. -- can anyone confirm this?

[tb100]

Yeh, if you want to run it like you did with R5 - from an image file on your windows drive, you'll need to find a drive that isn't windows XP NTFS formatted - FAT32 will be fine.

All the versions available are basically just R5 with more or less other free things from BeBits included. I have an image.be file, which is R5 PE, upgraded to 5.03, with a patch for Athlon XPs, the cpu_fix patch, replacement IDE driver, the latest open tracker, and a few extra drivers (think the Radeon one is in there, although probably not your sound and network drivers - you may have to get them off bebits through windows). Make a BeOS folder in the root of your FAT32 disk (D:\BeOS\ or whatever), and put this image file in there.
http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~sjt59/image-be.zip

You'll probably need to use mmu_man's athlon xp boot floppy to access the OS. It's available here, and includes a windows app to write the image to a floppy disk.
http://clapcrest.free.fr/revol/beos/AthlonXP_boot_floppy.zip

Hope that works for you!

Simon

[Euan Kirkhope (UK)]

I just install the original BeOS 5 Personal edition, run "simpatch" on it from windows command line after installing, make the standard bootdisk, and boot.  Simple as that.

http://euank.users.btopenworld.com/simpatch_win32.zip

[tb100]

Yeh but then you have to do the standard upgrade to 5.0.1, then to 5.0.3, then install open tracker and the ide replacement, along with whichever modern graphics driver you need. Of course you're free to do that if you wish, but I think my image is probably an easier way to start (plus I made the image 640MB, so virtual memory will still work if it's used as an image, but it can still fit on a CD).

[MYOB]

VM will only work if you have around 384MB RAM or less. No way for me to use a CD sized image and still have VM with 512MB RAM

Either way, /me pets his all-Intel gear. No kernel patching here.

[tb100]

VM will only work if you have around 384MB RAM or less. No way for me to use a CD sized image and still have VM with 512MB RAM

Ah ok. I just remember running 500MB PE image, and it getting too full to support VM fairly quickly. That was on a system with 192 MB RAM though.

Either way, /me pets his all-Intel gear. No kernel patching here.

* tb100 pets his AMD gear, which was about 25% cheaper than the equivalent intel stuff when I bought it, and works perfectly well (USB and all).

[MYOB]

BeOS's VM works similarly to Windows - goes from abour 4x the RAM size to at least 1.25x the RAM size. When your RAM is as big as the image file... its a no go

As goes the AMD price difference, it doesn't exist over here. Same price as Intel, and from my own (pretty wide) experience, less reliable. So I go Intel.

[jefro]

I'd get the Developer Edition. It has the patch, and replacement IDE driver. I really need to get the updated DE to see what has improved.

[tb100]

I'd get the Developer Edition. It has the patch, and replacement IDE driver. I really need to get the updated DE to see what has improved.

And the most completely b0rked compiler available on BeOS. Ironic really, for a distro that call themselves "Developer Edition".

I'm actually horified that people seem to think it actually makes a difference what "distro" you use. I don't know of anything unique to any of them. It seems to me the only difference is the number of bad choices that have been made about what to include.

Back on topic, as you can see, pretty much any "distro" can be made to work on your hardware - it's a matter of preference really.

[H-kon]

i have a special love for plain 5.03 Gobe version.

[jefro]

Actually I didn't fully read the first post.

There is no distro that meets what he/she wishes most likely.

The new NTFS will not allow beos's bootloader to read/write to image.be.

Mostly I assume that people who ask for assistance are people who don't fully know how to use any distro. So, I try to suggest a way that they can get most of beos working with the least amount of trouble. Now if anyone wishes to go over to that person's home and set it up that would be best. Otherwise I have to guess from afar as to what to suggest.

On bebits there is a newer Developer Edition that may be better suited for you tb100. If you feel that it won't install on most modern machines and get a regular user going then let us know. I won't suggest it if it doesn't work.

[tb100]

On bebits there is a newer Developer Edition that may be better suited for you tb100. If you feel that it won't install on most modern machines and get a regular user going then let us know. I won't suggest it if it doesn't work.

Better suited for me? Seen my post count?

I know what I want in my BeOS, and I know where to get it - I haven't just reformatted my Be partition to get rid of all the crap I have installed to replace it with crap someone else has packaged into an ISO!

I wasn't trying to attack your suggestion either, but any of the solutions posted here should work. Which is most work /the best option is largely a matter of opinion. If you read the full thread you will see that has basically all been said already.

Now let's all get along

Simon

[jefro]

The author has not replied so I guess we didn't help at all.