Recently I downloaded Free Personal Edition of BeOS  (Be Operating system). I also downloaded development tools. In this short article I will try to introduce it to people  who have not worked with it yet. There are two copies of Personal edition.One is for  installation under Linux operating system and the other for  installation under windows. After installation BeOS is not  much dependent to these operating systems. Professional  edition of BeOS even does not need these two environments  for it's operation. It will boot by itself like Unix or  windows. Personal edition uses these OS environments as a  base for its own file system that consists of only one file 500M in size. It's why they call it an Operating system in a file. All  files and applications reside inside this file and make a  complete file system. Inside BeOS you do not even know that  it's just a file. As this file is 500M maximum size of  Personal edition File system is 500M. But do not worry.  BeOS mounts all main kinds of partitions easily. For example it saw my fat16,fat32 and Linux ext2 file systems and I was able to work with them like it's own file system.  I even installed a software on my fat32 partition. I tried windows installation version. It was very quick and  straight. It took me less than 10 minutes to have it up. It  was a very beautiful and professional looking environment  with something like windows 2000. By the way it asked only  a few questions. Most important is that It is more than 4  times to 5 times faster than windows 2000 and windows 98. As soon as you click on some icon it's running. I was very  surprised by it's speed. It's even faster than Linux X11 X window system with different window managers. It was really  stable too.  It was only after 20 seconds after the time I taught about  dialing my ISP that I was ready to press dial button. It  contains a lot of multimedia (11 apps) and internet (5 apps)  applications ready for running. It also contains a beautiful  internet browser.  I also downloaded a lot of software's from :  http://www.bebits.com and http://www.downloads.com . They include about 400M of programming languages, IDEs and  tools and also internet, game and other entertainment  applications. As it seems they at Be.com has wanted this OS to be a very powerful environment for  internet, multimedia  and gaming purposes. Programming kit includes network, game and windowing toolboxes. You can download a Basic programming language with an IDE  like MS Visual basic. I must confirm that BeOS contains some bugs and weaknesses but it has done its first steps better than its successors.  I downloaded it and I will continue to use and develop  applications for it.  I wish it will be enough powerful and widely used very soon  because it worth's it. Go on ! you test it too. Home of BeOS is Be corporation at :                                http://www.be.com