
Haiku Operating System - wtetzner
https://www.haiku-os.org/
======
trotsky
I am always in awe of these guys just for the sheer dedication. This is what,
12 years? And at least as far as I've seen they've been consistently active
through it or at least it's never seemed dead. Yet they're still a good chunk
away from an initial release milestone. I remember some folks used to rave
about BeOS that's seldom been matched, but daaamn it had to have really been
something to keep people going 12 years and several more to ship.

I wonder who owns the intellectual property rights these days, or if there is
something unsolvable about the licensed components. I know Jean-Louis Gassée
is a notorious asshole at times, but it really seems like somebody should just
give the code to these guys. It's not like they're ever going to market it
again.

~~~
ZenoArrow
AFAIK, the intellectual property rights are owned by a Japanese company called
Access.

The IP isn't needed anymore. There's only one key feature holding back the
first beta release, and that's a stable set of package management tools. Every
other key component is in place.

~~~
pifflesnort
It's absolutely bizarre that the developers have adopted the Linux idea of
package management, including shared library dependency hell that requires
maintaining the dependency graph in lockstep.

You only need a traditional UNIX package manager if you have traditional UNIX
packages -- splatting files all over the file system, providing unstable
ABI/API, etc.

The OS is basically ready to release now, and instead of focusing on polish,
they're bringing over one of the worst features of Linux. You'd think they'd
at least borrow from the modern app store idea of "packages".

They're actually implementing package management as a paid project. I'm
_seriously_ annoyed that my donation to Haiku is being spent on that, rather
than on things that would actually matter to existing desktop users coming
from Mac OS X. It seems that Haiku has floundered, largely due to the take-
over of Linux-centric developers after the original project leader (Michael
Phipps) left in 2009. Michael kept the project _very_ focused on BeOS R1, and
now it's all over the map and pulling in the very ideas from Linux that BeOS
and MacOS were built in opposition to.

~~~
trotsky
Since you seem rather familiar, I've always wanted to ask what the story with
the widgets/theme is. I have nothing but respect for all the work that's been
done. But the UI really stands out as distinctively from a very specific era
and just doesn't feel very appealing now. So I'm curious what the primary
driver is there. Faithful recreation as a core value? Sort of a badge of honor
type thing for the BeOS faithful? Lack of ui/ux contributors? Or just lower on
the priority list?

I'm not knocking it, rationally i don't have a problem with it, but at the
same time i can't imagine i'd be up for using it as a main os.

~~~
ZenoArrow
The UI was one of the few components carried over from BeOS, as it was open-
sourced (OpenTracker): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenTracker>

There have been some refinements made to the UI during the Haiku era (such as
Stack and Tile windows and vector icons by default), but has otherwise
remained stable. What's the main reason behind that? It's not a priority for
R1 (the first stable release). No reason it can evolve in time.

What in particular do you dislike about the look? Should point out the deskbar
can be moved around to be more 'Start Menu'-like if you so wish.
<http://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/deskbar.html>

~~~
trotsky
Oh, I don't mean app positions or use patterns or anything like that. I mean
toolkit widgets like sliders, buttons, chrome, window manager elements, that
kind of thing.

And for the record i feel the exact same way about plain xtk, old style
gtk/gnome and probably win2k and earlier if i saw em.

I had to go and look at a bunch of screenshots to come up with an answer
besides just the "feel". I think a big part of it is the heavy reliance on
thin embossed/3d borders and lines, no rounded or softened elements, the
limited palette use in core elements, no rich gradients or transparencies.

I didn't realize it at all until i made the list, but I guess a big part of it
is the look of a toolkit/window manager that was built on top of a 3d api and
compositor.

I guess the gpu industry norms are a huge barrier for anyone on an alternate
path.

------
jordan0day
While I never used BeOS, and haven't tried Haiku either, I can't help but hope
that something not Unix-based* gains some popularity sometime. At lot of the
"innovation" happening in desktop OS's today seems incremental. In fact, I'd
argue that there's a bit of a monoculture among the various Unix-derivatives
that discourages radical changes, for compatibility reasons (which is
reasonable). Though I don't think the various Linux distros and BSDs have all
that much of a competitive effect on one another, anyway.

Or have we reached a point where OS's aren't that interesting any more?

* - Other than Windows, that is.

~~~
Millennium
BeOS had some extremely interesting concepts, and I'd love to see Haiku gain
some traction.

I'm not sure whether or not to call it Unix-based, though. It certainly isn't
based on any known Unix code-wise: it's not even written in C. But it does
retain a Unix-like command line, and you can even get much of the GNU toolset
for it.

~~~
gecko
Haiku also, far more than BeOS ever did, follows POSIX. Porting Unix
applications to Haiku is actually fairly easy these days.

~~~
pjmlp
POSIX UNIX applications == CLI, not much more.

------
Serow225
I remember being completely blown away back in the 90s when I installed BeOS
on a Pentium - on Windows 9X the machine struggled to play a single RealPlayer
video, whereas under BeOS I could run 30 or 40 videos simultaneously with each
window bouncing around automatically - and the sound had zero glitches(must
have been some kind of demo?) Also you could put up to 6 live videos on the
faces of a rotating cube, which was even more amazing at the time.

~~~
keithnoizu
My wow moment with BeOS came when ripping a cd under the os. The process took
forever on any program I tried on windows. On beos the entire cd was burned in
the time it would take to process a single track on windows.

It was an impressive little OS. It's shame it did not manage to go mainstream.

~~~
Serow225
Yes! I totally forgot that. Burning CDs did rip on BeOS.

------
jlebrech
I've been monitoring this for years, what's changed recently? I'd be looking
for some web development options, ruby, python, console, vim, before i use it
a on a daily basis.

~~~
gecko
Recently: x64 support, Bluetooth support, WiFi improvements, and a package
manager and porting tools.

In answer to your questions: Python definitely works just fine on it, as do
Vim and the terminal emulator. I have no idea about Ruby, but I'd be surprised
if it didn't work.

That said, what'll bite you is the lack of browser support. There are actually
good browsers, mind, but you don't have your usual Firefox/Chrome duopoly
fully available. There's also no virtualization support. While I don't know
what your web dev workflow looks like, mine needs at least something along the
lines of LXC/FreeBSD jails for me to actually get stuff done.

------
MrJagil
I just want to say, this is such an amazing HN thread. No snark, no one trying
to feel superior. Just pure excitement over something that (at this point) is
no where near having a serious impact. Just the joy of pre-smartphone nerdery.

Best of all, an incredible amount of information. I know nothing of this low-
level system stuff, yet i cant stop reading.

------
felipebueno
I like Haiku OS very much :)... Last year, I tried using it as my primary OS
for a couple of weeks but it didn't work very well. It's not productive enough
(for me) yet.

But I will certainly try it again in the near future because I like very much
switching my OS every now and then. And I definitely recommend it for any
advanced user to try it out. =)

~~~
abraininavat
So all you've told us is it didn't work very well. Is there anything else you
liked about it?

------
Skoofoo
I was initially skeptical and thought this would be another pet open source
project without direction, a viable target market, or good design sense, but
after checking this out I was proved very wrong on all counts.

This is amazing. The people behind this seem to really know what they're
doing. The operating system's interface design and that of its default
applications are better than anything offered on Linux [0]. I'm also really
impressed with the fact that there is One True environment and toolkit which
is integrated into the OS, which, compared to the Linux desktop, should
decrease development time while increasing the consistency and overall quality
of the user experience. And it has bash!

I thought Linux Mint with Cinnamon was great, but I'm strongly considering
dropping it and using this as my primary OS.

[0] <https://www.haiku-os.org/slideshows/haiku-tour>

------
reefab
I'm totally hoping that they'll finish their port to the Raspberry Pi. It
would be a great match.

------
beatgammit
This has been discussed before: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941>

Is there anything new or notable about the project these days? I haven't kept
up on the news.

~~~
jff
No, it's just karma whoring because the previous submission finally passed the
age threshold.

~~~
aeontech
That is unkind - just because you have read about Haiku before, does not mean
everyone else has. Filter bubble much?

~~~
pestaa
Let's not pretend there is a different incentive to submit a URL that has not
changed in the last 365 days other than karma points.

Though I certainly appreciate being reminded of excellent projects, this
submission feels way too automatic.

~~~
aeontech
I've enjoyed the discussion above, so I think it was a worthy submission. I
guess I don't really understand why people are bothered by someone getting
those priceless karma points even if it is a repost.

~~~
pestaa
I think most people don't care about karma farmers, but I think you'll agree
that karma farmers' submissions often increase the noise rather than the
signal.

~~~
aeontech
What's noise for you is signal for someone else and vice versa, isn't that why
it's a hard problem to solve?

------
msluyter
Sort of tangential, but I'd be interested in seeing an OS based on Go, where
Go::Go-OS as C::Unix. (And you could call it "Goose".) Given Go's awesome
features, I would imagine it could be pretty interesting.

~~~
amock
What could you get from an OS written in Go that an OS written in C doesn't
already provide? If you were writing a new OS then it might be easier to write
it mostly in Go, but I don't think there is any kind of fundamental difference
like there is between Linux and Squeak or a Lisp Machine.

~~~
ericbb
If /usr/include were dropped and /usr/lib only contained Go packages, then
you'd have an ecosystem where library namespaces are handled in a scalable way
--that's a pretty big deal. You'd be working in a statically linked
environment rather than a dynamically linked environment--another major
change. Garbage collection for everything in user space. Potentially, the
removal of select/poll? Drastic increase in memory safety (buffer overruns,
etc).

Based on the package naming, dependency management, and concurrency, it might
even be argued that a Go user space is a bigger fundamental change than a
Smalltalk or Lisp user space.

Btw, one probably wouldn't write a kernel in Go so I take the parent to be
speculating about a system where new OS features were provided by integrating
them first into a Go standard library rather than by integrating them into the
C standard libraries.

~~~
amock
Most of these things don't sound like they need OS support. Just writing Go
libraries and using Go alongside the existing system can provide a statically
linked environment, no need for the application write to use select/poll or
worry about memory safety, and garbage collection. It doesn't have to be "Go
all the way down" since you won't be modifying your environment at runtime.

------
klrr
Compared to Unix, is Haiku built with modularity and simplicity in mind?

~~~
fusiongyro
Haiku is built on object-oriented principles, so the question is really
whether you consider C++ as used in the project to be modular and simple. The
API is pretty clever, mostly built on implicit threading and message passing.
I consider it a pretty decent API, so I would say yes. The existence of
replicants is a pretty compelling demonstration of the flexibility it affords:
any view can be marked as "replicable" and then copied onto the desktop or any
other replicant target.

Now, because data is exchanged almost exclusively using BMessages and
everything is C++, if you're using C++ it's highly modular. If your definition
of modularity and simplicity implies Unix processes passing plain text between
them using pipes, you probably won't find it all that inspiring. My knowledge
is all vintage BeOS R4 so I don't know whether Haiku is more multilingual
today; I'd guess probably so, but if not, that would be a detriment since I'm
not overly fond of C++ and wouldn't consider it "simple."

~~~
asiekierka
It's not multilingual at all, unless you use the GTK ports or stick to
console.

~~~
fusiongyro
That's a shame. With swig it ought to have been easy to support other
languages, but maybe it's too hard to port.

~~~
chubot
I wouldn't consider SWIG the foundation of multi-language support; it seems
more like a legacy wart that you don't want to port to a new OS.

Especially with C++. AFAIK it's an ad hoc C++ parser written in Perl! They can
do better by ditching the legacy.

------
workbench
So glad to see this in development still. Linux still leaves a lot to be
desired until X11 dies in a fire.

