Cosmoe: BeOS Class Library on Top of Wayland

by Bogdanp on 6/21/2025, 9:00:01 AM with 60 comments

  • by leonheld on 6/21/2025, 11:40:41 AM

    Haiku/BeOS to me is simply peak computer design. This is beautiful!

  • by sockboy on 6/21/2025, 2:44:22 PM

    Emulating extended attributes for a filesystem is a fascinating approach. It can significantly streamline lightweight OS customization without needing a full port of the filesystem driver. Has anyone experimented with this in open-source projects? Would love to hear about practical results or challenges.

  • by em-bee on 6/21/2025, 1:02:13 PM

    from BeOS/Haiku i am actually most interested in two things:

    the way windows are styled/handled. so i'd like to see a BeOS styled compositor/window manager.

    the database like filesystem, and of course gui and commandline tools to use it. (can the filesystem features be emulated with extended attributes, or is a full port of the filesystem driver needed to get a filesystem with the same features? (i am not looking for compatibility, just the feature set))

  • by dkh on 6/21/2025, 12:50:06 PM

    Finally, the killer app to checkmate the Wayland naysayers: BeOS API implementation

  • by jbverschoor on 6/21/2025, 12:06:31 PM

    Interesting.. back in the early ‘00, I implemented the BeOS api on top of the win32 api. Naive me thought that would make people adopt programming for BeOS and in turn would make it a popular OS.

  • by jchw on 6/21/2025, 11:52:23 AM

    Now this looks interesting. I am not familiar with the BeOS APIs, but the UI design is very pleasing.

    One thing I don't see mentioned anywhere including the plans is accessibility though. Not having basic accessibility support would be a serious issue, so I'm hoping it is either already there and just not mentioned or at least planned in some way.

  • by tialaramex on 6/21/2025, 2:02:01 PM

    One thing that's fun about this is that BeOS isn't going anywhere.

    If you decided to do this for, say, Windows, Microsoft is going to release a new Windows version with new stuff you can't do and too bad.

    But BeOS itself is dead, and the Haiku project (to basically make BeOS again, once named "OpenBeOS") is about a quarter of a century old yet seems barely closer to releasing anything. A lethargic snail could sleep walk to the finish before Haiku ships version 2.

  • by Apocryphon on 6/21/2025, 1:17:35 PM

    More exciting UI news than Liquid Glass

  • by danans on 6/21/2025, 3:53:16 PM

    BeOS sold to Palm. Palm developed WebOS and sold that to LG. I wonder if any of BeOS ended up on my current WebOS powered LG TV. I bet someone here knows.

  • by pjerem on 6/21/2025, 11:13:11 AM

    Okay, I love this :)

  • by imchillyb on 6/21/2025, 12:32:38 PM

    “There are several sample applications included which demonstrate what it is capable of.”

    This was the mantra of BeOs. Here’s a technology preview. Watch videos on a cube, now a sphere!

    The OS was sold as a technology preview that was easy and accessible and the users only needed to wait for developers…

    …that never showed up.

    Similar occurrence with Microsoft phones and lack of developers. Pebble watch and lack of developers…

    What these projects all lack are meaningful engagement instead of a few ‘oh wow’ moments.

  • by kosolam on 6/21/2025, 11:57:39 AM

    What are the practical benefits of this library? We have gtk,qt,fltk,wx, and a long list of others some cross platform some not..

  • by mouse_ on 6/21/2025, 12:01:41 PM

    Cute!