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BeOS Successor Haiku Keeps the Faith
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Feb 11, 2009 05:00 PM
from the still-want-a-be-box-led-meter dept.
from the still-want-a-be-box-led-meter dept.
kokito writes "OSNews managing editor Thom Holwerda reviews Haiku, the open source successor of the Be operating system. According to the review, Haiku faithfully/successfully replicates the BeOS user experience and 'personality,' boasting very short boot times, the same recognizable but modernized GUI using antialiasing for fonts and all vector graphics as well as vector icons, a file system with support for metadata-based queries (OpenBFS) and support for the BeAPI, considered by some the cleanest programming API ever. The project has also recently released a native GCC 4.3.3 tool chain, clearing the way for bringing up-to-date ports of multi-platform apps such as Firefox and VLC, and making it easier to work on Haiku ports in general." (More below.)
"In spite of its pre-alpha status, Haiku seems to be pretty stable. If you would like to give it a try, nightly builds are available from the Haiku Files website, both as raw HDD and VMWare images. Or if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area, you could also take a peek at a Haiku demo during the upcoming Southern California Linux Expo (Feb. 21 & 22), where Haiku will be exhibiting in booth #4."
Related Stories
[+]
After 8 Years of Work, Be-Alike Haiku Releases Official Alpha 411 comments
NiteMair writes "The Haiku project has finally released an official R1 alpha, after 8 years of development. This marks a significant milestone for the project, and it also debuts the first official/publicly available LiveCD ISO image that can be easily booted and used to install Haiku on x86 hardware. Haiku is a desktop operating system inspired by BeOS after Be, Inc. closed its doors in 2001. The project has remained true to the BeOS philosophy while integrating modern hardware support and features along the way." Eugenia adds this link to an article describing the history of the OS, along with a review of the alpha version."
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Summary (Score:5, Funny)
similar to BeOS
now with GCC!
I'm holding my breath for.. (Score:5, Funny)
There once was an OS named Limerick
Whose kernel included a VIM-err-tick
It boot-strapped itself
and began exec-ing ELF
code that would kill the stack--errrr----ick*#%U!@!#%^%----NO CARRIER
Parent
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
each time I Haiku
fast computer start for me
but no web browsing
Parent
Re:Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
links will be ported
but without graphics you face
a life without porn
Parent
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
ASCII boobs are so so hot
Jiggle, asterisk!
Parent
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
"THOUGHT!"
"KNOWLEDGE!"
"METHODS!"
"TOOLS!"
"EVIL!"
"Go Patent!"
"By your powers combined, I am Captain Patent!"
Captain Patent, he's our hero
Gonna take innovation down to zero
He's our powers magnified
And he's fighting on the patent's side
Captain Patent, he's our hero
Gonna take innovation down to zero
Gonna help him put in the penumbrae
People who share ideas, techniques and sundry
"You'll pay for this Captain Patent!"
We're the Patenteers
You can be one too
'Cause saving our patents is the thing to do!
Sharing and collaborating is not the way
Hear what Captain Patent has to say!
"The Power is Ours!"
Parent
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
O. M. F. G.
Could you maybe throw some of your apparently overflowing free time into a cure for cancer, or world peace, or developing DNF? I mean, filks on cult classic Saturday morning cartoons from the mid 90s are great and all... but seriously.
Parent
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Could you maybe throw some of your apparently overflowing free time into a cure for cancer, or world peace, or developing DNF? I mean, filks on cult classic Saturday morning cartoons from the mid 90s are great and all... but seriously.
Time cannot be bought,
yet is more rationed than wine.
Unlike your Mother.
Parent
Re:Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Be already came
with GCC, since R3
for x86.
Even EGCS ran well
but PowerPC was stuck
with lame Metrowerks.
Parent
BeOS: still my favorite UI (Score:5, Interesting)
The interface for BeOS is still superior to any other OS I've used. It's like they took the good stuff from the old Mac OS 9 and Amiga and updated it. It was a power user's OS, yet still very user friendly. My college had a BeBox and I loved playing on that thing (the best part was that the CPU monitor allowed you to turn off both CPUs, instantly locking the computer).
I hope Haiku does well, but it seems like an also-ran in these days of Mac OS X and GNOME. I'm not sure there's a compelling reason to run it anymore, except for nostalgic purposes (sigh).
Re:BeOS: still my favorite UI (Score:5, Insightful)
I have actually used BeOS a lot, mostly for composing. I have experienced the highest level of responsiveness from an OS with BeOS - this is still unsurpassed. When I talk about responsiveness, I specifically mean it from the point of view of the user. Applications that play some kind of media (be it MIDI, audio or video of any kind) will never, under any circumstance, be interrupted by any other process. If you copy a file while playing a video, it will not skip. The file may not copy as fast at times, or other processes may slow down, but the video will not skip. In addition to this, the user commands, be it with the mouse or with the keyboard, are always taken into consideration. No "hourglass" or other bullshit. I don't know how BeOS was engineered to achieve this, I only know that no other OS I used during and since then, achieved this sort of responsiveness.
I've used Linux a lot, and am definitely a fan of some distros, and I also like OS X quite a bit, but neither are 100% "committed" to my whim. With BeOS, what I want is listened to and executed, and fuck everything else. I guess this means BeOS would be a terrible server OS - but very often I miss exactly this kind of behaviour.
If Haiku manages to achieve the same characteristics, it will be for me, the best desktop operating system in the world. I specifically look for support of modern CPUs, chipsets, graphics cards and soundcards. Perhaps not all of them, or even not most of them, but the ones that will be supported will appear in my house.
Parent
Re:BeOS: still my favorite UI (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, the grandparent didn't explain things entirely clearly, but what is crystal clear is you've never used BeOS mr coward. It multitasked amazingly well.
Parent
Re:BeOS: still my favorite UI (Score:5, Insightful)
The philosophy of Linux (server) and Haiku (desktop) dictates different OS design and application. Linux seems kinda shoehorned into the desktop mold, it works but there are things that don't quite fit. Haiku isn't a server OS, it aims for the multimedia desktop. They compliment and work with each other.
Parent
Slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)
I hope they aren't using Haiku to run their web site. If so, it may be pretty but it isn't good at handling a load.
Deadhorse? (Score:5, Insightful)
For a site supposedly traditionally supportive of alternative platforms, in practice there's a surprising amount of contempt for any alternative platform that doesn't fall into the cool club of Linux and OS X. I'm not a Haiku user, but if someone is writing an open source OS, good luck to them. Or maybe we should give up, and ridicule anyone who doesn't use Windows?
(I see this with other things - e.g., Internet Explorer is bad, Firefox is good ... but Opera for some reason is also bad. The usual argument of it not being open source doesn't even apply to Haiku, though. By that reasoning, we should be praising Haiku, and criticising OS X!)
Is anyone who starts an open source project flogging a "deadhorse", unless they're already mainstream? What a depressing attitude.
"Deadhorse" doesn't make sense anyway - according to Wikipedia, Haiku is a relatively new OS, only having received significant development in the last few years. Oh, it's a dead horse because it maintains some compatibility with BeOS? Big deal - by that reasoning, we should tag every OS X article "deadhorse", on the grounds that it shares its trademark name with a long dead twenty five year old OS that was never even particularly good at the time.
Re:Deadhorse? (Score:5, Interesting)
The BeOS user experience is fundamentally different from the Windows and Linux experience.
The difference is like driving a Porsche 911 after driving a pickup truck all your life.
Parent
Re:Deadhorse? (Score:5, Funny)
The difference is like driving a Porsche 911 after driving a pickup truck all your life.
You mean, beautiful, smooth, fast, elegant, and impractical?
Parent
Re:Deadhorse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Had to be done (Score:5, Funny)
pretty icons made of lines
what will run on it?
Re:Had to be done (Score:5, Funny)
Don't know what BeOS is.
I'll move along now.
Parent
Re:Had to be done (Score:5, Funny)
HTML line break marks
*hangs head shamefully*
Parent
Article ignores NeXTstep's place (Score:5, Insightful)
and why it was chosen instead of BeOS.
Moreover, Mac OS X runs nicely on multi-processor machines (Be's major claim to fame).
I'd rather see effort like this poured into GNUstep....
William
Re:Article ignores NeXTstep's place (Score:4, Funny)
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting when Jean Louis Gassee turned down $500 million from Apple and walked away.
Parent
Re:Article ignores NeXTstep's place (Score:5, Interesting)
If people supported GNUStep and push Apple to help it, Linux would have a lot of OS X software ports now and even Apple software in the future. The number 1 issue is of course, would people want Apple closed binaries/frameworks on their Linux/*BSD?
It is more like "What would happen if..." thing now. Still, if one starts coding on OpenStep, it is really easy to port same application in native form to OS X or even Windows. I don't understand why you mention both BeOS and GNUstep in same context. GNUstep is there, working and even a real good mail client is coded using it. http://www.collaboration-world.com/gnumail/ [collaboration-world.com]
Parent
Re:Article ignores NeXTstep's place (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare with Wine. The typical reason to use Wine is that you prefer Linux, but you don't have any choice because the app you need/want to use is Windows-only.
Since MacOS X isn't a monopoly, that doesn't occur very much with MacOS X. Nobody's bank tells them they can only access their account using MacOS X.
Ths typical Mac user likes MacOS because all the software and hardware is beautifully integrated and consistent, and everything Just Works. The last thing on earth that type of person is going to do is switch to Linux, but then insist on trying to run some kludged-together version of a Mac application that wasn't really designed to run on Linux.
Parent
ReligiOS (Score:5, Funny)
They should merge the soul of BeOS in with AmigaOS and maybe the Palm OS to release ReligiOS, keeper of of the faith.
They could sell it to those gullible televangelist audiences as JesOS, market it to fundamentalist Jews as the Messiah OS, and to fervent Muslims as MuhammaDOS.
Imagine all the faithful putting aside their wars and terrorism and instead taking their angst to alt.systems.advocacy.religios to flame each other in a more figurative sense. I'm sure all the gods in heaven would approve.
-
Microsoft plays catch up to MobileMe with My Phone [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:ReligiOS (Score:5, Funny)
They could sell it to those gullible televangelist audiences as JesOS
Eh... sounds like this is just the first release
I'll wait until the second coming.
Parent
How secure is BeOS? (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I remember BeOS wasn't designed as a multi-user system. What sort of security protections does it have?
Re:How secure is BeOS? (Score:5, Funny)
As I remember,
BeOS was single user.
Is Haiku secure?
(There, fixed it for you.)
Parent
Nice that HaikuOS gets this coverage (Score:5, Interesting)
but AROS [sourceforge.net] doesn't. AROS brings the Classic AmigaDOS/Workbench and AmigaOS experience to X86 and PPC platforms.
At least AmigaOS applications are still being developed, hardly anyone develops for BeOS anymore. AROS can at least run AmigaOS 3.1 and under applications and 68K Amiga applications via AmigaBridge.
One possible use... (Score:5, Interesting)
My eeePC 701 more or less only ever runs Firefox, a text editor, Comix, and Skype. Seems like a lot to have to put a whole Linux install on for...
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Insightful)
No, having different OSs isn't about beating Microsoft.
Have some imagination, please.
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
No, having different OSs isn't about beating Microsoft.
You wouldn't know that from reading Slashdot, though.
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Interesting)
BeOS is easily the most pleasant-to-use operating system I've ever seen. It could also multi-task while flawlessly playing back an MP3 on a 166Mhz Pentium with 32MB ram while showing minimal UI slowdown, which was impressive even back then; compared to the performance of operating systems now it's down-right miraculous.
In my perfect world it would have at least 75% of the desktop market and I'd rarely have to work on anything else. It's just a dream, but it's a good one.
I say keep it alive.
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Interesting)
I even remember the BeBoxes, with their twin row of LEDs up the front of the case that would should you the load of each (PowerPC) processor. I guess my big problem is that it always felt like a big impressive tech demo instead of an OS. I had a roommate with it and he was always strugging to get non-trivial applications running on the thing.
In some ways BeOS was ahead of its time, particularly with all of the multithreading and filesystem, but in other ways it was just too late to the game (Linux ate its lunch and dinner and was already wooing the girlfriend).
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
Linux was already wooing the girlfriend.
I think this might be a bad analogy.
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:4, Funny)
Installed zip image.
ssh is included.
What else do you need?
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
He came with cup full
Claiming all goals met
Missing, perchance, a nic driver?
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point of fighting one monoculture with another?
Microsoft's junk wouldn't be so bad if it didn't completely dominate the world. If it had some competition, it might make an effort to interoperate, making everyone's life easier.
Diversity stimulates research, growth, health and progress. Can we please put this "Linux/The Open Source Community needs to unite to beat Microsoft" meme to sleep. It's totally false and unhelpful.
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be, Inc.
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up. It's true. JLG and the other Be Inc execs failed pretty at strategic choices for their company.
1. Letting Apple pick NeXT (and Jobs) instead of BeOS.
2. The idiotic focus shift to "internet appliances" (whatever the fuck those were supposed to be) just as the dot com bubble was bursting.
3. Allowing key portions of the IP to be locked up in legal agreements with other much MUCH more powerful companies.
Parent
Plan 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
The most amazing thing is Plan 9 (Bell). From day 1, people say "It is good, but it can't replace Unix as it would be fixing a non broken thing" and yet use/copy every single unique aspect of it even on Windows (Unicode for example). What if Bell guys have said "Forget it, they will never give up Unix/Linux."? We wouldn't have procfs, unicode, /net and various other concepts.
Well at least IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer runs it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Gene [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to unite against Microsoft, the dominant power.
No, we don't have to do any such thing. Why is it that just because someone develops an alternate OS that it has to be used as a tool to fight against Microsoft? Not everyone who doesn't use Windows is doing so because they are trying to fight against Microsoft. This always comes up whenever someone mentions the many distros of Linux that everyone should unite cause we are supposed to be waging some "epic" battle against Microsoft, but many of us just don't give a shit about your stupid "war". Take your stupid battles somewhere else and leave the rest of us out of it so we can get on with coding.
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Informative)
Because they want to?
Not everyone is out to kill the Romans. Some people just want to keep using their favourite OS. Personally, I'm excited about the day Haiku "gets there" and I can run a small, fast, powerful OS again.
Parent
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
Another OS From which we have to choose from Why do we need this? Seriously, why hasn't BeOS (and OS/2 for that matter) just disappeared. As if the numerous Linux and BSD distros didn't make the market confusing enough.
And what's with all these dozens of menu items when I go into a restaurant? I only need a few types of food to survive, all these choices just confuse me.
Parent
Re:Licensing (Score:5, Insightful)
Your rant is nice and fine and all but it was Linux not BeOS that had the first 3D video drivers.
iPod is not the only game in town. If you choose to act that way, then your actions have unintended consequences.
This is why we are speaking of BeOS as resurrected abandonware.
Parent
Re:How have the APIs changed? (Score:5, Informative)
Try this with systcl:
vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 500
vm.swappiness = 0
And whenever you want to empty the fs caches: /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
echo 3 >
echo 0 >
swapoff -a
swapon -a
echo 3 >
echo 0 >
After that, it'll be like just booted
Parent
Re:How have the APIs changed? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm interested to know if Haiku will run under Parallels system virtualization, which itself runs under OSX.
Yes. [haiku-os.org]
I'm curious, too, if it is able to run in a full non-virtual memory, non-swapping configuration for speed and reliability.
Yep, by default (while still in pre-alpha at least) it runs without paging.
Parent
Re:How have the APIs changed? (Score:5, Informative)
The page you link to is over two years, and even the links on it to the nightly build is stale.
I just downloaded the VMWare image, uncompressed it, and "executed" the .vmx file. Fusion (v2.01) immediately loaded the VM, mentioned that it was an older version and asked if I wanted to update it. I chose "no" since I have no idea what hardware support has changed.
VM booted from "cold start" to Desktop in ~12-13 seconds. I'm amazed at how responsive the VM is.
Its a bit spartan from an eye candy perspective, but thats to be expected. What there is though is rather impressive.
Parent
Re:Haiku 1.0 == BeOS (Score:5, Informative)
Too late, Haiku already adds features on top of the functionality offered in BeOS R5.
The goal of Haiku R1 is to be able to run BeOS R5 software in a compatible way, not to be equivalent to it in functionality... Haiku improves upon BeOS R5 in MANY ways - especially when it comes to POSIX compliance and updated hardware support.
Quite a common misconception it seems.
Parent