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Be Operating Systems Technology

A Decade of Haiku OS 203

CharlyFoxtrot writes "Haiku OS, the open source reimplementation of BeOS, celebrated its tenth birthday this week. 'Ten years ago today, the first post appeared on the mailing list of our project — then still called "OpenBeOS" — officially marking the start of our endeavor. Back then, with the imminent demise of Be Inc., there was an excitement and creative motivation in the air, that lead many to think a first release was only a matter of a few years. As it turns out, this estimation was a bit too optimistic ...' The project is currently on the third alpha of its Haiku Release 1."
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A Decade of Haiku OS

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Assuming the OS makes it that far.

    Now that they're done trying to clone BeOS (for which they did a fine job), they're starting to go and do their own thing. Much to the despair of everyone else- these new tangents of development are very un-BeOS like and lack the elegance their role model exhibits. The package manager/filesystem they're trying to implement is a perfect example of this.

    I sincerely hope that they figure that stuff out- lest Haiku turn into an unmaintainable, overcomplicated piece of junk. It

  • by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @04:42AM (#37151742) Homepage
    "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it."
    -- Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be, Inc.
    • by hawk ( 1151 )

      C'mon, now; this is important. Apple's OS just doesn'ttake full advantage of my 68040; now I'll be abletousemysystem asitshpuld ha been in the first place.

      Those guys buying the PowerPC macs are just fools . .

  • by SlothDead ( 1251206 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @04:46AM (#37151758)

    So it arrives just in time for the post PC era?

    Don't get me wrong, I tried Alpha 2 a while ago and I think that if they finish it and if it got support from the developer community it would be the best desktop OS ever: The UI is excellent and it is very developer friendly.

    What I don't like about it is that it is basically just BeOS: A normal PC OS. And are you really sure that PCs will be the Computer of choice for anyone besides office workers and Slashdot readers?

    • And are you really sure that PCs will be the Computer of choice for anyone besides office workers and Slashdot readers?

      When I get home from work, I surf on my PC and watch videos. What else would I choose for that, off work, that would be as nice as having a full sized keyboard and screen?

      • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        you'd choose a touch tablet in the bed start wondering why you're having back and wrist problems..

        • I don't have any back, wrist or eye problems. I work at a computer all day and spend a few hours on a PC at home. Good diet and the gym I guess.

          I can't see a tablet on my couch being as useful/fun when I get home as a very nice PC on my large desk and my comfy big chair.

      • by tepples ( 727027 )
        As long as "surf" doesn't involve a lot of typing, a tablet with an HDMI cable to a television might be able to substitute.
        • That's a nifty idea. I wonder if it would be possible to somehow power the tablet from the HDMI cable, perhaps with some kind of injector, using any unused lines... Heck, you could handshake it, which would keep the injector expensive, sounds like a win for the manufacturer... and right up Apple's alley, if they weren't in love with inventing new connectors.

        • by Twinbee ( 767046 )

          What you can't already connect tablets up to bigger displays?

        • why a cable? and why hdmi?

          I do some of this now with flingo.org for video - and the reading crap on my laptop..

          • by tepples ( 727027 )
            Because it works with less expensive HDTVs that lack Flingo support, such as the TV that one may already own.
    • It would require an ARM port to run on ARM tablet systems. Most tablets these days are ARM based. Microsoft wants Windows 8 to run on ARM tablets. If HaikuOS can run on ARM systems it will have a lower overhead than Windows 8 and thus run faster with less memory.

      It has been a decade and still is in alpha release, if some major computer company was investing in it like they did the Mozilla Foundation we'd have a golden 1.0 release by now.

      • There has been some ARM porting [haiku-os.org] work done but as you say they are working with limited resources. I think if a company were to want to develop a new tablet OS from scratch, they could do worse than basing it on Haiku which is released under the very permissive MIT license. Hell, if Apple could cut OSX down to tablet size it could surely be done with the much leaner Haiku.

        • The thing is that there's really no compelling reason to use Haiku because there's no applications to speak of except some ports. Therefore it makes more sense to use Linux (GPL), Linux with your own userland (kinda GPL) or some BSD (copyright only) depending on their particular needs. Tablets are only getting more powerful, which reduces the benefit of a lightweight OS.

          • There were no applications for Android when they started of either, nor for (the now maybe defunct?) WebOS. Besides realistically, none of the existing FOSS apps are going to be ported straight over to modern type tablets (ie. no stylus, etc) because they aren't built from the ground up around a touch based metaphor. I also think there will be some enduring benefits for lightweight OS's yet on tablets, like better battery life for one. The hardware will no doubt get faster but tablets are very constrained b

        • by tepples ( 727027 )

          Hell, if Apple could cut OSX down to tablet size

          Then it would be called iOS.

          • Yeah sorry, I messed up my tenses. What I meant was: "If Apple can do it with OSX, then surely it could be done with Haiku."

  • We know it's an OS :P

    • I felt compelled to throw it in there. People are always complaining that there's no explanation in the summary of project names and such and I don't know how much of the current Slashdot readership actually remembers the BeOS, it has been a long time.

      • by hawk ( 1151 )

        To put that time into perspective:

        I have three grandchildren without having children as old as BeOS . . .

        Maybe they can port this thing to the new Amiga . .

    • Sweaty fingers, in the summer afternoon
      look up "haiku", which a webpage mentions:
      confusion ensues.

  • Well, if your OS is less relevant than Hurd these days -- and less capable -- you might have a problem.

    • And if you don't know the difference between a kernel and an OS on Slashdot and post as if they are the same, you DO have a problem.

      Prepare for ridicule.

      • For a long time, Hurd was merely a part of the GNU system, that just happened to be not functional "yet". You had GNU/Linux vs plain "GNU". It's only decades of Linux' dominance and Debian's concept of the kernel being interchangeable (linux vs kfreebsd vs hurd) that caused us to think about Hurd as something on its own.

        • by hawk ( 1151 )

          Yes, we all sat around thinking of the GNU operating system, and singing its praises.

          Never mind that there wasn't a single system in the universe that ran this system after decades; we knew it would be great when it came.

          So we made sure not to give any credit to any of the systems that used it's pieces. After all, they were just kernels, or just full Unix operating systems, and other insignificant things; it was all about GNU.

          hawk

    • by hawk ( 1151 )

      I'm torn here: is relevant than Hurd more or less embarrassing than still in alpha after Duke Nukem has shipped?

  • It's great that you made the 10 year anniversary. I'm rather impressed by the quality of the system at this point. It's a lot of work that most people will never understand. (Yeah i run an even less relevant OS project)

    Working on Linux isn't the same thing. There are many people that work on Linux. Keeping a smaller project running is a lot more challenging. They had the magic to attract help, but at the Linux levels. I think they'll have something quite usable in some time. I've dug through some of their code and it's quite good in many places.

  • How appropriate.

    BeOS was designed as a replacement for MacOS, unfortunately, Steve one-uped Jean-Louise with NeXT and stole that crown with a superior product. I still prefer
    BeOS over NeXT though

    The last efforts of Be Inc. was to bundle the lightweight BeOS into Internet Appliances, a concept not dissimilar to Tablet-based computers. They even had a Tactile UI called BeIA, (which although completely unrelated to) could be considered a precursor to modern tablets.

    PalmSource bought Be Inc.'s IP and planned to

  • Every now and then I'll download and play with one of the "alternative" OSs. The box I'm typing this on (a Mac running Lion) has VMware installs of Haiku, Syllable [syllable.org] (what AtheOS evolved in to), Minix [minix3.org], and several flavours of Linux. What next? MVS under Hercules [hercules-390.org], perhaps?

    Technically, Minix is the most interesting. Haiku is the prettiest.

    ...laura

The computer is to the information industry roughly what the central power station is to the electrical industry. -- Peter Drucker

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