10 ms·

Giving Haiku Beta 3 a try

113 points by pjerem 5y ago

mssdvd 5y ago
On a side note, Emacs has been recently ported to Haiku.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  Which is a great boon for both Haiku and my old netbook. 9/10 times I'm using terminal, browser and Emacs anyway, and Haiku is stupid fast. Now if only wireless support was bit better...
- bluepoint 5y ago
  you mean with gui? It was ported as a terminal application a while ago.
  - mssdvd 5y ago
    Yes, I do. It was merged to master a month ago.
gtsop 5y ago
I was completely oblivious to the existence of haiku until i saw a couple posts on HN. Is there any tl;dr version of how it is different than let's say a linux distro?
- Ygg2 5y ago
  It's derived from BeOS, rather than a Unix. Also it's a hybrid kernel written in C++, unlike Linux which is monolithic kernel in C.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Which means: - Different Kernel (based on NewOS if I'm not wrong) - Alright POSIX support but not 100% - Haiku has is unified base/GUI/OS compared to Linux distributions, that often choose their own window managers/composers/custom kernels (sometimes) and so on. One example is that the GUI is driven by the kernel in Haiku, in comparison to Linux distributions that often use X11 or similar software between - Different bootloader that seems more Windows OS aware than GRUB et al - Haiku focuses on personal computing, compared to Linux that (mostly) feels to aim for server usage, with supporting personal computing. But sometimes those things are at odds, and Linux allows you to configure it to be better for one or the other use case, while Haiku aims strictly for personal computing. - Haiku/BeOS always had multithreading/multi-processor in mind for it's design. If it's faster/better or not I'm not sure, but the focus been there since early - OOP API for development of Haiku software (if that's better not is an exercise left to the reader) I think the biggest selling point of Haiku is it's unity regarding the entire operating system being designed for one specific use case: personal computing. So responsiveness of the GUI is prioritized because that's the best for personal usage, while Linux (can) make other tradeoffs while allowing you to customize it. I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who test-driven Haiku a couple of times but never used it full-time, but am a daily user of Linux distributions (Arch, NixOS and Ubuntu). Some things might be wrong, I'm happy to be corrected if so, but this is what I've gathered from my usage and reading about it a little every time it pops up somewhere.
    - hestefisk 5y ago
      Is it multi-user?
      - orionblastar 5y ago
        Not yet, like the Amiga there is no login. It is still in beta and needs hard drive encryption as well.
      - rvense 5y ago
        I don't know the details about Haiku, but at the end of its life, BeOS had some kind of multiuser support, in that the OS was aware of UNIX-like permissions in the filesystem (and for processes I think). But there was no GUI for logging in, so you were always root. It was meant for single-user workstations. Not having multiple users was not really a problem, except that it made (makes) some people look down their noses. In this day and age, the main security issue on my workstation is that I all applications - including the browser that downloads a bunch of untrusted code and runs it willy-nilly - run as the same user that owns all my important files. I'm a lot more concerned about what's in my home directory than anything under /usr! So if and when Haiku adds security measures to isolate applications from each other, I would prefer they looked at some kind of sandboxing to isolate every app from each other, rather than just copying the basic UNIX model, which does basically nothing for the problems people actually have. (OK, if you need to share a computer which another person you can't have separate settings and browser histories etc., but.. I don't know if that's really such a big deal that it needs to be tackled before the other one)
        rzzzt 5y ago
        > you were always root baron :)
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        What is the virtue of a multi-user desktop? There are vanishingly few use cases for such a beast.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    > Also it's a hybrid kernel written in C++, unlike Linux which is monolithic kernel in C. "Hybrid" doesn't mean anything here. The "hybrid" design claims all the benefits of a monolithic kernel, without the disadvantages of a microkernel. Huh. Wait, let's read that again. It's a monolithic kernel with better marketing. Even the networking, which in BeOS back in the 1990s was genuinely userspace code - is baked inside the Haiku kernel just like the IP stack in Linux. C++ is not used very much in Haiku's kernel. This is because the Haiku kernel ABI boundaries are defined in C not C++ and because they're stuck with stuff from last century for compatibility reasons. If you know C++ 20 you will find Haiku's C++ dialect pretty archaic, they don't yet have C++ 11 era smart pointers for example. In practice, unlike Linux the Haiku kernel has a very 1980s attitude to hardware, it's big on "probing" at boot time for devices, like DOS would have, making it a poor fit for modern intelligent peripherals. As a hack USB is treated a bit differently so that at least it has some sort of "hot plug" like a 1990s PC. Where Haiku tried to go beyond probing they chose something very strange, they focus on capability discovery. So Haiku's thing is, you want a sound device, lets look for a sound device, I can't see one, give up. In Linux, discovery is driven by the peripherals, so this is a PCI controller, let us explore the PCI bus, OK there's a USB controller on it, let's explore the USB bus, OK there's an Intel HDA controller on it, let's explore that, it's a PCM output. We can play sound through that. Haiku's approach might fit well in some other universe, but the Linux strategy matches how your hardware actually works in our universe.
    - waddlesplash 5y ago
      (Haiku developer here.) We have our own homegrown smart pointers and do make plenty of use of them, though we could stand to make more. Already pretty much any short-lived objects (i.e. that have no lifetime beyond the function they are immediately in) are smart-pointer-managed. The "probing" approach needs a rewrite and we know it. Most of that code is confined to about 2-3 files inside the kernel. It will be a big job to fix it, but we won't need to reinvent the world. Eventually I or someone else will probably get around to it, but we haven't needed it yet; the people who need PCI hotplugging will have to do without Haiku for now. (Or they can submit patches :)
- cable2600 5y ago
  HaikuOS https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/ is a free and open source rewrite of BeOS using APIs it can run BeOS code and has had a lot of apps portered to it. It needs less memory than Linux and is more like ReactOS https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/ when they add in the WINE porting to run WIN32 and WIN64 apps. BETA3 is stable enough to use a web browser and email program to get things done. It can be installed on old retro legacy PCs to make better use of them. Run it in a virtual machine first.
  - fernandotakai 5y ago
    nitpicking, but the OS is called just "haiku", not haikuos.
  - nyanpasu64 5y ago
    Beta 3 won't boot on my Zen 3 desktop. Should I try the latest nightly, report a bug, or only run it on older hardware?
    - fold3 5y ago
      I'd recommend older hardware or in a VM.
    - waddlesplash 5y ago
      (Haiku developer here.) It works on my Zen 2 machine and I'm pretty sure one other developer runs it on Zen 3. Note that you have to use the EFI loader (only on x86_64) and you might need to use the fail-safe video driver if you get a black screen after the splash. If that doesn't work, yes, file a ticket.
      - nyanpasu64 5y ago
        > Note that you have to use the EFI loader (only on x86_64) Does that mean booting into my flash drive using EFI boot rather than MBR? In EFI boot, Haiku reboots itself after lighting up 0 tiles, and in MBR boot, Haiku hangs at 0 tiles lit. And one time when I hit power, my motherboard didn't power down, but remained on with a black screen, and I smelled magic smoke. My computer still works... for now. > use the fail-safe video driver if you get a black screen after the splash If I hold Shift and/or Space during boot, the same thing happens. Note that I have a Nvidia GT 730 GPU salvaged from an older machine. I suppose I'll file a ticket. EDIT: I can boot nightly 55756 if I hold Shift while restarting Windows, or run `efibootmgr -n ....`, but run into the same self-reboot issue if I press F12 from my motherboard. EDIT2: https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/17515 https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/17515
kgraves 5y ago
Given the amount of progress in porting Wine [0], RISC-V [1], 3D Acceleration and now has finally a full time developer (waddlesplash) It very is astounding to see what the Haiku team has done with the resources they currently have on building what could be a useable alternative OS for the desktop. I can only kindly suggest more of us donate to Haiku [2] there still needs to be more browsers (Chrome / Firefox) and polished ARM support (think Raspberry Pis) [0] https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-in-porting-wine/11741 https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-in-porting-wine/1... [1] https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-on-real-risc-v-hardware/10963/189 https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-on-real-risc-v-ha... [2] https://www.haiku-inc.org/donate/ https://www.haiku-inc.org/donate/
xyproto 5y ago
Is there a Linux distro out there that is themed to look like HaikuOS and works well?
- capableweb 5y ago
  I guess you could look for themes (Gnome: https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1143497| https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1143497| XFCE: https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1013908/ https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1013908/) but you won't get the same unified GUI as Haiku has, since everything is built with unification in mind, compared to the Linux ecosystem where modularity is usually king. I guess Elementary OS is as close to a unified GUI you come that runs with a Linux kernel, but it tries to look more like macOS than BeOS.
- rvense 5y ago
  The looks are the least important part. It works differently. Applications interact in a different way, there' APIs (especially around filesystem metadata) that applications and scripts can use. It's not necessarily that the capabilities don't exist on other systems, it's just that they're exposed and most importantly used in a different way. It's also a system that was built from the ground up to be GUI-based. The command line is there, but it's not the primary means of doing anything much. There are BeOS/Haiku window decoration themes for at least XFCE and I think OpenBox. But looks are really not what Haiku is about.
schleck8 5y ago
> The name of the project is simply “Haiku”. Unfortunately, despite numerous attempts, the registration of haiku.org has not been possible; hence the reason for haiku-os.org. And guess what, the domain haiku.org is collecting dust. What a surprise with how civil the domain market is. https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/#why-isnt-it-called-haikuos https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/#why-isnt-it-called-haiku... https://haiku.org/ https://haiku.org/
- halpert 5y ago
  What is your opinion on property rights?
  - krono 5y ago
    IANAL: As I understand it, dotcom domain names are leased rather than owned. Either way, if squatting of high value domains were illegal, you could make the case for some form of (civil) asset forfeiture, or eminent domain if the taker is a popular open source project. Not sure how I'd feel about this, though.
    - analognoise 5y ago
      There's no way business interests would ever allow asset forfeiture to help open source projects. It's a laughable idea.
      - Fnoord 5y ago
        Trademark perhaps?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - krono 5y ago
        The concept of "Eminent Domain" entails the state taking private property specifically for public use always. Which is why I mentioned it in relation to open source, separately from forfeiture :)
mysterydip 5y ago
Good to see all the progress on Haiku. This might be a solution for a "modern windows 2000" from the discussion the other day.
discmonkey 5y ago
It would be great to implement some of the windowing improvements as an addition to a current linux windowing system. Pinning different applications together or being able to merge applications with tabs both sound useful... These sorts of ideas are why it's great to have another open source OS.
- djur 5y ago
  Tabbed window managers have existed for X11 for ages, but the concept only seems to have remained popular in tiling WMs, not stacking WMs. KDE had built-in support for tabbed windows for a while but it looks like the feature disappeared a few years back, which suggests it wasn't being used much.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Good points. Although tiling may be a departure wanted or unwanted from your normal workflow i3wm does provide support for tabbing arbitrary applications together however this neither supporting merging 2 tabbed application into a single level of tabs nor does it fully support using window manager tabs in place of application tabs because of the inherent lack of context that would require a deeper sort of integration. For example in your browser you might want in its UI to open a particular link in the background or foreground or perform an operation on all tabs or a subgroup thereof that is specific to browser tabs that wouldn't make sense in the broader context like bookmarking, saving a session, sending to another device etc. There is a good argument for opening a window in the fore or background being exposed to the application but it doesn't at present work that way. Regarding multitab operations, do you display only the options that make contextual sense or perhaps list all the options that make sense? Example 3 firefox tabs and 2 Emacs tabs in a group. Show bookmark all firefox tabs and save all Emacs tabs as operations that can be done to the group? Possibly show only the relevant options if some subset are selected. Example if only 3 firefox tabs are selected show only those operations. There is an argument for retaining multiple levels of tabbing at the OS level and the application level other than simplicity. Often when you want to perform a group operation the app is an already defined group for that operation, and in addition it often makes more sense to page through application tabs and windows separately rather than as a singular operation. For example going one window to the left for your editor while leaving the existing firefox tab focused rather than having to hit a different shortcut to jump up a level. I think it would be interesting if you could have like application windows automatically vertically tabbed like Firefox's tree style tabs and have a contextual option to either break out to a new tree or open a different applications link as a child tab of the tree. One could then optionally switch between showing trees side by side/top bottom or joining them into a horizontal tab group. Ideally operations performed on multiple tabs could be performed by hitting a singular hotkey or button that would present all relevant options without going into each apps menu or pressing a different key or ui per app. This would however be both complicated and require coordination between players that would likely be impossible.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

113 points by pjerem 5y ago

mssdvd 5y ago

On a side note, Emacs has been recently ported to Haiku.

e3bc54b2 5y ago
Which is a great boon for both Haiku and my old netbook. 9/10 times I'm using terminal, browser and Emacs anyway, and Haiku is stupid fast. Now if only wireless support was bit better...
bluepoint 5y ago
you mean with gui? It was ported as a terminal application a while ago.
- mssdvd 5y ago
  Yes, I do. It was merged to master a month ago.

gtsop 5y ago

I was completely oblivious to the existence of haiku until i saw a couple posts on HN. Is there any tl;dr version of how it is different than let's say a linux distro?

Ygg2 5y ago
It's derived from BeOS, rather than a Unix. Also it's a hybrid kernel written in C++, unlike Linux which is monolithic kernel in C.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Which means: - Different Kernel (based on NewOS if I'm not wrong) - Alright POSIX support but not 100% - Haiku has is unified base/GUI/OS compared to Linux distributions, that often choose their own window managers/composers/custom kernels (sometimes) and so on. One example is that the GUI is driven by the kernel in Haiku, in comparison to Linux distributions that often use X11 or similar software between - Different bootloader that seems more Windows OS aware than GRUB et al - Haiku focuses on personal computing, compared to Linux that (mostly) feels to aim for server usage, with supporting personal computing. But sometimes those things are at odds, and Linux allows you to configure it to be better for one or the other use case, while Haiku aims strictly for personal computing. - Haiku/BeOS always had multithreading/multi-processor in mind for it's design. If it's faster/better or not I'm not sure, but the focus been there since early - OOP API for development of Haiku software (if that's better not is an exercise left to the reader) I think the biggest selling point of Haiku is it's unity regarding the entire operating system being designed for one specific use case: personal computing. So responsiveness of the GUI is prioritized because that's the best for personal usage, while Linux (can) make other tradeoffs while allowing you to customize it. I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who test-driven Haiku a couple of times but never used it full-time, but am a daily user of Linux distributions (Arch, NixOS and Ubuntu). Some things might be wrong, I'm happy to be corrected if so, but this is what I've gathered from my usage and reading about it a little every time it pops up somewhere.
  - hestefisk 5y ago
    Is it multi-user?
    - orionblastar 5y ago
      Not yet, like the Amiga there is no login. It is still in beta and needs hard drive encryption as well.
    - rvense 5y ago
      I don't know the details about Haiku, but at the end of its life, BeOS had some kind of multiuser support, in that the OS was aware of UNIX-like permissions in the filesystem (and for processes I think). But there was no GUI for logging in, so you were always root. It was meant for single-user workstations. Not having multiple users was not really a problem, except that it made (makes) some people look down their noses. In this day and age, the main security issue on my workstation is that I all applications - including the browser that downloads a bunch of untrusted code and runs it willy-nilly - run as the same user that owns all my important files. I'm a lot more concerned about what's in my home directory than anything under /usr! So if and when Haiku adds security measures to isolate applications from each other, I would prefer they looked at some kind of sandboxing to isolate every app from each other, rather than just copying the basic UNIX model, which does basically nothing for the problems people actually have. (OK, if you need to share a computer which another person you can't have separate settings and browser histories etc., but.. I don't know if that's really such a big deal that it needs to be tackled before the other one)
      - rzzzt 5y ago
        > you were always root baron :)
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      What is the virtue of a multi-user desktop? There are vanishingly few use cases for such a beast.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  > Also it's a hybrid kernel written in C++, unlike Linux which is monolithic kernel in C. "Hybrid" doesn't mean anything here. The "hybrid" design claims all the benefits of a monolithic kernel, without the disadvantages of a microkernel. Huh. Wait, let's read that again. It's a monolithic kernel with better marketing. Even the networking, which in BeOS back in the 1990s was genuinely userspace code - is baked inside the Haiku kernel just like the IP stack in Linux. C++ is not used very much in Haiku's kernel. This is because the Haiku kernel ABI boundaries are defined in C not C++ and because they're stuck with stuff from last century for compatibility reasons. If you know C++ 20 you will find Haiku's C++ dialect pretty archaic, they don't yet have C++ 11 era smart pointers for example. In practice, unlike Linux the Haiku kernel has a very 1980s attitude to hardware, it's big on "probing" at boot time for devices, like DOS would have, making it a poor fit for modern intelligent peripherals. As a hack USB is treated a bit differently so that at least it has some sort of "hot plug" like a 1990s PC. Where Haiku tried to go beyond probing they chose something very strange, they focus on capability discovery. So Haiku's thing is, you want a sound device, lets look for a sound device, I can't see one, give up. In Linux, discovery is driven by the peripherals, so this is a PCI controller, let us explore the PCI bus, OK there's a USB controller on it, let's explore the USB bus, OK there's an Intel HDA controller on it, let's explore that, it's a PCM output. We can play sound through that. Haiku's approach might fit well in some other universe, but the Linux strategy matches how your hardware actually works in our universe.
  - waddlesplash 5y ago
    (Haiku developer here.) We have our own homegrown smart pointers and do make plenty of use of them, though we could stand to make more. Already pretty much any short-lived objects (i.e. that have no lifetime beyond the function they are immediately in) are smart-pointer-managed. The "probing" approach needs a rewrite and we know it. Most of that code is confined to about 2-3 files inside the kernel. It will be a big job to fix it, but we won't need to reinvent the world. Eventually I or someone else will probably get around to it, but we haven't needed it yet; the people who need PCI hotplugging will have to do without Haiku for now. (Or they can submit patches :)
cable2600 5y ago
HaikuOS https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/ is a free and open source rewrite of BeOS using APIs it can run BeOS code and has had a lot of apps portered to it. It needs less memory than Linux and is more like ReactOS https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/ when they add in the WINE porting to run WIN32 and WIN64 apps. BETA3 is stable enough to use a web browser and email program to get things done. It can be installed on old retro legacy PCs to make better use of them. Run it in a virtual machine first.
- fernandotakai 5y ago
  nitpicking, but the OS is called just "haiku", not haikuos.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  Beta 3 won't boot on my Zen 3 desktop. Should I try the latest nightly, report a bug, or only run it on older hardware?
  - fold3 5y ago
    I'd recommend older hardware or in a VM.
  - waddlesplash 5y ago
    (Haiku developer here.) It works on my Zen 2 machine and I'm pretty sure one other developer runs it on Zen 3. Note that you have to use the EFI loader (only on x86_64) and you might need to use the fail-safe video driver if you get a black screen after the splash. If that doesn't work, yes, file a ticket.
    - nyanpasu64 5y ago
      > Note that you have to use the EFI loader (only on x86_64) Does that mean booting into my flash drive using EFI boot rather than MBR? In EFI boot, Haiku reboots itself after lighting up 0 tiles, and in MBR boot, Haiku hangs at 0 tiles lit. And one time when I hit power, my motherboard didn't power down, but remained on with a black screen, and I smelled magic smoke. My computer still works... for now. > use the fail-safe video driver if you get a black screen after the splash If I hold Shift and/or Space during boot, the same thing happens. Note that I have a Nvidia GT 730 GPU salvaged from an older machine. I suppose I'll file a ticket. EDIT: I can boot nightly 55756 if I hold Shift while restarting Windows, or run `efibootmgr -n ....`, but run into the same self-reboot issue if I press F12 from my motherboard. EDIT2: https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/17515 https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/17515

kgraves 5y ago

Given the amount of progress in porting Wine [0], RISC-V [1], 3D Acceleration and now has finally a full time developer (waddlesplash) It very is astounding to see what the Haiku team has done with the resources they currently have on building what could be a useable alternative OS for the desktop. I can only kindly suggest more of us donate to Haiku [2] there still needs to be more browsers (Chrome / Firefox) and polished ARM support (think Raspberry Pis) [0] https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-in-porting-wine/11741 https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-in-porting-wine/1... [1] https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-on-real-risc-v-hardware/10963/189 https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/my-progress-on-real-risc-v-ha... [2] https://www.haiku-inc.org/donate/ https://www.haiku-inc.org/donate/

xyproto 5y ago

Is there a Linux distro out there that is themed to look like HaikuOS and works well?

capableweb 5y ago
I guess you could look for themes (Gnome: https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1143497| https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1143497| XFCE: https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1013908/ https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1013908/) but you won't get the same unified GUI as Haiku has, since everything is built with unification in mind, compared to the Linux ecosystem where modularity is usually king. I guess Elementary OS is as close to a unified GUI you come that runs with a Linux kernel, but it tries to look more like macOS than BeOS.
rvense 5y ago
The looks are the least important part. It works differently. Applications interact in a different way, there' APIs (especially around filesystem metadata) that applications and scripts can use. It's not necessarily that the capabilities don't exist on other systems, it's just that they're exposed and most importantly used in a different way. It's also a system that was built from the ground up to be GUI-based. The command line is there, but it's not the primary means of doing anything much. There are BeOS/Haiku window decoration themes for at least XFCE and I think OpenBox. But looks are really not what Haiku is about.

schleck8 5y ago

> The name of the project is simply “Haiku”. Unfortunately, despite numerous attempts, the registration of haiku.org has not been possible; hence the reason for haiku-os.org. And guess what, the domain haiku.org is collecting dust. What a surprise with how civil the domain market is. https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/#why-isnt-it-called-haikuos https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/#why-isnt-it-called-haiku... https://haiku.org/ https://haiku.org/

halpert 5y ago
What is your opinion on property rights?
- krono 5y ago
  IANAL: As I understand it, dotcom domain names are leased rather than owned. Either way, if squatting of high value domains were illegal, you could make the case for some form of (civil) asset forfeiture, or eminent domain if the taker is a popular open source project. Not sure how I'd feel about this, though.
  - analognoise 5y ago
    There's no way business interests would ever allow asset forfeiture to help open source projects. It's a laughable idea.
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      Trademark perhaps?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - krono 5y ago
      The concept of "Eminent Domain" entails the state taking private property specifically for public use always. Which is why I mentioned it in relation to open source, separately from forfeiture :)

mysterydip 5y ago

Good to see all the progress on Haiku. This might be a solution for a "modern windows 2000" from the discussion the other day.

discmonkey 5y ago

It would be great to implement some of the windowing improvements as an addition to a current linux windowing system. Pinning different applications together or being able to merge applications with tabs both sound useful... These sorts of ideas are why it's great to have another open source OS.

djur 5y ago
Tabbed window managers have existed for X11 for ages, but the concept only seems to have remained popular in tiling WMs, not stacking WMs. KDE had built-in support for tabbed windows for a while but it looks like the feature disappeared a few years back, which suggests it wasn't being used much.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Good points. Although tiling may be a departure wanted or unwanted from your normal workflow i3wm does provide support for tabbing arbitrary applications together however this neither supporting merging 2 tabbed application into a single level of tabs nor does it fully support using window manager tabs in place of application tabs because of the inherent lack of context that would require a deeper sort of integration. For example in your browser you might want in its UI to open a particular link in the background or foreground or perform an operation on all tabs or a subgroup thereof that is specific to browser tabs that wouldn't make sense in the broader context like bookmarking, saving a session, sending to another device etc. There is a good argument for opening a window in the fore or background being exposed to the application but it doesn't at present work that way. Regarding multitab operations, do you display only the options that make contextual sense or perhaps list all the options that make sense? Example 3 firefox tabs and 2 Emacs tabs in a group. Show bookmark all firefox tabs and save all Emacs tabs as operations that can be done to the group? Possibly show only the relevant options if some subset are selected. Example if only 3 firefox tabs are selected show only those operations. There is an argument for retaining multiple levels of tabbing at the OS level and the application level other than simplicity. Often when you want to perform a group operation the app is an already defined group for that operation, and in addition it often makes more sense to page through application tabs and windows separately rather than as a singular operation. For example going one window to the left for your editor while leaving the existing firefox tab focused rather than having to hit a different shortcut to jump up a level. I think it would be interesting if you could have like application windows automatically vertically tabbed like Firefox's tree style tabs and have a contextual option to either break out to a new tree or open a different applications link as a child tab of the tree. One could then optionally switch between showing trees side by side/top bottom or joining them into a horizontal tab group. Ideally operations performed on multiple tabs could be performed by hitting a singular hotkey or button that would present all relevant options without going into each apps menu or pressing a different key or ui per app. This would however be both complicated and require coordination between players that would likely be impossible.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]