Like its predecessor, OFS (Old Be File System, was also called BFS when current), it includes support for extended file attributes (metadata) with indexing and querying characteristics to provide functionality similar to that of a relational database. Similar facilities are scheduled for future versions of Microsoft Windows under the name WinFS.
Its design process, API, and internal workings are, for the most part, documented in the book Practical File System Design with the Be File System. Although the book is now out of print it is freely available as a PDF file [1] (http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf).
BeFS has been reimplemented as OpenBFS as a part of their open source operating system, Haiku. SkyFS, a filesystem used in SkyOS, is a fork of OpenBFS.
References
Giampaolo, Dominic (1999). Practical File System Design with the Be File System (http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf). Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN 1558604979.
BeOS PE could be started from within Microsoft Windows or Linux, and was intended to nurture consumer interest in its product and give developers something they could tinker in.
Unfortunately, BeOS PE and BeIA proved to be too little too late, and in 2001 Be's intellectual property was sold to Palm, Inc. BeOS R5 is considered the last official version, but BeOS R5.1 "Dano", which was under development before Be's sale to Palm, was leaked to the public shortly after the company's demise.
The plain BeOS R5 GUI is commonly cloned, either as the main UI, such as in TriangleOS, or as a theme, such as for SkyOS or GNOME.
The Be FileSystem (BFS, occasionally misnamed as BeFS) is the native filesystem for the BeOS operating system.
It is case sensitive and capable of being used on floppy, hard disks and read-only media such as CD-ROMs, although its use on small removable media is not advised, as the filesystem headers consume from 600KB to 2MB, rendering floppy disks virtually useless.
Like its predecessor, OFS (Old Be FileSystem, was also called BFS when current), it includes support for extended file attributes (metadata) with indexing and querying characteristics to provide functionality similar to that of a relational database.
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