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Haiku doesn’t have much of a technological edge at the moment, given that the current goal is to reproduce BeOS 5 PE to its fullest extent before modernizing.

Haiku doesn’t have much of a technological edge at the moment, given that the current goal is to reproduce BeOS 5 PE to its fullest extent before modernizing. Where it does have an edge, though, is how’s its being designed first and foremost as a desktop OS with responsiveness as the top priority above all else. The latter especially is depressingly uncommon in modern operating systems.

snazz 8y ago
I agree on the responsiveness part and would like to add that the fact that BeOS dropped you to a debugger shell when it crashed is something missing from modern desktop OSs. Just like the Lisp Machine (Genera, at least), introspection is something that’s present in Haiku and BeOS that was cut out of many modern desktop operating systems for “security” and “ease of use”.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  In the JavaScript world, debugging is almost a bad word. It’s almost impossible to maintain a sane debuggable trace though a “modern” JavaScript application. I find I have to ignore basically all of the standard frameworks and transpiration pipelines and just write old school PHP-like code in Node. I say all of this because I feel that my community has lost control of the debugging pipeline and I applaud Be and Haiku for making that a priority. I find the benefits of committing to an always-running, always-traceable-in-production execution thread is an EXTRAORDINARY productivity gain (vs console.logs and connecting to IDEs manually via various witchcraft)
  - porker 8y ago
    > In the JavaScript world, debugging is almost a bad word. It’s almost impossible to maintain a sane debuggable trace though a “modern” JavaScript application. I felt this last week as I tried Webpack 4 on a new project. The source maps weren't correct, and instead of debugging my app I had to debug multiple Webpack plugins and work out which one was breaking the source maps. Never did find out, but I fixed my app by debugging it mentally. It sure made me wish for a developer-first language.
- int_19h 8y ago
  > The fact that BeOS dropped you to a debugger shell when it crashed is something missing from modern desktop OSs. Windows has that - if you have e.g. Visual Studio installed (or any other app that registers itself as a system-wide debugger), then application crash dialog will immediately offer to attach the debugger at the point of the crash.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Since Windows 3.1 actually, famous Dr. Watson.
- dpg23 8y ago
  Check out GuixSD if you like Guile Scheme REPLs when something breaks! I also recall OpenBSD and FreeBSD dropping to debuggers on kernel panics.
mdasen 8y ago
As someone who likes responsiveness, I've always wanted BeOS to take off. However, at this time, does OS responsiveness matter? I'm running three apps right now: VSCode, Slack, and a web browser. Given that VSCode and Slack are basically other browsers, how much does OS responsiveness matter? Has the responsiveness battle just moved to the browser? How much are people really running other than a web browser on a desktop/laptop now-a-days? When I evaluate an OS today, I'm going to care about how good its trackpad drivers are, whether I'm likely to have wifi issues, whether it can run the *nix tools I need to do my work, maybe whether I like the way it switches between windows/apps, and whether there are modern browsers to run on it. Responsiveness was a big deal back when I was running a Pentium II and BeOS had amazing demos (and I presume real-world usage) with uninterrupted video while multi-tasking and just buttery-smooth context switching in an era where you'd have your system lock-up. Heck, it was many years before OS X got past the beach ball of death happening constantly. However, today, it's my browser that locks up; it's my browser that I want to be able to smoothly scroll through a web page. I really want Haiku to succeed, but it feels like we might have moved beyond the OS for so much that the OS can't have the same impact it once had. On the one hand, the web has made it so that alternative OSs don't need a boat load of software to be usable. On the other hand, because the browser is now the OS, the usefulness of an alternative OS is lower.
- Annatar 8y ago
  "However, at this time, does OS responsiveness matter?" It always matters; I don't want to waste my life away in front of someone's irresponsive, laggy, slow software.
  - garmaine 8y ago
    You’re missing the point. With concurrency handled in user code and (I’d add) reduced latency from SSD storage, do you even want the OS to be excessively preemptive? Doing so has large drawbacks in terms of cache performance, and the difference is no longer noticeable.
    - Annatar 8y ago
mverwijs 8y ago
The thing that always blew me away with BeOS was the time it took to cold boot. From powering on a machine to being ready to work. It was seconds. Still faster than a chromebook. That sure is something that most OS'es today can't do.
- Annatar 8y ago
  AmigaOS can, and yes it's still being developed.
- swiftcoder 8y ago
  You can configure most Debian variants to boot in seconds from a decent SSD. Ubuntu Server edition was really pushing this for a while, the desktop editions don't seem to prioritise boot times quite so highly. Hell, even Windows 10 boots from an SSD these days in less time than my BIOS takes to start the Windows boot process...
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    By introducing SSD into the equation, you're creating a false equivalency.
    - swiftcoder 8y ago
      Sure, but it's a lot less disruptive solution to boot times than switching OS.
  - chungy 8y ago
    Desktop boot time mostly doesn't matter, it is an infrequent event -- once a day at most, if the system is shut down at night. Server boot time, on the other hand, does matter. You really don't want a server to be down for longer than it has to. Being able to reboot in 10 seconds is huge compared to rebooting in a couple minutes. Now, given that servers are fundamentally running the same OS, improvements geared towards that market tend to bleed over to desktop as well. Desktop just has a bit more to bring up, with a graphical environment and everything.

snazz 8y ago

I agree on the responsiveness part and would like to add that the fact that BeOS dropped you to a debugger shell when it crashed is something missing from modern desktop OSs. Just like the Lisp Machine (Genera, at least), introspection is something that’s present in Haiku and BeOS that was cut out of many modern desktop operating systems for “security” and “ease of use”.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
In the JavaScript world, debugging is almost a bad word. It’s almost impossible to maintain a sane debuggable trace though a “modern” JavaScript application. I find I have to ignore basically all of the standard frameworks and transpiration pipelines and just write old school PHP-like code in Node. I say all of this because I feel that my community has lost control of the debugging pipeline and I applaud Be and Haiku for making that a priority. I find the benefits of committing to an always-running, always-traceable-in-production execution thread is an EXTRAORDINARY productivity gain (vs console.logs and connecting to IDEs manually via various witchcraft)
- porker 8y ago
  > In the JavaScript world, debugging is almost a bad word. It’s almost impossible to maintain a sane debuggable trace though a “modern” JavaScript application. I felt this last week as I tried Webpack 4 on a new project. The source maps weren't correct, and instead of debugging my app I had to debug multiple Webpack plugins and work out which one was breaking the source maps. Never did find out, but I fixed my app by debugging it mentally. It sure made me wish for a developer-first language.
int_19h 8y ago
> The fact that BeOS dropped you to a debugger shell when it crashed is something missing from modern desktop OSs. Windows has that - if you have e.g. Visual Studio installed (or any other app that registers itself as a system-wide debugger), then application crash dialog will immediately offer to attach the debugger at the point of the crash.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Since Windows 3.1 actually, famous Dr. Watson.
dpg23 8y ago
Check out GuixSD if you like Guile Scheme REPLs when something breaks! I also recall OpenBSD and FreeBSD dropping to debuggers on kernel panics.

mdasen 8y ago

As someone who likes responsiveness, I've always wanted BeOS to take off. However, at this time, does OS responsiveness matter? I'm running three apps right now: VSCode, Slack, and a web browser. Given that VSCode and Slack are basically other browsers, how much does OS responsiveness matter? Has the responsiveness battle just moved to the browser? How much are people really running other than a web browser on a desktop/laptop now-a-days? When I evaluate an OS today, I'm going to care about how good its trackpad drivers are, whether I'm likely to have wifi issues, whether it can run the *nix tools I need to do my work, maybe whether I like the way it switches between windows/apps, and whether there are modern browsers to run on it. Responsiveness was a big deal back when I was running a Pentium II and BeOS had amazing demos (and I presume real-world usage) with uninterrupted video while multi-tasking and just buttery-smooth context switching in an era where you'd have your system lock-up. Heck, it was many years before OS X got past the beach ball of death happening constantly. However, today, it's my browser that locks up; it's my browser that I want to be able to smoothly scroll through a web page. I really want Haiku to succeed, but it feels like we might have moved beyond the OS for so much that the OS can't have the same impact it once had. On the one hand, the web has made it so that alternative OSs don't need a boat load of software to be usable. On the other hand, because the browser is now the OS, the usefulness of an alternative OS is lower.

Annatar 8y ago
"However, at this time, does OS responsiveness matter?" It always matters; I don't want to waste my life away in front of someone's irresponsive, laggy, slow software.
- garmaine 8y ago
  You’re missing the point. With concurrency handled in user code and (I’d add) reduced latency from SSD storage, do you even want the OS to be excessively preemptive? Doing so has large drawbacks in terms of cache performance, and the difference is no longer noticeable.
  - Annatar 8y ago

mverwijs 8y ago

The thing that always blew me away with BeOS was the time it took to cold boot. From powering on a machine to being ready to work. It was seconds. Still faster than a chromebook. That sure is something that most OS'es today can't do.

Annatar 8y ago
AmigaOS can, and yes it's still being developed.
swiftcoder 8y ago
You can configure most Debian variants to boot in seconds from a decent SSD. Ubuntu Server edition was really pushing this for a while, the desktop editions don't seem to prioritise boot times quite so highly. Hell, even Windows 10 boots from an SSD these days in less time than my BIOS takes to start the Windows boot process...
- reaperducer 8y ago
  By introducing SSD into the equation, you're creating a false equivalency.
  - swiftcoder 8y ago
    Sure, but it's a lot less disruptive solution to boot times than switching OS.
- chungy 8y ago
  Desktop boot time mostly doesn't matter, it is an infrequent event -- once a day at most, if the system is shut down at night. Server boot time, on the other hand, does matter. You really don't want a server to be down for longer than it has to. Being able to reboot in 10 seconds is huge compared to rebooting in a couple minutes. Now, given that servers are fundamentally running the same OS, improvements geared towards that market tend to bleed over to desktop as well. Desktop just has a bit more to bring up, with a graphical environment and everything.