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An introduction to the Haiku OS

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Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#61

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…

While I wouldn't disagree that an OSX install can get slower over several years, I can't help but think what you want is a bit of a case of 'the grass is always greener'. There are plenty of lean linux distributions out there, but the reality is that they cut things out.

Modern operating systems do a lot to improve your experience as a user and provide various services. A lot of tech people seem to want their system to have as much CPU and RAM free as possible, but then what are you going to do with it? Are your apps actually running out of memory and swapping?

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#62

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 can't see what Haiku offers that modern OS X doesn't. It is free and it doesn't require proprietary hardware?

You're right, I didn't really consider this. I run a hackintosh myself, so the hardware thing wasn't really on my radar.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#63
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, get some lens flare and transparent windows in there!

Or, you know, text smoothing. Antialiasing. Silly stuff like that ;)

Haiku icons are actually stored in a vector format instead of bitmap. That means all icons are resolution-independent and antialiased. Also, since the format was designed for icons, the filesize is so small that the data will usually fit in the same block as inode data, so the file takes effectively 0 space on the HD!

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#64

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 can't see what Haiku offers that modern OS X doesn't. It is free and it doesn't require proprietary hardware?

I run OSX...love it. I ran Haiku in a vm yesterday and was thinking..."what if Apple had went with Be". Haiku is fast!

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: If Be became OSX, we probably wouldn't have ever seen the iPod, iPhone or iPad.

What makes you say that? I think BeOS / OSX could've been a fantastic embedded platform to build an iOS type device around.

Not only that but you have a world of C++ developers that would have been able to develop for a BeOS type iPod/iPhone/iPad and not ObjC.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I wouldn't disagree that an OSX install can get slower over several years, I can't help but think what you want is a bit of a case of 'the grass is always greener'. There are plenty of lean linux distributions out there, but the reality is that they cut things out. Modern operating systems do a lot to improve your experience as a user and provide various services. A lot of tech people seem to want their system…

Yes I am having a problem w/ 4 gigs of memory, running minimal numbers of applications with swapping and slowness. Every year I reinstall Mac OS X and it gets better for a bit, then it starts to come back and I do some maintenance and it gets somewhat better and repeat til around the 12-15 month mark when I have to reinstall again.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#67

Several things 1. I'm an OS junkie. I love installing, fiddling and learning new OSes. I installed BeOS and used it for about 2 years (no joke) back in the day. LOVED IT. I even had it replace my Slackware instance for about 6 months as my primary system. 2. I love seeing OSes still actively developed even if they aren't popular. I think it keeps driving ingenuity and pushes other people. But, I don't get why we have…

> 4. The biggest problem with BeOS back in the day was lack of applications. I don't see this being fixed with Haiku unless they have translation layer.

Keep in mind that beos is basically posix-friendly. You can already compile a lot of applications which work on linux. Firefox needed some changes for example, but works now. Applications like vim compile without any changes at all - just get gcc, make, make install.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#68
post #54
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now I'm curious. How did plan9 'fix' root?

Plan 9 has no super-user. Each server is responsible for maintaining its own security, usually permitting access only from the console, which is protected by a password. For example, file servers have a unique administrative user called adm, with special privileges that apply only to commands typed at the server’s physical console. These privileges concern the day-to-day maintenance of the server, such as adding new users and configuring disks and networks. The privileges do not include the ability to modify, examine, or change the permissions of any files. If a file is read-protected by a user, only that user may grant access to others.

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#69
post #43
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.

I'm no security expert, but what comes to mind is a malicious application, rather than a malicious user.

Re: An introduction to the Haiku OS

#70
I loved BeOS back then. I have a thing for cute operating systems -- RISC OS, Epoc 32, BeOS. I even chose to buy a Palm phone because of WebOS, which I'm using to type this comment right now!
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