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An introduction to the Haiku OS

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Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#41

Post by spooneybarger »

mambodog wrote: post #18

I can't see what Haiku offers that modern OS X doesn't. Drag and Drop between applications? Got it. Combining soundcards to use in aggregate? Got it[1]. Object Oriented APIs? Had it since NeXTSTEP (and they're called 'Kits' as well). The only thing that seemed mildly interesting to me was the routing of audio between apps, but this is mostly achieved these days using ReWire or Soundflower (admittedly not an ideal sol…

I use Mac OS X every single day and I would freely admit it is a giant bloated memory sucking pig. My finder was using 100 megs of memory yesterday. Why? Who knows but for me I'd like to have a lean OS with good features rather than one that I need to reinstall every year because it suddenly becomes a sluggish, memory sucking pig like my Mac OS X machines have over the last 5 years.

Haiku isn't a memory pig- I'd like to see that ideal come back in OS design.

And yes, I am transfixed with 'memory sucking pig' as a phrase right now.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#42

Post by spooneybarger »

sidek wrote: post #5

Having tried Haiku, I like it a lot. I stopped using it, though, because it's really hard to program in it: most languages aren't supported, and others have large math errors.

languages have large math errors? can you explain that?

the haiku apis are C++. how that leads to math errors w/ other languages well... umm... what?

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#43

Post by thisrod »

tmcw wrote: post #10

The fact that BeOS is single-user is news to me. I have to wonder what the security model looks like without a 'root' concept - this article's dismissal of the problem seems pretty shallow. Obviously the "Change the World" title is just linkbait. Thanks for renaming.

What's the problem? There's one user, it's their data on the drive, and they can do what they want with it.

In any case, root isn't the solution. It's a bug in Unix that Plan 9 fixed.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#44

Post by spooneybarger »

Nelson69 wrote: post #30
slantyyz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see what Haiku offers that modern OS X doesn't. That's not really the point. Haiku's intent is to keep BeOS alive. At the time (over 10 years ago), BeOS was the epitome of a modern OS. The pickings were slimmer back then. Of course, it took almost that long to make Haiku happen, and the OS world has changed significantly since then.

For a "modern OS" BeOS lacked a lot. Shoddy hardware support at best, a terrible network stack, did it have a printing subsystem? I know they wanted to rebuild the networking stack I don't remember print being good. Internationalization was non-existant. It was an RTOS with a UI on it, sexy and clean, I'm not a hater but a long long long way from NextStep or OSX.

Replace shoddy with limited and I could agree with that. BeOS died very young.

Pretty much all those points could be made at the inception of any OS. OS X had a nice jump on that because it was NextStep and had been developed for well over a decade.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#45

Post by wmf »

tmcw wrote: post #10

The fact that BeOS is single-user is news to me. I have to wonder what the security model looks like without a 'root' concept - this article's dismissal of the problem seems pretty shallow. Obviously the "Change the World" title is just linkbait. Thanks for renaming.

IIRC BeOS had no security model; basically everything ran as root all the time. You might say that it had no concept of non-root. Remember that Be viewed Mac OS 8.0 and Windows 95 as their competition, not Unix.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#46

Post by lanolin »

BeOS was amazing. It simply smoked the competition. It was sleek, functional, good-looking, fun to program for, and had blistering speed (remember it playing 6 different videos each on a side of a rotating cube?).

It was not free software, but with features like that, who cared, right?

Well, its community cared when BeOS was mutated into an "appliance OS" and then later sold off and closed down.

I'm not optimistic about Haiku. As soon as it becomes popular (and I don't see why it wouldn't -- it's aimed squarely at knocking the socks off of end-users), I bet all the core devs get scooped up by some company which will then add proprietary lock-in features and sell it to users.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#47

Post by sidek »

spooneybarger wrote: post #42
sidek wrote: post #5

Having tried Haiku, I like it a lot. I stopped using it, though, because it's really hard to program in it: most languages aren't supported, and others have large math errors.

languages have large math errors? can you explain that? the haiku apis are C++. how that leads to math errors w/ other languages well... umm... what?

I doubt it's still an issue, but some scripting languages (Python?) had math errors. Why, I don't know.

edit : Here's what I was referring to. http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2009-January/085...

edit2: It seems like it was fixed 17 months ago. http://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/3308

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#48

Post by jbrennan »

tiles wrote: post #20

The reason that I'm excited about Haiku: a fledgling open-source OS that isn't based on the Linux kernel. It has been awesome to see Linux find its place on the desktop and mobile, yet, the homogeny is rather stifling and it's disappointing to see there's no alternative to maintaining UNIX's legacy (X11, filesystem layout, my personal dislikes). Haiku seems to have the potential to fill that void.

I wonder what a mobile OS based on Haiku could be like?

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#49

Post by hexley »

thinksocrates wrote: post #35
protomyth wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPad seems to be doing ok with that limitation.

The iPad does not have that limitation. Applications are not run as root. If they were there would be no need for jailbreaking.

That's not true, Applications could still run as root but be signed and subject to approval as they are now. The only difference I can think of is they just wouldn't be sandboxed any longer.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#50

Post by pyre »

phlyingpenguin wrote: post #34
Nelson69 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a "modern OS" BeOS lacked a lot. Shoddy hardware support at best, a terrible network stack, did it have a printing subsystem? I know they wanted to rebuild the networking stack I don't remember print being good. Internationalization was non-existant. It was an RTOS with a UI on it, sexy and clean, I'm not a hater but a long long long way from NextStep or OSX.

To be fair, much of the needed work was accomplished in the Dan0 development release that was leaked near BeOS's demise. This included the BONE network stack and some 3D support. Everything about Dan0 was, of course, very much development code, but it was definitely a marked improvement over R5. Haiku was able to use some of the Dan0 high level kits in place until rewrites could be made. Clearly the Apple/Be Inc. iss…

I'm assuming that the wink implies that 10.0 and 10.1 were both beta releases. :)

[Heck, there were many of parts of the OS that were practically beta software until 10.4]

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