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
i believe your wish has been granted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124834
Haiku
81–90 of 92 posts
Re: Haiku
#82It's a shame that Be failed. I think they were a victim of Microsoft's aggressive anti-competitive activities in the late-1990s, combined with Apple deciding to bring back Steve Jobs via the acquisition of NeXT (making Apple a serious competitor in the same segment that Be was targeting -- multimedia and realtime applications). Ultimately, they prevailed in winning about $24M from Microsoft, but that was after the co…
When they had to shift to x86 there was more to it than MS being jerks. At the time, hardware companies would write the device drivers for Windows, but nothing else. If you were an alternative OS you had to provide your own. And since the commodity x86 world was such a clusterfuck of barely compatible hardware, Be had to spend a ton of effort just keeping up with that noise.
Linux had a similar problem but had the advantage of open source. Random people would cobble together support for things and stick it online.
Re: Haiku
#83There's almost nothing written about Haiku's security [0]. Am I missing something?
I also don't understand this:
> Our infrastructure contains sensitive personal user data, and we aggressively keep this information private on a need-to-know basis at all times.
What do they mean by "infrastructure" here? Do they mean each installation or their site, bug tracker and so on (the usual interpretation of "infrastructure")? Why would it contain sensitive personal data?
From the FAQ and about pages I gathered that Haiku is just supposed to be simpler, more uniform in design/vision and less bloated than Linux, but nothing specific about why anyone should choose it. If I'm happy with my Linux DE and so on, why would I choose Haiku?
Re: Haiku
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be made inroads in radio and sound production; though I don't think they knew it.[0] There was a market starved for a stable, high quality and responsive operating system that would run on the x86 hardware that was abundant everywhere. Windows wasn't it, yet; recall this is years before XP, and Windows 98 was an unstable mess while NT was slow. 0: https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/27-tune_tracker/
Tune Tracker is sill(?) around, they moved to Haiku a long time ago.
It looks like it just moved to Mac earlier this year(!?)
Re: Haiku
#85There's almost nothing written about Haiku's security [0]. Am I missing something? I also don't understand this: > Our infrastructure contains sensitive personal user data, and we aggressively keep this information private on a need-to-know basis at all times. What do they mean by "infrastructure" here? Do they mean each installation or their site, bug tracker and so on (the usual interpretation of "infrastructure")?…
(Haiku developer here.)
> Am I missing something?
Haiku's not nearly as well-tested for security as most other OSes. We have a lot of the basic features (ASLR, NX bit, safety checks for kernel/userland data copies, some use-after-free detection in malloc, etc.) but things haven't been seriously audited or pentested the way other OSes are. We fix security bugs when they get found, but not too many people are looking for them that I know of.
> What do they mean by "infrastructure" here?
The web/internet infrastructure: software depot (has accounts for people to post ratings/reviews), forums, bug tracker, code review, etc. And it contains all the usual "sensitive personal data": IP addresses, email addresses, some private communications, and so on.
> If I'm happy with my Linux DE and so on, why would I choose Haiku?
Well, I guess the question is, are you really happy with your Linux DE? Because every time I've run desktop Linux, I have to spend what feels like 5-10% (or sometimes more) of my time fixing things that randomly break, or otherwise don't do or behave the way they're expected to, usually by finding some obscure configuration file and changing some random option.
On Haiku, since the system is designed and developed by one team, it all goes together in a way that Linux DEs can't really achieve. The downside is that, of course, we can't reuse much of the Linux's work (we have lots of Linux software ports, but the base system is all us), so we have a lot more to do than your average Linux distro, and so we're quite a ways from general feature parity with the Linux desktop (but the gap does decrease year over year, at least in some areas...)
Re: Haiku
#86Re: Haiku
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the simplest way. More interesting is the result for is_computer_on_fire() https://github.com/VitruvianOS/Vitruvian/blob/0e4c6e33ab235b...
Why does it return a double?
Test the API kernel calling convention when dealing with 64 bit IEE754 doubles on a 32 bit CPU, especially when dealing with MSB vs LSB processors.
Also, a long time ago (pre 486DX), processors did not have FPU circuitry instead it was a FPU coprocessor. When dealing with a kernel context switch, you'd have to copy all registers to a stack. With a coprocessor, you'd have to make sure those registers got copied as well. Which was slower with coprocessors ... So for a time some real time kernels did not allow context switching of FPU. To support that, you'd get the performance hit.
These days its all integrated so you dont have to worry about it ...
Re: Haiku
#88BeOS 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.
Linux is just the kernel, the ecosystem is make up of half a dozen desktop managers, windowing systems, API toolkits, sound servers, file systems, package hits etc.
There is an abstraction layer between all these systems. Multiuser, whether you need it or not.
Haiku is a unified system, so native apps have one windowing system, one desktop environment, one API, one media kit, one file system etc. There are less layers for data to travel, hence it will always be faster. Also Haiku targets desktop users (single user system, for better or worse), while Linux in all honesty targets servers and embedded with desktop a distant 3rd use case. Haiku package management is a generation ahead of Linux.
Finally, BeOS/Haiku core architecture is built from modern 90's designs, while Linux started as a clone of Unix (deep in the bowels of Linux there is a TTY terminal block device).
Finally, BeOS had a cool factor (and their fanboys) that Linux never had. Dual CPU from day #1. Blinkenlights. Geek port. Playing videos on a face of a cube. is_computer_on(). Linux is sooo boring in comparison.
Re: Haiku
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's one of the last single-user focused operating systems. Its design from kernel to UI is intended to make the system accessible to the user sitting at the desk. It was _extraordinarily_ fast and stable on even modest hardware of the era, and its software toolkit was a delight to use. Even now, using it feels like the system is bereft of bloat and cruft. It's a system _for the user_ that doesn't assume that the use…
> Its design from kernel to UI is intended to make the system accessible to the user sitting at the desk. What does this translate to, in some amount of technical detail?
Minimalist and consistent UX, incredibly responsive applications, simple and logical organizational structure, with _excellent_ documentation and developer tools for the era.
You boot straight to a desktop, and there's no ads, alerts, pop-ups, pop-unders, noisy task apps, sidebars, widgets, and other engagement seeking focus destroyers. Every app has a reasonably consistent UX and presents as much necessary and relevant information as it can, without tedious wizards or aggressively hiding information behind folds or submenus.
Re: Haiku
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Its design from kernel to UI is intended to make the system accessible to the user sitting at the desk. What does this translate to, in some amount of technical detail?
Minimalist and consistent UX, incredibly responsive applications, simple and logical organizational structure, with _excellent_ documentation and developer tools for the era. You boot straight to a desktop, and there's no ads, alerts, pop-ups, pop-unders, noisy task apps, sidebars, widgets, and other engagement seeking focus destroyers. Every app has a reasonably consistent UX and presents as much necessary and relev…
I was asking what they did differently in the programming.