Giving Haiku Beta 3 a try

https://www.friendlyskies.net/notebook/giving-haiku-os-beta-3-a-try

by pjerem • 5 years ago

113 48 5 years ago

gtsop• 5 years ago

I was completely oblivious to the existence of haiku until i saw a couple posts on HN. Is there any tl;dr version of how it is different than let's say a linux distro?

Ygg2• 5 years ago

It's derived from BeOS, rather than a Unix.

Also it's a hybrid kernel written in C++, unlike Linux which is monolithic kernel in C.

capableweb2• 5 years ago

Which means:

- Different Kernel (based on NewOS if I'm not wrong)

- Alright POSIX support but not 100%

- Haiku has is unified base/GUI/OS compared to Linux distributions, that often choose their own window managers/composers/custom kernels (sometimes) and so on. One example is that the GUI is driven by the kernel in Haiku, in comparison to Linux distributions that often use X11 or similar software between

- Different bootloader that seems more Windows OS aware than GRUB et al

- Haiku focuses on personal computing, compared to Linux that (mostly) feels to aim for server usage, with supporting personal computing. But sometimes those things are at odds, and Linux allows you to configure it to be better for one or the other use case, while Haiku aims strictly for personal computing.

- Haiku/BeOS always had multithreading/multi-processor in mind for it's design. If it's faster/better or not I'm not sure, but the focus been there since early

- OOP API for development of Haiku software (if that's better not is an exercise left to the reader)

I think the biggest selling point of Haiku is it's unity regarding the entire operating system being designed for one specific use case: personal computing. So responsiveness of the GUI is prioritized because that's the best for personal usage, while Linux (can) make other tradeoffs while allowing you to customize it.

I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who test-driven Haiku a couple of times but never used it full-time, but am a daily user of Linux distributions (Arch, NixOS and Ubuntu). Some things might be wrong, I'm happy to be corrected if so, but this is what I've gathered from my usage and reading about it a little every time it pops up somewhere.

tialaramex• 5 years ago

Also it's a hybrid kernel written in C++, unlike Linux which is monolithic kernel in C.

"Hybrid" doesn't mean anything here. The "hybrid" design claims all the benefits of a monolithic kernel, without the disadvantages of a microkernel. Huh. Wait, let's read that again. It's a monolithic kernel with better marketing. Even the networking, which in BeOS back in the 1990s was genuinely userspace code - is baked inside the Haiku kernel just like the IP stack in Linux.

C++ is not used very much in Haiku's kernel. This is because the Haiku kernel ABI boundaries are defined in C not C++ and because they're stuck with stuff from last century for compatibility reasons. If you know C++ 20 you will find Haiku's C++ dialect pretty archaic, they don't yet have C++ 11 era smart pointers for example.

In practice, unlike Linux the Haiku kernel has a very 1980s attitude to hardware, it's big on "probing" at boot time for devices, like DOS would have, making it a poor fit for modern intelligent peripherals. As a hack USB is treated a bit differently so that at least it has some sort of "hot plug" like a 1990s PC. Where Haiku tried to go beyond probing they chose something very strange, they focus on capability discovery. So Haiku's thing is, you want a sound device, lets look for a sound device, I can't see one, give up. In Linux, discovery is driven by the peripherals, so this is a PCI controller, let us explore the PCI bus, OK there's a USB controller on it, let's explore the USB bus, OK there's an Intel HDA controller on it, let's explore that, it's a PCM output. We can play sound through that. Haiku's approach might fit well in some other universe, but the Linux strategy matches how your hardware actually works in our universe.

cable2600• 5 years ago

HaikuOS https://www.haiku-os.org/ is a free and open source rewrite of BeOS using APIs it can run BeOS code and has had a lot of apps portered to it. It needs less memory than Linux and is more like ReactOS https://reactos.org/ when they add in the WINE porting to run WIN32 and WIN64 apps.

BETA3 is stable enough to use a web browser and email program to get things done. It can be installed on old retro legacy PCs to make better use of them.

Run it in a virtual machine first.

fernandotakai• 5 years ago

nitpicking, but the OS is called just "haiku", not haikuos.

nyanpasu642• 5 years ago

Beta 3 won't boot on my Zen 3 desktop. Should I try the latest nightly, report a bug, or only run it on older hardware?

kgraves• 5 years ago

Given the amount of progress in porting Wine [0], RISC-V [1], 3D Acceleration and now has finally a full time developer (waddlesplash)

It very is astounding to see what the Haiku team has done with the resources they currently have on building what could be a useable alternative OS for the desktop.

I can only kindly suggest more of us donate to Haiku [2] there still needs to be more browsers (Chrome / Firefox) and polished ARM support (think Raspberry Pis)

[0] https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-in-porting-wine/1...

[1] https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-on-real-risc-v-ha...

[2] https://www.haiku-inc.org/donate/

xyproto• 5 years ago

Is there a Linux distro out there that is themed to look like HaikuOS and works well?

capableweb2• 5 years ago

I guess you could look for themes (Gnome: https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1143497| XFCE: https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1013908/) but you won't get the same unified GUI as Haiku has, since everything is built with unification in mind, compared to the Linux ecosystem where modularity is usually king.

I guess Elementary OS is as close to a unified GUI you come that runs with a Linux kernel, but it tries to look more like macOS than BeOS.

rvense2• 5 years ago

The looks are the least important part. It works differently. Applications interact in a different way, there' APIs (especially around filesystem metadata) that applications and scripts can use. It's not necessarily that the capabilities don't exist on other systems, it's just that they're exposed and most importantly used in a different way. It's also a system that was built from the ground up to be GUI-based. The command line is there, but it's not the primary means of doing anything much.

There are BeOS/Haiku window decoration themes for at least XFCE and I think OpenBox. But looks are really not what Haiku is about.

schleck8• 5 years ago

The name of the project is simply “Haiku”. Unfortunately, despite numerous attempts, the registration of haiku.org has not been possible; hence the reason for haiku-os.org.

And guess what, the domain haiku.org is collecting dust. What a surprise with how civil the domain market is.

https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/#why-isnt-it-called-haiku...

https://haiku.org/

halpert2• 5 years ago

What is your opinion on property rights?

krono2• 5 years ago

IANAL: As I understand it, dotcom domain names are leased rather than owned.

Either way, if squatting of high value domains were illegal, you could make the case for some form of (civil) asset forfeiture, or eminent domain if the taker is a popular open source project. Not sure how I'd feel about this, though.

rvz• 5 years ago

Maybe if they had tons of cash somehow, they would have bought it already, just like how Signal was able to buy signal.org (even with or without donations) regardless.

Assuming everyone here from many companies from large corporations / startups to small open-source companies know how expensive some domain names are.

KZerda• 5 years ago

Domains are used for more than just webhosting. The owner could have email accounts, etc, that use the haiku.org domain that they don't want to switch to another less recognizeable name.

thewakalix• 5 years ago

Seems likely.

  Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2022-01-01 14:17 CST
  Initiating Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 14:17
  Completed Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 14:17, 0.00s elapsed
  Initiating Connect Scan at 14:17
  Scanning haiku.org (35.213.168.88) [11 ports]
  Completed Connect Scan at 14:17, 5.00s elapsed (11 total ports)
  Nmap scan report for haiku.org (35.213.168.88)
  Host is up.
  rDNS record for 35.213.168.88: 88.168.213.35.bc.googleusercontent.com
  
  PORT     STATE    SERVICE
  21/tcp   filtered ftp
  25/tcp   filtered smtp
  53/tcp   filtered domain
  80/tcp   filtered http
  110/tcp  filtered pop3
  143/tcp  filtered imap
  443/tcp  filtered https
  587/tcp  filtered submission
  993/tcp  filtered imaps
  995/tcp  filtered pop3s
  3306/tcp filtered mysql
  
  Read data files from: /usr/bin/../share/nmap
  Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 5.06 seconds

mssdvd2• 5 years ago

On a side note, Emacs has been recently ported to Haiku.

e3bc54b2• 5 years ago

Which is a great boon for both Haiku and my old netbook. 9/10 times I'm using terminal, browser and Emacs anyway, and Haiku is stupid fast. Now if only wireless support was bit better...

bluepoint• 5 years ago

you mean with gui? It was ported as a terminal application a while ago.

mssdvd2• 5 years ago

Yes, I do. It was merged to master a month ago.

mysterydip• 5 years ago

Good to see all the progress on Haiku. This might be a solution for a "modern windows 2000" from the discussion the other day.

discmonkey• 5 years ago

It would be great to implement some of the windowing improvements as an addition to a current linux windowing system.

Pinning different applications together or being able to merge applications with tabs both sound useful... These sorts of ideas are why it's great to have another open source OS.

djur• 5 years ago

Tabbed window managers have existed for X11 for ages, but the concept only seems to have remained popular in tiling WMs, not stacking WMs. KDE had built-in support for tabbed windows for a while but it looks like the feature disappeared a few years back, which suggests it wasn't being used much.

michaelmrose2• 5 years ago

Good points. Although tiling may be a departure wanted or unwanted from your normal workflow i3wm does provide support for tabbing arbitrary applications together however this neither supporting merging 2 tabbed application into a single level of tabs nor does it fully support using window manager tabs in place of application tabs because of the inherent lack of context that would require a deeper sort of integration.

For example in your browser you might want in its UI to open a particular link in the background or foreground or perform an operation on all tabs or a subgroup thereof that is specific to browser tabs that wouldn't make sense in the broader context like bookmarking, saving a session, sending to another device etc.

There is a good argument for opening a window in the fore or background being exposed to the application but it doesn't at present work that way.

Regarding multitab operations, do you display only the options that make contextual sense or perhaps list all the options that make sense?

Example 3 firefox tabs and 2 Emacs tabs in a group. Show bookmark all firefox tabs and save all Emacs tabs as operations that can be done to the group? Possibly show only the relevant options if some subset are selected. Example if only 3 firefox tabs are selected show only those operations.

There is an argument for retaining multiple levels of tabbing at the OS level and the application level other than simplicity. Often when you want to perform a group operation the app is an already defined group for that operation, and in addition it often makes more sense to page through application tabs and windows separately rather than as a singular operation. For example going one window to the left for your editor while leaving the existing firefox tab focused rather than having to hit a different shortcut to jump up a level.

I think it would be interesting if you could have like application windows automatically vertically tabbed like Firefox's tree style tabs and have a contextual option to either break out to a new tree or open a different applications link as a child tab of the tree.

One could then optionally switch between showing trees side by side/top bottom or joining them into a horizontal tab group.

Ideally operations performed on multiple tabs could be performed by hitting a singular hotkey or button that would present all relevant options without going into each apps menu or pressing a different key or ui per app.

This would however be both complicated and require coordination between players that would likely be impossible.

Giving Haiku Beta 3 a try

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