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I'm glad to see Haiku is still making progress! I really enjoy the visual style of Haiku. The look-n-feel of it seems better to me than any other UI I've seen,

I'm glad to see Haiku is still making progress! I really enjoy the visual style of Haiku. The look-n-feel of it seems better to me than any other UI I've seen, and I say that as someone who never used BeOS, so it's not the nostalgia talking. It would be really cool if Haiku was able to get to a state were it's usable as a daily driver. I think having an OS and interface more focused on a single user at a graphical terminal rather than a multi-user system with graphics tacked on would be positive. BeFS also has some really great ideas that aren't replicated in other more modern FSes, namely it includes database-like functionality that enables some really neat features via a standardized interface, rather than hiding them away in vendor-specific file formats. If you're interested, Practical File System Design[0] uses beFS as it's example filesystem (and it's also a really good book in general). 0 - https://www.amazon.com/Practical-System-Design-Dominic-Giampaolo/dp/1558604979 https://www.amazon.com/Practical-System-Design-Dominic-Giamp...

themodelplumber 6y ago
I had Haiku installed for a while. I think it could be a pretty effective daily driver as-is, depending on what you need to do in your daily driving. (If you're a Peruvian long-haul mountain bus driver and failed to reveal that in your pre-qualification, then that's on you...)
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  What's the hardware support like?
  - themodelplumber 6y ago
    No idea really, except that I ran it on an old netbook, plugged in an external monitor and mouse, and that specific set of things worked great. This is what led me to install it rather than just running from the USB disk.
  - taborj 6y ago
    Running it on a USB stick will give you a great idea about hardware support.
  - bebop 6y ago
    It’s pretty good if you do not have an exotic setup. Intel graphics are the best supported, but the vesa driver works well for a lot of cards. I don’t think there is an nvme driver (someone correct me if I am wrong), but the sata driver works well.
    - waddlesplash 6y ago
      Uh, if you read the release notes linked from this news item, it would have told you there is a NVMe driver.
      - bebop 6y ago
        My mistake, thanks for the correction.
  - bebop 6y ago
    Also the WiFi stack is ported from FreeBSD, so you can try and look there to see if your card would work. Although a boot usb is probably quicker and more fun
- taborj 6y ago
  I concur, it's nearly there for me. On my old Dell Inspiron 3847 (my daily driver), the only hardware that didn't work right was audio through HDMI, and bluetooth didn't find my mouse (though it did find my BT headphones). I can probably get to the bottom of those with a bit of digging. The software side I didn't dig into much yet. I use my system for ham radio, so I would be compiling a lot of software in the future, some of it dependent on hardware things. Not sure how well that'll work, but I'm honestly willing to give it a try. The biggest annoyance for me is the lack of a plug-in capable web browser; specifically having Bitwarden in the browser. I'll have to investigate if there's a solution.
  - extro 6y ago
    > audio through HDMI, and bluetooth didn't find my mouse Both unsupported.
- charlesdaniels 6y ago
  Sadly for my work I need various proprietary programs like Matlab, Quartus, and Vivado. Not a chance of those ever being ported to Haiku. I know it has Python, but I would suspect it probably has some limitations which respect to Python libraries that have C extensions, which is surprisingly many of them.
  - phlakaton 6y ago
    Like later versions of BeOS, it looks like Haiku still supports the gcc compiler chain, so things may not be hopeless.
    - bebop 6y ago
      There are essentially 3 flavors of haiku. Gcc2 for beos compatibility, gcc8 32 bit and gcc8 64 bit. LLVM I think can also compile the source but is not an official build as of now. I am a casual lurker so my details should be taken with a grain of salt.
    - charlesdaniels 6y ago
      I actually checked after I wrote that comment -- Haiku does ship numpy in their repos. That seems to be one of the harder Python libraries to get working, so they must be doing something right.
mdasen 6y ago
I also like the look of Haiku/BeOS, but to me it looks a lot like Apple Platinum from Mac OS 8 and 9: https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3ce39de8d4e8e2b489a2a93880-780x585.jpg https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3.... I'm curious what you like about it. I personally miss a lot of design things that have fallen out of style. On Windows, it feels like everything is blindingly white/soft grey with no texture or borders to help my eyes focus. Transparency is used without regard for its utility. Instead of using borders, they use space which ends up wasting a lot of screen real-estate. The differentiation between active and background window is very subtle. macOS has many of the same issues. Scroll bars aren't shown unless you're scrolling. You can change this behavior, but still. Background windows are hard to differentiate from foreground windows. Transparency is used for seemingly no reason. That said, macOS does offer better design queues than Windows 10. The macOS finder will use a slightly different color for the left panel than the main work area. Windows 10 uses the same white for both areas drawing focus as if they're equal. Buttons in macOS have a very subtle bump out to show that they're buttons vs just being completely flat. There are usually small borders between things. Take this screenshot: https://thehacktoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/screenshot-folder.png https://thehacktoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/screensh.... There's no border between the back/forward/up buttons and the content below. Everything is the same white. Clickable items have no real indication that they're buttons. macOS: https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-music-in-macos-catalina-finder-1.jpg https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-m.... You can see more clear demarcations. Buttons clearly stick out a little, the left panel is a different color with a tiny border, the title bar is a different color with a gradient, etc. Haiku's design harkens back to a day when we demarcated things. Haiku's active windows are yellow while background windows are grey (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS...). This makes it instantly clear what is the top window. There are borders on everything and a subtle beveled effect. Is that the kind of stuff that you like about Haiku's UI? Is it something els?
- kingnight 6y ago
  That Windows screenshot really is chaos. I would love to hear a defense of that design because I am missing any merit to it.
tqh 6y ago
The style is not just for visual purposes: Stacking and tiling is a hidden gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y-6YmGd30A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y-6YmGd30A
- space_ghost 6y ago
  I want those features in an XOrg window manager. I want them more than my next breath.
  - sudobash1 6y ago
    Fluxbox has the ability to add windows to each other like tabs as is shown there.
  - dilandau 6y ago
    Pekwm
- charlesdaniels 6y ago
  Huh, I didn't realize it could do that. That's an incredibly cool feature, much better than the window "collisions" that some other UIs have. The most similar idea I can think of would be i3 with it's container windows and such. You could group things together and tile within the groups, and IIRC you could have the whole group float if you wanted to. I don't use i3 anymore since I switched to CWM, but maybe an i3 user can comment.
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    Yes, you can float a whole group. It's a bit fiddly though.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    I3 is a terrible wm for floating windows. Floating functionality is very primitive. No snapping. Resizing relies on hitting a small target unless you also know you can do super+shift+right click and drag. Directional bindings to switch windows doesn't work between floating windows or between floating windows and tiled ones. You have to hit a binding to go between tiled/floating. No alt tabbing between floating windows. No minimize. Scratchpad can be used for something LIKE minimize but it isn't minimize because a minimized window remains available to be recalled via an icon or label in the taskbar whereas a scratchpad window requires you to recall it by its criteria programmically or by cycling through candidates. Floating windows always overlap tiled windows so that if you have both you must relocate floating windows if you want to access tiled ones. Floating windows in i3 are for dialog windows not applications. If you try to use it as a floating wm you would be disappointed.
codezero 6y ago
The author has the pdf available on their personal site. I highly recommend reading it. It is understandable by a hobbyist in my opinion. http://www.nobius.org/dbg/ http://www.nobius.org/dbg/

themodelplumber 6y ago

I had Haiku installed for a while. I think it could be a pretty effective daily driver as-is, depending on what you need to do in your daily driving. (If you're a Peruvian long-haul mountain bus driver and failed to reveal that in your pre-qualification, then that's on you...)

AsyncAwait 6y ago
What's the hardware support like?
- themodelplumber 6y ago
  No idea really, except that I ran it on an old netbook, plugged in an external monitor and mouse, and that specific set of things worked great. This is what led me to install it rather than just running from the USB disk.
- taborj 6y ago
  Running it on a USB stick will give you a great idea about hardware support.
- bebop 6y ago
  It’s pretty good if you do not have an exotic setup. Intel graphics are the best supported, but the vesa driver works well for a lot of cards. I don’t think there is an nvme driver (someone correct me if I am wrong), but the sata driver works well.
  - waddlesplash 6y ago
    Uh, if you read the release notes linked from this news item, it would have told you there is a NVMe driver.
    - bebop 6y ago
      My mistake, thanks for the correction.
- bebop 6y ago
  Also the WiFi stack is ported from FreeBSD, so you can try and look there to see if your card would work. Although a boot usb is probably quicker and more fun
taborj 6y ago
I concur, it's nearly there for me. On my old Dell Inspiron 3847 (my daily driver), the only hardware that didn't work right was audio through HDMI, and bluetooth didn't find my mouse (though it did find my BT headphones). I can probably get to the bottom of those with a bit of digging. The software side I didn't dig into much yet. I use my system for ham radio, so I would be compiling a lot of software in the future, some of it dependent on hardware things. Not sure how well that'll work, but I'm honestly willing to give it a try. The biggest annoyance for me is the lack of a plug-in capable web browser; specifically having Bitwarden in the browser. I'll have to investigate if there's a solution.
- extro 6y ago
  > audio through HDMI, and bluetooth didn't find my mouse Both unsupported.
charlesdaniels 6y ago
Sadly for my work I need various proprietary programs like Matlab, Quartus, and Vivado. Not a chance of those ever being ported to Haiku. I know it has Python, but I would suspect it probably has some limitations which respect to Python libraries that have C extensions, which is surprisingly many of them.
- phlakaton 6y ago
  Like later versions of BeOS, it looks like Haiku still supports the gcc compiler chain, so things may not be hopeless.
  - bebop 6y ago
    There are essentially 3 flavors of haiku. Gcc2 for beos compatibility, gcc8 32 bit and gcc8 64 bit. LLVM I think can also compile the source but is not an official build as of now. I am a casual lurker so my details should be taken with a grain of salt.
  - charlesdaniels 6y ago
    I actually checked after I wrote that comment -- Haiku does ship numpy in their repos. That seems to be one of the harder Python libraries to get working, so they must be doing something right.

mdasen 6y ago

I also like the look of Haiku/BeOS, but to me it looks a lot like Apple Platinum from Mac OS 8 and 9: https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3ce39de8d4e8e2b489a2a93880-780x585.jpg https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3.... I'm curious what you like about it. I personally miss a lot of design things that have fallen out of style. On Windows, it feels like everything is blindingly white/soft grey with no texture or borders to help my eyes focus. Transparency is used without regard for its utility. Instead of using borders, they use space which ends up wasting a lot of screen real-estate. The differentiation between active and background window is very subtle. macOS has many of the same issues. Scroll bars aren't shown unless you're scrolling. You can change this behavior, but still. Background windows are hard to differentiate from foreground windows. Transparency is used for seemingly no reason. That said, macOS does offer better design queues than Windows 10. The macOS finder will use a slightly different color for the left panel than the main work area. Windows 10 uses the same white for both areas drawing focus as if they're equal. Buttons in macOS have a very subtle bump out to show that they're buttons vs just being completely flat. There are usually small borders between things. Take this screenshot: https://thehacktoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/screenshot-folder.png https://thehacktoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/screensh.... There's no border between the back/forward/up buttons and the content below. Everything is the same white. Clickable items have no real indication that they're buttons. macOS: https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-music-in-macos-catalina-finder-1.jpg https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-m.... You can see more clear demarcations. Buttons clearly stick out a little, the left panel is a different color with a tiny border, the title bar is a different color with a gradient, etc. Haiku's design harkens back to a day when we demarcated things. Haiku's active windows are yellow while background windows are grey (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS...). This makes it instantly clear what is the top window. There are borders on everything and a subtle beveled effect. Is that the kind of stuff that you like about Haiku's UI? Is it something els?

kingnight 6y ago
That Windows screenshot really is chaos. I would love to hear a defense of that design because I am missing any merit to it.

tqh 6y ago

The style is not just for visual purposes: Stacking and tiling is a hidden gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y-6YmGd30A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y-6YmGd30A

space_ghost 6y ago
I want those features in an XOrg window manager. I want them more than my next breath.
- sudobash1 6y ago
  Fluxbox has the ability to add windows to each other like tabs as is shown there.
- dilandau 6y ago
  Pekwm
charlesdaniels 6y ago
Huh, I didn't realize it could do that. That's an incredibly cool feature, much better than the window "collisions" that some other UIs have. The most similar idea I can think of would be i3 with it's container windows and such. You could group things together and tile within the groups, and IIRC you could have the whole group float if you wanted to. I don't use i3 anymore since I switched to CWM, but maybe an i3 user can comment.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  Yes, you can float a whole group. It's a bit fiddly though.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  I3 is a terrible wm for floating windows. Floating functionality is very primitive. No snapping. Resizing relies on hitting a small target unless you also know you can do super+shift+right click and drag. Directional bindings to switch windows doesn't work between floating windows or between floating windows and tiled ones. You have to hit a binding to go between tiled/floating. No alt tabbing between floating windows. No minimize. Scratchpad can be used for something LIKE minimize but it isn't minimize because a minimized window remains available to be recalled via an icon or label in the taskbar whereas a scratchpad window requires you to recall it by its criteria programmically or by cycling through candidates. Floating windows always overlap tiled windows so that if you have both you must relocate floating windows if you want to access tiled ones. Floating windows in i3 are for dialog windows not applications. If you try to use it as a floating wm you would be disappointed.

codezero 6y ago

The author has the pdf available on their personal site. I highly recommend reading it. It is understandable by a hobbyist in my opinion. http://www.nobius.org/dbg/ http://www.nobius.org/dbg/