[HN Gopher] Haiku R1/beta2 has been released
___________________________________________________________________
Haiku R1/beta2 has been released
Author : waddlesplash
Score : 229 points
Date : 2020-06-09 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.haiku-os.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.haiku-os.org)
| dmichulke wrote:
| Took me a while to figure out what it is:
|
| "While the first release(s) of Haiku will be very much like the
| _BeOS R5, the operating system it is reimplementing_ ... "
| wtallis wrote:
| The domain name is _haiku-os.org_. Every page includes an
| "About" link at the top, and the root page has a two-sentence
| description in a large font at the top.
|
| They really couldn't make it any easier to figure out what
| Haiku is.
| dmichulke wrote:
| The news release doesn't show a thing about what it is nor is
| there a link.
|
| The URL with an OS in the name tells me what category it is
| in but not the USP (I don't really get that from the two
| sentences either but at least it's something)
|
| So I went looking (not via Home or About because usually they
| are useless, YMMV) but via Documents.
|
| So here I am, saying that it took me a while to figure out
| what it was.
| vhodges wrote:
| There is no USP really... it's an OpenSource
| reimplementation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
| (before your time?). Haiku has been around in some guise or
| other since the early 2000's.
|
| BeOS was/is pervasively threaded and took full advantage of
| multiple cores (a very novel thing when it came out - BeBox
| had two PPC processors).
|
| Similar projects include: ReactOS (Windows 2000), AROS
| (AmigaOS), FreeDOS (MS-DOS), FreeMiNT (Atari ST). I think
| there might even be one for OS/2
| slantyyz wrote:
| For all intents and purposes, if you had no exposure to
| BeOS, you won't really get why this project exists.
|
| It is so crazy to think that we could be living in a
| completely different world today had Apple opted to
| acquire BeOS instead of NeXT.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| Wait, are you saying you wondered what this project is and
| you saw the "About" link at the top and decided not to
| click it? About pages are indeed useless if no one visits
| them.
| [deleted]
| charlesdaniels wrote:
| I'm glad to see Haiku is still making progress!
|
| I really enjoy the visual style of Haiku. The look-n-feel of it
| seems better to me than any other UI I've seen, and I say that as
| someone who never used BeOS, so it's not the nostalgia talking.
|
| It would be really cool if Haiku was able to get to a state were
| it's usable as a daily driver. I think having an OS and interface
| more focused on a single user at a graphical terminal rather than
| a multi-user system with graphics tacked on would be positive.
|
| BeFS also has some really great ideas that aren't replicated in
| other more modern FSes, namely it includes database-like
| functionality that enables some really neat features via a
| standardized interface, rather than hiding them away in vendor-
| specific file formats. If you're interested, Practical File
| System Design[0] uses beFS as it's example filesystem (and it's
| also a really good book in general).
|
| 0 - https://www.amazon.com/Practical-System-Design-Dominic-
| Giamp...
| themodelplumber wrote:
| I had Haiku installed for a while. I think it could be a pretty
| effective daily driver as-is, depending on what you need to do
| in your daily driving.
|
| (If you're a Peruvian long-haul mountain bus driver and failed
| to reveal that in your pre-qualification, then that's on
| you...)
| charlesdaniels wrote:
| Sadly for my work I need various proprietary programs like
| Matlab, Quartus, and Vivado. Not a chance of those ever being
| ported to Haiku. I know it has Python, but I would suspect it
| probably has some limitations which respect to Python
| libraries that have C extensions, which is surprisingly many
| of them.
| taborj wrote:
| I concur, it's nearly there for me. On my old Dell Inspiron
| 3847 (my daily driver), the only hardware that didn't work
| right was audio through HDMI, and bluetooth didn't find my
| mouse (though it did find my BT headphones). I can probably
| get to the bottom of those with a bit of digging.
|
| The software side I didn't dig into much yet. I use my system
| for ham radio, so I would be compiling a lot of software in
| the future, some of it dependent on hardware things. Not sure
| how well that'll work, but I'm honestly willing to give it a
| try.
|
| The biggest annoyance for me is the lack of a plug-in capable
| web browser; specifically having Bitwarden in the browser.
| I'll have to investigate if there's a solution.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| What's the hardware support like?
| taborj wrote:
| Running it on a USB stick will give you a great idea about
| hardware support.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| No idea really, except that I ran it on an old netbook,
| plugged in an external monitor and mouse, and that specific
| set of things worked great. This is what led me to install
| it rather than just running from the USB disk.
| mdasen wrote:
| I also like the look of Haiku/BeOS, but to me it looks a lot
| like Apple Platinum from Mac OS 8 and 9:
| https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3....
|
| I'm curious what you like about it. I personally miss a lot of
| design things that have fallen out of style.
|
| On Windows, it feels like everything is blindingly white/soft
| grey with no texture or borders to help my eyes focus.
| Transparency is used without regard for its utility. Instead of
| using borders, they use space which ends up wasting a lot of
| screen real-estate. The differentiation between active and
| background window is very subtle.
|
| macOS has many of the same issues. Scroll bars aren't shown
| unless you're scrolling. You can change this behavior, but
| still. Background windows are hard to differentiate from
| foreground windows. Transparency is used for seemingly no
| reason.
|
| That said, macOS does offer better design queues than Windows
| 10. The macOS finder will use a slightly different color for
| the left panel than the main work area. Windows 10 uses the
| same white for both areas drawing focus as if they're equal.
| Buttons in macOS have a very subtle bump out to show that
| they're buttons vs just being completely flat. There are
| usually small borders between things.
|
| Take this screenshot: https://thehacktoday.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/10/screensh.... There's no border between
| the back/forward/up buttons and the content below. Everything
| is the same white. Clickable items have no real indication that
| they're buttons. macOS: https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/d
| igitaltrends/import-m.... You can see more clear demarcations.
| Buttons clearly stick out a little, the left panel is a
| different color with a tiny border, the title bar is a
| different color with a gradient, etc.
|
| Haiku's design harkens back to a day when we demarcated things.
| Haiku's active windows are yellow while background windows are
| grey (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku
| _OS...). This makes it instantly clear what is the top window.
| There are borders on everything and a subtle beveled effect.
|
| Is that the kind of stuff that you like about Haiku's UI? Is it
| something els?
| gjvc wrote:
| "cues"
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I agree with all your points. But worth pointing out that
| BeOS predates Mac OS 8 and 9. Not sure if there's a line of
| influence between the two, but uthere's definitely a 1990s
| 'demarcated' design; not just with colour but with simple
| visual elements.
|
| And attention to physical placement. Windows 95 made a
| strange choice when it placed the 'close' button next to
| minimize/maximize, making it entirely possible to close-by-
| accident. OS X then strangely threw away the classic Mac
| positioning and adopted something like Windows, and made this
| worse by choosing in its first versions to make the function
| of the buttons unclear until the mouse moved over them.
|
| I really enjoyed Sun's "OpenLook" design back in the day:
| http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png
|
| Minimalist while not being spartan or unclear.Skeuomorphism
| but not overdone.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Windows 95 made a strange choice when it placed the
| 'close' button next to minimize/maximize, making it
| entirely possible to close-by-accident. OS X then strangely
| threw away the classic Mac positioning and adopted
| something like Windows, and made this worse by choosing in
| its first versions to make the function of the buttons
| unclear until the mouse moved over them.
|
| I think your argument against positioning them together is
| valid, but the reasons in favor of doing are also
| relatively obvious: similar actions should be grouped
| together. Close, minimize, and maximize all control the
| position of the window.
|
| On OS X, putting them together also allowed Apple to
| introduce a traffic light metaphore, which I consider quite
| clever and strong. Red closes the window, yellow moves it
| out of the way temporarily, and green makes it larger.
| charlesdaniels wrote:
| While we're talking about cool old UIs, I'll also point out
| IRIX 4dwm[0] (google image search "IRIX 4dwm" for more
| examples). It's far before my time, but based on the
| screenshots out there on the 'net it seems like a pretty
| good UI for it's time period.
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX
| rakoo wrote:
| I blame flat design
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_design)
|
| Before flat design the pseudo-3d visual we had was giving us
| helpful visual clues with the desktop metaphor
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor). We knew we
| had different containers, those containers had a header and
| content, the header contained buttons, etc... All of this was
| clearly visible.
|
| Flat design supposes we are already used to this and
| simplifies the UI to make it look cleaner. In the process we
| lose all the cues we had before and have to guess where
| things start and where they end. We've always mocked our
| elders for not understanding computers, not knowing where the
| firefox window ends and where the taskbar starts, but now
| with flat design we're in the same situation. There's no
| depth, no indication that anything is actionable, no clear
| demarcation. It would have been ok if it didn't still follow
| the desktop metaphor: I find this much more acceptable on
| mobile for example, but it's not working well on desktops.
| dnautics wrote:
| to be fair before flat design came I remember there was an
| extreme skeuomorphism trend, that flat was a response to.
|
| It's also not like totally flat is terrible, one could
| imagine an effective LCARS-like UI (and I'm sure, many of
| us dream of it still).
| badsectoracula wrote:
| I've read about that extreme skeuomorphism trend before
| as a response for the flat design, but i think it is
| largely exaggerated. Outside of some Apple applications
| in macOS getting a leather skin or whatever for a single
| macOS version and getting mocked for it, there hasn't
| been much of a trend for unnecessary skeuomorphism on the
| desktop. The worst i can think of were some device driver
| utilities taking themability to unnecessary extremes (i
| remember the Windows 9x drivers for an old scanner i had
| using... animated AVIs of opening/closing wooden windows,
| for some reason :-P) but those were very rare outliers,
| not a trend.
| charlesdaniels wrote:
| I agree with the general sentiment of what you're saying.
|
| If I had to narrow it down to something more specific:
|
| * The UI seems very compact, the buttons/widgets are no
| larger than they need to be, as compared to Windows 10 and
| GNOME 3. I would say modern macOS also does a decent job
| here. The compactness is valuable for small screens for
| obvious reasons, and is also valuable for large screens since
| you can fit a lot more stuff on them. And it sounds like with
| this release, you can set different scaling factors, so
| everyone can be happy.
|
| * The intractable widgets are clearly demarcated from the
| rest. As you point out in many modern UIs, it's very
| difficult to tell what is a button and what isn't. I actually
| think GNOME 3's Adwaita (as much as I like to rip on GNOME
| for what I consider to be good reasons) does a good job in
| that department. In the final screenshot in your comment, it
| is very clear even without being familiar with the specific
| programs what can be clicked on, and you have a good
| expectation of what's going to happen. With Windows 10 and
| modern macOS, it's only clear if you are familiar with the
| specific programs being shown.
|
| I also like macOS 8 and 9 a lot from a UI design perspective,
| though I have read enough about their underlying architecture
| to know that maybe I wouldn't want to actually use them.
|
| Context: I'm just starting out as a graduate student. My
| first PC ran Vista, then I went to Windows 7, 8, then to
| Linux, a brief stint on macOS, and I've been bouncing between
| Linux and BSD since then. I've tried about every "modern" UI
| under the sun and most of them suck.
| kingnight wrote:
| That Windows screenshot really is chaos. I would love to hear
| a defense of that design because I am missing any merit to
| it.
| 1_player wrote:
| There's no defense. Might be harsh, but whoever is
| directing Windows' UI and UX department needs to be moved
| elsewhere, to say the least. Windows 10 might have the
| worst looking UI paradigm I've seen since I've started with
| DOS computers in the 90s.
|
| That's not even style over function. It's just pure
| blandness. Greys and flat whites everywhere.
|
| * Why does the title bar have a folder icon, some unknown
| icon and the same folder icon again? What does the dropdown
| arrow icon represent?
|
| * What's all that whitespace in the folder tree?
|
| * What's that down arrow next to the "forward" button? Oh
| and there's one next to the help icon, what does that do?
|
| * Why is "Picture Tools" in highlighted yellow in the
| ribbon? Is that the most important thing a user needs to be
| aware of?
|
| The whole Windows 10 UI is full of non-sensical UI
| decisions that result in a confusing, grey experience. And
| it's not like Microsoft isn't capable of good UIs, they've
| done a great job from at least Windows 95 to Windows 7.
| Then they've just dropped the ball hard.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| It's for touching and swiping on _surfaces_ with fatty
| fingers. Jurassic mousepushers and nippletwisters are out
| of fashion.
| tqh wrote:
| The style is not just for visual purposes: Stacking and tiling
| is a hidden gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y-6YmGd30A
| space_ghost wrote:
| I want those features in an XOrg window manager. I want them
| more than my next breath.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| Fluxbox has the ability to add windows to each other like
| tabs as is shown there.
| charlesdaniels wrote:
| Huh, I didn't realize it could do that.
|
| That's an incredibly cool feature, much better than the
| window "collisions" that some other UIs have.
|
| The most similar idea I can think of would be i3 with it's
| container windows and such. You could group things together
| and tile within the groups, and IIRC you could have the whole
| group float if you wanted to. I don't use i3 anymore since I
| switched to CWM, but maybe an i3 user can comment.
| codezero wrote:
| The author has the pdf available on their personal site. I
| highly recommend reading it. It is understandable by a hobbyist
| in my opinion.
|
| http://www.nobius.org/dbg/
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Sigh. Probably will try it later. Did try the R1/beta1, and had
| to fiddle in the BIOS to get usable output on secondary display
| (can't remember if i managed dual-screen) on intel graphics.
| Liked the look and feel of it, mostly. Because on the secondary
| display on 24"@1920X1200 the icons looked somehow stretched wide,
| but just a little. Not so on the internal 13"@1280x800. Question
| is: what to do with it? How stable is the FS? Where are the
| videos/intros which _really_ show what i can do with it, which i
| can 't with other desktops? Haven't found a really compelling
| reason so far. (Hmmm, seems like they updated their slideshows
| and list of videos...)
|
| Would FreeCiv stop slowing down to a crawl on larger maps in late
| game? Could i abuse AQEMU as performant dockerthingy for the
| applications i need?
| stOneskull wrote:
| > Question is: what to do with it?
|
| perfect for an old 32 bit computer lying around. a computer for
| the grandparents. or the kids. or dual-boot into it for a focus
| for writing, with minimal distractions.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Dual-booting _is_ a distraction to me. Could also blow up
| some editor into fullscreen while having no messengers /mails
| running and be done with it.
| trarman wrote:
| I'm amazed! On a whim, I tried installing it to my old ASUS EEE
| 7" netbook. Everything seems to work! Haiku just breathed new
| life into that old device.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Hidden gem of the Haiku project is the "Learning to Code in C++"
| tutorials.
|
| https://www.haiku-os.org/development/
| snicker7 wrote:
| I would love a faithful replication of the BeOS/Haiku desktop on
| Linux.
| waddlesplash wrote:
| People have tried it before, but all those projects are now
| defunct. Ultimately it winds up being "just another Linux
| desktop environment", or even a mere reskin of another DE. The
| kind of deep system integration that is possible when the
| entire system is developed as one project is extremely
| difficult, if not actually impossible, to do in the Linux
| ecosystem.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The main appeal of Haiku OS back in the day was its soft-
| realtime focus wrt. UX and multimedia, and you could get
| there quite easily with modern-day Linux. Especially if you
| add the PREEMPT_RT patchset and use the cgroups2 tuning knobs
| to improve priority of user-interaction tasks.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Crazy idea: Have you ever thought of porting your desktop
| environment to Genode? ( https://genode.org/ ) And fully
| integrating their Sculpt into it? I mean, on Amd64 you are
| already binary incompatible, so that wouldn't count as an
| argument against it.
| waddlesplash wrote:
| Someone suggested it (but then, the community is large
| enough that all far-fetched-but-not-impossible ideas have
| probably been mentioned at one point or another :)).
|
| I don't really know what the differences between porting
| Haiku's userland to that or to Linux would be. Everyone
| loves to make arguments about how microkernels are so great
| and all, but there still isn't a major operating system or
| distribution with a significant number of everyday users on
| one. Plus, all of our same philosophical objections to
| using the Linux (or any other kernel) as the basis for
| Haiku would still apply.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Hm. For one they have seamless Virtual Box integration.
| Which means NATIVE vbox-port running on that, and fast.
| Can use one of the fastest (message passing) micro
| kernels available. Which seems fitting to the concepts of
| Haiku from my layman point of view? What i'd imagine is
| your desktop, with the exact look and feel and usage
| concepts ripped free from Beos/Haiku kernel stuff, and
| running atop SeL4 instead, with BFS running in some user
| task, thereby not loosing all the database/tag-capable
| stuff for the DE.
|
| Maybe even having more drivers for contemporary hardware?
| Also security, network stack?
| willtim wrote:
| Unfortunately as much as I love Linux, you are absolutely
| right. But I think it more of a social problem than a
| technical one.
| mullsork wrote:
| Congrats to the Haiku team! I recently started testing it out,
| hoping to contribute soon, and it's pretty neat. I last played
| with it 10 years ago, and it feels a lot more solid today. Really
| looking forward to what's in store for R2 when R1 is released!
| Koshkin wrote:
| So..... Why would Jane the User pick Haiku OS over, say, Ubuntu?
| jdboyd wrote:
| Because she really wants something fringe and not really Unix.
| I'd be surprised if there was any user or developer that didn't
| do Haiku as a hobby. I've never heard of a single person making
| money from it.
| waddlesplash wrote:
| Well, you're about to: http://tunetrackersystems.com/
| MintelIE wrote:
| I used BeOS for a couple years in the 1990s as my exclusive OS.
| It had all the software I needed at the time. I especially liked
| the feature where you could clone your whole working system to
| another drive or partition, live. That actually saved me on a
| couple occasions, I would perform a weekly backup of my whole
| live system to a secondary drive.
|
| It's so nice to see this project making great progress.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Interesting to see this isn't another linux distribution, but a
| _real_ OS.
|
| Some of the software ported to this OS [0] (some not on this list
| but looking at their repo [1] ):
|
| LibreOffice
|
| Krita
|
| Telegram
|
| Jetbrains (PyCharm, ItelliJ)
|
| Rust, Node.JS, Python, Java 12
|
| Qt Creator
|
| Arduino
|
| Obviously there's more in their repo, looking promising though.
| (Try find your favourite software in there!)
|
| [0] https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release-
| notes#mor...
|
| [1] https://depot.haiku-os.org
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Though IMO this misses the point of the OS which is the deep
| integration and fast UI the native APIs allow that these cross
| platform applications (and any application ported to Haiku
| through Qt and Java) ignore. There is no real reason to use
| Haiku over some Linux desktop (you can even make XFCE look
| kinda similar to Haiku/BeOS if you want) if the applications
| you use do not take advantage of it.
| [deleted]
| waddlesplash wrote:
| As a Haiku developer (and user, naturally!) I have to
| disagree. Obviously native software would be preferred, just
| as it is on macOS, but I am pretty sure that macOS users will
| tell you that they still prefer macOS, even if they are using
| Firefox, or JetBrains, or Inkscape, etc., yes?
|
| The Linux desktop is a horribly fragmented and fragile
| ecosystem. Haiku lacks a lot of features the Linux kernel
| has, but the overall system architecture and design is
| significantly cleaner and less fundamentally fragile.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _Haiku lacks a lot of features the Linux kernel has, but
| the overall system architecture and design is significantly
| cleaner and less fundamentally fragile._
|
| Yes, absolutely, spot on.
|
| But an OS does not exist on it's own. I'm afraid it will
| all be for naught unless you (or someone) has a viable
| business model to push the surrounding ecosystem forward.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I don't think anyone is suggesting Haiku to compete
| against windows or macOS. It seems to be more of a hobby
| play than anything else. The real company failed trying
| to commercialize this -- why would a design from the 90s
| be commercially viable now when the main selling features
| are standard, and all the innovation is on phones anyway?
| reddotX wrote:
| the fragmentation is in the non Ubuntu distros. Ubuntu
| alone has probably 70% linux market share
| waddlesplash wrote:
| That's not what I mean by "fragmentation"; I mean that
| the Linux desktop is a collection of different software
| projects (GRUB, the kernel, X11, ALSA, systemd, GNOME,
| ...) which are combined to form the operating system
| proper. Ubuntu is just as fragmented as any other
| distribution here.
|
| In Haiku, on the other hand, the bootloader, the kernel,
| window manager / display server, init system, base
| applications, etc. are all developed by one team in one
| source code repository.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| I never implied that the Haiku developers would dislike
| these applications, so i'm not sure you being a Haiku
| developer has anything to do with your disagreement.
|
| And yes, macOS users probably also tell you that they
| prefer macOS, though note that they also are often _very_
| loud about preferring software that takes advantage of
| their OS ' features because this is why they use that OS.
|
| The thing is, macOS has a much richer selection of software
| than Haiku has (and most likely, ever have) so macOS users
| at least can fall back to those. But if all you are going
| to use on Haiku is ported software that ignores native APIs
| then what is the point of using an OS with less hardware
| support and features?
|
| The Linux desktop being fragmented doesn't mean much - your
| Qt application ported to Haiku will also work on KDE
| perfectly fine and chances are even if you limit your
| software selection to Qt-only applications, you'll still
| have more applications to work with. Though that
| fragmentation is really a poor description since there are
| standards you can rely on, like X11 - sure someone might be
| using Gnome or XFCE or Window Maker or i3 or whatever as
| their desktop, but applications do not target those
| environments, they target a lower level of the stack that
| is shared among these and making an application on XFCE
| doesn't mean it'll only run under XFCE.
|
| So yeah, it might look fragmented, but unless you are some
| custom support worker that tries to navigate someone
| through the UI via phone, that isn't much of an issue in
| practice (and "in practice" is the important bit here
| because the reasons i've seen people put forth for having
| Qt/Java applications ported to Haiku and ignore Haiku's own
| APIs are all about practicality - which ignores the
| elephant in the room which is that if you care about
| practicality using Haiku in the first place wouldn't be a
| good choice anyway).
| dundarious wrote:
| Being a developer (and a user as they acknowledge), they
| have relative deep experience with the system and the
| benefits of "native" vs. ported apps. From that basis,
| they have a reasonable basis of knowledge in order to
| dispute your statement about the suitability of Haiku for
| someone using those apps, or the benefits of using those
| apps on Haiku.
| waddlesplash wrote:
| Your rosy picture of the Linux desktop where software
| gets along due to standards, etc. does not match up with
| my (and indeed many others') lived experiences. See my
| replies elsewhere in this chain about that problem.
| nix23 wrote:
| WoW thank you very much for working on that OS, as a
| Desktop OS it's blazing fast!
|
| Have matured non-native 'apps' is a big YESYES, it flattens
| the adaption curve.
|
| Hope more peoples test Haiku, they will love it, its so
| fast and un-bloated and still has everything a Desktop OS
| need's...oh man and the startup...i mean even OpenBSD feels
| bloated, the booting time is phenomenal.
| dingdingdang wrote:
| Hey, thanks for your good work! Haiku is like "enjoyable
| computing" restarted, reminds me of the spirit of the Amiga
| with the stability of proper modern OS! :)
| waddlesplash wrote:
| Thanks! :)
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Is there any good intro on how to get developing under
| Haiku? I seem to remember there being a wxWidgets port
| years ago but the documentation regarding it is scant. I
| would like to know which development environment I could
| use (Qt Creator perhaps?) and get to writing some apps on
| it as I really enjoyed using Haiku and BeOS for fun.
|
| Do you have any tips or pointers? Thanks in advance
| VZ wrote:
| The really interesting thing would be to have a wx port
| using the native API for it, but unfortunately the last
| time I heard about wxBe was in the last century...
| waddlesplash wrote:
| There is wxQt running on top of the Qt5 port, yes, but it
| isn't that well used. I know someone got Code::Blocks
| running under it, but they were working on some issues in
| the wx port still. Development should be like it is under
| Linux with that.
|
| Qt Creator is indeed in the depots and works pretty well,
| so you can use that.
|
| If you have more questions, feel free to find us on IRC
| (Freenode#haiku), the forums, the mailing lists, the bug
| tracker, or (for ported software) on GitHub
| (@haikuports/haikuports). Or continue asking here if you
| prefer :)
| tqh wrote:
| Haiku has it own set of API's, that is a bit different
| than other platforms (message passing, multi-threaded).
| The UI API's is defined in the Interface Kit. See
| https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/api/
|
| Here is the code for the Magnify App in Haiku: https://gi
| thub.com/haiku/haiku/blob/master/src/apps/magnify/...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| What do you view as fragile about Linux distros? Just the
| lack of tight integration, or something else?
| waddlesplash wrote:
| See my reply to reddotX below for the "theory"; in
| practice, this winds up causing all kinds of breakage
| when e.g. you are using a "non-default" configuration,
| and then upgrading fails to change some critical line in
| a configuration file, and now you have no audio out and
| must spend multiple hours Googling to even find an error
| message and install a missing package and start a daemon
| manually (true story, happened to me on Kubuntu some
| years ago.)
|
| Or you want to use Xrdp to connect to your desktop via
| Windows RDP, but the default shipped configuration
| enables the wrong plugin, so you can connect but get
| cryptic errors when signing in, so you have to edit the
| Xrdp configuration file and change the plugin load order
| and then restart X11 while signed in via SSH (happened to
| me a few months ago, on 18.04 LTS.)
|
| Those are just two examples off the top of my head; back
| when I did use Linux as a daily driver, I would spend
| multiple hours a month fixing something that got broken
| or did not work as it was supposed to, and this was just
| on Ubuntu, not even on Arch or some more up-to-date
| distro like that.
| close04 wrote:
| You have to start somewhere and people (users or devs) are
| more likely to use an OS that has more of the apps they're
| used to.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| But if practicality is the concern they'd use Windows or
| Linux.
| croo wrote:
| I tried haiku back in 2011, it was a fun 2 hour then I forgot
| about it. Since that short experience, every other year news find
| me that it reached a new milestone.
|
| It does sound like fun to write a new os... but this project is
| at least 10 years old. How and why did it survive and reached
| beta? Why does it still exist?
|
| What practical applications does this OS has (or will have) over
| the commonly knowns?
| azinman2 wrote:
| Why do people work on old cars? For the love of it.
| vvpan wrote:
| So you are saying Haiku is a hobby project with no goal of
| being um... "production"? Are you sure that people building
| it feel the same way?
| azinman2 wrote:
| Considering it's a small set of developers who all work
| part time re-implementing an OS from the 90s that failed
| when it was a commercial entity fully staffed, it's hard to
| imagine that they're super serious about it being a
| "production" OS.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| A couple quick comments:
|
| (1) While Be, Inc., failed, it's debatable whether it
| failed because the OS wasn't good enough. It was
| certainly being used in commercial production in certain
| places already -- not just by hobbyists. Steinberg was
| selling a BeOS version of their (very high-grade and
| expensive!) audio production system, Nuendo, and I
| actually _saw_ Level Control Systems ' CueStation, an
| "audio automation system" for Broadway-grade live
| performance systems, running on BeOS in the wild -- it
| was running the control booth of Cirque de Soleil's
| permanent installation at Disney World. BeOS was doing
| _shockingly_ well in attracting commercial applications
| in 1997-1999 given its tiny user base -- what they were
| failing at was attracting hardware companies to ship pre-
| installed systems. Be 's management was dead set on the
| idea that "steady and slow growth as a niche OS" just
| wouldn't do, and they needed to either be the next Apple
| or die trying. And, when they punted on desktop BeOS in
| favor of a custom version for what turned out to be the
| absolutely imaginary market for internet appliances, they
| pretty much chose "die trying."
|
| (2) I think it depends on what you mean by "production".
| I mean, it's probably never going to be competing with
| Linux servers. But is it possible it could be competitive
| with Linux as a desktop OS? Maybe. A few years ago I
| wouldn't have been that optimistic, but they've done a
| tremendous job with ports.
| jug wrote:
| Interesting-- two showstoppers for me fixed since Beta 1. USB 3
| is now much better supported including as boot devices, and NVMe
| drives are now also supported. I might just be able to at least
| boot and see this! Judging by this, the traction actually sounds
| decent. Wait - what? It's 10+ years old. Yes, but that was just
| two major improvements out of several, and during 20 months.
| dang wrote:
| Those curious for more may wish to see also:
|
| 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127
|
| 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918
|
| 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056
|
| 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766
|
| 2012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941
|
| 2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827
|
| 2009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844
|
| Sundry:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| return wrote:
| The actual R1/Beta 2 release notes provide more details on what's
| in this release [0]:
|
| [0] https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release-notes/
| memexy wrote:
| The ideals of Haiku are great but is anyone using it
| consistently? If they are what workflows benefit from Haiku's
| feature set?
|
| I understand the theoretical benefits. I'm curious if anyone is
| actually using Haiku features in some non-trivial way, e.g.
|
| > Database-like file system (BFS) with support for indexed
| metadata
|
| A filesystem with indexed metadata sounds great but who is
| actually using it and how?
|
| I tried to search for comments with the obvious phrases but all I
| found was this comment from 10 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1335692.
| jessermeyer wrote:
| > A filesystem with indexed metadata sounds great but who is
| actually using it and how?
|
| One of my first sour experiences with NTFS was the horror
| involved in learning how to find which files have changed since
| some given time in a directory. I expected a SQL-ish interface
| but...omg. omg.
|
| The reason for tracking changes in files was for hot loading
| art assets into a running program.
| memexy wrote:
| Yup, filesystems in general should have a database/SQL
| interface. I'm currently using CouchDB and Apache Tika to
| index and search my files. It works but there is no way
| people who are not programmers would enjoy using such a
| system. It's extremely inelegant and requires constant
| context switching and I'd much rather be using an operating
| system that had all this functionality as part of the
| filesystem interface.
| miki123211 wrote:
| How does Haiku's accessibility story look like? Any plans for a
| screen reader?
|
| Blind user here, I would like to try this out and see what all
| this fuss is about, but I think I can't. Can someone explain
| what's so great about Haiku's UI?
| waddlesplash wrote:
| (Haiku developer here.) The way the UI is structured, creating
| a screen reader would not be too difficult, and I think one of
| our developers attempted it at one point, but it was certainly
| never finished and is not usable right now. Sorry :(
|
| Beyond the spirit of and compatibility with BeOS, Haiku's
| advantages are being full-fledged desktop operating system
| developed by a single team as a single unit (that is, unlike
| Linux or the BSDs where the kernel, window manager, GUI
| toolkit, application suite, etc. are developed by separate
| teams and combined by yet other groups); and also our
| occasionally unique approach to systems design and
| implementation (for instance, the Haiku package manager is
| based around a union mount of block-compressed filesystem
| images.)
|
| The UI itself is reminiscent of 1990s UIs (gradients, bevels,
| more saturated colors), with a modern feel (modern fonts,
| antialiasing, etc.) The window borders are not rectangular, but
| are instead yellow "tabs" which are only as wide as their text
| is, and so windows from separate applications can be "stacked"
| and used as a unit, like tabs within applications.
| aquabeagle wrote:
| I've tried Haiku a few times and liked it, but it feels like the
| beta label has been around forever and is not doing them any
| favors. It's 2020, you're not publishing software as a big-box
| release in stores, just cut a release already and then keep
| iterating!
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| _It wasn 't until September, 2009 that Haiku reached its first
| milestone with the release of Haiku R1/Alpha 1. Then in November,
| 2012 the R1/Alpha 4.1 was released, while work continued on
| nightly builds.[8] On September 28, 2018, the Haiku R1/Beta 1 was
| released.[9] On June 9, 2020, Haiku R1/Beta 2 was released._
|
| Almost 11 years and it's still not out of beta?!
| waddlesplash wrote:
| What can I say? We have extremely stringent quality standards
| ;)
|
| The "beta" label signified that we had implemented all the
| features we thought mandatory for R1. Of course there are new
| ones in this release (like HiDPI support or the NVMe driver)
| because we still want to use Haiku on contemporary hardware, so
| changes still get made. But largely we are more oriented
| towards stabilization and "usability", i.e. fixing bugs or
| minor enhancements that get in the way of actually using Haiku.
|
| But it's also the case that we do not get a massive amount of
| work done every month; probably around or less than a "man-
| month" between the dozen or two developers.
| Koshkin wrote:
| ReactOS is still in alpha after 22 years. I guess their
| standards are even higher.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Well, ReactOS still BSODs when you look at it wrong. Haiku
| is a lot more stable.
| bryan_w wrote:
| To be fair windows does keep introducing new API. BeOS has
| been "stable" for some time now
| Koshkin wrote:
| IIRC the goal was to be _driver-compatible_ (with Windows
| Server 2003).
| kingnight wrote:
| Hi!
|
| Thanks for your work on Haiku.
|
| I remember LOVING BeOS when it came out. I was a kid, had
| dabbled in breaking my parents computers with Linux
| distributions in the 90s, and was enamored with BeOS and was
| blown away by how great it worked. The fact that the user
| space has continued over the years is really nice to know
| (and have tried over various times through emulation).
|
| Has there ever been interest or attempts at funding it so
| that more than a man-month could get accomplished?
| waddlesplash wrote:
| Yes, there are occasionally contracts paid out by the Inc.
| to developers to work on things, but this depends on a
| developer having the opportunity and willingness to do so,
| since the funds will eventually dry up and they will be out
| of a job.
|
| We had two major contracts (for a few months) in 2012-2013
| to finish and then integrate the package management system,
| another in 2013 for the new kernel scheduler, and then one
| that lasted almost a year around the same time working on
| the WebKit port used in the built-in web browser (which
| ended because the money ran out.)
|
| Haiku, Inc. currently has over $100k in the bank as per
| it's last financial report, but at only $20k (usually less)
| in donations a year, it's obviously not enough to be
| sustainable past a year or two for even a single developer.
| If there was actual sponsorship by the community or
| otherwise, then yes, a number of us would be willing to
| work on Haiku full-time.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Oh the other hand, probably when they first announce 1.0 a lot
| of new users will try it, and they probably don't want their
| first experience to be a buggy mess.
| return wrote:
| Well the development team is incredibly small working on an
| 'entire OS' not just a kernel, in their spare time with little
| resources and funds compared to other open-source projects who
| have many more paid contributors working on a sub-system part
| of a Linux distro. I'd say the fact that Haiku is still alive
| and has most of the essential software is impressive given its
| situation.
|
| Imagine if Haiku had fully funded developers working on the OS.
| It would be out a lot sooner with more features, but obviously
| that isn't the case.
| the-dude wrote:
| So what?
| Koshkin wrote:
| Beta means "not production-ready." (10+ years is an awfully
| long time for something to become production ready from the
| commercial standpoint.)
| thesuitonym wrote:
| >to become production ready from the commercial
|
| It's not a commercial product. Even if it was, what ever
| happened to releasing quality software? Sure, Google and
| Facebook release new builds constantly but everybody hates
| them. There used to be a time when a new version of
| software meant new features, not new bugs, and it seems
| like Haiku hearkens back to that time.
| slantyyz wrote:
| If you want to count back to its initial development, we're
| going back to 2001, almost two decades.
|
| I remember being optimistic/hopeful about the project in
| its earliest days (following its progress on OSNews).
|
| I wanted to see something like BeOS on x86 hardware after
| seeing how fast it ran on my first PC (after a long stint
| with Apple IIs and Macs).
|
| A lot has changed in those 19 years, but still, kudos to
| the team for sticking at it.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| By complete coincidence, today was the day that I finally decided
| to try Haiku on a spare laptop... and it just worked. Battery's
| recognized, display's running at full resolution (no VESA or
| whatever), wifi worked without issue. I'm typing this comment in
| WebPositive:) This is actually pretty great.
| moreorless wrote:
| It has been a long long time since I gave Haiku a look. It is
| getting there. Setup on KVM took less than a minute. Looking
| nice. Networking seems a little slow when loading web pages,
| otherwise looks good. I miss WebPositive.
| extro wrote:
| WebPositive is included.
| moreorless wrote:
| Yes. I know. I am posting from it right now.
| rwmj wrote:
| Haiku has a really lovely smooth "90s-style" graphical interface.
| Always responsive whether you run it locally or (as I more often
| do) run it in a VM.
| lordleft wrote:
| I remember folks who would wax nostalgic about BeOS, and claim it
| trounced Unix & Windows when it came to performance. Could anyone
| speak to the technical strengths / interesting aspects of this
| OS?
| kitotik wrote:
| I think most of the perceived performance was a result of
| pervasive multi threading, which was novel at the time.
|
| For example, I remember being able to simultaneously play 5-6
| mp3 files, load a web page, play an mpeg video, and browse the
| local file system while having complete UI responsiveness and
| no audible/visual glitches. This was pretty much unheard of at
| the time, especially on modest consumer hardware (pentium 2
| ~350mhz IIRC)
| slantyyz wrote:
| Yeah that pretty much sums it up. The OS ran circles around
| pretty much any other OS you had running on the same
| hardware.
|
| I remember the OS installing in a crazy short amount of time.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Legends of BeOS's fast multimedia handling still lives on and I
| wonder if Haiku has some sort of edge today when it comes to
| playing multimedia or recording music?
| slantyyz wrote:
| It was bonkers. I could barely play two videos simultaneously
| on my Pentium in Windows 9x, but I could play four
| simultaneously on the same box booted into BeOS. The OS was
| small and fast.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Haiku looks like an interesting project. I like the concept and
| the consistent design, but ... it is still missing one critical
| feature ... a viable business model.
|
| Linux is an example of what to expect without this critical
| piece. Decades of manhours from some of the best and brightest,
| millions of lines of code ... and a miniscule marketshare on the
| desktop.
| mulmen wrote:
| There are many successful businesses built on top of Linux. The
| install base of Linux is small on _desktops_ but it 's the most
| common OS on all other platforms.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Yes, I know. Linux is most successful where only a shell
| interface is required.
|
| But this is not what Haiku is about.
| zlynx wrote:
| Cars. Airplanes. Space capsules. Coffee machines.
|
| Linux shows up everywhere. With a GUI.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Dedicated, embedded, custom made, single purpose GUIs
| where the OS is buried so deep that most users will never
| find it.
|
| Again, not what Haiku is about.
| Koshkin wrote:
| macOS usage share is also small (4.9% according to Wikipedia).
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Small but still significantly more popular and vibrant on the
| desktop than Linux --- due to it's business model.
| [deleted]
| slantyyz wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there is no business model. I see Haiku as a
| labour of love.
| agambrahma wrote:
| I get (I think) how this is different from a Linux desktop, being
| developed in entirety as a single project, instead of being split
| into a kernel, and user-space distro, and fragmented apps on top
| of that, but ... is there a tl;dr on how this compares to (say)
| FreeBSD, which is another "kernel + user-space in one package"
| thing?
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