Haiku • Hacker News Board

Re: Haiku

#11

Post by nathell » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

lbaune wrote: post #9

This has been around for years. I don't understand what the news is?

Posting stuff that has been around for years makes it possible for today’s lucky 10,000 [0] to learn about that stuff.

[0]: https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: Haiku

#12

Post by alterom » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

reconnecting wrote: post #7

BeOS was my dream from childhood. Haiku is amazing, especially because the original BeOS only existed for five years, while Haiku has been going for 24 already. What stamina!

Same here

Re: Haiku

#13

Post by velcrovan » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

I would love to see if they can get boot times down to a couple seconds.

Re: Haiku

#14

Post by bananaflag » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

reconnecting wrote: post #7

BeOS was my dream from childhood. Haiku is amazing, especially because the original BeOS only existed for five years, while Haiku has been going for 24 already. What stamina!

Sorry for being negative here:

What is the motivation for recreating Be? What would you hope to obtain that you cannot just by using, say, a customized Linux Mint?

If it's just historical/nostalgia/challenge, I get it. But people seem to believe there is something else too, and I'd like to know what that is.

Re: Haiku

#15

Post by mmooss » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

What was the technical brilliance of BeOS? If I remember the story, Be provided incredible multitasking multimedia performance at a time when resources seemed too constrained and other OSes couldn't match it.

So how did they do it? And does Haiku use the same tech under the hood or does it forus on matching the user experience?

Re: Haiku

#16

Post by shevy-java » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

The problem with Haiku is that it is unable to leave the perpetual beta situation.

On Linux I can use perl, ruby, python, php, julia - you name it. Good luck thinking you can do this on Haiku, as-is.

Edit: I should say that I like Haiku, but I used it many years ago, and the situation with regards to programming still has barely improved here for the most part. They are building literally a dream OS nobody will seriously use.

Re: Haiku

#17

Post by shevy-java » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

bananaflag wrote: post #14

reconnecting wrote: post #7

BeOS was my dream from childhood. Haiku is amazing, especially because the original BeOS only existed for five years, while Haiku has been going for 24 already. What stamina!

Sorry for being negative here: What is the motivation for recreating Be? What would you hope to obtain that you cannot just by using, say, a customized Linux Mint? If it's just historical/nostalgia/challenge, I get it. But people seem to believe there is something else too, and I'd like to know what that is.

It kind of looks nice visually. Other than that I do agree with you. I got tired of waiting. Linux spoiled me. I need things to work these days. Linux works.

Re: Haiku

#18

Post by mghackerlady » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

Ah, haiku. I like a lot of the ideas it has, and wish someone would make a hybrid of some of its ideas with an actual unix

Re: Haiku

#19

Post by shevy-java » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

efficax wrote: post #8

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #2

I always wondered what is the motivation behind Haiku. Is it a recreation of BeOS for the sake of recreating it, or is it practically usable for daily use?

i can't speak for the project's maintainers and their motivation, but it is workable as a daily use OS if your hardware is supported and you are willing to use the still beta firefox port.

But compared to Linux, why would I want to use Haiku these days?

Re: Haiku

#20

Post by dleslie » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

There's an interesting fork that recently cropped up. It takes the Haiku user space and places it atop the Linux kernel.

Vitruvian OS: https://v-os.dev/