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The Dawn of Haiku OS

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Re: The Dawn of Haiku OS

#111

Post by crusso »

I LOVED BeOS back in the R3-R5 days. I switched over to it completely for a time and started writing software for it. Work carried me in a different direction, and my hobbyist enthusiasm lost steam as I saw that Be was going nowhere corporate-wise. Once Apple decided to go with NeXT instead of BeOS as the basis for its new OS, that was all she wrote. I was disappointed with the technology decision by Apple, but that was way offset by getting Jobs back into the company... and we all saw how well that turned out.

Anyhow, the C++ API of BeOS was amazing. OSX/Objective-C still don't give you that OO access to the OS feel that BeOS had. My one major gripe with their approach was in the way that they managed run-time binding -- it was very brittle from release to release of the OS. As a developer, you had to ship separate binaries for each OS release you wanted to support. Nasty.

I'd love to see Haiku take off and become a viable platform. If for no other reason, just to have a reference version of how things CAN BE DONE.

That cheerleading aside, I have to say that with a fresh OS install, my OSX Lion 2009 PB performs great. Very snappy, runs cool, starts up quickly. It's only when you start installing all your apps, VMs, widgets, drivers, and misc. junk that it slows down. Would Haiku do any better if it had that rich of a software environment?

Re: The Dawn of Haiku OS

#112

Post by drivebyacct2 »

rbanffy wrote: post #109
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protip (sorry for using the term), stop using the titlebar to move Windows. I feel physically encumbered when using Windows or OS X because I can't Alt+Drag windows around. It will make you so much faster because you just hold Alt and click and drag. No more searching for that tiny little microscopic bit of window to drag. (For example, Chrome on OS X has almost NO hit space to drag the window). I guess this post is…

I have given up on windows. Most of the time mine are maximized and I switch spaces instead.

I can't bring myself to do that on a 15.4" screen (I like the real estate specifically for multitasking and looking back and forth) but I've seen it leveraged extremely well on a 11/13" Air.

Re: The Dawn of Haiku OS

#113

Post by untog »

alxp wrote: post #101
rbanffy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know Palm (or was it Access?) bought Be (and BeOS) for reasons then (and, to be fair, now too) unfathomable. Now they can say "That's what we intended all along" ;-)

WebOS's biggest problem was UI performance. Sick, sad irony strikes again.

No, WebOS's biggest problem was either a lack of third party support or sub-par devices to run on.

Re: The Dawn of Haiku OS

#114

Post by Bjartr »

gaius wrote: post #108
beosrocks wrote: post #31

dr_dank's comment on Slashdot ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66224&cid=6095472 ) pretty much sums up its awesomeness: 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 a beat. Then, he pulled out the showstopper. He yanked the plug on the box. Wit…

it's hard to imagine the kind of performance it was able to squeeze out of that hardware No no no, you have it backwards. It's hard to imagine what a "modern" OS (Windows, Linux, OSX) is actually doing with all those CPU cycles, that it can't do stuff like this even with >10x the compute power.

What are you talking about? A desktop today has no problem playing two dozen low-bitrate mp3s from disk, streaming a dozen movie trailers from youtube at 240p, playing WoW, and talking on Skype at the same time.

Now if you try to do that with only itunes or windows media player or equivalent "monolithic" player, you'll probably run into some slowdown, but only because those are designed to maximize the experience for one single piece of media at a time. Something like media player classic would do it in a heartbeat though.

Re: The Dawn of Haiku OS

#115

Post by neuroelectronic »

batista wrote: post #72
nkoren wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more forgiving of Lion if it could play even one movie on my Macbook pro without occasionally going into frame-dropping VM-swapping. There's no question that my hand-built BeOS box, 15 years ago, had a far snappier userland experience.

> I'd be more forgiving of Lion if it could play even one movie on my Macbook pro without occasionally going into frame-dropping VM-swapping. Try my MacBook Pro then, I play movies all the time on it with no problem of frame-dropping or swapping. And it's a 2007 model.

Oh, why should I try a free OS to improve performance when I can just purchase a $2000 machine?
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