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Haiku Project

haiku-os.org

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Re: Haiku Project

#61

Post by freehunter »

TkTech wrote: post #30
mikestew wrote: post #23

I've played with Haiku in a VM in the past. But what is suggested that I do with the OS? Be a daily driver? Does it fit some niche use case? I have an old netbook, I'd load Haiku on the boot partition, I really would. I'm a sucker for something different (given the evils of Big OS and all), and for the underdog. Hell, I might even contribute if I have something (coding wise) to give. So I load 'er up on the ol' boot…

It's a general-purpose OS. Do whatever you normally do on it. More importantly, it's a learning tool. It's been part of many courses and many rounds of Google Summer of Code. It's an embeddable kernel + OS free of the cancerous GPL, under a permissive MIT licence. It is extremely well documented, well tested, and consistent. Writing drivers for it is very simple. This makes it interesting for education, for-profit de…

>Do whatever you normally do on it.

What I normally do involves a lot of software that does not run on Haiku. Is there a Citrix receiver for it? Does Cisco make an AnyConnect client? What about LibreOffice? Java? Flash?

I love the idea of Haiku, don't get me wrong. But the question of "what can I do with it" is not answered by "whatever you normally do", especially if (considering your second paragraph) what I normally do does not entail writing device drivers. An OS means nothing without compatible software. Ask anyone who uses Windows Phone.

Re: Haiku Project

#63

Post by soapdog »

lbenes wrote: post #38
miles wrote: post #8

I always smile wistfully whenever Haiku/BeOS comes up... its performance and just sheer fun remains unmatched by Windows, OS X, Linux, etc (try it out in a VM). dr_dank summed it up best back in 2003 [0]: 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…

Haiku is a clone not based on the original BeOS codebase. So while it may run the same apps and look similar, does it have the internal design and optimizations that made the original so capable for its time? Could Haiku running on equivalent hardware run that demo as well as BeOS?

It is even better. It has ABI compatibility with BeOS, it can run x86 BeOS apps (not PPC apps though)

Re: Haiku Project

#64

Post by rogerbinns »

cm3 wrote: post #18
honkhonkpants wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well let's don't get all romantic about something that was, in the end, half-baked. BeOS debuted at the dawn of the web, and it had a barely-working, userspace network stack and a web browser that essentially didn't work at all. It had some novel APIs, a nifty filesystem, and made for a damn good demo, but there wasn't much more to it.

The filesystem metadata queries were real-time back when spinning disks were much slower and neither the processing power or ram was comparable to what we have today. With today's machines we do not have the same experience under Windows, macos, GNOME, KDE. Feature-wise yes, performance no. Is there a technical reason we couldn't have the same filesystem integration? No, there isn't, it's just incompatible priorities…

BeOS did it by writing their own filesystem. The filesystem author wrote a good book about the design and implementation, including overviews of other filesystems (eg NTFS). He has made the book available for free download at http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf

Ars Technica also has a nice 2010 article: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/06/the-be...

The way it implemented the queries well was because they were integrated into the filesystem. Windows/Mac/Linux do it in userspace. Doing it in the filesystem would be considered a layering violation by most.

Re: Haiku Project

#65

Post by renox »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #26

Interesting philosophy on why Haiku is not Linux-based (from the site): Linux-based distributions stack up software -- the Linux kernel, the X Window System, and various DEs with disparate toolkits such as GTK+ and Qt -- that do not necessarily share the same guidelines and/or goals. This lack of consistency and overall vision manifests itself in increased complexity, insufficient integration, and inefficient solutio…

Bah, this justification is flawed and/or obsolete: why does it matter for reusing the Linux kernel what classic GNU/Linux distribution do? It didn't prevent Google (Android) reusing the Linux kernel to build the Android OS..

Re: Haiku Project

#66

Post by gavanwoolery »

renox wrote: post #65
gavanwoolery wrote: post #26

Interesting philosophy on why Haiku is not Linux-based (from the site): Linux-based distributions stack up software -- the Linux kernel, the X Window System, and various DEs with disparate toolkits such as GTK+ and Qt -- that do not necessarily share the same guidelines and/or goals. This lack of consistency and overall vision manifests itself in increased complexity, insufficient integration, and inefficient solutio…

Bah, this justification is flawed and/or obsolete: why does it matter for reusing the Linux kernel what classic GNU/Linux distribution do? It didn't prevent Google (Android) reusing the Linux kernel to build the Android OS..

I think you can get by with either/or, although as some have recently pointed out, an empty Android project is 38 mb large with 1000+ files [1].

I think there is probably something to an elegant, small system. In theory, it should be easier to learn, more predictable, and more stable. Even if this is just on the developer end, it should translate to a less buggy, faster, more consistent user experience, or faster turn-around time for features. In theory, at least :)

[1] https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/771749108780523520

Re: Haiku Project

#67

Post by yolesaber »

cm3 wrote: post #52
honkhonkpants wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have all that and more in macos today and have for many years. Spotlight is implemented by the same person who wrote BeFS.

The last time I used Spotlight (no mac at the moment), it was so slow that I had to disable it globally. The metadata integration in BeOS was different. For example media and email storage in BeOS.

Spotlight is amazing, I use it everyday. It is VERY fast.

Re: Haiku Project

#68

Post by tw04 »

tomovo wrote: post #42

It would be interesting to see the modern "handmade" movement (Casey Muratori of handmade hero fame) join the project. It would be so cool if it could, for example, replace Ubuntu as the basis for Steam OS. Seems like it's the perfect fit for something that requires high performance and low latency.

Unless this can run Linux binaries native, that sounds like a TON of work that would result in further fragmenting the Steam ecosystem. At the moment having the Steam console run Linux means they also support the entire Linux user base (which while admittedly small, is still likely large enough to help fund the console development work). There's no way the console sales can standalone justify the development work if it were running something as obscure as Haiku.

Re: Haiku Project

#69

Post by fu9ar »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #51
fu9ar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what kept me out of Linux when I was a teenager, but it was MODEM drivers at that time. Lack of driver support for an operating system is not a technical problem, it is a social problem.

Software modems, you mean. Real modems are attached to serial ports and don't require drivers :-)

Essentially, it doesn't matter what mechanism generates the signals except when it came down to me wanting to play with Linux twenty years ago and a company decided to release a product that was only compatible with a single operating system. My desire to play with Linux did not happen to be worth as much as it would have cost to do so at the time, so I waited.
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