
Haiku Project - gscott
https://www.haiku-os.org/
======
miles
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 a beat. Then, he
pulled out the showstopper._

 _He yanked the plug on the box._

 _Within 20 seconds or so of restarting, the machine was chugging away with
all of its media files in the place they were when they were halted, as if
nothing had happened._

 _Damn._

[0]
[https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66224&cid=6095472](https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66224&cid=6095472)

~~~
honkhonkpants
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.

~~~
cm3
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 and half-baked 2nd system syndrome in
effect and repeated all the time.

~~~
rogerbinns
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](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...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/06/the-beos-
filesystem/)

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.

~~~
jwatte
Layer violations are fine if they give you value. ZFS is very layer
"violating" as well. However, the layers are concepts put in place by humans
to help, not God given laws of nature.

~~~
cm3
Agreed, and if you run on a microkernel, then pretty much everything is in
userspace and any boundaries are those of, say, a capability system for
security purposes. I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that we're
adding ways to avoid the kernel network stack and other exceptions to the
rule, while ignoring microkernels as the sorely needed feature for mainstream
computing it is.

------
AstroJetson

        Huge Hacker Comments
        about Haiku OS today
        But so few Haiku's
    
        BE/OS clone
        quiet power, elegance
        just simplicity  
    
        Plan 9 and Minux
        all have their followers 
        will Haiku get love
    
        More than a small toy 
        Time will be the decider 
        Windows look out now

~~~
iheartmemcache
Haha. +1 for the effort (though my pedantic affectations force me to note it's
`BeOS' rather than BE/OS).

Plan 9 had some brilliant ideas. In addition to the whole Acme editor being
integrated into the OS at levels which beat out even Smalltalk, and the Plan 9
tags(1) [see: File indexing and searching for Plan 9] system was marvelous as
well. I've been trying to come up with a semantic information modeling system
better than the standard hierarchy, and better than just a tagging system.
tags(1) and Lotus Agenda get(got?) pretty close.

Side-note: emacs org-mode users - I highly suggest experimenting with Agenda
in DosBox for a few months. It's pretty much the paragon of PIM, so much so
that I wrote a few thousand lines of elisp to replicate most of the
functionality.

~~~
throwanem
So I'm an Emacs org-mode user, and I'm not seeing a good reason why I should
spend the time getting Agenda going just to play around with it. It looks like
a lot of resources on the web are geared toward "I used Agenda years ago and
loved it, how do I do that again?" Which is great and all, but it's not really
helping me understand why I should take you up on your suggestion. It might
help to see those few thousand lines of Emacs Lisp, but it'd help even more to
have a quick précis of why Agenda is great and what it does that org-mode
doesn't. You seem to know such things. Will you share them?

------
gavanwoolery
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 solutions, making the use of your
computer more complicated than it should actually be.

Instead, Haiku has a single focus on personal computing and is driven by a
unified vision for the whole OS. That, we believe, enables Haiku to provide a
leaner, cleaner and more efficient system capable of providing a better user
experience that is simple and uniform throughout._

~~~
freehunter
I've always agreed with this, though I've never seen this particular text or
seen it stated this way. Linux is a miracle of free software, it shows that a
thousand people can come together and make a wonderfully complex system that
actually works. But it is not elegant nor is it efficient, nor is there really
any vision behind its creation. That's both a good thing (you can customize it
and fork it to make it do anything you want) and a bad thing (lack of
consistency). I do wish BeOS/Haiku had taken off. How different would the
world be?

~~~
ploxiln
It's true, a working linux desktop system is pretty complicated and somewhat
inelegant. But somehow, the more popular competitors are even more
inefficient. They spawn and exec processes slower, context switch slower, you
can't run a minimal desktop environment on them, only the huge default one.
("min-win" being the minor exception here.)

You can make a 50 MB bootable live USB with a minimal graphical desktop and a
minimal web browser, based on linux. No such chance in less than a few
gigabytes with the more popular alternatives.

The bloat of actual linux distributions and desktops is mostly down to user
demand.

------
adamnemecek
BeOS (the OS Haiku is a reimplemntation of) has an interesting history. It was
an OS that has a fully async C++ API (very novel for it's time and even now).
The fact that it was async made the OS much more responsive and had a better
CPU utilization.

BeOS was another company that Apple considered to purchase but they ended up
buying NeXT instead. IIRC they ended up going with NeXT because BeOS didn't
have networking back then.

~~~
pavlov
IIRC, BeOS had networking but no multi-user or printer support. The latter was
pretty important for Apple's pro market at the time, which was mostly desktop
publishing.

Just the other day I found a BeOS Revision 3 manual in a closet. It was the
first version that Be released on x86 after getting snubbed by Apple.

~~~
electroly
It had printer support since at least R4. As I recall it even had some support
for printing to network printers. There was an office package called Gobe
Productive which was pretty nice for a BeOS application. Similar to AppleWorks
or Microsoft Works.

~~~
pavlov
R4 shipped in November 1998. Apple was shopping for BeOS in autumn 1996. The
feature gap compared to NeXT was real at that time.

------
mikestew
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 partion and...what? Music production? Just a
lightweight, novel web surfing machine? Someone, anyone, give me a reason to
spend my weekend farting around with OS installs.

Counter to that, should the answer be, "meh, it's just something novel to play
with", then why are the devs pouring time into it? I guess I'm trying to
politely say I kinda don't get the point. (But maybe a good answer to question
#1 can help.)

EDIT: thanks much for the answers. Very helpful, if for no other reason than
confirming that there isn't _the_ answer. Now to go blow the dust off that old
MSI Wind.

~~~
TkTech
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 development,
embedded applications, etc...

It's also just fun. There is a very active forum[1], wiki[2], and community[3]
that has been spiting out hobby OSs for a decade. The kernel originally used
in Haiku is from NewOS, a project by Travis Geiselbrecht that was also just a
hobby project.

[1]: [http://forum.osdev.org/](http://forum.osdev.org/)

[2]: [http://wiki.osdev.org/](http://wiki.osdev.org/)

[3]: irc://chat.freenode.net:6667/#osdev

~~~
mintplant
> free of the cancerous GPL, under a permissive MIT licence

Is this attitude common in the Haiku community? I was interested in checking
it out but seeing this sort of rhetoric is discouraging.

~~~
TkTech
That's just reality. In general the GPL is perceived extremely negatively.
Almost every company I've worked for has had strict audits to ensure nothing
we do or even previously worked on has touched anything potentially GPL.

If you're writing software for fun, enjoy seeing it being used, and still want
attribution you licence it under the MIT or BSD, not the GPL. Many people get
polarized on the topic and there are many discussion on stackoverflow and
around where people seek or design MIT-like, GPL-incompatible licence
specifically. Likewise, the GPL has its own cult following.

Regardless of personal opinions, few if any commercial entities willing want
to work with the GPL.

~~~
cosarara97
The linux kernel proves you wrong.

~~~
TkTech
It does not, at all. Working with the only available option is not the same
thing as wanting to work with it.

Read the mailing list and driver discussions. This conversation is repeated
twice a week. They HATE working around the GPL.

------
jason_slack
I bought a BeBox while in college. Everyone was using DOS/Windows for C++. Not
me :-) The amount I learned about threading, SMP, concurrency, locking,
mutexes, was way more valuable than any college programming course I took.

I still wish an email client as good as PostMaster was available on OS X now.
PE was my editor.

Haiku is a great implementation. I wish more of what it offers were in OS's
that I have to use each day.

~~~
tjl
There used to be an OS X editor called Pepper that was basically PE for OS X.
I don't think it's still around. I can't find it except in very old
references.

There is Eddie [1], which is based on a BeOS editor and is written by a former
Be employee. He's very responsive to feedback. I worked with him in improving
its LaTeX support.

[1] [http://www.el34.com](http://www.el34.com)

~~~
chipotle_coyote
While I'm not _positive_ (maybe he'll return and post a yes/no), I seem to
recall that Pepper's source code was bought by a guy named Jason Slack,
presumably the fellow you're responding to. It was my first editor when I went
back to OS X myself, although I confess I grew irritated both with it and with
the attitude of its (original, pre-Jason) developer, who always seemed to have
a chip on his shoulder about, well, everything: performance issues on OS X
with Pepper that other editors didn't exhibit were Apple's fault; Pepper's
mediocre documentation wasn't really a problem, users just weren't exploring
the editor to find things (maybe this was a complaint in the Pe days, but I
swear it was a real complaint); ultimately, Pepper's failure in the
marketplace wasn't due to the poor performance, bugs and mediocre
documentation, but our collective failure to recognize its true genius.

...sorry, apparently I've wanted to get that off my chest for 15 years. I'm
feeling better now!

Anyway, I was kind of hopeful Pepper would be revived, but I gave up on it
long ago, moving from BBEdit to TextMate to Sublime Text and, perhaps
surprisingly, back to BBEdit, although I keep Atom up to date as well.

~~~
tjl
I tried Pepper back then and found the same issues you had. In the end, I
usually end up with BBEdit. It's fast, the developers are responsive and keep
it up to date and it handles the languages I'm interested in fairly well (but
they could be better). I keep Atom up to date and I've been looking at VS
Code, but both are kind of slow. I have a TextMate license, but I stopped
using it after the continued delays on 2.0. The 2.0 betas are actually decent,
but I tend to stick with BBEdit. I tried Sublime Text, but got very put off by
the need to configure preferences with a text file.

No, Eddie is software that actually is written by a former Be developer. I
think he originally wrote it for BeOS and has since ported it to OS X and he
has an older Linux port as well. It has nothing to do with Pepper.

~~~
jason_slack
Eddie is written by Pavel Chisler(?). I don't know him, but I hear is a great
developer.

------
dangom
Here's an old demo video from BeOS, for those like me who were unaware of its
existence.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsVydyC8ZGQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsVydyC8ZGQ)

------
bcantrill
I love Haiku -- and their inspiration in BeOS brings back my memories of
deciding not to work for Be in 1996, and then later hitting jackpot at the Be
Inc. bankruptcy auction.[1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgN8pCMLI2U#t=53m49s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgN8pCMLI2U#t=53m49s)

------
buckbova
Something new or interesting to report?

~~~
yoshamano
That's what I was hoping for, but it's not meant to be. The August status
update is still the latest blog post, and there still isn't a new Alpha/Beta.

~~~
vhodges
I was just looking this morning (I have an old laptop looking for a new
purpose in life) and while there's no definite date, there's 'only' 31 issues
left open in the R1/Beta1 milestone at their Trac instance.

------
orionblastar
Yes I have donated to HakuOS, ReactOS,
[https://www.reactos.org/](https://www.reactos.org/) and other free and open
source projects. There is AROS based on AmigaOS for X86 PCs as well.
[http://aros.sourceforge.net/](http://aros.sourceforge.net/)

There is also OSFree an OS/2 rewrite from scratch:
[http://www.osfree.org/](http://www.osfree.org/)

I'm not a system level programmer, I always worked with business apps and
other apps. If I was a system level programmer I'd donate some time to working
on those operating systems. I donate to them every once in a while when I can
afford it. I want to see a third choice between MacOS and Windows for the
average person who can't figure out Linux. I use Linux Mint for myself, but I
can't see the average person using it unless they are trained in it, sometimes
you have to use the shell instead of the GUI for Linux.

~~~
jsmith0295
At this point the only potential I see for a viable alternative to Windows and
Mac on the desktop is ChromeOS/Android, and that's still not quite where it
needs to be yet.

~~~
orionblastar
Nope not ready for the average user yet.

I like that Chromebooks and Android Tablets can be under $300 or $200 or even
$99 because they don't have to pay Microsoft a Windows tax because they don't
use Windows. My Aunt Peggy gets confused with them and we have to put her back
into a Windows machine because a Mac costs too much for her. We tried Linux
Mint for her, but she got confused on it.

------
johnwheeler
Here are screenshots for anyone interested: [https://www.haiku-
os.org/slideshows/haiku-1](https://www.haiku-os.org/slideshows/haiku-1)

------
rcarmo
There were some efforts to port it to ARM, but they apparently never took off.
Which is kind of sad, since it would make an _amazing_ OS for, say, the
Raspberry Pi.

------
orbitingpluto
I really enjoyed Be back in the day and made an attempt to use it as my
primary operating system. Two months later, my internet provider stopped
giving me leases for it. I put it behind a router that would give the BeOS
computer a lease. When I cloned the MAC of the computer it refused to give me
an address. I got so curious I put another NIC in and tried without the
router. Soon thereafter it was also banned. The ISP was banning my NIC if I
was running Be. To this day I have no idea what happened. It was also
interesting to note that the router's MAC was not banned when a computer
running Be was behind it.

------
tomovo
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.

~~~
tw04
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.

------
codezero
I hope this isn't too off topic, but I recall when the BeBox was coming out,
one of its cool features was the "Geekport"

I am going to Google it – but I'm curious if anyone on HN had experience with
it and can explain what made it awesome (or not!)

~~~
itomato
37 pins of GPIO with an external D-Sub connector, plus DAC/ADC with Libraries
built in to the OS.

[https://www-s.acm.illinois.edu/bug/Be%20Book/The%20Device%20...](https://www-s.acm.illinois.edu/bug/Be%20Book/The%20Device%20Kit/GeekPort.html)

[http://www.hardwarebook.info/GeekPort](http://www.hardwarebook.info/GeekPort)

------
protomyth
It looks like they could use some donations to get to their $35,000 goal. They
even take bitcoin and are a 501(c)(3).

[http://www.haiku-inc.org/donations.html](http://www.haiku-
inc.org/donations.html)

------
jp_sc
10 years ago I believed this project had a great future. But instead focusing
on a non-PC devices where it actually had a chance of success, they continue
to trying to compete with other desktop OS.

------
Mizza
I used BeOS as a kid while playing with different operating systems. All of
the windows were yellow colored, and you could irrevocably damage your system
if you ever tried to change the color.

Good times.

~~~
throwanem
> All of the windows were yellow colored, and you could irrevocably damage
> your system if you ever tried to change the color.

...what? How does that work?

~~~
ultramancool
Not sure, but my guess would be that the yellow was a hardcoded constant in
the code in a few places and modifying it involved opening up system files in
a hex editor and doing some edits, amateurs + hex editors = bad times.

------
rbanffy
I know it kind of misses the point (and risks never solving the problem by
sidestepping it) but is there an X server for it?

If there is, it readily becomes a usable work environment.

A couple months back I was wondering if there was a good way to tie an RPi to
an Apple II and use its keyboard and memory (to display a Linux console) and
allow me to have the pleasure of actually working from a vintage computer.

------
rcarmo
I love this and would use it if I could actually install it on a modern
machine, say a netbook/chromebook/winbook (I'd have to hunt around for a good
browser build, SSH and remote desktop, but I like to think those exist/are
feasible to self-build).

~~~
agildehaus
Haiku has OpenSSH and a webkit-based browser called WebPositive. All built-in
to the base install.

It has a remote desktop, but I've not used it: [https://www.haiku-
os.org/tags/remote_desktop](https://www.haiku-os.org/tags/remote_desktop)

~~~
rcarmo
I know about NetPositive and the revamp, didn't see that. But what I meant was
RDP support. Now if it actually installed and supported power management and
the wi-fi card...

------
acdimalev
Well, even as a growing Rust enthusiast, I guess I still can't quite rule
Haiku out.

[http://rust-on-haiku.com/](http://rust-on-haiku.com/)

------
jimmywinestock
I came here to find real haikus not virtual haikus...

------
youdontknowtho
I donated last year. I love this project.

------
afro88
Is it a realtime OS like BeOS?

~~~
Black-Plaid
BeOS was never real-time.

It was just good with it's threading for userspace activities.

------
jimmywinestock
I thought this was gonna be a real haiku; I love gorry darn haikus. GIVE ME A
HAIKU.

------
behnamoh
Another piece of good software that got no attention in this industry. Don't
even get me started on so many great languages that failed. Pity :/

------
codegeek
lets hope it is not a trademark violation

[https://www.haikulearning.com/](https://www.haikulearning.com/)

EDIT: I jumped the gun on this one. Should have done a bit googling first.

~~~
chc
Haiku predates Haiku Learning by several years. But fortunately trademarks
don't generally work that way and lots of companies and products have, for
example, the word "Windows" in their name.

~~~
ZenoArrow
From what I've seen, trademarks only limit name choices for direct
competitors. That's why the existence of Apple (the music label started by the
Beatles) didn't stop the name being used again by Jobs and Wozniak.

~~~
bbcbasic
Looking at the sister Wikipedia link it appears that it did stop them from
expanding their business several times in an audio/musical direction, until
they coughed up some cash.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Yes, that's arguably when they started to be in the same market.

~~~
laumars
Apple Computers still settled out of court several times before then though.
As early as '78 Apple Corp (the music label) sued Apple Computers with the
computer company settling in the early 80s. So the disputes have been going on
longer than Apples expansion into the iTunes et al.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Sure, but if you look at the trademark claims that were made, they were all
based on some kind of sound/music-related activity (aside from the first set
of claims, I don't know enough detail about the claims that started the case
in 1978 and haven't been able to find much in the way of substantial detail
online). Even if some of the claims were a bit of a stretch, it appears that
the trademark claims relied on establishing that the companies had overlapping
interests. It's probably harder for companies that produce general purpose
hardware/software to defend themselves against these claims (compared to
companies/products with a narrower focus), as there are more angles for
lawyers to use to try to link them with other companies.

On a completely anecdotal level, I have some friends who were contacted by a
big technology company as their coffee shop had the same name as one of their
products. Once it was clear they weren't competitors, I don't believe this
technology company contacted them again. This was further evidence to me that
trademarks are not universal in scope.

