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Haiku Project

haiku-os.org

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Re: Haiku Project

#21

Post by panic »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #15
miles wrote: post #8

I always smile wistfully whenever Haiku/BeOS comes up... its performance and just sheer fun remains unmatched by Windows, OS X, Linux, etc (try it out in a VM). dr_dank summed it up best back in 2003 [0]: BeOS was demonstrated to me during my senior year of college. The guy giving the talk played upwards of two dozen mp3s, a dozen or so movie trailers, the GL teapot thing, etc. simultanously. None of the apps skipped…

Well let's don't get all romantic about something that was, in the end, half-baked. BeOS debuted at the dawn of the web, and it had a barely-working, userspace network stack and a web browser that essentially didn't work at all. It had some novel APIs, a nifty filesystem, and made for a damn good demo, but there wasn't much more to it.

Network stacks and web browsers are easier to improve incrementally than more fundamental parts of the OS.

Re: Haiku Project

#22

Post by honkhonkpants »

cm3 wrote: post #18
honkhonkpants wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well let's don't get all romantic about something that was, in the end, half-baked. BeOS debuted at the dawn of the web, and it had a barely-working, userspace network stack and a web browser that essentially didn't work at all. It had some novel APIs, a nifty filesystem, and made for a damn good demo, but there wasn't much more to it.

The filesystem metadata queries were real-time back when spinning disks were much slower and neither the processing power or ram was comparable to what we have today. With today's machines we do not have the same experience under Windows, macos, GNOME, KDE. Feature-wise yes, performance no. Is there a technical reason we couldn't have the same filesystem integration? No, there isn't, it's just incompatible priorities…

We have all that and more in macos today and have for many years. Spotlight is implemented by the same person who wrote BeFS.

Re: Haiku Project

#23

Post by mikestew »

I've played with Haiku in a VM in the past. But what is suggested that I do with the OS? Be a daily driver? Does it fit some niche use case? I have an old netbook, I'd load Haiku on the boot partition, I really would. I'm a sucker for something different (given the evils of Big OS and all), and for the underdog. Hell, I might even contribute if I have something (coding wise) to give.

So I load 'er up on the ol' boot partion and...what? Music production? Just a lightweight, novel web surfing machine? Someone, anyone, give me a reason to spend my weekend farting around with OS installs.

Counter to that, should the answer be, "meh, it's just something novel to play with", then why are the devs pouring time into it? I guess I'm trying to politely say I kinda don't get the point. (But maybe a good answer to question #1 can help.)

EDIT: thanks much for the answers. Very helpful, if for no other reason than confirming that there isn't the answer. Now to go blow the dust off that old MSI Wind.

Re: Haiku Project

#24

Post by AstroJetson » 

    Huge Hacker Comments
    about Haiku OS today
    But so few Haiku's

    BE/OS clone
    quiet power, elegance
    just simplicity  

    Plan 9 and Minux
    all have their followers 
    will Haiku get love

    More than a small toy 
    Time will be the decider 
    Windows look out now

Re: Haiku Project

#25

Post by astrobe_ »

panic wrote: post #21
honkhonkpants wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well let's don't get all romantic about something that was, in the end, half-baked. BeOS debuted at the dawn of the web, and it had a barely-working, userspace network stack and a web browser that essentially didn't work at all. It had some novel APIs, a nifty filesystem, and made for a damn good demo, but there wasn't much more to it.

Network stacks and web browsers are easier to improve incrementally than more fundamental parts of the OS.

I'm not so sure. When you implement your own OS your hands are mostly free. With browser on the other hand, you have to comply to large, complex and evolving standards (HTML/CSS/Javascript). I might be biased by the fact that I dabbled a bit with the Linux kernel and dislike graphics programming, though.

Re: Haiku Project

#26

Post by gavanwoolery »

Interesting philosophy on why Haiku is not Linux-based (from the site):

Linux-based distributions stack up software -- the Linux kernel, the X Window System, and various DEs with disparate toolkits such as GTK+ and Qt -- that do not necessarily share the same guidelines and/or goals. This lack of consistency and overall vision manifests itself in increased complexity, insufficient integration, and inefficient solutions, making the use of your computer more complicated than it should actually be.

Instead, Haiku has a single focus on personal computing and is driven by a unified vision for the whole OS. That, we believe, enables Haiku to provide a leaner, cleaner and more efficient system capable of providing a better user experience that is simple and uniform throughout.

Re: Haiku Project

#27

Post by wcummings »

adamnemecek wrote: post #6

BeOS (the OS Haiku is a reimplemntation of) has an interesting history. It was an OS that has a fully async C++ API (very novel for it's time and even now). The fact that it was async made the OS much more responsive and had a better CPU utilization. BeOS was another company that Apple considered to purchase but they ended up buying NeXT instead. IIRC they ended up going with NeXT because BeOS didn't have networking…

The BeBox had dual cpus, too, iirc

Re: Haiku Project

#28

Post by zem »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #15
miles wrote: post #8

I always smile wistfully whenever Haiku/BeOS comes up... its performance and just sheer fun remains unmatched by Windows, OS X, Linux, etc (try it out in a VM). dr_dank summed it up best back in 2003 [0]: BeOS was demonstrated to me during my senior year of college. The guy giving the talk played upwards of two dozen mp3s, a dozen or so movie trailers, the GL teapot thing, etc. simultanously. None of the apps skipped…

Well let's don't get all romantic about something that was, in the end, half-baked. BeOS debuted at the dawn of the web, and it had a barely-working, userspace network stack and a web browser that essentially didn't work at all. It had some novel APIs, a nifty filesystem, and made for a damn good demo, but there wasn't much more to it.

the network stack is the reason i never got into it; it didn't work on my machine at the time and i wasn't about to buy a new network card just to experiment with beos.

Re: Haiku Project

#29

Post by ZenoArrow »

chc wrote: post #10
codegeek wrote: post #7

lets hope it is not a trademark violation https://www.haikulearning.com/ EDIT: I jumped the gun on this one. Should have done a bit googling first.

Haiku predates Haiku Learning by several years. But fortunately trademarks don't generally work that way and lots of companies and products have, for example, the word "Windows" in their name.

From what I've seen, trademarks only limit name choices for direct competitors. That's why the existence of Apple (the music label started by the Beatles) didn't stop the name being used again by Jobs and Wozniak.

Re: Haiku Project

#30

Post by TkTech »

mikestew wrote: post #23

I've played with Haiku in a VM in the past. But what is suggested that I do with the OS? Be a daily driver? Does it fit some niche use case? I have an old netbook, I'd load Haiku on the boot partition, I really would. I'm a sucker for something different (given the evils of Big OS and all), and for the underdog. Hell, I might even contribute if I have something (coding wise) to give. So I load 'er up on the ol' boot…

It's a general-purpose OS. Do whatever you normally do on it.

More importantly, it's a learning tool. It's been part of many courses and many rounds of Google Summer of Code. It's an embeddable kernel + OS free of the cancerous GPL, under a permissive MIT licence. It is extremely well documented, well tested, and consistent. Writing drivers for it is very simple. This makes it interesting for education, for-profit development, embedded applications, etc...

It's also just fun. There is a very active forum[1], wiki[2], and community[3] that has been spiting out hobby OSs for a decade. The kernel originally used in Haiku is from NewOS, a project by Travis Geiselbrecht that was also just a hobby project.

[1]: http://forum.osdev.org/

[2]: http://wiki.osdev.org/

[3]: irc://chat.freenode.net:6667/#osdev

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