
Haiku Project - jordansmithnz
https://www.haiku-os.org
======
kgraves
It seems that this project is a free and open-source inspiration of the BeOS
rather than aiming to be a complete reimplementation of it. Just like what
Linux was to UN*X and ReactOS was to Windows. But, judging from its recent
progress: package management repos, 64 bit support and the recent software
ports at ‘HaikuPorts[0]’, it seems to be already more advanced than BeOS was
and already has a lot more software since its last official alpha release (5
years ago.)

But yeah a pretty interesting OS, but I’d wait for it’s so called ’beta’ when
ever it arrives. I’d like to try this on a Raspberry Pi or another ARM board
soon. If only it attracted more developers though.

PS. (Its actually 'Haiku' not 'Haiku OS' ;) )

[0] [https://github.com/haikuports](https://github.com/haikuports)

~~~
waddlesplash
(I'm one of the developers of Haiku -- I manage the website and am one of the
leads at HaikuPorts in addition to committing to the main source tree.)

The ARM port is stalled due to a lack of developer time, and has been for over
a year now... The kernel is mostly ported and initializes the framebuffer but
then stalls when it gets to HID and storage initialization because the USB
stack isn't ported yet (iirc). Patches wanted... but we won't have much time
to spend on it ourselves anytime soon.

Yes, the beta release should be coming "real soon now". We're down to 2
blockers, both of which should not be that complicated to fix.

And yes, it is indeed "Haiku" not "Haiku OS". :)

~~~
monocasa
Is there any documentation on what the current status of the ARM port is?

~~~
waddlesplash
I know there is
[https://github.com/haiku/haiku/tree/master/docs/develop/port...](https://github.com/haiku/haiku/tree/master/docs/develop/ports/arm)
but I think it's out of date at this point. Check the commit logs for the
"arm" directories in the kernel, and then ask the developers responsible for
that on IRC (Freenode#haiku).

I don't know much about the ARM port in specific, but I'm very familiar with
our build system and development model in general, so if you have questions
about that I can help there.

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phren0logy
A fitting link to follow up the Apple / Next merger article that's gotten so
much traffic today. At the time I really thought Apple was making the wrong
move. Who knows what BeOS would have been today had Apple picked it up, but
the wisdom of going with something *nix-based seems to have been a great
decision.

~~~
conception
Or if Microsoft didn't actively attempt to destroy it.

MS got hit with lawsuits because of Netscape, but their targeted destruction
of BeOS was so much worse considering, at the time, BeOS was such a better
system that just couldn't fight back.

~~~
nickbauman
There's (perhaps apocryphal) stories that Gates was terrified of what a Unix
with a decent UI might do to upend Windows.

~~~
eesmith
If so, that would have been NeXTStep. BeOS was (mostly?) POSIX compatible, but
was less of a Unix than Linux.

John Perry Barlow described it: "I have a NeXT machine -- I expect a boo or
two -- that's as close to UNIX as I've been able to get, and that's kind of
like UNIX with training wheels by Armani."
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565929920.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565929920.do)

~~~
dragonwriter
Yeah, but Apple solved the NeXTStep problem by buying NeXT and discontinuing
Next step for commodity hardware. While it revived Apple, it also neutralized
any serious threat NeXTStep might have posed to Microsoft.

~~~
eesmith
My argument is that _if_ Gates was "terrified of what a Unix with a decent UI
might do to upend Windows" then NeXTStep must have been more terrifying than
BeOS.

In the 1990s I worked in places where NeXT machines were in frequent use,
including as the main desktop machine for a number of people. We also had NexT
machines available for making presentations.

There was never anything like that for BeOS. And FWIW, I was a registered BeOS
developer.

Remember too that Apple's A/UX was also a "Unix with a decent UI".

------
nickbauman
What I loved about BeOS was the multithreaded user interface. Imagine and
office with a single computer with dozens of gigs of RAM and 128 cores could
do where everyone could collaborate on the same screen (50 feet wide) at once.
Kinda like SunRay on steroids.

~~~
nerdponx
That sounds like a godawful nightmare.

~~~
nickbauman
Until you personally need 64 cores for a particular calculation while everyone
else is just checking their emails...

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danans
If this ever gets past Beta someone has to recreate the original BeBox to go
with it, perhaps with a dual core CPU with each core's activity (?) mapped to
the LED cpu activity indicators on the front of the box. I still miss mine ;)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox)

~~~
waddlesplash
There was some project which was going to do that, using the MinnowBoard Max
(x86-based): [https://twitter.com/20thABBx](https://twitter.com/20thABBx) \--
but we haven't heard from them in over a year now :(

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Apocryphon
Imagine if BeOS had been ported to mobile devices. What would it look like?
How would it have run? Not so insane, since this was attempted:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeIA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeIA)

And also this:

[https://mondaynote.com/the-operating-system-fountain-of-
yout...](https://mondaynote.com/the-operating-system-fountain-of-youth-
ios-39bc1a3ce004)

~~~
protomyth
Well, there was a bit of hope. Palm bought BeOS, spun it off with PalmSource
which all eventually got bought by ACCESS. It was hoped Palm would use BeOS as
the basis for new operating systems but it never quite happened with the
failed Palm OS Cobalt. Palm, going its own way, eventually created WebOS which
is now owned by LG.

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jason_slack
Some of us spent $2,000usd on a BeBox :-) I learned so much about c++, SMP,
threading, etc.

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k__
Wasn't Zeta a BeOS?

Here in Germany we had much fuzz about it, because it was sold via TV
commercials.

Somehow noone was really sure if they had an acutal BeOS licence and really
access to the source, eventually it died.

~~~
eesmith
"Zeta was a commercially available operating system based on the BeOS R5.1
codebase." \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS)

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solarkraft
I was going to reference the "is computer on fire" and "is computer turned on"
API calls, but couldn't find them in the documentation anymore :s All that's
left seems to be this page: [https://www.haiku-
os.org/is_computer_on_fire/](https://www.haiku-os.org/is_computer_on_fire/)

~~~
waddlesplash
Oh don't worry, they're still around:
[https://github.com/haiku/haiku/blob/master/headers/os/kernel...](https://github.com/haiku/haiku/blob/master/headers/os/kernel/OS.h#L589)
:)

Our own API documentation is still a massive work in progress. The old Be Book
should still have them documented, though.

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phlakaton
A certain Be executive once quipped that "we don't engage in necrophilia." And
yet, here we are... ;-)

It still gives me a grin to see this project plugging forward, funky
1990s-flavored C++ programming kits and all. :-)

~~~
waddlesplash
Haiku isn't Be, we're free to be necrophiliacs. :P

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andy_ppp
I couldn’t have helped but want to rename the NS prefix from all over the OS
APIs (NSString, NSUrl, NSWhatever, etc.) but it feels good to me that it’s
still there. Almost as if no software is ever perfect...

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killjoywashere
Is this still considered alpha? Last I tried this on a dell laptop it would
crash everytime I tried something really banal, I can't remember what. Like
visit Google with the browser.

~~~
waddlesplash
We're very near "beta", at least in the nightly builds The browser is much
more polished (it plays YouTube out of the box, etc.) And kernel crashes are
at least somewhat rare.

~~~
killjoywashere
thanks!

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cgb223
How does this compare to Linux performance wise?

What’s the advantage to Haiku?

------
of
I remember installing this in a VirtualBox around 2008 - cool to see it's
still going! I had a friend in my CS program who was really into BeOS.

~~~
erric
In 1999 at a convention in New Orleans, a friend of mine had BeOS 3 or 4 on an
x86 and it absolutely was amazing. It booted way faster then Linux or Windows
and was quite pretty. A lot of us reminisce for what could have happened with
the MacOS. I love OSX. I use it every day and I'm quite happy with it. Still I
wonder what the present would be like with a BeOS based system instead.

