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> Jims review on Ars was a bit unfair, considering the enormous difference in man power involved with the Haiku community and the commercial support most other

> Jims review on Ars was a bit unfair, considering the enormous difference in man power involved with the Haiku community and the commercial support most other OS’s have I get that context matters, but if you're going to write a review about a desktop operating system, you should be comparing it to the other desktop OSes that are available so that readers have a point of reference. > It’s a young system with potential. It’s a beta of R1. To be fair, it's taken almost twenty years to get to the R1 beta. I've been following its development on and off since the demise of BeOS. I remember reading about all of the in-fighting from the early days of OpenBeOS, so I'm glad that they've made all the progress they have. What they've produced is indeed admirable, but you can't ignore the fact that the technology world is in a very different place since they started this project. When I look at Haiku today, it is like opening up a time capsule of a late 90's era operating systems. Even when I had BeOS, I still had to dual boot with Windows due to the lack of broad application support. So as a somewhat interested observer/follower of the OS's development since the project began -- once I get past that feeling of nostalgia -- it's even hard for me to see the potential that you talking about.

partdavid 6y ago
Well, a more interesting review would address not only what doesn't work well and what you can't really use it for; but also what you can use it for. In other words, yes, it's fair to say "don't use this for surfing the web or if you have an EVOO laptap". But ideally you would then suggest what you could use it for and how it works in those areas. I would have expected at least to understand the state of desktop productivity software, music playing, networking, hacking, playing games, printing, etc. And given that a lot of readers (unlike yourself) will never have used BeOS or be that familiar with it, what's it like? If you read an email and someone sends you a PDF, do you save it and open it in a PDF reader? Does something else happen? Is any of it interesting in some way?
- slantyyz 6y ago
  "Web surfing" might seem easy to dismiss, but look at the original iPhone. Sure, it had a nice form factor, etc., but the thing that made the iPhone a game changer was mobile Safari, a modern web browser. Remember when Apple's response to "hey there are no apps" was to use "web apps"? Well, I tend to consider the bare minimum for any desktop OS to be viable is the ability to run a modern web browser (which would let you do your email, desktop productivity, music playing, games and PDF viewing). Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that Haiku's next major milestone should be to get Firefox or Chromium to run on it. With a working modern browser, all of a sudden it's at least as functional as a Chromebook. Which means you might actually be able to use the OS as a daily driver in spite of its other shortcomings.
  - partdavid 6y ago
    Understood: I agree with you. I'm not dismissing web browsing as if it's of secondary importance; I'm just saying it's not the only important thing. I believe you when you say it's of overriding importance to you, and all you really need to know about an OS is whether you can have a standard web browsing experience. But that's not everyone, especially among people who might want to read about a "new" OS. I do more things with computers, for both fun and work, than use a web browser. I'm interested not only in what web browsing is like, but also what it's like to hack on a program, or configure the OS, or get a piece of hardware working, or produce digital art, or play a game, or make a game. I'm not saying the review is wrong; I'm saying it's incomplete. I'm pointing out that a better (more complete, fairer) review would answer not just the question of what users an OS is wrong for, but also at least tries to examine who it's right for.
  - nonbirithm 6y ago
    > With a working modern browser, all of a sudden it's at least as functional as a Chromebook. Which means you might actually be able to use the OS as a daily driver in spite of its other shortcomings. I find it sad that the sentiment is that a computer without a modern web browser is not useful for daily work. And also that those browsers are massively complex and can only be practically developed by entrenched corporations with stable revenue streams. What's frightening is that soon this might actually become true, if it wasn't before. And at the same time I see Web+ and wonder when it will ever be standards compliant, much less stable, given the size of the team behind it.
    - slantyyz 6y ago
      > I find it sad that the sentiment is that a computer without a modern web browser is not useful for daily work. Maybe, but when there is a dearth of application support like there is with Haiku OS, the role of the modern browser becomes that much more important.

partdavid 6y ago

Well, a more interesting review would address not only what doesn't work well and what you can't really use it for; but also what you can use it for. In other words, yes, it's fair to say "don't use this for surfing the web or if you have an EVOO laptap". But ideally you would then suggest what you could use it for and how it works in those areas. I would have expected at least to understand the state of desktop productivity software, music playing, networking, hacking, playing games, printing, etc. And given that a lot of readers (unlike yourself) will never have used BeOS or be that familiar with it, what's it like? If you read an email and someone sends you a PDF, do you save it and open it in a PDF reader? Does something else happen? Is any of it interesting in some way?

slantyyz 6y ago
"Web surfing" might seem easy to dismiss, but look at the original iPhone. Sure, it had a nice form factor, etc., but the thing that made the iPhone a game changer was mobile Safari, a modern web browser. Remember when Apple's response to "hey there are no apps" was to use "web apps"? Well, I tend to consider the bare minimum for any desktop OS to be viable is the ability to run a modern web browser (which would let you do your email, desktop productivity, music playing, games and PDF viewing). Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that Haiku's next major milestone should be to get Firefox or Chromium to run on it. With a working modern browser, all of a sudden it's at least as functional as a Chromebook. Which means you might actually be able to use the OS as a daily driver in spite of its other shortcomings.
- partdavid 6y ago
  Understood: I agree with you. I'm not dismissing web browsing as if it's of secondary importance; I'm just saying it's not the only important thing. I believe you when you say it's of overriding importance to you, and all you really need to know about an OS is whether you can have a standard web browsing experience. But that's not everyone, especially among people who might want to read about a "new" OS. I do more things with computers, for both fun and work, than use a web browser. I'm interested not only in what web browsing is like, but also what it's like to hack on a program, or configure the OS, or get a piece of hardware working, or produce digital art, or play a game, or make a game. I'm not saying the review is wrong; I'm saying it's incomplete. I'm pointing out that a better (more complete, fairer) review would answer not just the question of what users an OS is wrong for, but also at least tries to examine who it's right for.
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  > With a working modern browser, all of a sudden it's at least as functional as a Chromebook. Which means you might actually be able to use the OS as a daily driver in spite of its other shortcomings. I find it sad that the sentiment is that a computer without a modern web browser is not useful for daily work. And also that those browsers are massively complex and can only be practically developed by entrenched corporations with stable revenue streams. What's frightening is that soon this might actually become true, if it wasn't before. And at the same time I see Web+ and wonder when it will ever be standards compliant, much less stable, given the size of the team behind it.
  - slantyyz 6y ago
    > I find it sad that the sentiment is that a computer without a modern web browser is not useful for daily work. Maybe, but when there is a dearth of application support like there is with Haiku OS, the role of the modern browser becomes that much more important.