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VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS (https://v-os.dev)

155 points by felixding about 8 hours ago | 74 comments | View on ycombinator

yason about 3 hours ago |

I bought an Amiga in the early 90's and enjoyed it immensely. Commodore went under and Amiga died.

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.

carlesfe 41 minutes ago |

I ran BeOS as a daily driver for a few months in the early 2000s. I had a winmodem and Linux couldn't connect to the internet for me, but for some reason, BeOS had drivers, so I used it. It was faster and the desktop environment felt more polished than KDE/Gnome.

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.

rebolek about 5 hours ago |

If you like BeOS, take a look at Haiku https://www.haiku-os.org/ , it's very nice and very usable system based directly on BeOS.

watersb about 6 hours ago |

25 years ago, I configured GNOME to run a BeOS-like tabbed window manager. On a sun workstation.

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.

donatj about 5 hours ago |

The important question becomes can you stack the window decoration "tabs" of different apps into a single stack of tabs like in BeOS?

Demonstrated here (animated):

https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/images/gui-images...

vanderZwan about 1 hour ago |

Sort-of unrelated (but very on-brand for people into BeOS I think), it's so satisfying when a webpage is so free of bloat that navigation and latency to clicking on things in general feels instant.

WD-42 about 5 hours ago |

UI elements that have depth look so mouth-wateringly good now. So over the minimalism and bouncing back hard.

thisislife2 about 6 hours ago |

This is interesting - a Linux distro that really differentiates itself technically, instead of just having a different GUI / desktop environment.

rcarmo about 3 hours ago |

I hope it’s not just the look. The ability to group tabs from various apps into a single window was the best UX feature it had, and I still miss it sometimes.

nico about 5 hours ago |

BeOS was such an amazing experience back in the day. It really felt magical. Too bad it got shutdown. I wonder what the evolution of it would be like today

s1mn about 1 hour ago |

I was never cool enough to run BeOS but I coveted it. It looked so cool and futuristic compared with Windows.

I'm not cool enough to run VitruvianOS either, but i'm glad it exists.

aaronbrethorst about 6 hours ago |

Vitruvian asks a different question: what would I actually want to do with my computer that I currently can’t?

Only be able to drag a window around the screen from the top left corner

unixhero about 5 hours ago |

Why should users not instead go for Haiku

clayhacks about 4 hours ago |

Ok maybe I’m too young, but what is BeOS? Everyone here is linking other alternatives, but no one’s linked to the original BeOS. Or is it gone now?

ofrzeta about 5 hours ago |

"Real-time patched Linux kernel for low-latency desktop use" - does this really make sense? I think there have been various efforts like this over the decades but as far as I remember none of them really made a huge difference for the end user.

jazzyjackson about 4 hours ago |

I’ll try this out with my eink display, interface might look good in grayscale. So far my favorite desktop for this is the Chicago95 theme for xfce

add2 about 2 hours ago |

How about making Haiku frameworks OS independent?

undefined about 5 hours ago |

undefined

arm about 6 hours ago |

jonhohle about 4 hours ago |

Is this a new window manager and tracker or something skinned for this use case? Wayland, X11? There’s a screenshots section but the details are sparse.

asadm about 6 hours ago |

is there a debian distro that is close to win98. Sorta like ReactOS but can be daily-driven.

lnxg33k1 about 3 hours ago |

> It’s very easy to use. It features an intuitive desktop

> 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

shevy-java about 3 hours ago |

It's been a pain to try to get ruby to work on Haiku, so I expect that this will be like linux - but worse, in that barely anything works. I like the design choices made by BeOS, but we have 2026 now. Linux kind of showed that practical considerations beat theoretical superiority (except for the desktop segment, where Linux keeps on failing hard; see GTK5 not supporting xorg, it is now the all corporate-dictated wayland era).

KnuthIsGod about 5 hours ago |

Why does the marketing read like slop ?

"VitruvianOS is an alternative Linux desktop with a singular philosophy: the human at the center."

https://v-os.dev/news/vitruvian-0.3.0-available/

leke about 6 hours ago |

So this is a lighter weight alternative to other Linux desktops?