Better for my needs: Linux or BeOS?

[Advaik A. Flask]

Again I still have not installed Linux but I am going to do so this afternoon. I will for sure try Linux and hopefully learn it but I want to know if I should make my computer tri-booting (is that possible?) with windoze, linux, and beos. I work alot with graphics and adobe products but I also do alot of programming and networking. I hear BeOS is excellent for my graphic work but linux is great for my networking and programming. Will linux give me all the support I need for media editting or should I go ahead and get BeOS also? Btw it's a 450mhz pII, tnt2 ultra video, and 64mb ram.

Also can I customize linux desktop to do all this (and will it be difficult knowing I have no knowledge of it?):

Military time clock visible on desktop bar
Local time clock visible on desktop bar
All time zones visible by clicking on Local time (IE you click on local time and a bar comes up saying 5:24est 6:24cst etc)
Current local tempature
A desttop bar on buttom with "start" menu type thing fast click buttons and system tray objects
A desktop bar on top with current programs opened
Mp3 player built into desktop bar on bottem
Desktop is like PowerDesk (or Windows Explorer) instead of a regular desktop (I spend my entire time in explorer and never use my desktop so why not make my desktop an explorer? :))
A kick *** graphic outline for pop ups and desktop bars (Got to have one of these :))

Thats pretty much my idea of a perfect desktop. How hard would it be to make one of these or is there one like it already made?

Thanks so much again!

[bdg1983]

All right, one at a time:
Yes, triple booting is possible.
BeOS is a great little OS, very fast and stable. However, it currently suffers from a major application deficiency. I'm not too sure you could get a good photoshop workalike on BeOS, but if you're into sound and video editing, Be is great.
As for the desktop stuff, you can definitely have standard and military time on the taskbar. For having other time zones pop up, that I'm not so sure of.
For the current local temperature, there are applets that get the current conditions from a weather server and put them in the taskbar.
Most desktop environments come with some start-menu like thing, and I know at least KDE and Gnome can have quicklauch type buttons.
There are also applets to control xmms (the best mp3 player for linux) from the taskbar.
Don't know if there's something like powerdesk for linux; I do most of my file moving/renaming/deleting from the command line.
As for an "outline", I think you're talking about theme support. Linux excels at this. You can pretty much make your windows look like anything, from Windows 98 to Aqua (Mac OSX) to a Star Trek control panel :)

Good luck to you!

[demian]

Ok, first of all triple booting is not at all a problem. You desktop wish list is interesting. Let me repeat this for reference.

[list=1]
Military time clock visible on desktop bar
Local time clock visible on desktop bar
All time zones visible by clicking on Local time (IE you click on local time and a bar comes up saying 5:24est 6:24cst etc)
Current local tempature
A desttop bar on buttom with "start" menu type thing fast click buttons and system tray objects
A desktop bar on top with current programs opened
Mp3 player built into desktop bar on bottem
Desktop is like PowerDesk (or Windows Explorer) instead of a regular desktop (I spend my entire time in explorer and never use my desktop so why not make my desktop an explorer? :))
A kick *** graphic outline for pop ups and desktop bars (Got to have one of these :))
[/list=a]

#1 and #2 are no problem at all. For #3 I have this option (http://www.nord-com.net/goedeke/tkplanet.jpg) for you. The background is updated every five minutes and the shadow moves along with the position of the sun. It's also possible to display a sphere and a kind of time ruler so that you know what time it is in whatever timezone.
#4 no problem. Same for #5 to #7. As for #8 there are tons of file manager apps. I don't use them a lot but I'm sure you'll find one that suits you. For #9 go with enlightenment (http://www.enlightenment.org) as you window manager. You'll like it, I guess. Themes can be found here (http://www.themes.org).

As for Linux vs. BeOS I don't know. I have both installed but I hardly ever start Be and can't really give you advice on that. The Gimp (http://www.gimp.org) certainly is the graphics application for linux. Check it out and see how you like it. Recently I read a post here where someone said you can also run Photoshop through wine (in case you don't like the gimp.

Hope this helps.

Just updated the screenshot 'cause I realized the first didn't really show the picture of the earth...

[ 06 March 2001: Message edited by: demian ]