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Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

theregister.com

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Re: Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

#21

Post by waddlesplash »

chazeon wrote: post #8

I am confused about this: > Haiku, like BeOS before it, is not a Unix. If you actively like Unix, and what you want to do already works well on Unix – any Unix, and that includes macOS, as well as Linux and FreeBSD – then you probably won't see much appeal here. Don’t they support the same set of terminal command as in other Unix-like systems? From what I saw [1] there aren’t much difference. Well that is what what p…

(Haiku developer here.) This is actually a very common misconception that Haiku is not a UNIX, and it's sad to see The Register get it wrong.

It's debatable whether or not BeOS was a UNIX, but I think by most standards it is: the `fork()`-based process model, UNIX-style file descriptors (but no `mmap`), etc.

Haiku has all the bits BeOS had, of course, but we have far extended our POSIX compliance: of course we have mmap, but also pthreads, and /dev/ (including all the staples, like /dev/null, etc.) These aren't mere compatibility wrappers, but often the "native" APIs; some of the Be APIs are implemented on Haiku using them (while others use lower-level APIs.) There is no "POSIX compatibility layer" in the kernel, it's just natively POSIX all the way down.

Re: Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

#23

Post by jonhohle »

prmoustache wrote: post #12

It is lovely to use once you learn the keyboard shortcuts My main gripes for now: - no full disk encryption which means it can only really be used as a kiosk computer and not contain anything sensitive. - I haven't been able to play anything reliably from netflix or hbomax. either with otterbrowser or epiphany/Gnome Web. Probably Widevine can't be run on those and even tweaking user agents won't help. Right now it is…

That’s somewhat ironic because that’s basically what Be pivoted to shortly before their demise. AFAIK the Sony eVilla running BeIA was the last release from Be. They were about 15 years too early with the concept.

Re: Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

#25

Post by jonhohle »

d12bb wrote: post #20
chazeon wrote: post #8

I am confused about this: > Haiku, like BeOS before it, is not a Unix. If you actively like Unix, and what you want to do already works well on Unix – any Unix, and that includes macOS, as well as Linux and FreeBSD – then you probably won't see much appeal here. Don’t they support the same set of terminal command as in other Unix-like systems? From what I saw [1] there aren’t much difference. Well that is what what p…

Unix is not just a set of terminal commands, it's the whole system architecture, and the fact that all those derive from the original old AT&T Unix. If I run the Bash shell on Windows, it won't turn it into Unix either..

Most people probably don’t care about Unix, but rather POSIX user space.

Re: Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

#26

Post by pxc »

kristopolous wrote: post #16
pxc wrote: post #9

Haiku sounds much more usable than I'd realized: > The new version supports HiDPI displays [...] and has significantly improved Wi-Fi support, including via some USB Wi-Fi adapters[.] > [...] > It has translation layers for both X11 and Wayland, as well as for Gtk apps, alongside the WINE support it gained this time last year. This means a number of new apps, including the GNOME Web browser Epiphany, a full graphical…

Way easier to try it out. Just fire up a vm in virtualbox or whatever your preference is. They even wrote documentation on it https://www.haiku-os.org/guides/virtualizing

That's definitely how I'll spin it up to test it, but for me, bare metal use feels more convenient as well as more 'real', once u get past the initial setup.

I'm hoping that it might be fun for me to explore and even struggle with a little bit in the same way that Linux was exciting for me as a kid. :)

Re: Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

#27

Post by spijdar »

waddlesplash wrote: post #21
chazeon wrote: post #8

I am confused about this: > Haiku, like BeOS before it, is not a Unix. If you actively like Unix, and what you want to do already works well on Unix – any Unix, and that includes macOS, as well as Linux and FreeBSD – then you probably won't see much appeal here. Don’t they support the same set of terminal command as in other Unix-like systems? From what I saw [1] there aren’t much difference. Well that is what what p…

(Haiku developer here.) This is actually a very common misconception that Haiku is not a UNIX, and it's sad to see The Register get it wrong. It's debatable whether or not BeOS was a UNIX, but I think by most standards it is: the `fork()`-based process model, UNIX-style file descriptors (but no `mmap`), etc. Haiku has all the bits BeOS had, of course, but we have far extended our POSIX compliance: of course we have m…

One big difference with POSIX/UNIX is the lack of multiple users. My understanding is Haiku is working to add support for multi-user/privilege separation of some kind, but at least for BeOS this was a fairly big difference.

Re: Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

#28

Post by dixie_land »

chazeon wrote: post #8

I am confused about this: > Haiku, like BeOS before it, is not a Unix. If you actively like Unix, and what you want to do already works well on Unix – any Unix, and that includes macOS, as well as Linux and FreeBSD – then you probably won't see much appeal here. Don’t they support the same set of terminal command as in other Unix-like systems? From what I saw [1] there aren’t much difference. Well that is what what p…

Technically UNIX being a trademark only the following systems are UNIX

https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

Many systems are definitely UNIX-like and many are to different degrees POSIX-compliant

Re: Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

#29

Post by waddlesplash »

spijdar wrote: post #27
waddlesplash wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Haiku developer here.) This is actually a very common misconception that Haiku is not a UNIX, and it's sad to see The Register get it wrong. It's debatable whether or not BeOS was a UNIX, but I think by most standards it is: the `fork()`-based process model, UNIX-style file descriptors (but no `mmap`), etc. Haiku has all the bits BeOS had, of course, but we have far extended our POSIX compliance: of course we have m…

One big difference with POSIX/UNIX is the lack of multiple users. My understanding is Haiku is working to add support for multi-user/privilege separation of some kind, but at least for BeOS this was a fairly big difference.

Haiku already has support for multiple users at the kernel and filesystem level. You can `useradd`, `passwd`, and then `su` (or even SSH into your newly-created user on your Haiku install from another machine), and also `chown`, `chmod`, etc.

What isn't properly supported yet is running GUI applications as anything other than UID 0. Adding support for that will require some careful refactoring across a few different components. Actually, if you added a handful of hacks in a few places it might work already...

Re: Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty

#30

Post by waddlesplash »

prmoustache wrote: post #12

It is lovely to use once you learn the keyboard shortcuts My main gripes for now: - no full disk encryption which means it can only really be used as a kiosk computer and not contain anything sensitive. - I haven't been able to play anything reliably from netflix or hbomax. either with otterbrowser or epiphany/Gnome Web. Probably Widevine can't be run on those and even tweaking user agents won't help. Right now it is…

> It is lovely to use once you learn the keyboard shortcuts

If you mean Alt vs. Ctrl, you can swap to Ctrl-based keyboard shortcuts by clicking the button in the "Keymap" application. But, the Quick Tour tells you this, there's a reason we encourage users to take it :) https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/welcome/en/quicktour.html#shor...

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