After 8 Years of Work, Be-Alike Haiku Releases Official Alpha 411
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."
Oh my (Score:5, Funny)
Their code formatting rules are.
Sounds like a tough job.
Re:Oh my (Score:5, Funny)
You got the first post
And started a Haiku fad
I hope you're happy
Re:Oh my (Score:5, Funny)
A misused apostrophe
Massive haiku fail
Take that! (Score:5, Funny)
Honking geese fly south
Cacophonously, just like
Slashdot pedants' posts.
Re:Oh my (Score:5, Funny)
Good god, no!
More idiots who think they are being smart by creating three lines of text in a 5-7-5.
Come on geeks, if you are going to be geeks at least get it right. There is more to making a haiku than 5-7-5 and trying to sound smart. Go and google/wikipedia it.
Hint. There are no haikus on this thread so far.
Anal retentive
I'll guess you've heard that before
Down in your basement
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh! Burn!
wait, I live in my mom's basement you insensitve clod!
Re:Oh my (Score:5, Funny)
From wikipedia: "Haiku typically contain a kigo, or seasonal reference, and a kireji [lit. 'cutting word'] or verbal caesura."
A haiku is more
Than five, seven, and five words.
Fuck you, it's autumn.
Summer in September? Preposterous! (Score:5, Funny)
Uhh, it's the middle of September, dude. You might want to get a calendar.
You might ask yourself,
On what date does summer end?
Do you see my point?
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
After eight long years
The alpha release is done
It took long enough
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
Bittorrent download?
Ah yes, there it is now then.
Finally, a clue!
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-iso.zip.torrent [haiku-os.org]
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-vmdk.zip.torrent [haiku-os.org]
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-image.zip.torrent [haiku-os.org]
Obligatory BeOS quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée had to say in 2001 about what happened:
We could have had close to 10 years of use out of this really good Be OS in schools, products, and businesses, if not for Microserfs and Microsofters. Apple needs to learn from Be Inc. and clean out the nails Microsofters set in its track while there's still an Apple Computer . The time is over for putting up with promoters of M$, especially those inside other businesses.
Eight years the wiser.
So happy together then?
Don't bend down again.
Be OS was a very good OS so we should see good things from Haiku, too. The niche it filled will be different today for Haiku [haiku-os.org], but still highly relevant. Netbooks are all the rage now. I expect it will be tried there first.
Re:Obligatory BeOS quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple did learn; they have their own retail stores. They don't rely on companies that make most of their money selling MS products and MS-related products for their business. Microsoft can't offer the Apple Store a discount on Windows if they don't sell OS X.
Be failed because it messed its customers around. Their first releases were for PowerPC and ran on Macs and their own hardware. Then they added support for x86, and didn't provide cross-compiler toolchains, so most third-party apps became x86-only and the people on PowerPC were left in the cold. Then they announced that they were going to switch focus to BeIA, and frightened third-party commercial developers away from BeOS. Then they turned down Apple's offer, demanding ten times what Apple was willing to pay, and eventually had to sell to Palm for around 20% of Apple's offer. Plam did very well out of the deal, paying $11m for the company and then getting $23m from Microsoft in settlement of the suit over anticompetitive practices.
Re:Obligatory BeOS quote (Score:4, Informative)
Insightful? Just about every 'fact' is incomplete and your timeline is completely incorrect.
Among the things you mentioned, the Apple offer came first. The counter offer was not "ten times." More like a little under double.
BeOS was FORCED to port to Intel when Apple refused to disclose specs for the G3 line. This wasn't done on a whim, it was done out of technical necessity.
BeIA was the last ditch effort/nail in the coffin, not something that scared away developers. By that time, they had no developers left.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In the end (say 200 years from now), we'll all probably be using one standard OS (or at least hope to).
Just like standard thread sizes, standard units of measurement, standard building codes, standard laws, and standard currencies.
Torrent? (Score:3, Funny)
Ya damned pirate.. you know only pirates and terrorists use p2p
Re: (Score:2)
They're had reasonably usable code out there for ages though. WINE is another project that took forever to get to 1.0, but produced tons of non-vaporware work along the way. Personally, I find this long-haul-to-stable much more professional than the other approach, of say, KDE, releasing .0 stuff which is low quality. In fact, that alone would make me want to check out this release, if I wasn't already interested in Haiku for many other reasons.
Usable OS (Score:4, Informative)
I've been running a VM image built from source from a couple of recent developer's releases, and I've got to say, the OS is definitely usable. Probably the largest missing piece has been a wireless stack (haven't checked the R1 alpha, so for all I know his is already there). This will make an awesome OS for a netbook - lightweight, fast, boots fast, already has a port of Firefox. Can't wait to try out the alpha.
Re:Usable OS (Score:5, Informative)
The wireless stack is a work in progress, based on the FreeBSD 8.0 WLAN stack.
http://www.haikuware.com/blog [haikuware.com]
http://dev.osdrawer.net/projects/activity/haiku-wifi [osdrawer.net]
Colin is working to a bounty in the spirit of carrot driven development:
http://www.haikuware.com/bounties/ [haikuware.com]
What about Syllable? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I tried out BeOS R4, I was really impressed but couldn't really use it day to day. Ever since then I've been looking for the next best thing but never found it. I've tried Syllable and that seems great, but no WiFi support means I can't connect to the Internet, so it's useless. Haiku should have some support for this, so I might give it a try soon!
Unlike Syllable Haiku also supports Firefox, so I hope Amarok can be used too, that would be absolutely awesome.
Re:What about Syllable? (Score:5, Funny)
Haiku is 17 times better than Syllable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What about Syllable? (Score:5, Funny)
Haiku is 17 times better than Syllable.
What you call "better", I call "bloat"! I like my OSes how I like my poetry, streamlined and with everything extraneous removed. A wise man once said that the process of creating is done when you have removed everything you can. Clearly, then, Syllable is the best thing ever.
Just as an example of its power, watch as I use Syllable to compress not only every Haiku, but every poem of every type ever, down into 3 poems!
Sex.
Death.
Life.
And for the enterprising Syllabist, you can probably guess that even this can be reduced down to a single poem, the one and only poem that you'll ever need:
Fuck.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> When I tried out BeOS R4, I was really impressed but couldn't really use it day to day. Ever since then I've been looking for the next best thing but never found it.
You should have looked at NeXT at this time. It was waaay better than BeOS.
Re:Why can't you connect to the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
"but no WiFi support means I can't connect to the Internet"
Err, have you never heard of an ethernet cable?
It's so much harder to plug an ethernet cable into your neighbour's router without them noticing.
Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of me feels like I shouldn't even say this, because I don't want to take anything away from the achievement of the people who released this alpha....
But I remember when BeOS first gained traction. Copies of the installation CD were even being given away free, bundled with magazines - and the "buzz" was all over my workplace in the I.T. and software development portions of the company. Despite all of that, the universal conclusion of those who tried to use it for a while was the same. It was a "reall
redundant haiku is redundant (Score:3, Funny)
i post this anon
because so many exist
but what is one more?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
i post this anon because so many exist but what is one more?
Redundant haiku
Tautology makes very
Redundant haiku.
This would be really great news... (Score:5, Interesting)
...if Apple hadn't bought NeXT.
But they did, and have been catering to people who want a modern non-MS OS since then.
And now, they have stuff that provides a sensible approach to concurrency [arstechnica.com], BeOS or a clone of BeOS is a lot less meaningful.
(Actually, pages 9-15 of that review are all about Be's boat having sailed.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But they did, and have been catering to people who want a modern non-MS OS since then.
If all you want in an operating system is that it's not from Microsoft, that's a laudable goal. A sad reality though is that Windows 7 (or in most situations, Windows Vista with SP2) is to many people a superior operating system to OSX. Oh sure, it falls down in some places, but OSX totally flails in others where Windows is the current champ. I've run Linux and Windows on many of the same systems and have more experience than I want with OSX, and I've even used NeXTStep on NeXT hardware a bit, and I can tel
Re: (Score:2)
I've even used NeXTStep on NeXT hardware a bit, and I can tell you that OSX has no damned excuse for how chunky and unresponsive to user input it is
Hey, that's not fair, NeXTStep had a 25MHz '030 to work with to get that kind of user experience. You're comparing Apples and Magnesium chassis.
BeOS in historic context (Score:2)
BeOS looked like it had some actual advantages to the end user. I had a BeBox briefly and it's frankly amazing what two 66 MHz 603e chips could do with an operating system designed from the ground up for multiprocessing.
I use BeOS on my PowerMac and it naturally kicked MacOS butt (to the point where OS 8 under SheepShaver was faster than OS 8 on the raw hardware), but that's such a low hurdle to jump: the underlying operating system on pre-OSX Macs would have been considered primitive in 1969... it was noth
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There was more memory contention and stalling (even for command line apps) on a PC with 16M (which sounds small now, but it was pretty high end back then).
It most certainly was not! I think you're off by several powers of two there, me laddo. My 386 had 8MB RAM on it.
Given this error I don't see how the rest of your comment could possibly be worth reading. My BeBox had 64MB in it and that was pretty excellent. I also Ran BeOS on a PPro with 128MB and it was FANTASTIC, like butter. YOUR problems were ALMOST CERTAINLY driver-related. The memory it was "using" was almost certainly overreported.
It's not the kernel and OS design that makes OS X slow, it's the heavyweight window system. Making every window (including subwindows!) its own OpenGL texture simplifies application development somewhat, but it's a massive burden on the hardware.
You have it 100% wrong. First of all, Quartz was not always GPU-accel
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple would have gotten a better operating system for their purposes out of BeOS, but they got Steve Jobs with NeXT. Or was it the other way around?
I think what you're looking for is "NeXT purchased Apple for negative 429 million dollars."
Re: (Score:2)
I think the key is that Windows 7 at least gives the illusion of greater responsiveness than Vista ever did. Thus, if what you say is true, that Ubuntu and Vista run about the same, then 7 should (in theory) feel faster than both.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a dual boot Vista/Ubuntu setup on a low-end but recent Dell and both feel equally responsive for common tasks - generally the biggest delays are external to the OS, like web server speeds.
Actually what he mentions is something that I've noticed for a long time. I'm click happy when I'm working - I move around the computer fast and open a lot of windows/tabs (go to my web browser and it's not uncommon for me to have 3-4 windows open with a few dozen tabs each). Windows on my machine will handle this (speed-wise) like a champ. I middle click on a link and boom - instant, no jerk, tab opens up with no hesitation. When I click the close button on a tab? Same thing. Instant close. Linux on
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Believe it or not, there are some people who might like an OS for reasons other than a knee-jerk "It's not MS" (especially hilarious given how many Mac users then run MS software on their Macs).
But even if that's true, you could say the same about OS X - why use that, now there's BeOS? You see, if all you can say about OS X is that it doesn't have the flaws on Windows, then that applies to all non-MS OSs that are released. If you want to suggest otherwise, the burden is upon you to show how OS X is better t
Modern? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, a unix-like kernel with a pretty window manager is modern?
Damn. That's some strong kool-aid.
Re: (Score:2)
But they did, and have been catering to people who want a modern non-MS OS since then.
OS X is basically Mach, NeXTStep, and Objective-C, all technologies from the 1980's. Arguably, Windows is actually more modern, with a more object-oriented kernel, CLR, its presentation framework, and languages like C# and F#.
Of course, there is more than modernity to making a good OS. Actually, needless innovation and needless complexity is one of the most common problems with operating systems.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Both systems have u
Re:This would be really great news... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worth noting that the CLR is heavily based on the Smalltalk-80 VM
In what sense? Pretty damn sure it's not the code; if it is design, then can you please explain in more detail what CLR design decisions are "heavily based" on Smalltalk VM?
C#, semantically, is almost identical to Objective-C, it just has more C++-inspire syntax.
Uhh, seriously, WTF? Since when is a statically typed OO language "semantically almost identical to Objective-C", which is based on Smalltalk's message-passing, dynamic object model, with its hallmarks such as the ability to handle arbitrary messages sent to your object, and redispatch them elsewhere?
Remember that, originally, there were 2 main families of OO languages - one static, started by Simula-67, another dynamic, started by Smalltalk. Objective-C has Smalltalk all over it; on the other hand, C++ is definitely a Simula grandkid, but so is C# - in fact C# is perhaps even more so, since virtually every Simula concept has direct representation in C#, including such bits as single-inheritance, value/reference type separation or virtual concept and keyword.
Something that's semantically almost identical to Smalltalk (and thus much closer to Objective-C) is Ruby.
Regarding F# - it isn't really all that modern as such (I mean, it's explicitly just another CAML dialect!), though it does have some nifty ideas in it like active patterns or units of measurement (which have been seen elsewhere before, though). The nice thing about it is that it's an attempt to take a mostly functional language with roots in academia, and put it in the mainstream by teaching C# and VB developers to appreciate the power it gives, and sticking support for it into an IDE they already use daily.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Both are stack-based machines with instructions for dynamic dispatch.
What is the CIL instruction for dynamic dispatch, then (I assume that by "dynamic" you mean "send this message to an object of any type" here - if you rather mean virtual dispatch, then I don't see how it is Smalltalk-specific)?
C# uses the same dispatch mechanism. It is not statically typed, it just features compile-time type checking (like Objective-C and StrongTalk). The dispatch is all handled dynamically using run-time lookups.
The dispatch is not all handled dynamically in C# and CLR. The fact that virtual is a keyword in C# with exact same meaning it has in C++, and the fact that virtual dispatch semantics aren't there by default, might give a clue.
Also, you have a very interesting definition of "static t
Re: (Score:2)
Haiku is free, as in speech. That adds to its meaningfulness quite a bit I think.
Is it free as in beer, too?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The MIT License is a free software license [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's still Free Software by the FSF's and most other people's definitions. What it is *not* is copy left. So yes, you can make non-free derivatives. But the rest of the world will still have the previous, open source releases available. You even have the freedom to create a GNU-focused Haiku release if you really wanted to - it might be worth it, just for the looks of horror at the idea of a GNU/BeOS (I'd use it!).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
GNU/BeOS?
Pshh, what a newbie OS that would be!
Re: (Score:2)
Quite being a douchebag zealot. BSD and MIT are both perfectly fine open source licenses. If Haiku decided to close up their project, another team could take the last OSS release, fork it, and pick up where Haiku left off.
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soo.... (Score:2)
Here it is at last
Looks like Solaris OS
And we need this why?
Debian? (Score:2, Funny)
Is the real BeOS alive in any form? (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember when Palm bought the Be source code way back when in 2002(?). I heard that some of it found its way into PalmOS 5, but I wonder if any of its elements are used in Palm's new webOS.
Posting from inside Haiku (Score:5, Informative)
Installed it in Virtualbox, and it's running just as smoothly as I remember BeOS doing. Even installed in about 3 minutes :)
The built in browser, Bon Echo, seems to be a Firefox derivative, possibly Firefox 2, so it's not all bad.
If the hardware is supported, I think Haiku would make for a very very good OS for a netbook. It's using 60 MB total at the moment and hardly pegging the CPU. In fact Virtualbox is only using 38 MB according to Windows and hovering around 20% on a single core of my 2 GHz Turion x64. Granted, I'm only running the browser, but that's still quite nice.
Google Docs works as well, though I only have a simple spreadsheet to test with. It's a little bit slow to respond, but that is probably down to the browser. Actually now the browser is already using more memory than everything else combined, and I've only had six pages open in total. That's not a good sign. And of course the Haiku website seems to be Slashdotted, so there's no help there either ;)
But I would love to see how this OS runs on a netbook with fully supported hardware.
Re:Posting from inside Haiku (Score:5, Informative)
Bon Echo is indeed a port of Firefox 2. Webkit was ported (again) over the summer, and work is underway to construct a new browser around it.
But what of their non-code progress? (Score:3, Interesting)
Haiku Haiku (Score:2)
I could have predicted it:
One hour later,
the site is Slashdotted.
Mildly interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Although from what I read, Microsoft also helped it along, from memory Be died for the same reason that some of the people I've known who died from cancer, did; it was something from a parallel universe where good things actually happen, somehow wound up in this one by mistake, and thus had to be recalled.
Be is one of a long list of non-mainstream technologies which I've seen wither on the vine, again for the simple reason that they were too good. There is a status quo in virtually every area in this world, including computer software. If something shows up which is intelligent, positive, and therefore radical to the point where it exceeds the "just good enough," status quo, it tends to slip back below the surface, very rapidly.
I've often wondered how much more positive the world would be, if all of the things which have been repressed or destroyed because they were too innovative, too positive, or too endangering to a scarcity based economy, had actually been allowed to survive and be used.
Spellswell will support Haiku (Score:3, Insightful)
For all these years, I have held onto the Spellswell source code, and kept it safe, knowing that someday the Phoenix of Haiku would rise from the ashed of Be, Inc. (Or rather, I just don't like to ever throw anything away.)
I also still have all the protocol specification documents. I just gotta organize them and throw them up on the web again.
Word Services actually still works on Mac OS X, but not yet with Spellswell. We never did Carbonize it. Eventually Working Software was dissolved, and we all went our separate ways. But I expect I'll release an OS X-Native Spellswell at some point as well.
Some things never die... Spellswell was originally published by Green, Johnson Inc. before Mike Green and Dave Johnson split up into Cassady and Green and Working Software. My understanding is that it could check Microsoft Word 1.0 documents on the 128k Mac. It was a huge hit, before Microsoft added a built-in speller to Word.
A lot of that code from 1984 is still in there, for example an incredibly elaborate dictionary file format that provides compression while at the same time being editable.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, if OS X is on a quad-core and BeOS is on an old-style dual-Pentium.
Re:8 years is a long time (Score:5, Interesting)
I care, as does anyone who remembers operating systems that were responsive to user interaction first and foremost
I feel in full control of BeOS and Haiku (also AmigaOS) and there's a lot of things that it gets right that Windows, Mac and Linux still fail to do between them. There's something kind of indefinable 'fun' about the OS as well..
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
There's something kind of indefinable 'fun' about the OS as well..
I've sent this in to Linux developers as a feature request.
Dear developers,
Please make Linux more fun. You know... like... fun. I think it could use 15-20% more je ne sais quoi. Then it would really rock.
Thanks!
Greenguy
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I used and loved BeOS, and AmigaOS, and I still don't care about Haiku.
BeOS was amazing because it was written by a group of dedicated developers with a razor-sharp vision of how to design a great OS.
Haiku is an attempt to copy what those guys did a decade and a half ago.
One is really a lot less exciting than the other.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:8 years is a long time (Score:5, Informative)
Ok then, how about this?
BeOS never became unresponsive. No matter what you were doing and no matter how many programs were running, the operating system itself always remained quick and responsive. Windows, Linux and Mac OS X constantly become unresponsive for seconds and even minutes at a time during everyday activities. Think about every time you see an hourglass cursor (a concept that didn't even exist in BeOS) or every time a menu lags or every time your hard drive starts thrashing.
BeOS has a highly advanced journalling file system that never required defragmentation and would never lose data on the drive, even if you pulled the power plug in the middle of a write operation. It also supported meta data of any type for any file, even using another file as the meta data (ie. add a text file, image, audio file, video file, etc. as a file attribute for any other file).
On a 400MHz Pentium II PC, BeOS was capable of running 10 MP3s and 10 videos simultaneously (maybe even more), without lag or stutter. Windows, Linux and Mac OS X would have a difficult time pulling that off on a modern PC.
Sliding title tabs on windows. This allows a user to stack windows and align the title tabs next to each other for quick and easy access to every stacked window. BeOS was the first and possibly the only OS to apply this aspect of the "file folder" metaphor.
From pressing the power button to useable desktop, the boot time for BeOS was about 10 seconds (on a Pentium II 400MHz).
Fewer (no?) viruses. I realise that this has a lot to do with how popular an operating system is, but if Mac and Linux users can throw this around as a selling point for their respective OSes, then the same can be done for BeOS.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How the hell do you get a linux desktop to become unresponsive? I have used Linux on my desktop for many years, and have newer seen my desktop become unresponsive for even a single second*. Some applications(Hi firefox) may be unresponsive, but X and linux always respond.
*With the exception of when Kde/Plasma crashes. If they do that most thing become unresponsive a few seconds until the reload is complete.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How the hell do you get a linux desktop to become unresponsive?
Run any app that gobbles up all the memory it can find, such Firefox when it goes out of control. Locks up my Linux machine *solid* for fifteen-twenty minutes until the OOM killer finally manages to run and kill the process.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
BeFS.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you mean:
A mighty Project
Completed far too slowly
What is BeOS?
Re: (Score:2)
Depending on how you pronounce BeOS, though.
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Operating Systems are not trivial and hardware support is a real pain. It takes years even for large communities to do this and even a community as big as Linux's doesn't always get it right, neither do some companies for that matter. They look as if they're a small team trying to do a great deal.
I remember using BeOS on an old Pentium 166MHz with little RAM and being able to play many songs, browse and play videos and the same time when Linux and Windows struggled to do any one of these on the machine.
Sure, most people won't be interested, but variety is the spice of life and if some of the good aspects of BeOS get adopting, it will be a good thing for everybody.
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I remember using BeOS on an old Pentium 166MHz with little RAM and being able to play many songs, browse and play videos and the same time when Linux and Windows struggled to do any one of these on the machine.
Don't forget fastest boot time this side of the Pecos !
Re: (Score:2)
For anyone who is interested in why be failed: here is an article about the lawsuit that they filed against Microsoft [zdnet.co.uk] which was later won for 23 mi
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You can't lay all the blame for the demise of Power* at Intel's feet. In the desktop space they did it to themselves.
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I remember the Clipper [wikipedia.org]. I remember, back in '98 going to a state auction where lots of old furniture & equipment was being unloaded. They had maybe a dozen machines, and nobody bought them. I remember thinking that somebody, somewhere might like to port the linux kernel to them if they had the time & the right architecture documentation. It was hard to resist; like walking by puppies in the window.
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I still remember. It was the SUV... no wait, the Tank, ...or was it the mini? Aaahhh, was it a Toyota?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes...let's create a new and entirely gratuitous standard because trolls
and developers alike can't be bothered to be aware of the pre-existing
standards and conventions that have existed on Unix in general (never
mind just Linux) for 20 YEARS already.
Losers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you are basically saying that if something already exists, we shouldn't create new things?
Re: (Score:2)
It depends on how you write your software. If you're trying to port some old, crufty, legacy system that was hard-coded to use a particular GUI or DOS filesystem, then yes. If, on the other hand, you're coding new software, you can use libraries like WxWidgets to make it portable, or better, simply separate your GUI code from your main app logic, and get proper, native GUIs for each system. Even porting old software to Haiku would be arguably very worthwhile though --- even the Linux kernel itself has im
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC The OS Is POSIX Compatible, porting *most* applications from Linux to BeOS isn't very difficult.
I'll try to break it down (Score:5, Insightful)
No one has really answered you so far, surprisingly. I don't really know BeOS internals, but having toyed around with it as an ex-Amiga user looking for a modern equivalent (like many others), I can give you the general idea.
Basically, it's this: unix sucks.
Lol, it's flippant, but for all the greatness of Unix and Linux, especially compared to Windows, there's a definite truth to this. The problem is that unix is a few simple (and strong) principles from the early 70s, upon which nearly decades of evolution have occured. The fact that this was even possible is a huge testament to the flexibility of those core principles. Nonetheless, most of the evolution since is essentially a big hackish attempt to keep Unix up to date. For instance, go to phoronix and search for graphics stack. You'll find a lot of discussion about Xorg, the Linux kernel, graphics drivers, GPUs, libraries, the linux console, and how none of them are really consistent or integrated, and the problems that result. Moreover, Unix was originally designed for many users sharing a huge, expensive computer. It's not really designed for personal computers at all. Arguably, this distinction isn't so relevant these days.
BeOS, on the other hand though, is an attempt to make a modern, coherent, friendly, desktop operating system for personal computers. It's designed to be quick, to have a logical stack of libraries that cooperate (such as for audio and graphics, again, unlike Linux's audio/graphics stack).
Essentially, the point is just to build a modern system, and dump all the old, legacy cruft that just gets in the way. It's an attempt to draw a line under the past, and say, "OK, that's the old way. From now on, programs should use this stuff instead, so everything looks good and runs well, and integrates nicely."
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it could be argued that 19 years is a long time in the computer world and BeOS would be old enough to have accumulated its own cruft by now.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All of this sounds nice from an academic point of view until you realize that it was
Linux that got suitably complete hardware support first. Sure, BeOS is really nifty
but that only gets you so far. THIS is why stuff like X remains in place. It's no
small feat to rip it out completely and then replace it with something else that is
equally functional.
Otherwise some group of Linux users would have happily reinvented that wheel a long time ago.
Besides, Unix addresses features that are just plain left out of BeOS
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think both views are true and do not conflict with each other. Unix and Linux are today's reality. They are usable and robust, with many strong points and some weaknesses: the OSes for today's user (besides other options such as MacOS and Windows).
Haiku is an attempt to improve today's options. At RC1, it is not something that the majority would use instead of Unix and Linux. Maybe in the future it will be. It shows some nice features that tries to improve over today's OSes but it is not as complete as th
OpenGL (Score:3, Interesting)
Three more words (Score:4, Funny)
three words:
kernel mode setting
Three more words:
bicycle cheese starfish
Re: (Score:2)
Please forgive my ignorance, but what makes Haiku any different from some other version of Linux?
I read through the Haiku site and I can't seem to find anything that makes it any different from say Ubuntu...
Try the FAQ:
Haiku aims to be tightly integrated. That's a design trade-off with certain pros and cons. They get more performance. They also have to do all the work themselves.
With the exception of the BFS
Linux
BeOS - Zeta - Haiku - BlueEyedOS (Score:3, Informative)
I made the same mistake when I read about Haiku, since I stopped following BeOS after Be went out of business.
I used to use BeOS R5 exclusively for awhile, and then I kept it around some time after that with the patches (like the BONE net stack which was in development at Be Inc and which got leaked).
Then there were all these projects that sprouted up... BlueEyedOS, OpenBeOS, YellowTab Zeta... as well as questions about what Palm might do with BeOS. And of course there were a ton of Mac, Linux, and Windows
Re: (Score:2)
I've never used or for that matter seen BeOS, but from the article and other comments I gather it's distinguished because it was built from the ground up to be a highly responsive desktop machine capable of exploiting multiple cores. Presumably that means that when you right click for a context menu the system responds immediately, as oppose to Linux and Windows where it appears eventually when the scheduler decides it can be fit in between other applications crunching numbers in the background.
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt the underlying OS is THAT extreme, it probably just shifts all UI stuff to the top of the priority queue. An application wont see its resources suddenly yoinked from it, it will just have to wait a few extra processor cycles before it gets its own turn on the CPU.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, it's perfectly safe. With a modern OS the applications do not have a direct understanding of the CPU share they're receiving, or how much memory they really have. The OS basically provides them with a (rather abstract) virtual machine that has system calls instead of real hardware. CPU and memory can be taken away from a process at pretty much any time without it being any the wiser. This all requires hardware support but that support (unlike the support required for *full* virtual machines
Re:Just another flavour of Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
A few thoughts off the top of my head:
* It's a BeOS clone, some people miss BeOS as it was revolutionary at the time.
* It has a somewhat different user interface to what you'll get in Ubuntu. Don't know if it's better (for you) but it is different.
* The whole stack is developed and released together, so it's potentially integrated in a way that's harder to do with Linux (though obviously Linux has more people doing the interoperation and integration work).
* It aims for binary compatibility with BeOS - run your old apps.
* It's fast. I'd be surprised if it gave you the throughput of a Linux system but for desktop use BeOS was always very responsive. I don't know if Haiku is as good as BeOS in this respect but it boots *super* quick and even under full emulation it runs at a surprising speed.
* AFAIK it's also quite lightweight compared to modern Linux running a contemporary DE. BeOS originally ran on really weedy hardware. Don't know if Haiku is *that* light but I do know that it has a fairly small resource footprint.
* New, non-Linux kernel and OS - is this an advantage? Not necessarily but it sure is cool. It's a microkernel, too.
* BeOS used the filesystem in very cool ways; it's powerful metadata support let you basically treat it like a database, reducing the amount of stuff you needed to do in specialised apps.
* It still has some POSIX support so your favourite shell utilities probably ought to work.
Taken all together, once the wireless support is done and the OS stabilised a bit more, Haiku should be an extremely good fit for a netbook, amongst other things.
Re:Just another flavour of Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm of the "if it looks like a duck" school of thought
Sounds more like your school of thought goes like "if it's not an octopus and not a fish and it has two legs, it must be a duck".
Re: (Score:2)
Also... no one that can explain why it's different than Linux is using it.
Why did apple pay more for NeXT though? (Score:3, Insightful)
That about matches what I've read of the whole affair. Didn't know that Palm bought Be for so little though; that's been a harsh lesson for someone I'll bet.
Does anyone happen to know why Apple only wanted to pay about $115M for BeOS, when they eventually paid something like $400M for NeXT? Did they just think NeXT was worth more (that they'd need to spend a lot more developing BeOS maybe), or did they just run out of options and get desperate by the NeXT stage, I wonder?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
NeXT was the more valuable property - they had actual products that they sold in quantity to actual customers.
Also, never underestimate the power of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. He was Chairman and CEO of NeXT...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(1) NeXTSTEP had more of an established market presence,
(2) NeXT had some things besides NeXTSTEP of interest (e.g., WebObjects),
(3) NeXT had Steve Jobs (which was probably seen as positive for Apple, though it turned out not to be positive rather quickly for Apple CEO Gil Amelio.)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a shame, with a (more or less) entirely new OS, they have a chance of designing it for entirely new hardware. But then again, BeOS is designed to run on very low-end hardware and that requires 32bit support. Catch-22 I suppose.
Re:Screenshot (Score:3, Insightful)
If any one wonders how does Haiku look in an OS, here is one screenshoot
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haiku_Screenshot.png [wikimedia.org]
So, it looks like the Be theme in KDE?
Kind of a joke there, but also a bit of a serious comment, too: can't tell much about an OS from a screenshot like this.