BeOS Successor Haiku Keeps the Faith 448
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."
Sweet! (Score:2)
Next best thing since the revival of the Commodore 64 [wikipedia.org] :)
How have the APIs changed? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm interested to know if Haiku will run under Parallels system virtualization, which itself runs under OSX. Be great for s/w development, as that's what's on my desk.
I'm curious, too, if it is able to run in a full non-virtual memory, non-swapping configuration for speed and reliability. That'd make it a very interesting OS to me for running on actual hardware of its own. There's nothing like watching linux turn into a total turtle after running for too long and building up lots of cache and swap to sou
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
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.
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.
Haiku 1.0 == BeOS (Score:4, Informative)
AFAIK, the goal of the Haiku 1.0 release is to be fully ABI compatible with BeOS 4.x and/or 5.x. After that, they'll start adding new features.
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.
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
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
each time I Haiku
fast computer start for me
but no web browsing
Re:Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
links will be ported
but without graphics you face
a life without porn
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
WebKit will be your
Haiku way to get your porn
so please don't worry
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
ASCII boobs are so so hot
Jiggle, asterisk!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Haikus penned about
BeOS with GCC
Make me OGC
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!"
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.
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.
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.
Nitpicking is fun/I query your poetry/WTF is that? (Score:3, Funny)
Haiku boots quickly
similar to BeOS
now with GCC!
Haikus are tricky. /BEE-OSS/ or /BEE-OH-ESS/
Is
the way to say it?
35 Seconds - Natively? (Score:3, Informative)
35 Seconds in VirtualBox ain't bad! I'm actually kind of surprised you didn't see more errors than you did.
If Ubuntu boots on that machine in 35 seconds, you should see how long Haiku takes on raw hardware (and take a look at bootchart).
One of BeOS's strongest points was it's lightning-fast boot time compared to Windows 95/98, and in fact, most Linux distributions at the time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I use Fedora 10 on my laptop and boot times are in the order of one minute and login to the KDE or Gnome session managers takes approx 30 seconds (login via command line takes about two seconds). The thing is I rarely log out, switch the machine off or even reboot unless I get a new kernel. Once I have logged in access t
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Mine was at a full desktop in 12 seconds - much, *much* faster than my host Ubuntu install.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you ever use the original BeOS? It's probably the OS I've enjoyed using the most. I still have the disks around (R4 and R5).
BeOS WAS something to get excited about when it came out. It was pretty much the best platform for digital audio work. It just ran into too many hurdles to work its way into the market.
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: (Score:2)
If Haiku has anywhere near the performance that BeOS did, I'll be using it for pretty much any "appliance"-type application I have. Homemade set-top boxes and the like.
That OS put all of its contemporaries to shame with its smooth multitasking and media playing, and it did it on hardware that would cry, have a nervous breakdown, and melt into a pile of goo from merely being in the same room as the installation disc for a modern graphical OS.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
the best part was that the CPU monitor allowed you to turn off both CPUs, instantly locking the computer
I'm not sure what to say about an OS that boasts this as its best feature :)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
One thing they did was that every window ran in its own thread. Another beautiful thing was the forever extensible BMessage [haiku-os.org] - pack and unpack primitive types (incl. pointers and other BMessages). Who cares about parameter compatibility when you can pass around whatever data you like.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fine grained multi tasking, and avoiding mutexs. I think BeOS uses message passing to implement inter process communications. In engineering terms, it is the most modern desktop operating system.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who really wants a fair scheduler for a desktop OS? Most desktop users want the scheduler to respond to THEIR wishes at any given time.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux was designed to operate as a desktop server, the best of both worlds, able to run on minimal resources yet still have full unix server style functionality. That's why it does both admirably but only if your idea of a desktop is a CLI.
This is where BeOS and Linux philosophy diverge. Linux has gone with multiuser server style responsiveness, BeOS with single user style responsiveness. Linux has a GUI as an afterthought, BeOS has it as a central focus. Linux has many targets from the smallest to the larg
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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?
Re:Deadhorse? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Had to be done (Score:5, Funny)
HTML line break marks
*hangs head shamefully*
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall when he had to tell Be inc's shareholders why selling all assets to Palm for $11 million in 2001 was better for them than letting Apple buy the same assets for $500 million in 1996.
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]
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ths typical Mac user likes MacOS because all the software and hardware is beautifully integrated and consistent, and everything Just Works.
I must've thought those exact words a hundred times tonight as I reinstalled OS X on my wife's iMac because it wouldn't recognize her new iPod Touch and that was Apple Tech Support's final suggestion.
"Just Works" my ass.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This said, I happen to run NS3.3/Risc on a SS10 on a regular basis, so I may be a bit partial toward the concept of this OS.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, WindowMaker is a standalone, light windowmanager that happens to be themed like Nextstep / OPENSTEP ; GNUStep is a collection of libraries that intend to bring desktop manager like capabilities to most windowmanagers, as well as OPENSTEP 4.2 / Cocoa source compatibility to FOSS systems. Both fit quite well, but GNUStep is equally at ease on AfterStep or XFCE and can be used along Gnome or KDE.
WindowMaker doesn't itself depend on GNUStep, but relies on th
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.
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: (Score:3, Informative)
Like BeOS, Haiku is a single-user system. That said, multi-user support was kept in mind from day one. R2 will supposedly be a true multi-user system.
Re:How secure is BeOS? (Score:5, Funny)
As I remember,
BeOS was single user.
Is Haiku secure?
(There, fixed it for you.)
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...
"cleaning programming API ever"? (Score:3, Funny)
MOUSEBENDER: It's not much of an API, is it?
WENSLEYDALE: Finest in the industry, sir.
MOUSEBENDER: Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.
WENSLEYDALE: Well, it's so clean, sir.
MOUSEBENDER: It's certainly uncontaminated by developers.
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Insightful)
No, having different OSs isn't about beating Microsoft.
Have some imagination, please.
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
No, having different OSs isn't about beating Microsoft.
You wouldn't know that from reading Slashdot, though.
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:4, Insightful)
Would that be the same Slashdot where we're having a lively (and so far, very reasonable) discussion on the front page about a non-Linux, non-MS OS?
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually went to Haiku's site and poked around a little bit. Aside from the very 90's looking screen shots of a couple of apps - mail, contacts, media prefs., what is actually available to run under Haiku?
The apps are what make an OS usable, really. The OS itself should just get out of the way and let the (hopefully) plethora of apps do their job.
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:4, Funny)
Installed zip image.
ssh is included.
What else do you need?
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
He came with cup full
Claiming all goals met
Missing, perchance, a nic driver?
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:4, Funny)
They came with cup full
People looked on in horror
Two girls and one cup
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of open-source apps used to run on BeOS. No idea if they still do. Firefox was ported, as was (IIRC) OpenOffice. I'm pretty sure it's posix-compatible (more or less, at least) and it had a GTK port, so loads of other stuff had been ported over by enthusiasts. You could run most of the same end-user apps as in Linux or BSD, plus many of the server apps (Apache had a port, I think). Also, it had a few exclusive programs--I had a 3-disc RPG for mine, only ever released on BeOS. Never finished it, b
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Firefox appears to run on it. I can't get the networking to work under VMware because (I think) VMware is choosing the wrong network adapter. There don't seem to be any preference panes or anything like that.
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).
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
Linux was already wooing the girlfriend.
I think this might be a bad analogy.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree! (Score:3, Funny)
BeOS is easily the most pleasant-to-use operating system I've ever seen.
I agree - it is very pleasant to be able to use an operating system without having to worry about things like software!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I did the same thing with Linux on a 100Mhz 486 with 32M RAM. Not only
was I playing back the mp3's but I was ripping them and converting them
at the same time. Netscape and Star Office were still perfectly usable
on top of that and my music didn't miss a beat.
I don't believe this for a second. Star Office, Netscape, and X itself were all performance-killers on 486s. No way you were playing MP3s and encoding them at the same time.
I'm not sure why you feel the need to lie, but it certainly doesn't make Linux
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:4, Interesting)
Hear, hear.
I distinctly remember ugly hacks to get MP3s to play smoothly and reliably on my (absurdly stable and still running) P120 Linux box. It went something like this:
nice -n-10 (mpg123 "hello i am an mp3.mp3" | bplay -b 4096 -)
XMMS (or whatever it was named back then) didn't work much at all -- the box didn't have enough oomph. Winamp, under Windows, wasn't very reliable. It took a Gods-small and efficient mp3 player, at a real command line, without X running, along with a program designed specifically only to buffer audio, for it to function reliably.
It chewed up more than 90% CPU according to top. And yes, I was pleased with that -- it worked.
Nowadays, I get occasional skips under Windows on my 2.4GHz quad-core Q6600 box. And similar skips and strangeness on my Athlon XP 1900+ Linux box. Both of which, one would think, would be adequate to play a fucking mp3 without hacks and tweakage. *sigh*
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and my Linux experience back then wasn't nearly as good as yours--it would skip when I sent or received an IM, saved any kind of document, when browsed to a new web page, or when it decided it needed to do some kind of housekeeping thing in the background. Not every time, but fairly often. It was better than Windows (which basically couldn't be used for anything else if you wanted to hear your music at all) but BeOS was still superior. I wasn't using super-light distros, though, so it may have been t
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.
Re:BeOS Haiku (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be, Inc.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
(just my opinion here. if you were a BeOS fan, skip it)
I was a NeXTstep developer at that time, an I did quite a lot of BeOS developement too.
Let me give it to you straight:
BeOS sucked balls. The APIs were horrendous C++ kludges. For a design that was done 8 years later than NeXT, it didn't make sense. The UI was ugly (for instance, windows minimisation left the small title bar in the middle of the screen).
At the end, it really looked like a bastard C++ clone of MacOS to me (which was already doomed at that
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]
Re:Plan 9 (Score:4, Informative)
[...]even on Windows (Unicode for example).
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but this is not quite correct. Unicode was not invented for Plan 9 (in fact, it seems to have been invented by some Apple guy). Ken Thompson invented UTF-8 for Plan 9 with the purpose of encoding Unicode in an ASCII-compatible manner, and UTF-8 sees only very little usage on Windows, which mostly uses UCS-2 (or is it UTF-16 these days?).
I just thought I'd pick that nit. :)
Re: (Score:2)
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. I'm constantly reminded of the scene in Caesar's Palace in Monty Python The Life of Brian. You know, where Brian tries to separate the People's Front of Judea and the Campaign to Free Galilee. When he says they need to unite against the common enemy they all shout "The Judean People's Front!" Then Brian has to say "No, no...the Romans!" That is what these OS wars are about. We need to unite against Microsoft, the dominant power. We already have several OS alternatives out there, Mac, Linux, BSD. Why throw another in the mix which will never be supported mainstream?
I'm pretty sure this is for hobbyists who remember BeOS, or geeks who are just curious. If you're talking about markets, competition, and "uniting against Microsoft", you've missed the point.
Also, people doing things for fun occasionally discover new techniques or ideas, so why not? I doubt anyone's putting aside a career to work on this, so what's lost?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's Haiku, not BeOS. And I wasn't aware there was a limit to the number of operating systems allowed to exist. Is there a limit for any kind of software, or just operating systems?
You know, where Brian tries to separate the People's Front of Judea and the Campaign to Free Galilee.
Except there they had a common cause. In the market, we have this thing known as competition.
We already have several OS alternatives out there, Mac, Linux, BSD. Why throw another in the mix which will never be supported mainstream
Licensing (Score:2, Interesting)
The GPL was made specifically for fighting against big proprietary vendors that abuse selling proprietary software/hardware in order to increase profits. If that's your mission, then GNU Linux is your friend.
But after a while, you simply don't care anymore. You just want the damn video card to work as advertised and display all the eye candy it possibly can. You want to use an ipod because it is actually a decent device, or you actually feel that paying individually for songs (drm or not) is actually a ju
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.
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.
mod parent up (Score:3)
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.
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Here, here.
I love Linux and run in wherever possible, but even after years of experience I always feel that I don't really understand 80% of what's happening under the hood.
If it weren't for Ubuntu's terrific work streamlining and simplifying the OS, I would still be running Windows in my desktop and maybe text-mode Linux in a headless server doing simple tasks (it was the only way I was able to make some sense of Linux 10 years ago and keep it from becoming overwhelmingly complex).
I used to use BeOS back i
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.
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The summary doesn't state that, though, it states that the recent addition of a GCC toolchain "clears the way" for a port of Firefox. Having the GCC toolchain is a start, but not the whole shebang.
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Haiku has drivers for both nVidia and ATI, though they're nowhere near where they should be... but they do work quite well. 3D support is provided by Mesa. I don't think 3D hardware is supported ATM.
Ethernet support is pretty damn good. I've yet to test a machine whose NIC isn't supported by Haiku. Its netstack is very very good for its alpha state, quite fast and stable.
Last time I tried, sound was pretty flaky. BUT that was before they integrated Open Sound System and all that jazz. I hear support is quit
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The problem here is that you're putting all the focus on BeOS, and not really looking at Haiku.
The goal for R1, which is getting pretty close, was to simply re-create the core BeOS R5. At that point, it will officially have recreated a stunning technology from 2000. I will assume you remember the state of Linux in 2000, right?
Post R1, that's when the work can really begin on addressing all those features you feel were lacking. Multi-user was probably the biggest one, but that is a known, and work can sta
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