11–20 of 115 posts
I think the article writer meant "process" -- there are many threads per process, and that is present in most "contemporary operating systems". If this is their (Haiku Inc.'s) attempt at PR... they are not doing it well.
"Where BeOS drove ahead of other operating systems of its time (and where Haiku is still ahead of contemporary operating systems) is that each individual application uses many threads. The core of the application itself has one thread, and each window the application creates has a thread." I might not have been around when BeOS was first created, but this is certainly not a new concept today. I don't think I can name…
Wait, there's only one set of system calls into the kernel. What exactly are they talking about here, anyone know?
I like the idea of Haiku OS, but from what I've heard, for binary-compatibility reasons (kernel drivers? All applications? I'm not sure) it still ships with GCC 2.95. Requiring a compiler over a decade old for a modern OS doesn't seem like a good long-term strategy.
The current setup is really only used to the benefit of applications - the kernel interface is not ABI- or API-compatible, for the most part, with that of BeOS R5.
"Where BeOS drove ahead of other operating systems of its time (and where Haiku is still ahead of contemporary operating systems) is that each individual application uses many threads. The core of the application itself has one thread, and each window the application creates has a thread." I might not have been around when BeOS was first created, but this is certainly not a new concept today. I don't think I can name…
At some stage they must have asked themselves, with all the effort they had gone through, couldn't we just make a serious offer to buy the BeOS IP?
In 2001 (when BeOS was bought), it might have made a bit of sense. Be was pretty modern then - competing against Windows XP and either the Classic Mac OS which it was far better than or OS X which was very new and so incredibly slow it was nearly unusable - I don't miss those days being a Mac user. However, in 2001 it had just been bought. Palm wasn't going to turn around and say "we spent $11M on this, you guys want it on the cheap?"
Today, Haiku has probably surpassed BeOS in any relevant way. The issue is that the world has moved on. Imagine a really well-made car/engine from 1990 (and imagine that it was like code which doesn't corrode and such). It can still be a great car today in many respects - maybe its performance characteristics still make it a lot nicer than many modern cars. However, you then start thinking about how it doesn't have anti-lock brakes, traction control, electronic slip protection, air bags, a CD player, iPod hookup, bluetooth; plus, it has a an analog carphone installed in the center. That's a bit like was BeOS would be like today.
For example, Haiku just got preliminary WPA support in October. Frankly, if an operating system doesn't have wonderful WiFi support, it's missing a key practical piece for me. Likewise, other operating systems have put considerable energy into compositing window managers to provide things people take for granted today like shadows, transparency, minimization effects, etc. Plus, and this is pure speculation since I haven't used Haiku recently enough to really comment, I'm guessing the web browser ports aren't quite as mature/good as they are for other systems that have a lot more users/developers.
So, licensing the BeOS IP isn't the issue. It would basically be buying an operating system that hasn't been updated since Windows XP came out. Sure, Windows XP isn't terrible today, but part of that is because Microsoft continued to update and maintain it since its release in 2001. Even then, it seems old.
If BeOS was open-sourced in 2001, it might have seen decent adoption. It had a nice GUI, was really ready for the multi-core processors to come, and it might have gotten the traction to see things like Mozilla concentrate on it as a platform. When OpenBeOS (Haiku's former name) started, I think there was a lot of hope. Of course, as they were concentrating on replicating BeOS R5, the world moved on and Apple, Microsoft, and the Linux community had an army of programmers working on advancing their systems while Haiku had a small team trying to resurrect their beloved system. BeOS was very advanced for its day and in some ways I think it's still better, but BeOS today would just be old in many practical ways even if it was awesome in many other ways.
"Linux, by contrast, has hundreds of APIs..." Wait, there's only one set of system calls into the kernel. What exactly are they talking about here, anyone know?
"Generally, there is one thread for each application and one for the operating system’s user interface as well." I think the article writer meant "process" -- there are many threads per process, and that is present in most "contemporary operating systems". If this is their (Haiku Inc.'s) attempt at PR... they are not doing it well.
I like the idea of Haiku OS, but from what I've heard, for binary-compatibility reasons (kernel drivers? All applications? I'm not sure) it still ships with GCC 2.95. Requiring a compiler over a decade old for a modern OS doesn't seem like a good long-term strategy.
Is this still a problem? Isn't this why just about every other OS exposes it's lowest level APIs as C apis?