21 ms·

Haiku Beta 3

176 points by bitigchi 5y ago

cable2600 5y ago
Free version of BeOS rewritten from scratch using the API levels for compatibility. One step closer to public release.
- smallstepforman 5y ago
  Its better than BeOS, has nvme support, xhci, efi boot, slab allocator, better Posix support, has Qt, webkit, FreeBSD based networking, layout engine, wifi, packages etc.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Yeah... it's been almost thirty years after all.
- st_goliath 5y ago
  Not just API compatibility. To maintain ABI compatibility as well, at this point they are working with a fork of a really old gcc version that still implements this particular C++ ABI[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Compatibility_with_BeOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Compa...
  - pakyr 5y ago
    That's only on the 32 bit version, and even there they also use GCC 8.
    - st_goliath 5y ago
      Is that a "recent" development? I remembered that from a few years back when I played around with Haiku in a VM, tried to port some programs and poked around in the kernel source out of curiosity. It would explain, why I couldn't find that "how to build the toolchain" page anymore through some quick browsing and posted the Wikipedia reference instead. I guess somebody(TM) should update the Wikipedia page then.
      - pakyr 5y ago
        I'm not actually sure how recent this is. Clicking through the Wayback Machine for their FAQ (http://web.archive.org/web/20150813135145/https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq#tech_1 http://web.archive.org/web/20150813135145/https://www.haiku-...), it looks like they've shipped the 32-bit versions with both GCC 2 and a newer version since at least 2015, starting with GCC 4 and getting newer as the years passed.
- szszrk 5y ago
  Is it promising as a basic daily system? Some modern web browser, email client, some common console tools or things like Python to run them? Or maybe there is a ports-like system developed unofficially? I used to test every iso of Haiku I found, but it felt very much a development project then actual system for simple daily use. I wonder what's the status now.
  - pakyr 5y ago
    I'd say iffy on the first. The native browser is based on a modern port of WebKit, but it's buggy and not feature-complete. Things like Youtube work in-browser, but not well (buggy player, sometimes choppy playback, etc.). Wasm doesn't work. It's otherwise pretty functional. There's no Firefox/Chromium. There are alternatives to the native browser, but they're not significantly better. It has the second, and third (Python 3 is ported). It's POSIX-compliant, so there's tons of Linux/Unix CLI stuff available. There is a package manager with a lot of software, both native and ported. Many of the staples are available (LibreOffice, VLC, etc.), but there's also a lot missing, some with alternatives (there's no GIMP, but there is Krita, for example). Overall, I think it's usable as a basic system, but you could definitely run into some issues with software availability and web browsing if you want to do more powerful stuff.
    - qwerty456127 5y ago
      > there's no GIMP, but there is Krita, for example I wish they'd rather port Inkscape.
      - anthk 5y ago
        I'd check for native software first instead of Gimp, as Haiku had a lot of background on media production. My 2 cent tip.
      - andai 5y ago
        Haiku's icons are vector based right? Is there a native Haiku vector art software?
- prvc 5y ago
  Is there any proprietary software from the era for the platform that is worth running today?
  - nkoren 5y ago
    Honestly I still miss Gobe Productive. Fantastic productivity suite. Not very full-featured, but everything just came together in a smooth way I haven't seen replicated since.
  - jccalhoun 5y ago
    Apparently some products still use it. TuneTracker is a system for running radio stations that uses Haiku http://www.tunetrackersystems.com/about_haiku.html http://www.tunetrackersystems.com/about_haiku.html
  - stinkytaco 5y ago
    From the era? Probably not. I like GoBe Productive and actually used PoorMan for some internal stuff, but neither would be sufficient for most uses today. However, TuneTracker and its associated suite of tools for radio station automation ran on BeOS and then on Haiku. It's been a few years since the website was updated, so I do not know if it's still active, but it was worth running in a very specific setting.
handelaar 5y ago
I think at this point I'm on the fourth consecutive laptop that this just won't ever boot on. This time, however, it just says "Haiku" on a splash screen and then stops completely. No errors, no debug message window, nothing. (At this point usually someone here insists that I file a bug. Which I won't do because a) I have no useful information to put into a bug report and b) I think after eleven years of this nonsense it's probably in there about 200 times already anyway.) Oh, look. Can't even press the space bar to get an unintelligible error anymore.
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  I've pretty much given up on these new OSes. I tried to run OS/2 and Plan 9 (whatever that relatively recent open sourced version of it was) and I just feel like... maybe I haven't developed the appropriate context to be able to even know what to do with it. Sure, Kali I know I can use my AWUS036ahw network card on, Ubuntu I know I at least have some sensible defaults, Alpine for containers (goddamnit why don't you have vim by default, so annoying to quickly debug stuff), but overall it's just not useful to know these little pieces of computing history. I suppose there are computing archaeologists that benefit from it, but I just get left with a sense of dread that everything I know and have mastered more or less is going to be left for dead and I just get a sense of exhaustion. I'd say my initial experience of playing around with distros/burning to CDs, etc were instrumental to my learning about what different terminology meant, but overall right now, it's just such a time sink with no real benefit. Same reason why I don't just stop what I'm doing to learn Zig or Objective-S or whatever. There are so many tools to do the same damn thing and while it may be useful for self-learning or potentially a very specific problem set, it's just not worth the mental investment to accomplish any real goals. It sucks to think about things in this context but it's a real constraint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU
  - handelaar 5y ago
    I'm having a little philosophical discussion with myself here about whether something that can't run on an actual computer (as opposed to a VM) is in any meaningful sense an "operating system" at all. Meanwhile I can definitely boot RiscOS on a Pi containing built-in apps with a 1987 copyright message in them. I mean I can't then really do anything with it, but it's still got Haiku beat.
themodelplumber 5y ago
I was very impressed with the last version I tried earlier this year. It was fun to use. I uninstalled it because I needed to get back to a system I knew better for a while. For one minor detail, QMMP had some freezing bug, but man I loved that haiku skin. I guess it's time to try it again and see how it goes with the various use cases. > improvements to Wi-Fi networking to match FreeBSD 13 Just curious, why this match in particular? Was it a goal of some kind or is this mainly a reference freebie due to the reuse of some component?
- pakyr 5y ago
  The FreeBSD 13 reference is probably because Haiku uses FreeBSD drivers for most of its network drivers via a compatibility layer.
MawKKe 5y ago
I decided to try out Haiku last week. I was positively surprised how fast the whole process was. Installer loaded, system was installed and rebooted in about 20-30 seconds (not accounting for human I/O latency). And this was in a VM with SATA disk backing. Makes you yearn for simpler times.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  > Installer loaded, system was installed and rebooted in about 20-30 seconds This was my experience with QNX 6 two decades ago. Installing and booting into its beautiful Photon desktop environment took less time than it took to just boot Windows 2000. > And this was in a VM with SATA disk backing. Believing virtualization always makes things slower is a mistake. Windows XP always booted and worked a lot faster in a VirtualBox under Linux than it did directly on the same machine.
  - drclau 5y ago
    Oh, QNX [0]! That was such a great OS, and quite advanced for the times (microkernel, realtime, userland was POSIX complaint etc). I remember I tried QNX Neutrino sometime in the first half of the 2000's, and it literally booted from a 1.44MB floppy into a UI (Photon), and had a working browser and everything needed to setup an internet connection (back then, this included dialup related stuff). Of all OSes that could have been, this is the one I am most upset about not succeeding. I know it still exists in some forms, but it's pretty much fringe. Refs: [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
    - qwerty456127 5y ago
      What is worth additional mentioning is PhAB (Photon Application Builder). It was a visual (like in Visual Basic) RAD C++ GUI app builder which came bundled with the OS and accompanied by a great tutorial. It was so great, I bloody wish its clone was available for Linux (and Haiku perhaps). I also miss Photon's visual style. Subjectively, it was the best I've ever seen (and Haiku feels somewhat close to this taste actually). If somebody would offer a bundle of Linux (XFCE, GNOME, KDE) and Windows (10) themes resembling QNX 6 Photon I would buy them for some real money.
qwerty456127 5y ago
What I really want to see ported to Haiku is Electron. I don't like Electron itself and feel like its non-native look&feel would pollute Haiku aesthetics, nevertheless Electron would open the doors to Visual Studio Code and Obsidian which are worth a lot.
qwerty456127 5y ago
Perhaps I would like to build a dedicated Haiku box. What is the optimal hardware configuration to run Haiku on bare metal? I don't mean as cheap as possible, I mean as compatible as possible and also rather performant. The release notes mention nVidia GeForce 6200 - GeForce Go 6400 graphics cards - are these the best for Haiku?
- pakyr 5y ago
  There are two unofficial and incomplete hardware compatibility lists: https://sites.google.com/view/haiku-computer-list-beta2 https://sites.google.com/view/haiku-computer-list-beta2 https://besly.de/index.php/en/hardware/unofficel-compatibility-list https://besly.de/index.php/en/hardware/unofficel-compatibili... (edit: newer list: https://besly.de/index.php/en/hardware/besly-system-analysis-tool-2 https://besly.de/index.php/en/hardware/besly-system-analysis...) Not really sure what exactly would be optimal, but Haiku's pretty performant on virtually any relatively modern hardware (less than 10 years old and not overly cheap) since it's so light.
- soapdog 5y ago
  I run it on a x230 and am happy with the results.
  - e12e 5y ago
    How is sleep/hibernate/resume and powersaving/battery use in general?
    - bitigchi 5y ago
      There are power saving features like turning off individual CPU cores, but sleep/hibernate/resume is not implemented yet. Any help is welcome.
- bebop 5y ago
  Intel integrated video tends to have the best success in my experience.
anthk 5y ago
Nvidia support? Something like the old nv driver for X under Unix?
soapdog 5y ago
I have a Haiku installation here and it is having trouble upgrading to Beta 3. Anyone having trouble as well? What I'm seeing are some package resolution errors. Things like haikuwebkit higher version wanting beta 3 (which is not yet installed), and giving me options to keep my old version or ignore it.
- pakyr 5y ago
  This post on the Haiku website explains what's going on, and how to upgrade to Beta 3: https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2021-06-22_important_change_required_for_haiku_nightly_and_r1beta2_users/ https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2021-06-22_important_change_re...
  - soapdog 5y ago
    Thanks a lot for the link. :-)
shaunrussell 5y ago
There is something about the text rendering in the screenshots that makes the GUI look 20 years old. What is it exactly? Anti-aliasing?
- fbnlsr 5y ago
  It looks like it's using a bitmap font, which always look odd compared to what we're using nowadays.
  - sho_hn 5y ago
    It's not using a bitmap font.
hootbootscoot 5y ago
Do we have USB audio drivers yet?

Haiku Beta 3

176 points by bitigchi 5y ago

cable2600 5y ago

Free version of BeOS rewritten from scratch using the API levels for compatibility. One step closer to public release.

smallstepforman 5y ago
Its better than BeOS, has nvme support, xhci, efi boot, slab allocator, better Posix support, has Qt, webkit, FreeBSD based networking, layout engine, wifi, packages etc.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Yeah... it's been almost thirty years after all.
st_goliath 5y ago
Not just API compatibility. To maintain ABI compatibility as well, at this point they are working with a fork of a really old gcc version that still implements this particular C++ ABI[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Compatibility_with_BeOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Compa...
- pakyr 5y ago
  That's only on the 32 bit version, and even there they also use GCC 8.
  - st_goliath 5y ago
    Is that a "recent" development? I remembered that from a few years back when I played around with Haiku in a VM, tried to port some programs and poked around in the kernel source out of curiosity. It would explain, why I couldn't find that "how to build the toolchain" page anymore through some quick browsing and posted the Wikipedia reference instead. I guess somebody(TM) should update the Wikipedia page then.
    - pakyr 5y ago
      I'm not actually sure how recent this is. Clicking through the Wayback Machine for their FAQ (http://web.archive.org/web/20150813135145/https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq#tech_1 http://web.archive.org/web/20150813135145/https://www.haiku-...), it looks like they've shipped the 32-bit versions with both GCC 2 and a newer version since at least 2015, starting with GCC 4 and getting newer as the years passed.
szszrk 5y ago
Is it promising as a basic daily system? Some modern web browser, email client, some common console tools or things like Python to run them? Or maybe there is a ports-like system developed unofficially? I used to test every iso of Haiku I found, but it felt very much a development project then actual system for simple daily use. I wonder what's the status now.
- pakyr 5y ago
  I'd say iffy on the first. The native browser is based on a modern port of WebKit, but it's buggy and not feature-complete. Things like Youtube work in-browser, but not well (buggy player, sometimes choppy playback, etc.). Wasm doesn't work. It's otherwise pretty functional. There's no Firefox/Chromium. There are alternatives to the native browser, but they're not significantly better. It has the second, and third (Python 3 is ported). It's POSIX-compliant, so there's tons of Linux/Unix CLI stuff available. There is a package manager with a lot of software, both native and ported. Many of the staples are available (LibreOffice, VLC, etc.), but there's also a lot missing, some with alternatives (there's no GIMP, but there is Krita, for example). Overall, I think it's usable as a basic system, but you could definitely run into some issues with software availability and web browsing if you want to do more powerful stuff.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    > there's no GIMP, but there is Krita, for example I wish they'd rather port Inkscape.
    - anthk 5y ago
      I'd check for native software first instead of Gimp, as Haiku had a lot of background on media production. My 2 cent tip.
    - andai 5y ago
      Haiku's icons are vector based right? Is there a native Haiku vector art software?
prvc 5y ago
Is there any proprietary software from the era for the platform that is worth running today?
- nkoren 5y ago
  Honestly I still miss Gobe Productive. Fantastic productivity suite. Not very full-featured, but everything just came together in a smooth way I haven't seen replicated since.
- jccalhoun 5y ago
  Apparently some products still use it. TuneTracker is a system for running radio stations that uses Haiku http://www.tunetrackersystems.com/about_haiku.html http://www.tunetrackersystems.com/about_haiku.html
- stinkytaco 5y ago
  From the era? Probably not. I like GoBe Productive and actually used PoorMan for some internal stuff, but neither would be sufficient for most uses today. However, TuneTracker and its associated suite of tools for radio station automation ran on BeOS and then on Haiku. It's been a few years since the website was updated, so I do not know if it's still active, but it was worth running in a very specific setting.

handelaar 5y ago

I think at this point I'm on the fourth consecutive laptop that this just won't ever boot on. This time, however, it just says "Haiku" on a splash screen and then stops completely. No errors, no debug message window, nothing. (At this point usually someone here insists that I file a bug. Which I won't do because a) I have no useful information to put into a bug report and b) I think after eleven years of this nonsense it's probably in there about 200 times already anyway.) Oh, look. Can't even press the space bar to get an unintelligible error anymore.

arthurcolle 5y ago
I've pretty much given up on these new OSes. I tried to run OS/2 and Plan 9 (whatever that relatively recent open sourced version of it was) and I just feel like... maybe I haven't developed the appropriate context to be able to even know what to do with it. Sure, Kali I know I can use my AWUS036ahw network card on, Ubuntu I know I at least have some sensible defaults, Alpine for containers (goddamnit why don't you have vim by default, so annoying to quickly debug stuff), but overall it's just not useful to know these little pieces of computing history. I suppose there are computing archaeologists that benefit from it, but I just get left with a sense of dread that everything I know and have mastered more or less is going to be left for dead and I just get a sense of exhaustion. I'd say my initial experience of playing around with distros/burning to CDs, etc were instrumental to my learning about what different terminology meant, but overall right now, it's just such a time sink with no real benefit. Same reason why I don't just stop what I'm doing to learn Zig or Objective-S or whatever. There are so many tools to do the same damn thing and while it may be useful for self-learning or potentially a very specific problem set, it's just not worth the mental investment to accomplish any real goals. It sucks to think about things in this context but it's a real constraint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU
- handelaar 5y ago
  I'm having a little philosophical discussion with myself here about whether something that can't run on an actual computer (as opposed to a VM) is in any meaningful sense an "operating system" at all. Meanwhile I can definitely boot RiscOS on a Pi containing built-in apps with a 1987 copyright message in them. I mean I can't then really do anything with it, but it's still got Haiku beat.

themodelplumber 5y ago

I was very impressed with the last version I tried earlier this year. It was fun to use. I uninstalled it because I needed to get back to a system I knew better for a while. For one minor detail, QMMP had some freezing bug, but man I loved that haiku skin. I guess it's time to try it again and see how it goes with the various use cases. > improvements to Wi-Fi networking to match FreeBSD 13 Just curious, why this match in particular? Was it a goal of some kind or is this mainly a reference freebie due to the reuse of some component?

pakyr 5y ago
The FreeBSD 13 reference is probably because Haiku uses FreeBSD drivers for most of its network drivers via a compatibility layer.

MawKKe 5y ago

I decided to try out Haiku last week. I was positively surprised how fast the whole process was. Installer loaded, system was installed and rebooted in about 20-30 seconds (not accounting for human I/O latency). And this was in a VM with SATA disk backing. Makes you yearn for simpler times.

qwerty456127 5y ago
> Installer loaded, system was installed and rebooted in about 20-30 seconds This was my experience with QNX 6 two decades ago. Installing and booting into its beautiful Photon desktop environment took less time than it took to just boot Windows 2000. > And this was in a VM with SATA disk backing. Believing virtualization always makes things slower is a mistake. Windows XP always booted and worked a lot faster in a VirtualBox under Linux than it did directly on the same machine.
- drclau 5y ago
  Oh, QNX [0]! That was such a great OS, and quite advanced for the times (microkernel, realtime, userland was POSIX complaint etc). I remember I tried QNX Neutrino sometime in the first half of the 2000's, and it literally booted from a 1.44MB floppy into a UI (Photon), and had a working browser and everything needed to setup an internet connection (back then, this included dialup related stuff). Of all OSes that could have been, this is the one I am most upset about not succeeding. I know it still exists in some forms, but it's pretty much fringe. Refs: [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    What is worth additional mentioning is PhAB (Photon Application Builder). It was a visual (like in Visual Basic) RAD C++ GUI app builder which came bundled with the OS and accompanied by a great tutorial. It was so great, I bloody wish its clone was available for Linux (and Haiku perhaps). I also miss Photon's visual style. Subjectively, it was the best I've ever seen (and Haiku feels somewhat close to this taste actually). If somebody would offer a bundle of Linux (XFCE, GNOME, KDE) and Windows (10) themes resembling QNX 6 Photon I would buy them for some real money.

qwerty456127 5y ago

What I really want to see ported to Haiku is Electron. I don't like Electron itself and feel like its non-native look&feel would pollute Haiku aesthetics, nevertheless Electron would open the doors to Visual Studio Code and Obsidian which are worth a lot.

qwerty456127 5y ago

Perhaps I would like to build a dedicated Haiku box. What is the optimal hardware configuration to run Haiku on bare metal? I don't mean as cheap as possible, I mean as compatible as possible and also rather performant. The release notes mention nVidia GeForce 6200 - GeForce Go 6400 graphics cards - are these the best for Haiku?

pakyr 5y ago
There are two unofficial and incomplete hardware compatibility lists: https://sites.google.com/view/haiku-computer-list-beta2 https://sites.google.com/view/haiku-computer-list-beta2 https://besly.de/index.php/en/hardware/unofficel-compatibility-list https://besly.de/index.php/en/hardware/unofficel-compatibili... (edit: newer list: https://besly.de/index.php/en/hardware/besly-system-analysis-tool-2 https://besly.de/index.php/en/hardware/besly-system-analysis...) Not really sure what exactly would be optimal, but Haiku's pretty performant on virtually any relatively modern hardware (less than 10 years old and not overly cheap) since it's so light.
soapdog 5y ago
I run it on a x230 and am happy with the results.
- e12e 5y ago
  How is sleep/hibernate/resume and powersaving/battery use in general?
  - bitigchi 5y ago
    There are power saving features like turning off individual CPU cores, but sleep/hibernate/resume is not implemented yet. Any help is welcome.
bebop 5y ago
Intel integrated video tends to have the best success in my experience.

anthk 5y ago

Nvidia support? Something like the old nv driver for X under Unix?

soapdog 5y ago

I have a Haiku installation here and it is having trouble upgrading to Beta 3. Anyone having trouble as well? What I'm seeing are some package resolution errors. Things like haikuwebkit higher version wanting beta 3 (which is not yet installed), and giving me options to keep my old version or ignore it.

pakyr 5y ago
This post on the Haiku website explains what's going on, and how to upgrade to Beta 3: https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2021-06-22_important_change_required_for_haiku_nightly_and_r1beta2_users/ https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2021-06-22_important_change_re...
- soapdog 5y ago
  Thanks a lot for the link. :-)

shaunrussell 5y ago

There is something about the text rendering in the screenshots that makes the GUI look 20 years old. What is it exactly? Anti-aliasing?

fbnlsr 5y ago
It looks like it's using a bitmap font, which always look odd compared to what we're using nowadays.
- sho_hn 5y ago
  It's not using a bitmap font.

hootbootscoot 5y ago

Do we have USB audio drivers yet?