Dano is a leaked beta version of the Be Operating System (BeOS). It is more properly called Exp/Dano, or 5.1d0. This was the last stage in the official development of the BeOS, right before Be Incorporated was sold to Palm in 2001. The "5.1" is deceiving; Dano is closer to an R6 version. Being a beta, it is rather crashy and rough-around-the-edges in places, but it is apparent that it was very close to being ready for release (contrary to popular belief, Be did not completely stop BeOS development when it had the much-decried focus shift). Dano incorporates a number of major changes:
- Integration of a BONE-like networking stack. This is (I believe) merely a more advanced version of BONE, and thus does the same thing: moving networking from the userland net_server to the kernel.
- Hardware OpenGL support. This is rather limited, but see below for discussion.
- A completely new look/toolkit. The Dano widgets are much more streamlined and curvy than the blocky R5 ones. The famous tabs, for example, have been replaced with a sleek thin titlebar (with mouseover highlighting!), with some sort of (very good-looking) bulbous protrusion where the tab itself used to be.
- Some preliminary support for the OHCI bus and IEEE 1394.
This isn't exhaustive; there are numerous other fixes/enhancements.
There is another version of Dano, a very unofficial one, called PhosphurOS. This is basically a host of bugfixes and improvements to Dano, and seems to solve many of the issues of the original leak. In particular, its OpenGL support is much more complete, as well as faster. Networking is a weird amalgamation of BONE 6, 7a, and the Dano network kit. The author of this is looncraz; he periodically shows up on BeShare. He is now working on the yellowTAB Zeta development team, and has thus been asked to stop distributing PhOS. It is hard to find it; check on BeShare.
Please note that this is, in fact, illegal. Palm has not and probably will not take any action against user or distributors of Dano. Be is, unfortunately, dead and thus will not be in any way injured by this. Just Be (haha!) aware of the implications. (#include )