What is BeOS R5 about, anyways?
R5 Personal Edition (PE) is a very intriguing product. Normally, installing a new OS means that you have to partition your HD into multiple “drives” so that you can install the new OS on one of them. This can be a tedious and potentially dangerous process (depending on which program you use). R5 PE, on the other hand, allows you to install and run the latest version of BeOS without needing to repartition your HD. It does this by creating a 512 MB file on one of your Windows (FAT32) drives. This file acts as a virtual partition to BeOS – when you run the BeOS loader (either from Windows or from a boot floppy), it pretends that this file is a partition, and loads the BeOS off of it, as it would off a normal harddrive. Your BeOS applications and settings all reside inside the 512 MB partition with the OS. While this doesn’t seem like much room, it actually works fine. The system files, applications, and everything included as part of the system all take up only about 90 MB. I have a lot o
