

 Haiku Project Announces Availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 2 - gcr
http://www.haiku-os.org/news/2010-05-10_haiku_project_announces_availability_haiku_r1alpha_2

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zokier
One thing that I has been wondering is while there are relatively large amount
on alternative operating systems (and some are quite awesome like Haiku),
still most Linux distros seem to be repackagings of classic gnu/x/(gnome|kde)
apps. I find it hard to believe that these days high level userspace
innovation is so heavily bound to kernel. Why don't we have more diverse Linux
distros instead of having diverse collection of complete operating systems?

Especially for hardware support it would be kinda nice if more projects would
use a common kernel instead of writing one themselves, and I find it also hard
to believe that its easier to write a new kernel (that actually works in a
range of hardware) compared to modifying an existing kernel to fit the
project.

~~~
njn
Indeed.. it is a sad state of affairs when GoboLinux (
<http://www.gobolinux.org/> ), though innovative, call themselves _the_
alternative Linux distribution. They are one of the few unique Linux
distributions, and all they do is redefine the filesystem hierarchy.

There are an abundance of 'niche' distributions (focusing on size, audio
support, etc) but none that really attempt new things. Actually, I'm sure
there are some more but I haven't heard of them.. please inform me.

But of course, why are we complaining instead of thinking up possibilities of
our own?

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xenthral
Anyone ever used Haiku? And what were you mostly doing with it? What are the
advantages if any [for that activity]?

I've known about the project for quite a while, pretty icons and whatnot, but
never fired up a vmware-like program to install it and check it out.

~~~
cturner
It's impressive. It feels like BeOS, unlike Zeta which was had poor quality.

There's some things not like they should be. This alpha is missing vi and ed
(and no 've' either). It has nano. It has gcc and python2.6 and a perl5
though. Python libraries seem to work.

In some ways it's further ahead than Be. For example - far better web browser
than was ever available back in the day (even relative to web browsing
standards of the time). Could use some polish, but still a remarkable
achievement. Better email functionality, although parts could be implement a
lot better.

Little things are not right - keyboard shortcuts and the like. But it's much
better than I was expecting on this front. People have definitely been putting
energy into quality. A lot of little things work like they should that I've
tested.

I'm using it under vmware on a macbook. The 'tracker' interface still feels
way better to use than anything else I've used (including current-era finder).

I was a die-hard user, and it's quite novel to think that - long after having
given up on the dream of being able to run this as my primary workstation OS -
I may be on the brink of being able to do just that. The key will be whether
it can be installed natively with all drivers working effectively.

Update: dell lat. gets a good pass on compatilibity: [http://www.haiku-
os.org/community/forum/dell_latitude_x1_dre...](http://www.haiku-
os.org/community/forum/dell_latitude_x1_dream_laptop_haiku)

~~~
halo
I believe they deliberately removed vim from the default install since they
felt that it wasn't suitable for a desktop-oriented operating system. It can
be installed using via optional packages ('installoptionalpackage' in
console).

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lr
I loved the BeOS -- happily discarded Mac OS 8 when BeOS PR1 came out -- and I
am so happy to see Heiku OS on the front page of Hacker News. To this day, the
BeOS is still the OS which brought me the most fun on a day-to-day basis.

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misuba
Cool, but... BeOS is 10 years old. And its GUI was dated even then.

