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Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

discuss.haiku-os.org

71–80 of 223 posts

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#71
post #3

Beautiful to see such passion and great execution, especially for 20 years in a row. It's like a piece of art. I suspect the company that created BeOS actually lost the source-code and that's potentially the real reason they don't want to share, because from an economic perspective there does not seem anything of value there.

Palm bought BeOS back in the day, but they didn't do anything with it. It was spun out with the PalmOS into Palmsource when Palm went to other OSes, so it didn't follow the rest of Palm into HP (and then LG). Palmsource was then swallowed by a Japanese company called Access, which was and apparently still is making a browser for embedded applications called Netfront.

Early Toshiba smart TVs used Access software. Wasn’t pleasant to develop for.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#73
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually hope that history does repeat itself, and google gets severely punished

If history does repeat itself, the punishment wont be very large, despite guilty judgment. Microsoft was found to have engaged in monopolistic practices, but was still given a relative slap on the wrist instead of outright broken up.

And Firefox got to where it was at its peak by being better than IE, not because of any pressure from political institutions. I think there are many parallel universes where Microsoft does in fact own the web.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WiFi support missing? Afaik it uses *BSD network "drivers" and I remember having a wifi dialog/support Edit: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/workshop-wlan.htm... here wifi seems to be working (which another commenter pointed out as well)

It doesn't support a lot of modern Wi-Fi chipsets. There was an entire wave of Broadcom-powered stuff that they weren't able to develop for.

That sounds more like licensing issues than "being 20 years in the past."

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember Windows 95 & MS Word 6 being especially snappy. I think this is nostalgia.

The apps were snappy, but the hardware wasn't. Every menu/window opened immediately and without unnecessary animation... unless it needed some unexpected processing - then you were potentially waiting for the spinning rust to handle the swap file.

There's an option to disable animations in Windows, but I find it disorienting.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#77
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Window Maker still exists. There's an ongoing Wayland port / reimagining: https://github.com/phkaeser/wlmaker .

The thing I liked most in the NeXT was the sparing use of color. It was part necessity, but also usability. What does the color of the window bar being blue communicate? I am an enthusiast for Gnome’s less is more approach.

Original NeXT was monochrome, so of course it used no significant colors in the UI.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just another proof that copyright laws must be heavily reformed asap because they continue to harm development also in cases where any reason of protecting some company's IP is long gone.

Is it though? I think there's scope to improve the laws around intellectual property, but I feel like it's a stretch to suggest that the lack of BeOS source code "harms development".

An open source desktop OS that was basically usable for day-to-day stuff and easy to install, released in 2001? I don't think it's hyperbole to say that that would have changed the course of computer history.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#79
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The interface is so incredibly snappy So that feels like its 20 years in the past > there is a lot of basics missing such as WiFi support. So that sounds like 20 years in the past too Where does the future bit come in?

Exactly what I thought as well. UIs get increasingly slower as time passes, not snappier. We had snappy UIs in the 80s and 90s.

That's just comparing CRT screens with 60Hz LCD panels. Get anything 120Hz+ and you will see that modern systems are very snappy.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#80

Firefox ported to HaikuOS, before it's ported to Windows XP. :-) (If you need a modern browser on XP, in the meantime try the Chrome port: https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/ )

"before it's ported to Windows XP" what does this even mean???, I remember using firefox on windows xp back then, the reason they stop make a release version for windows xp because its too old and people already move on to newer windows 7 (microsoft already stop supporting it)

You can run an up to date port of Chrome on XP, 2000 soon as well. They're also finishing up hardware acceleration support for the d3d9 backend.

https://github.com/win32ss/supermium

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