9 ms·

Haiku R1/beta4

440 points by waddlesplash 4y ago

waddlesplash 4y ago
Release notes: https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ Downloads: https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/ https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/
- pb82 4y ago
  Very happy to see boot failure fixes in the release notes. Can't wait to give it another try with beta4!
gigatexal 4y ago
Oh what would have been what could have been had Apple bought Be instead of Next. We'd likely not have any iPhones or a 2.5T Apple but we could have had some really cool software. BeOS and now Haiku will always have a special place in my nerd-head. consider sponsoring the team here: https://github.com/sponsors/haiku https://github.com/sponsors/haiku
- angrygoat 4y ago
  Circa 1999 one of the popular machines in my uni's computer club was the BeBox - it had a solid web browser, it was fast, it had the cool CPU usage indicator on the front, and it was *nix enough to compile most stuff or to work on assignments in ANSI C. And it was just so snappy, it could do more than one thing without getting janky. A real shame that they faded out. I kind of miss those days with all the different and varied workstations – Be, SGI, DEC, HP, IBM, Sun, ...
  - rzzzt 4y ago
    I'd like to see the GeekPort reintroduced on non-Pi class machines. A bit of digital GPIO, some analog lines, maybe SPI...
    - hakfoo 4y ago
      I wonder why there isn't a $20 PCI-E card (or perhaps USB dongle) that offers a 40-pin RasPi-style port.
      - ofrzeta 4y ago
        If you had a PCI card you would need some kind of external adapter or breakout box for the GPIO pins. Seems much more practical to have the board in the "breakout box" and connect it via USB.
      - jeffbee 4y ago
        I don't know about the prices but mixed-signal GPIO rigs for PCIe and USB are very common. Look at the "LabJack" for example. The LabJack U3-HV has almost exact feature parity with the geekport.
        hakfoo 4y ago
        A quick google puts it at $130, well beyond the price of "just buy a Raspberry Pi or similar device, which also comes with all the SoC smarts too."
        jeffbee 4y ago
        Fair enough. It compares more favorably to an odd port inconveniently located on the back of a $5000 (2022 dollars) tower PC.
    - guenthert 4y ago
      Twenty years ago I might have liked that too, but these days I much prefer dedicated machines (MCUs like Arduino, P8X32A, R.Pico etc. or "single-board" (or rather "open-frame") computers like R.Pi, BBB etc.) for the acoustic noise alone (not to speak of power bill and electrical safety). USB or Ethernet (preferred for galvanic separation) on the PC does just fine to connect to those.
- cameroncooper 4y ago
  It would be interesting to see what would have happened had Apple bought Be instead of Apple, but I think it's pretty clear Apple made the "right" move. NeXT had really good software, and of course, Steve Jobs (and let's not forget about the rest of the NeXT team with people like Avie). Hard to imagine Jean-Louis Gassée (or anyone else really) being able to turn the company around like Steve did.
  - hankman86 4y ago
    Exactly. In acquiring NeXT, Apple bought leadership and culture. And we can argue forever if Apple’s engineers could have shipped the first OSX release earlier or in a better state, had they instead acquired Be. But I doubt it. Because - again - they bought themselves a high-performance culture, which they might not have gotten from Be. Porting BeOS to Apple hardware / existing software would have likely required an equally Herculean effort. Oh and they got Steve Jobs of course who made quick work of pushing out the old Apple leadership. And good that he did.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      BeOS already ran on existing Apple PowerPC hardware of the time: http://testou.free.fr/www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/support/guides/beosreadylist_ppc.html http://testou.free.fr/www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/su...
- KMag 4y ago
  In school, I quad-booted Debian, Win2k, QNX, and BeOS on my desktop. BeOS was very light weight. Its ethernet driver for 3c509 was buggy and crashed often, but being a userspace driver, I just got a popup asking permission to restart the driver. Conversely, a couple years later I had an OSX laptop, and a corrupted backup CD that would kernel panic OSX, Win2k, and Linux. (Honestly, ISO 9660 and FAT32 drivers should be migrated out of mainstream OS kernels, since kernel latency is very far from being the bottleneck when using thunmb drives or CDs.) On the other hand, BeOS had some questionable uses of metadata. After improperly using tar to backup my home directory before a reinstall, I lost all of my NetPositive browser bookmarks. I didn't realize each bookmark was a zero-sized file with the URL actually stored in metadata. My improper backup procedure dropped the metadata fork. Also, there was a kernel bug related to semaphores. I had some semaphore code that worked fine under Linux but would kernel panic BeOS. Had Apple purchased Be, we'd likely have a much lighter weight OSX, though perhaps with poorer support for multiple users. I'm still hoping that someday QNX RTP gets open-sourced. A hard real-time light weight microkernel OS was fun to play around with. In particular, a cache benchmark I ran for a systems class showed quite a bit smaller cache footprint for QNX vs. Debian. (Though, Debian almost certainly had more daemons running, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison of kernel cache footprints.)
- jeffbee 4y ago
  I find this take somewhat baffling. At the moment that Apple bought NeXT, NeXTSTEP had a mature software toolchain, a working IPv4 networking stack, and enterprise customers, three things that BeOS lacked. BeOS had a primitive software toolchain ecosystem based on pre-standard C++. BeOS IP networking barely worked and despite everything claimed in their advertising it was fully serialized, single-threaded networking. BeOS had zero customers. The only thing that Be did have was one nifty demo, and a somewhat innovative file system. Apple must have correctly deduced that it would be easy to improve the filesystem, because they later did so, with the same author. Comparing BeOS and NextSTEP in 1997 is like comparing a ham sandwich to a piglet and a bag of flour. One of these things was a finished product.
  - steve1977 4y ago
    NeXT even had stuff like WebObjects, which was really ahead of its time back then. And AFAIK it still powers some services at Apple.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      iTunes and App Store seem to both still be backed by webobjects services. Stuff like [1] still respond at WO-like URLs and still include headers like `x-webobjects-whatever` so I surmise these are still production WO apps. 1: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/ws/wsLookup?id=909253&urlDesc= https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/ws/w...
  - perardi 4y ago
    Also, NeXtSTEP could reliably print stuff. Which, given that publishing was the niche that arguably kept the Mac alive during those years: kinda important!
  - PAPPPmAc 4y ago
    (Just because I love this argument): Have you used Mid-90s OpenStep and BeOS on period hardware? People rose-tinted-glasses the hell out of OpenStep (...and the first few OS X releases), it's ridiculously sluggish and brittle (in that same kind of "I did something to config and rendered it unbootable" way as early 2000s Linux). BeOS is shockingly performant and flexible on the same hardware. As much as the original BeOS network stack was mediocre (and it was, it wasn't fixed until the BONE design in that final Dano leak in 2001) the much-touted NeXT networking stack was literally the open source 4.3BSD networking code running hosted, with their awful NetInfo system on top, which Apple spent the next several years excising. Excising like the Adobe license fees cost more than a PC, few major vendors (not even Adobe!) willing to port their software to, Display PostScript GUI they had to throw out and replace. I'll grant that they got a really good set of development tools they're still essentially using, and Be's were rough (and kind of alien, that kind of pervasive threading is _still_ hard with decades of work on the tooling). Apple bought NeXT because the stack looked architecturally like a less-bungled version of their own failed Pink/Taligent effort, and Steve Jobs had a better relationship with people still at Apple than Jean-Louis Gassée.
- diskzero 4y ago
  Many Be employees, including myself, ended up at Apple; some after a brief time at Eazel and others later on. They had, and continue to, make great contributions. As a former Be employee and lover of BeOS, I can say that Apple acquiring Be would have been a disaster for Apple. I have no ill will to Gil Amelio, Ellen Hancock, Steve Glass and the other leadership, but they didn't have what it took (other than the NeXT purchase) to pull Apple out of crisis.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Assuming Apple's success by going with Be instead of NeXT, we would have yet another mainstream OS where C++ plays a major role, thus settling the whole discussiong regarding C vs C++ for OS design.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Linus Torvalds has settled that whole discussion, by rejecting C++ and subsequently adopting Rust. Even Windows is basically written in C in its lowest layers anyway, they apparently don't find C++ itself very useful.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Linus Torvalds has settled that whole discussion for the Linux kernel. Thankfully his opinion about C++ is meaningless outside Linux world. Windows started to adopt C++ on the kernel since Vista, you can make use of Windows Implementation Library, a C++ template library for kernel, drivers and userspace code. Just gotta to love that VC++ /kernel flag. macOS with its NeXTSTEP heritage, changed from having Objective-C drivers on kernel space to C++ drivers in kernel space. Then if you bother to broaden your horizons beyond FOSS UNIX clones, there are enough OSes already shipping C++ on the kernel.
spyremeown 4y ago
Who is the designer behind Haiku's icons and general "feel"? It looks really nice.
- c0balt 4y ago
  I can't speak to the specific person(s) however the Haiku inc. (The non-profit for Haiku Org stuff) has an FAQ entry about them: https://www.haiku-inc.org/trademarks/haiku_icons/ https://www.haiku-inc.org/trademarks/haiku_icons/ Edit: Fixed typo
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  That would be "stippi" aka. Stephan Aßmus on both counts, I believe. At least the icon style was chosen after a competition all the way back in 2006, where stippi's style got the most votes [1]. The look & feel of controls was done by him in 2009 [2], not sure if there was ever an announcement about that (I see an old forum thread that may be related, though.) These days, stippi does not have much time for Haiku, but there are a number of developers & community members who have picked up where he left off, continuing work on the UI and drawing new icons when required. (Old hands from the BeOS days may remember stippi as the co-developer of the shareware "WonderBrush", which now runs on Haiku and has been open-sourced [3].) [1]: https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2006-11-03_icon_contest_and_best_rated_icon_set_award_goes/ https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2006-11-03_icon_contest_and_be... [2]: https://github.com/haiku/haiku/commit/2f86ba45579bdc9648b232175f87edc62ab71b54 https://github.com/haiku/haiku/commit/2f86ba45579bdc9648b232... [3]: https://github.com/stippi/WonderBrush-v2/ https://github.com/stippi/WonderBrush-v2/
- brobinson 4y ago
  Where do you even see them? I clicked around the website for a minute and can't find a freaking screenshot of anything anywhere. How frustrating.
  - waddlesplash 4y ago
    The front-page should probably have more screenshots, yeah. There's a screenshot tour here: https://www.haiku-os.org/slideshows/haiku-1/ https://www.haiku-os.org/slideshows/haiku-1/ And the release notes, linked from the release announcement, have screenshots: https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/
yellowapple 4y ago
It's awesome that Haiku has come a long enough way that it runs on my Framework out-of-the-box. Still ain't quite there as a daily driver, but it's very close.
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  Have you tried the newly-ported GNOME Web browser, mentioned in the release notes? It seems that it solves the "web browser problem" many users have complained about.
  - HeckFeck 4y ago
    It is excellent to see a modern browser on Haiku, but one thing remains: If we get a web browser with advert blocking, it will be ready for the modern web.
    - waddlesplash 4y ago
      GNOME Web has built-in adblocking.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    I haven't yet, but my daily-driver-blocking issues during my last attempt were more around stability. Much of it I think is the hardware (OpenBSD and Haiku both would spontaneously reboot on occasion; given that it was more frequent on battery, I suspect it's some quirk with the Framework's power management - or maybe there's something in the iwx driver that freaks out the whole machine), and some were likely attributable to being on nightly; I'll have to re-test with beta4 (and maybe the latest UEFI updates on my machine) to see if that straightens some things out. The lack of a built-in solution for full-disk encryption is also a blocker for me. It's something I keep meaning to try and tackle (say, by porting over OpenBSD's FDE implementation), but I ain't quite comfortable enough yet with Haiku's codebase to even know where to start.
    - waddlesplash 4y ago
jamesdwilson 4y ago
any way to run this bare metal on an m1 mac? can i dual boot it?
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  The ARM64 port doesn't yet boot all the way to desktop in QEMU, so it certainly won't run bare metal on an M1, unfortunately. You can certainly dual-boot it on x86 machines, though.
  - snvzz 4y ago
    Is RISC-V port in any better condition?
    - waddlesplash 4y ago
      Yes. As I noted in another comment, the RISC-V port is basically "fully functional" and only lacks software (HaikuPorts is set up to build on it, but we haven't yet created binary package repositories for RISC-V.) I know at least one Haiku developer has a HiFive Unmatched and it runs Haiku pretty well.
hectorm 4y ago
If anyone wants to quickly spin up a Haiku VM I leave here my Docker image [1]. It's just a proof of concept but some people are using it for CI as well [2]. [1] https://github.com/hectorm/docker-qemu-haiku https://github.com/hectorm/docker-qemu-haiku [2] https://github.com/HaikuArchives/ArtPaint/blob/7f5c49278545eff4a6e01000814ce9ff28c8e016/.github/workflows/build.yaml https://github.com/HaikuArchives/ArtPaint/blob/7f5c49278545e...
- grubby 4y ago
  thanks! will def check this out
rcarmo 4y ago
This is pretty impressive. GTK, WINE, Wayland… As a “lightweight” OS, it has a lot of potential for tinkering. I can’t wait until they get a working ARM version for a Raspberry PI or an RK3688 SBC.
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  The ARM port has made a lot of progress since the last release; it gets almost all the way to starting the desktop. Similar progress was made on ARM64. But that's not very exciting news, so it only got an oblique mention in the release notes. The RISC-V port on the other hand is nearly fully usable even on bare metal. I know some people run it on HiFive Unmatched, at least...
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  The approaches to X and Wayland compatibility are interesting. >Instead of running a full X server as XQuartz or other X11 compatibility packages do on other operating systems, it directly handles Xlib API calls and translates them into Haiku API calls, instead. >It is a little more complicated than the one for X11, running an “in-process Wayland server” for each application instead of translating C API calls directly. Unfortunately the Wayland part has no blog post similar to the X one.
donatj 4y ago
As a BeOS users in the late 90's / early 2000's - the fact that Haiku is still going twenty years since its first inception is just incredible to me. I am continually amazed at how much progress the project continues to garner. It really proves there was something magical to BeOS.
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  It's not just that there was something magical to BeOS, there's still something magical to Haiku, especially in the era of the "Linux desktop" with its free-for-all fractured ecosystem approach to desktop environments. We aren't working on Haiku just because it reminds us of the past, but because we think it could be the future, too.
  - hankman86 4y ago
    This deserves to be expanded on: I very much see the need for innovation in OS research. But I just don’t see anything in BeOS/Haiku that would address any of the big challenges for operating systems. Which in my mind include the following: Can we get away from the “leaky bucket” security paradigm where despite all of the best efforts and gradual improvements, prevalent operating systems “keep on giving” in terms of exploits that are discovered all the time. Is there something akin to what Rust is for programming languages? Or what about an operating system for AIs? Is the current stack of Linux, GPU drivers, and some ML SDK on top an adequate answer for emerging AI applications? Or if you still believe in Blockchain applications, what about a native OS for that? And the list goes on. All I see in Haiku/BeOS is a pretty, albeit dated user interface. Someone educate me what else they bring to the table.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - christophilus 4y ago
      It screams on super underpowered hardware. That’s a nice benefit over just about any modern OS.
djsavvy 4y ago
@dang Could the URL be changed to the release notes? https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ It's a much more filled-out page, and probably what most people are clicking through to anyways.
- dang 4y ago
  Changed from https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2022-12-23_haiku_r1_beta4/ https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2022-12-23_haiku_r1_beta4/. Thanks!
makach 4y ago
HaikuOS still going strong If we like it on our pcs Install and use it
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
forgotpwd16 4y ago
>One of the newly available GTK applications is GNOME Web aka. Epiphany, which is based on a very recent version of WebKitGTK. This provides an unfortunately non-native but largely functional web browser for Haiku for the first time in many years, with “just works” status for major websites like YouTube and others. For many people that makes Haiku suitable to run daily.
- chungy 4y ago
  I kind of get not using the Be GUI API makes it feel "non-native", but it's still a native port of GTK and Epiphany. It's not like they've built a Linux ABI emulation layer to run it.
  - waddlesplash 4y ago
    There's not a Linux ABI emulation layer but it is running on top of a Wayland emulation layer, instead of using the Be GUI API directly (as the Qt, SDL, and Java Swing ports do.) That does make a difference, especially around stuff like keyboard handling.
    - forgotpwd16 4y ago
      >on top of a Wayland emulation layer As per release notes, for time being it uses X11 layer instead for features and performance.
      - waddlesplash 4y ago
        Uh ... no? The release notes state it started out using the X11 layer, but then switched to using the Wayland layer. I should know: I wrote the X11 layer, contributed to the Wayland layer, and wrote most of these release notes. :)
        forgotpwd16 4y ago
        Yeah, skimmed through them and mixed up the wording. It says "port now is built atop [the Wayland compatibility layer] for both features and performance reasons", remembered it the other way.
gatosenojados 4y ago
Try it in the browser, new version should be available soon: https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=haiku https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=haiku
user3939382 4y ago
These compatibility layers are huge and are going to skyrocket Haiku’s strength as a daily driver. I’m really rooting for everyone working on it. Keep up the good work guys.
hankman86 4y ago
Beyond the nostalgia: are there any other reasons to keep contributing to Haiku? Like critical infrastructure that is reliant on BeOS/Haiku. Or anything you can plausibly do best on Haiku?
- unixhero 4y ago
  It's just a fun OS
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  It's an alternative to the fragmented state of the "Linux desktop": instead of having dozens of separate projects (GNOME, PipeWire, systemd, Wayland, ...) be combined by yet another project (a distribution), which is (in my view) a major cause of the fragile nature, slow pace of development (it's hard to request features if you have to spend minutes to hours figuring out where they need to be requested from!), and other problems it faces, Haiku is a one-project-governs-all: a single development team for the core operating system and userspace ("desktop environment"), with an interconnected distribution ecosystem. We can merge a change to Haiku's kernel and drivers, and test builds will be available with it on the "nightly" channel within hours. We can issue a patch for the system C library headers, trigger rebuilds of packages from the ports tree against it as soon as CI builds finish. We can send users experimental builds of work-in-progress features for testing, with very little technical know-how required to install such a patch or revert to the previous version if it breaks something. There are so many huge advantages Haiku has due to how the project is structured that the "Linux desktop", whatever upsides it does possess, basically cannot ever have by its very nature.
  - guenthert 4y ago
    > instead of having dozens of separate projects (GNOME, PipeWire, systemd, Wayland, ...) be combined by yet another project (a distribution), which is (in my view) a major cause of the fragile nature, slow pace of development (it's hard to request features if you have to spend minutes to hours figuring out where they need to be requested from!), and other problems it faces, Haiku is a one-project-governs-all: a single development team for the core operating system and userspace ("desktop environment"), with an interconnected distribution ecosystem. So there will never be 3rd party software? Not even a GNU Emacs? Surely you're using GNU GCC, aren't you?
alganet 4y ago
I'm eager to test this. HiDPI, modern browser, wine, emacs... that's A LOT of useful stuff. I use lightweight linux VMs to keep different workspaces and hobbyspaces separate from my main OS. Depending on how the test goes, I feel that Haiku might replace some of those linuxes.
- MonkeyClub 4y ago
  Yep, this stood out for me as well: > but now (thanks to Emacs developers!) has a fully-upstreamed, polished-to-a-shine native GUI. This alone is definitely worth giving it a go!
szastamasta 4y ago
While I totally despise Electron it might be a great moment for new OSes and UI toolkits to emerge. In near future it might be enough to port Electron and a web browser and your niche OS might become actually usable on daily basis. It’s slow and a total memory waste, but web became a new UI toolkit that actually solved OS compatibility issues. Who would have thought…
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Aren't most electron apps available as regular web pages anyway? I mean I tried a number of electron apps and always end up using the web version that is always the most up to date and are as wll integrated to the desktop thanks to desktops support for web notifications. And in many cases, the web version end up more stable/reliable than the electron one. MS Teams is a great example of that.
superboum 4y ago
3 days ago, I installed Haiku on bare metal: an old PC from ~2004. I was not aware that a new version was planned at that time, but the upgrade was completely smooth. My idea when I installed Haiku was to make my own version of the "old computer challenge"[1], with an emphasis on using GUI apps. Similarly to @probono (a FOSS dev), I also found Haiku "shockingly good"[2] at being a lightweight, responsive, easy-to-use desktop OS. After some patching, I was even able to compile Tectonic[3], a modern LaTeX engine written in Rust, and Quaternion a Matrix client supporting E2EE[4]. All that running on a single core Athlon 64 and 1.5GB of RAM. I posted some screenshots in a Mastodon threads if you are curious[5] (but my posts are in french sorry :/). And of course this comment is posted from Haiku! [1]: https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2021-07-07-old-computer-challenge.html https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2021-07-07-old-computer-challe... [2]: https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-first-day-with-haiku-shockingly-good-8930cad4bbb0 https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-first-day-with-haiku-shocki... [3]: https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-US/ https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-US/ [4]: https://github.com/quotient-im/Quaternion https://github.com/quotient-im/Quaternion [5]: https://mastodon.tedomum.net/@tgoldoin/109554115997967651 https://mastodon.tedomum.net/@tgoldoin/109554115997967651
- xattt 4y ago
  Around 2001, I ran the contemporary BeOS demo on a Pentium MMX 200 MHz machine with 32 MB of RAM. Even with those limitations, the thing screamed. I believe it was live CD you downloaded and burned. I am absolutely not surprised it works well on Athlon 64.
  - drooopy 4y ago
    I remember having the exact same experience on slightly less powerful hardware with that BeOS demo. I remember throwing everything at it and it just kept on going like it was no big deal and me constantly going "wow, wow, wow" haha! It was such a bummer going back to Windows after experiencing that.
  - KMag 4y ago
    Ahh, the memories! (266 MHz PII, 64 MB RAM ... maybe upgraded to 384 MB RAM by the time I was quad-booting Debian, Win2k, BeOS and QNX) Maybe I ran BeOS slightly before a demo CD was available, or maybe I just didn't risk burning a coaster. (Remember those days where you had to worry about your OS not being able to feed the CD burner as fast as it was writing?) When I demoed BeOS around 2000, it was on a floppy (I repurposed a free AoL floppy from a few years earlier... by that time AoL was mailing free CDs instead of free floppies). The demo floppy allowed one to format a BeFS partition on the drive, and I think even put the kernel on the drive, but kept the bootloader on the floppy to encourage purchase. I woke up one morning to see the floppy drive light on, and apparently a BeOS kernel or usespace driver bug caused it to spin the floppy continuously all night without moving the read/write head. I popped out the floppy and pulled back the dust guard to discover a thin stripe where the magnetic media had been polished off of the floppy. The drive didn't read any floppy correctly after that; presumably the read/write head was covered in magnetic media dust. I don't remember how, but I eventually found instructions for copying the bootloader off of the downloaded floppy image and getting GRUB to find it, so I didn't need to put my replacement floppy drive at risk.
dang 4y ago
This is maybe about the limit for a list like this, and I omitted a few less interesting ones. If anyone knows of a good thread that I missed, we can merge it in! Show HN: Xlibe – A serverless Xlib (X11) compatibility layer for Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31167562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31167562 - April 2022 (46 comments) Giving Haiku Beta 3 a try - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29757451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29757451 - Jan 2022 (48 comments) My progress in porting Wine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29753069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29753069 - Dec 2021 (62 comments) Haiku Now Has Experimental 3D Acceleration - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29390689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29390689 - Nov 2021 (71 comments) Haiku has hired an existing contributor to work on Haiku full-time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28305191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28305191 - Aug 2021 (105 comments) 20 Years of Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28241255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28241255 - Aug 2021 (119 comments) Haiku Beta 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27955755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27955755 - July 2021 (96 comments) HaikuOS running on RISC-V hardware (HiFive Unmatched) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27867941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27867941 - July 2021 (80 comments) The Dawn of Haiku OS (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27616822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27616822 - June 2021 (15 comments) Haiku Monthly Activity Report – May 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395511 - June 2021 (20 comments) Haiku OS ported and running on RISC-V - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129305 - May 2021 (86 comments) Haiku Activity Report – January 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26055781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26055781 - Feb 2021 (24 comments) Haiku: Call for Wallpapers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24756787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24756787 - Oct 2020 (24 comments) Haiku: Contest for System Sounds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593719 - Sept 2020 (15 comments) A decidedly non-Linux distro walkthrough: Haiku R1/beta2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23676975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23676975 - June 2020 (46 comments) Haiku R1/beta2 has been released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23469209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23469209 - June 2020 (254 comments) Haiku Alpha 1: Rebirth of legend - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401383 - Feb 2020 (14 comments) 500 Byte Images: The Haiku Vector Icon Format (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22373422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22373422 - Feb 2020 (91 comments) The Haiku Operating System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812877 - Aug 2019 (1 comment) My sixth day with Haiku: Under the hood of resources, icons, and packages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20443136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20443136 - July 2019 (38 comments) Most long-standing XHCI (USB 3.0+) issues resolved - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19352839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19352839 - March 2019 (58 comments) Haiku Beta is finally here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18769814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18769814 - Dec 2018 (53 comments) What makes BeOS and Haiku unique - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583722 - Dec 2018 (219 comments) Haiku R1/beta1 has been released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127 - Sept 2018 (79 comments) The State of Rust on Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17472907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17472907 - July 2018 (84 comments) LibreOffice is now available for Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440862 - July 2018 (157 comments) Haiku Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918 - Dec 2017 (64 comments) Scripting the Haiku GUI with hey - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15697697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15697697 - Nov 2017 (47 comments) Trying to work in Haiku, the BeOS successor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14697308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14697308 - July 2017 (24 comments) Porting Swift to Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14617453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14617453 - June 2017 (49 comments) Haiku booting in UEFI mode - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200633 - Dec 2016 (94 comments) Haiku Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056 - Sept 2016 (143 comments) 500 Byte Images: The Haiku Vector Icon Format - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420763 - Sept 2016 (81 comments) Haiku OS Action – From BeOS compatible to Desktop [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9713843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9713843 - June 2015 (4 comments) Haiku OS – Fundraising 2015 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9046701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9046701 - Feb 2015 (27 comments) Whatever Happened to BeOS? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8175135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8175135 - Aug 2014 (17 comments) Interview with Haiku developer Paweł Dziepak - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754772 - May 2014 (47 comments) Haiku meets 9th processor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987731 - Dec 2013 (44 comments) Haiku Operating System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766 - April 2013 (110 comments) Haiku OS (BeOS clone) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941 - June 2012 (46 comments) HaikuOS x86_64 port part of Google Summer of Code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3906710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3906710 - April 2012 (15 comments) The Dawn of Haiku OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904972 - April 2012 (110 comments) * Haiku Project Announces Availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 2* - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827 - May 2010 (11 comments) Haiku: A Perfect Desktop Operating System? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009751 - Dec 2009 (5 comments) Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=826986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=826986 - Sept 2009 (29 comments) Haiku Project Announces Availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844 - Sept 2009 (20 comments) Haiku OS first alpha scheduled for September 6th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=767766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=767766 - Aug 2009 (11 comments) BeOS Lives: Haiku Impresses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475756 - Feb 2009 (19 comments)
nullc 4y ago
I really love how responsive the Haiku gui feels. I only use if for testing free software packages in a "weird" build environment, but every time I do I feel sad for how much we've regressed in terms of the latency of modern desktop software. Beyond latency the UIs are also just a lot more useful, the subtle faux-3d delineates the boundaries of control surfaces and make it much more clear where you need to click and what will happen when you do.
xvilka 4y ago
> Supporting these drivers required the addition of an “OpenBSD compatibility layer”, which builds on top of the existing FreeBSD compatibility layer. This doesn't look very good, in my opinion. While having working WiFi is important, stacking compatibility layers is not a good architectural decision.
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  OpenBSD is itself a fork of FreeBSD from many years ago, and while there has been a significant amount of API divergence, the differences are not as large as you might first expect. The "OpenBSD compatibility layer" is just a bunch of headers which add more or differing functions from FreeBSD, it does not have any .c files. It works just fine.
  - chungy 4y ago
    OpenBSD was actually a fork of NetBSD ca. 1996; NetBSD and FreeBSD in turn are basically sibling-forks from 386BSD.
    - waddlesplash 4y ago
      Ah right, seems I got the BSD lineages mixed up. Well, the basic point still stands, anyway.
hbbio 4y ago
> Since the last release, there is 1 new Haiku developer with commit access: davidkaroly, who has already made significant contributions to Haiku’s in-progress support for ARM. Welcome! This is one the most interesting bits in an already awesome release notes! Haiku would rock with Raspberries and I can't wait to use it as the default OS for family 400s.
- RalfWausE 4y ago
  If you want to see something really rocking on a raspi, i would suggest to take a look at RiscOS ;-)
  - lproven 4y ago
    :-D It's true, but Haiku is multithreaded now, and has SMP support and wifi... ;-)
ofrzeta 4y ago
With so much compatibility now how much work would it be to port Firefox? What are the showstoppers?
shrubble 4y ago
Installed this beta4 on a ThinkPad T410, 4GB RAM, 1280x800 display, SSD drive. Seems pretty fast, the Emacs UI is nice, everything is VERY responsive. It detected only 1024x768 when it started up, which made things look blurry; fixed by going into the Screen app and changing it. Haven't figured out the Wifi yet, but the Ethernet was detected and worked immediately. With both Web and WebPositive browsers up and with a page or two loaded, 1.2GB RAM was in use, total, for everything.
LeFantome 4y ago
Both Haiku and SerenityOS seem to have enough momentum to potentially become viable contenders for the Open Source Desktop someday. Both of them highlight how much nicer a vertically integrated user experience can be as well as how much lighter weight a modern desktop can be as well. They also demonstrate that it does not take dozens of corporate paid engineers to do it ( not that I would turn them away ). Haiku has a long lead over Serenity in terms of hardware support and now app compatibility ( with the new X11 and Wayland stuff ). That said, having to drag along binary compatibility with BeOS must really be slowing Haiku down at this point. I am looking forward to using one or both of them in the future.
- bionsystem 4y ago
  I like RedOx too although it's going to be quite some work before it runs on a reasonably wide variety of hardware. Haiku was fun to play around a few years back, I remember being able to write a toy gui app in an afternoon with no particular dev experience (although some programming knowledge). Indeed everything seemed well integrated and coherent.
- httgp 4y ago
  Is elementaryOS still going strong?
  - dogma1138 4y ago
    Isn’t ElementaryOS just another Ubuntu Linux based distro?
    - LeFantome 4y ago
      Debian now I think but otherwise yes.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  It seems that both are struggling with drivers and more advanced system states, both are in a far worse position than Linux desktop was in the mid to late 2000’s… And this is really where it’s difficult to get any real progress without massive industry backing. So I’m not sure how either will become a contender for any real word desktop use without someone at the scale of Google putting their weight behind them.
bluepoint 4y ago
> One of the newly available GTK applications is GNOME Web aka. Epiphany, which is based on a very recent version of WebKitGTK. This provides an unfortunately non-native but largely functional web browser for Haiku for the first time in many years, with “just works” status for major websites like YouTube and others. I was really waiting for this! I want to install Haiku in an old computer for an old lady friend to use (and for me to see how she will use it). They only problem always was that youtube never really worked. That is the chance!
themodelplumber 4y ago
> The thumbnails themselves are stored in extended attributes of the files themselves, which means applications can create their own thumbnails for custom filetypes, if they want (for example, a screenshot might be the thumbnail of an emulator’s save-state.) This is pretty neat. Is it something that script-type applications can do, as opposed to more formally-programmed applications? Or for that matter is there that kind of system scripting language for the OS, like an ARexx for Haiku? I've used Haiku but not at this level.
euclaise 4y ago
> This means Haiku is only the third open-source operating system (to the best of our knowledge) after Linux and OpenBSD to support 802.11ac WiFi, as not even FreeBSD supports it (yet?) despite having worked on it intermittently for years. 9front also uses OpenBSD drivers for Intel cards, so it might also be one

440 points by waddlesplash 4y ago

Release notes: https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ Downloads: https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/ https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/

pb82 4y ago
Very happy to see boot failure fixes in the release notes. Can't wait to give it another try with beta4!

gigatexal 4y ago

Oh what would have been what could have been had Apple bought Be instead of Next. We'd likely not have any iPhones or a 2.5T Apple but we could have had some really cool software. BeOS and now Haiku will always have a special place in my nerd-head. consider sponsoring the team here: https://github.com/sponsors/haiku https://github.com/sponsors/haiku

angrygoat 4y ago
Circa 1999 one of the popular machines in my uni's computer club was the BeBox - it had a solid web browser, it was fast, it had the cool CPU usage indicator on the front, and it was *nix enough to compile most stuff or to work on assignments in ANSI C. And it was just so snappy, it could do more than one thing without getting janky. A real shame that they faded out. I kind of miss those days with all the different and varied workstations – Be, SGI, DEC, HP, IBM, Sun, ...
- rzzzt 4y ago
  I'd like to see the GeekPort reintroduced on non-Pi class machines. A bit of digital GPIO, some analog lines, maybe SPI...
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    I wonder why there isn't a $20 PCI-E card (or perhaps USB dongle) that offers a 40-pin RasPi-style port.
    - ofrzeta 4y ago
      If you had a PCI card you would need some kind of external adapter or breakout box for the GPIO pins. Seems much more practical to have the board in the "breakout box" and connect it via USB.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      I don't know about the prices but mixed-signal GPIO rigs for PCIe and USB are very common. Look at the "LabJack" for example. The LabJack U3-HV has almost exact feature parity with the geekport.
      - hakfoo 4y ago
        A quick google puts it at $130, well beyond the price of "just buy a Raspberry Pi or similar device, which also comes with all the SoC smarts too."
        jeffbee 4y ago
        Fair enough. It compares more favorably to an odd port inconveniently located on the back of a $5000 (2022 dollars) tower PC.
  - guenthert 4y ago
    Twenty years ago I might have liked that too, but these days I much prefer dedicated machines (MCUs like Arduino, P8X32A, R.Pico etc. or "single-board" (or rather "open-frame") computers like R.Pi, BBB etc.) for the acoustic noise alone (not to speak of power bill and electrical safety). USB or Ethernet (preferred for galvanic separation) on the PC does just fine to connect to those.
cameroncooper 4y ago
It would be interesting to see what would have happened had Apple bought Be instead of Apple, but I think it's pretty clear Apple made the "right" move. NeXT had really good software, and of course, Steve Jobs (and let's not forget about the rest of the NeXT team with people like Avie). Hard to imagine Jean-Louis Gassée (or anyone else really) being able to turn the company around like Steve did.
- hankman86 4y ago
  Exactly. In acquiring NeXT, Apple bought leadership and culture. And we can argue forever if Apple’s engineers could have shipped the first OSX release earlier or in a better state, had they instead acquired Be. But I doubt it. Because - again - they bought themselves a high-performance culture, which they might not have gotten from Be. Porting BeOS to Apple hardware / existing software would have likely required an equally Herculean effort. Oh and they got Steve Jobs of course who made quick work of pushing out the old Apple leadership. And good that he did.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    BeOS already ran on existing Apple PowerPC hardware of the time: http://testou.free.fr/www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/support/guides/beosreadylist_ppc.html http://testou.free.fr/www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/su...
KMag 4y ago
In school, I quad-booted Debian, Win2k, QNX, and BeOS on my desktop. BeOS was very light weight. Its ethernet driver for 3c509 was buggy and crashed often, but being a userspace driver, I just got a popup asking permission to restart the driver. Conversely, a couple years later I had an OSX laptop, and a corrupted backup CD that would kernel panic OSX, Win2k, and Linux. (Honestly, ISO 9660 and FAT32 drivers should be migrated out of mainstream OS kernels, since kernel latency is very far from being the bottleneck when using thunmb drives or CDs.) On the other hand, BeOS had some questionable uses of metadata. After improperly using tar to backup my home directory before a reinstall, I lost all of my NetPositive browser bookmarks. I didn't realize each bookmark was a zero-sized file with the URL actually stored in metadata. My improper backup procedure dropped the metadata fork. Also, there was a kernel bug related to semaphores. I had some semaphore code that worked fine under Linux but would kernel panic BeOS. Had Apple purchased Be, we'd likely have a much lighter weight OSX, though perhaps with poorer support for multiple users. I'm still hoping that someday QNX RTP gets open-sourced. A hard real-time light weight microkernel OS was fun to play around with. In particular, a cache benchmark I ran for a systems class showed quite a bit smaller cache footprint for QNX vs. Debian. (Though, Debian almost certainly had more daemons running, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison of kernel cache footprints.)
jeffbee 4y ago
I find this take somewhat baffling. At the moment that Apple bought NeXT, NeXTSTEP had a mature software toolchain, a working IPv4 networking stack, and enterprise customers, three things that BeOS lacked. BeOS had a primitive software toolchain ecosystem based on pre-standard C++. BeOS IP networking barely worked and despite everything claimed in their advertising it was fully serialized, single-threaded networking. BeOS had zero customers. The only thing that Be did have was one nifty demo, and a somewhat innovative file system. Apple must have correctly deduced that it would be easy to improve the filesystem, because they later did so, with the same author. Comparing BeOS and NextSTEP in 1997 is like comparing a ham sandwich to a piglet and a bag of flour. One of these things was a finished product.
- steve1977 4y ago
  NeXT even had stuff like WebObjects, which was really ahead of its time back then. And AFAIK it still powers some services at Apple.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    iTunes and App Store seem to both still be backed by webobjects services. Stuff like [1] still respond at WO-like URLs and still include headers like `x-webobjects-whatever` so I surmise these are still production WO apps. 1: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/ws/wsLookup?id=909253&urlDesc= https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/ws/w...
- perardi 4y ago
  Also, NeXtSTEP could reliably print stuff. Which, given that publishing was the niche that arguably kept the Mac alive during those years: kinda important!
- PAPPPmAc 4y ago
  (Just because I love this argument): Have you used Mid-90s OpenStep and BeOS on period hardware? People rose-tinted-glasses the hell out of OpenStep (...and the first few OS X releases), it's ridiculously sluggish and brittle (in that same kind of "I did something to config and rendered it unbootable" way as early 2000s Linux). BeOS is shockingly performant and flexible on the same hardware. As much as the original BeOS network stack was mediocre (and it was, it wasn't fixed until the BONE design in that final Dano leak in 2001) the much-touted NeXT networking stack was literally the open source 4.3BSD networking code running hosted, with their awful NetInfo system on top, which Apple spent the next several years excising. Excising like the Adobe license fees cost more than a PC, few major vendors (not even Adobe!) willing to port their software to, Display PostScript GUI they had to throw out and replace. I'll grant that they got a really good set of development tools they're still essentially using, and Be's were rough (and kind of alien, that kind of pervasive threading is _still_ hard with decades of work on the tooling). Apple bought NeXT because the stack looked architecturally like a less-bungled version of their own failed Pink/Taligent effort, and Steve Jobs had a better relationship with people still at Apple than Jean-Louis Gassée.
diskzero 4y ago
Many Be employees, including myself, ended up at Apple; some after a brief time at Eazel and others later on. They had, and continue to, make great contributions. As a former Be employee and lover of BeOS, I can say that Apple acquiring Be would have been a disaster for Apple. I have no ill will to Gil Amelio, Ellen Hancock, Steve Glass and the other leadership, but they didn't have what it took (other than the NeXT purchase) to pull Apple out of crisis.
pjmlp 4y ago
Assuming Apple's success by going with Be instead of NeXT, we would have yet another mainstream OS where C++ plays a major role, thus settling the whole discussiong regarding C vs C++ for OS design.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Linus Torvalds has settled that whole discussion, by rejecting C++ and subsequently adopting Rust. Even Windows is basically written in C in its lowest layers anyway, they apparently don't find C++ itself very useful.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Linus Torvalds has settled that whole discussion for the Linux kernel. Thankfully his opinion about C++ is meaningless outside Linux world. Windows started to adopt C++ on the kernel since Vista, you can make use of Windows Implementation Library, a C++ template library for kernel, drivers and userspace code. Just gotta to love that VC++ /kernel flag. macOS with its NeXTSTEP heritage, changed from having Objective-C drivers on kernel space to C++ drivers in kernel space. Then if you bother to broaden your horizons beyond FOSS UNIX clones, there are enough OSes already shipping C++ on the kernel.

spyremeown 4y ago

Who is the designer behind Haiku's icons and general "feel"? It looks really nice.

c0balt 4y ago
I can't speak to the specific person(s) however the Haiku inc. (The non-profit for Haiku Org stuff) has an FAQ entry about them: https://www.haiku-inc.org/trademarks/haiku_icons/ https://www.haiku-inc.org/trademarks/haiku_icons/ Edit: Fixed typo
waddlesplash 4y ago
That would be "stippi" aka. Stephan Aßmus on both counts, I believe. At least the icon style was chosen after a competition all the way back in 2006, where stippi's style got the most votes [1]. The look & feel of controls was done by him in 2009 [2], not sure if there was ever an announcement about that (I see an old forum thread that may be related, though.) These days, stippi does not have much time for Haiku, but there are a number of developers & community members who have picked up where he left off, continuing work on the UI and drawing new icons when required. (Old hands from the BeOS days may remember stippi as the co-developer of the shareware "WonderBrush", which now runs on Haiku and has been open-sourced [3].) [1]: https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2006-11-03_icon_contest_and_best_rated_icon_set_award_goes/ https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2006-11-03_icon_contest_and_be... [2]: https://github.com/haiku/haiku/commit/2f86ba45579bdc9648b232175f87edc62ab71b54 https://github.com/haiku/haiku/commit/2f86ba45579bdc9648b232... [3]: https://github.com/stippi/WonderBrush-v2/ https://github.com/stippi/WonderBrush-v2/
brobinson 4y ago
Where do you even see them? I clicked around the website for a minute and can't find a freaking screenshot of anything anywhere. How frustrating.
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  The front-page should probably have more screenshots, yeah. There's a screenshot tour here: https://www.haiku-os.org/slideshows/haiku-1/ https://www.haiku-os.org/slideshows/haiku-1/ And the release notes, linked from the release announcement, have screenshots: https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/

yellowapple 4y ago

It's awesome that Haiku has come a long enough way that it runs on my Framework out-of-the-box. Still ain't quite there as a daily driver, but it's very close.

waddlesplash 4y ago
Have you tried the newly-ported GNOME Web browser, mentioned in the release notes? It seems that it solves the "web browser problem" many users have complained about.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  It is excellent to see a modern browser on Haiku, but one thing remains: If we get a web browser with advert blocking, it will be ready for the modern web.
  - waddlesplash 4y ago
    GNOME Web has built-in adblocking.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  I haven't yet, but my daily-driver-blocking issues during my last attempt were more around stability. Much of it I think is the hardware (OpenBSD and Haiku both would spontaneously reboot on occasion; given that it was more frequent on battery, I suspect it's some quirk with the Framework's power management - or maybe there's something in the iwx driver that freaks out the whole machine), and some were likely attributable to being on nightly; I'll have to re-test with beta4 (and maybe the latest UEFI updates on my machine) to see if that straightens some things out. The lack of a built-in solution for full-disk encryption is also a blocker for me. It's something I keep meaning to try and tackle (say, by porting over OpenBSD's FDE implementation), but I ain't quite comfortable enough yet with Haiku's codebase to even know where to start.
  - waddlesplash 4y ago

jamesdwilson 4y ago

any way to run this bare metal on an m1 mac? can i dual boot it?

waddlesplash 4y ago
The ARM64 port doesn't yet boot all the way to desktop in QEMU, so it certainly won't run bare metal on an M1, unfortunately. You can certainly dual-boot it on x86 machines, though.
- snvzz 4y ago
  Is RISC-V port in any better condition?
  - waddlesplash 4y ago
    Yes. As I noted in another comment, the RISC-V port is basically "fully functional" and only lacks software (HaikuPorts is set up to build on it, but we haven't yet created binary package repositories for RISC-V.) I know at least one Haiku developer has a HiFive Unmatched and it runs Haiku pretty well.

hectorm 4y ago

If anyone wants to quickly spin up a Haiku VM I leave here my Docker image [1]. It's just a proof of concept but some people are using it for CI as well [2]. [1] https://github.com/hectorm/docker-qemu-haiku https://github.com/hectorm/docker-qemu-haiku [2] https://github.com/HaikuArchives/ArtPaint/blob/7f5c49278545eff4a6e01000814ce9ff28c8e016/.github/workflows/build.yaml https://github.com/HaikuArchives/ArtPaint/blob/7f5c49278545e...

grubby 4y ago
thanks! will def check this out

rcarmo 4y ago

This is pretty impressive. GTK, WINE, Wayland… As a “lightweight” OS, it has a lot of potential for tinkering. I can’t wait until they get a working ARM version for a Raspberry PI or an RK3688 SBC.

waddlesplash 4y ago
The ARM port has made a lot of progress since the last release; it gets almost all the way to starting the desktop. Similar progress was made on ARM64. But that's not very exciting news, so it only got an oblique mention in the release notes. The RISC-V port on the other hand is nearly fully usable even on bare metal. I know some people run it on HiFive Unmatched, at least...
forgotpwd16 4y ago
The approaches to X and Wayland compatibility are interesting. >Instead of running a full X server as XQuartz or other X11 compatibility packages do on other operating systems, it directly handles Xlib API calls and translates them into Haiku API calls, instead. >It is a little more complicated than the one for X11, running an “in-process Wayland server” for each application instead of translating C API calls directly. Unfortunately the Wayland part has no blog post similar to the X one.

donatj 4y ago

As a BeOS users in the late 90's / early 2000's - the fact that Haiku is still going twenty years since its first inception is just incredible to me. I am continually amazed at how much progress the project continues to garner. It really proves there was something magical to BeOS.

waddlesplash 4y ago
It's not just that there was something magical to BeOS, there's still something magical to Haiku, especially in the era of the "Linux desktop" with its free-for-all fractured ecosystem approach to desktop environments. We aren't working on Haiku just because it reminds us of the past, but because we think it could be the future, too.
- hankman86 4y ago
  This deserves to be expanded on: I very much see the need for innovation in OS research. But I just don’t see anything in BeOS/Haiku that would address any of the big challenges for operating systems. Which in my mind include the following: Can we get away from the “leaky bucket” security paradigm where despite all of the best efforts and gradual improvements, prevalent operating systems “keep on giving” in terms of exploits that are discovered all the time. Is there something akin to what Rust is for programming languages? Or what about an operating system for AIs? Is the current stack of Linux, GPU drivers, and some ML SDK on top an adequate answer for emerging AI applications? Or if you still believe in Blockchain applications, what about a native OS for that? And the list goes on. All I see in Haiku/BeOS is a pretty, albeit dated user interface. Someone educate me what else they bring to the table.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - christophilus 4y ago
    It screams on super underpowered hardware. That’s a nice benefit over just about any modern OS.

djsavvy 4y ago

@dang Could the URL be changed to the release notes? https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta4/release-notes/ It's a much more filled-out page, and probably what most people are clicking through to anyways.

dang 4y ago
Changed from https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2022-12-23_haiku_r1_beta4/ https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2022-12-23_haiku_r1_beta4/. Thanks!

makach 4y ago

HaikuOS still going strong If we like it on our pcs Install and use it

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

forgotpwd16 4y ago

chungy 4y ago
I kind of get not using the Be GUI API makes it feel "non-native", but it's still a native port of GTK and Epiphany. It's not like they've built a Linux ABI emulation layer to run it.
- waddlesplash 4y ago
  There's not a Linux ABI emulation layer but it is running on top of a Wayland emulation layer, instead of using the Be GUI API directly (as the Qt, SDL, and Java Swing ports do.) That does make a difference, especially around stuff like keyboard handling.
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    >on top of a Wayland emulation layer As per release notes, for time being it uses X11 layer instead for features and performance.
    - waddlesplash 4y ago
      Uh ... no? The release notes state it started out using the X11 layer, but then switched to using the Wayland layer. I should know: I wrote the X11 layer, contributed to the Wayland layer, and wrote most of these release notes. :)
      - forgotpwd16 4y ago
        Yeah, skimmed through them and mixed up the wording. It says "port now is built atop [the Wayland compatibility layer] for both features and performance reasons", remembered it the other way.

gatosenojados 4y ago

Try it in the browser, new version should be available soon: https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=haiku https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=haiku

user3939382 4y ago

These compatibility layers are huge and are going to skyrocket Haiku’s strength as a daily driver. I’m really rooting for everyone working on it. Keep up the good work guys.

hankman86 4y ago

Beyond the nostalgia: are there any other reasons to keep contributing to Haiku? Like critical infrastructure that is reliant on BeOS/Haiku. Or anything you can plausibly do best on Haiku?

unixhero 4y ago
It's just a fun OS
waddlesplash 4y ago
It's an alternative to the fragmented state of the "Linux desktop": instead of having dozens of separate projects (GNOME, PipeWire, systemd, Wayland, ...) be combined by yet another project (a distribution), which is (in my view) a major cause of the fragile nature, slow pace of development (it's hard to request features if you have to spend minutes to hours figuring out where they need to be requested from!), and other problems it faces, Haiku is a one-project-governs-all: a single development team for the core operating system and userspace ("desktop environment"), with an interconnected distribution ecosystem. We can merge a change to Haiku's kernel and drivers, and test builds will be available with it on the "nightly" channel within hours. We can issue a patch for the system C library headers, trigger rebuilds of packages from the ports tree against it as soon as CI builds finish. We can send users experimental builds of work-in-progress features for testing, with very little technical know-how required to install such a patch or revert to the previous version if it breaks something. There are so many huge advantages Haiku has due to how the project is structured that the "Linux desktop", whatever upsides it does possess, basically cannot ever have by its very nature.
- guenthert 4y ago
  > instead of having dozens of separate projects (GNOME, PipeWire, systemd, Wayland, ...) be combined by yet another project (a distribution), which is (in my view) a major cause of the fragile nature, slow pace of development (it's hard to request features if you have to spend minutes to hours figuring out where they need to be requested from!), and other problems it faces, Haiku is a one-project-governs-all: a single development team for the core operating system and userspace ("desktop environment"), with an interconnected distribution ecosystem. So there will never be 3rd party software? Not even a GNU Emacs? Surely you're using GNU GCC, aren't you?

alganet 4y ago

I'm eager to test this. HiDPI, modern browser, wine, emacs... that's A LOT of useful stuff. I use lightweight linux VMs to keep different workspaces and hobbyspaces separate from my main OS. Depending on how the test goes, I feel that Haiku might replace some of those linuxes.

MonkeyClub 4y ago
Yep, this stood out for me as well: > but now (thanks to Emacs developers!) has a fully-upstreamed, polished-to-a-shine native GUI. This alone is definitely worth giving it a go!

szastamasta 4y ago

While I totally despise Electron it might be a great moment for new OSes and UI toolkits to emerge. In near future it might be enough to port Electron and a web browser and your niche OS might become actually usable on daily basis. It’s slow and a total memory waste, but web became a new UI toolkit that actually solved OS compatibility issues. Who would have thought…

prmoustache 4y ago
Aren't most electron apps available as regular web pages anyway? I mean I tried a number of electron apps and always end up using the web version that is always the most up to date and are as wll integrated to the desktop thanks to desktops support for web notifications. And in many cases, the web version end up more stable/reliable than the electron one. MS Teams is a great example of that.

superboum 4y ago

3 days ago, I installed Haiku on bare metal: an old PC from ~2004. I was not aware that a new version was planned at that time, but the upgrade was completely smooth. My idea when I installed Haiku was to make my own version of the "old computer challenge"[1], with an emphasis on using GUI apps. Similarly to @probono (a FOSS dev), I also found Haiku "shockingly good"[2] at being a lightweight, responsive, easy-to-use desktop OS. After some patching, I was even able to compile Tectonic[3], a modern LaTeX engine written in Rust, and Quaternion a Matrix client supporting E2EE[4]. All that running on a single core Athlon 64 and 1.5GB of RAM. I posted some screenshots in a Mastodon threads if you are curious[5] (but my posts are in french sorry :/). And of course this comment is posted from Haiku! [1]: https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2021-07-07-old-computer-challenge.html https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2021-07-07-old-computer-challe... [2]: https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-first-day-with-haiku-shockingly-good-8930cad4bbb0 https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-first-day-with-haiku-shocki... [3]: https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-US/ https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-US/ [4]: https://github.com/quotient-im/Quaternion https://github.com/quotient-im/Quaternion [5]: https://mastodon.tedomum.net/@tgoldoin/109554115997967651 https://mastodon.tedomum.net/@tgoldoin/109554115997967651

xattt 4y ago
Around 2001, I ran the contemporary BeOS demo on a Pentium MMX 200 MHz machine with 32 MB of RAM. Even with those limitations, the thing screamed. I believe it was live CD you downloaded and burned. I am absolutely not surprised it works well on Athlon 64.
- drooopy 4y ago
  I remember having the exact same experience on slightly less powerful hardware with that BeOS demo. I remember throwing everything at it and it just kept on going like it was no big deal and me constantly going "wow, wow, wow" haha! It was such a bummer going back to Windows after experiencing that.
- KMag 4y ago
  Ahh, the memories! (266 MHz PII, 64 MB RAM ... maybe upgraded to 384 MB RAM by the time I was quad-booting Debian, Win2k, BeOS and QNX) Maybe I ran BeOS slightly before a demo CD was available, or maybe I just didn't risk burning a coaster. (Remember those days where you had to worry about your OS not being able to feed the CD burner as fast as it was writing?) When I demoed BeOS around 2000, it was on a floppy (I repurposed a free AoL floppy from a few years earlier... by that time AoL was mailing free CDs instead of free floppies). The demo floppy allowed one to format a BeFS partition on the drive, and I think even put the kernel on the drive, but kept the bootloader on the floppy to encourage purchase. I woke up one morning to see the floppy drive light on, and apparently a BeOS kernel or usespace driver bug caused it to spin the floppy continuously all night without moving the read/write head. I popped out the floppy and pulled back the dust guard to discover a thin stripe where the magnetic media had been polished off of the floppy. The drive didn't read any floppy correctly after that; presumably the read/write head was covered in magnetic media dust. I don't remember how, but I eventually found instructions for copying the bootloader off of the downloaded floppy image and getting GRUB to find it, so I didn't need to put my replacement floppy drive at risk.

dang 4y ago

This is maybe about the limit for a list like this, and I omitted a few less interesting ones. If anyone knows of a good thread that I missed, we can merge it in! Show HN: Xlibe – A serverless Xlib (X11) compatibility layer for Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31167562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31167562 - April 2022 (46 comments) Giving Haiku Beta 3 a try - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29757451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29757451 - Jan 2022 (48 comments) My progress in porting Wine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29753069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29753069 - Dec 2021 (62 comments) Haiku Now Has Experimental 3D Acceleration - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29390689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29390689 - Nov 2021 (71 comments) Haiku has hired an existing contributor to work on Haiku full-time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28305191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28305191 - Aug 2021 (105 comments) 20 Years of Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28241255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28241255 - Aug 2021 (119 comments) Haiku Beta 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27955755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27955755 - July 2021 (96 comments) HaikuOS running on RISC-V hardware (HiFive Unmatched) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27867941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27867941 - July 2021 (80 comments) The Dawn of Haiku OS (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27616822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27616822 - June 2021 (15 comments) Haiku Monthly Activity Report – May 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395511 - June 2021 (20 comments) Haiku OS ported and running on RISC-V - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129305 - May 2021 (86 comments) Haiku Activity Report – January 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26055781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26055781 - Feb 2021 (24 comments) Haiku: Call for Wallpapers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24756787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24756787 - Oct 2020 (24 comments) Haiku: Contest for System Sounds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593719 - Sept 2020 (15 comments) A decidedly non-Linux distro walkthrough: Haiku R1/beta2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23676975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23676975 - June 2020 (46 comments) Haiku R1/beta2 has been released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23469209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23469209 - June 2020 (254 comments) Haiku Alpha 1: Rebirth of legend - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401383 - Feb 2020 (14 comments) 500 Byte Images: The Haiku Vector Icon Format (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22373422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22373422 - Feb 2020 (91 comments) The Haiku Operating System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812877 - Aug 2019 (1 comment) My sixth day with Haiku: Under the hood of resources, icons, and packages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20443136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20443136 - July 2019 (38 comments) Most long-standing XHCI (USB 3.0+) issues resolved - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19352839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19352839 - March 2019 (58 comments) Haiku Beta is finally here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18769814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18769814 - Dec 2018 (53 comments) What makes BeOS and Haiku unique - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583722 - Dec 2018 (219 comments) Haiku R1/beta1 has been released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127 - Sept 2018 (79 comments) The State of Rust on Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17472907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17472907 - July 2018 (84 comments) LibreOffice is now available for Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440862 - July 2018 (157 comments) Haiku Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918 - Dec 2017 (64 comments) Scripting the Haiku GUI with hey - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15697697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15697697 - Nov 2017 (47 comments) Trying to work in Haiku, the BeOS successor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14697308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14697308 - July 2017 (24 comments) Porting Swift to Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14617453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14617453 - June 2017 (49 comments) Haiku booting in UEFI mode - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200633 - Dec 2016 (94 comments) Haiku Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056 - Sept 2016 (143 comments) 500 Byte Images: The Haiku Vector Icon Format - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420763 - Sept 2016 (81 comments) Haiku OS Action – From BeOS compatible to Desktop [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9713843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9713843 - June 2015 (4 comments) Haiku OS – Fundraising 2015 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9046701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9046701 - Feb 2015 (27 comments) Whatever Happened to BeOS? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8175135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8175135 - Aug 2014 (17 comments) Interview with Haiku developer Paweł Dziepak - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754772 - May 2014 (47 comments) Haiku meets 9th processor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987731 - Dec 2013 (44 comments) Haiku Operating System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766 - April 2013 (110 comments) Haiku OS (BeOS clone) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941 - June 2012 (46 comments) HaikuOS x86_64 port part of Google Summer of Code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3906710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3906710 - April 2012 (15 comments) The Dawn of Haiku OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904972 - April 2012 (110 comments) * Haiku Project Announces Availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 2* - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827 - May 2010 (11 comments) Haiku: A Perfect Desktop Operating System? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009751 - Dec 2009 (5 comments) Haiku - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=826986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=826986 - Sept 2009 (29 comments) Haiku Project Announces Availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844 - Sept 2009 (20 comments) Haiku OS first alpha scheduled for September 6th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=767766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=767766 - Aug 2009 (11 comments) BeOS Lives: Haiku Impresses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475756 - Feb 2009 (19 comments)

nullc 4y ago

I really love how responsive the Haiku gui feels. I only use if for testing free software packages in a "weird" build environment, but every time I do I feel sad for how much we've regressed in terms of the latency of modern desktop software. Beyond latency the UIs are also just a lot more useful, the subtle faux-3d delineates the boundaries of control surfaces and make it much more clear where you need to click and what will happen when you do.

xvilka 4y ago

> Supporting these drivers required the addition of an “OpenBSD compatibility layer”, which builds on top of the existing FreeBSD compatibility layer. This doesn't look very good, in my opinion. While having working WiFi is important, stacking compatibility layers is not a good architectural decision.

waddlesplash 4y ago
OpenBSD is itself a fork of FreeBSD from many years ago, and while there has been a significant amount of API divergence, the differences are not as large as you might first expect. The "OpenBSD compatibility layer" is just a bunch of headers which add more or differing functions from FreeBSD, it does not have any .c files. It works just fine.
- chungy 4y ago
  OpenBSD was actually a fork of NetBSD ca. 1996; NetBSD and FreeBSD in turn are basically sibling-forks from 386BSD.
  - waddlesplash 4y ago
    Ah right, seems I got the BSD lineages mixed up. Well, the basic point still stands, anyway.

hbbio 4y ago

> Since the last release, there is 1 new Haiku developer with commit access: davidkaroly, who has already made significant contributions to Haiku’s in-progress support for ARM. Welcome! This is one the most interesting bits in an already awesome release notes! Haiku would rock with Raspberries and I can't wait to use it as the default OS for family 400s.

RalfWausE 4y ago
If you want to see something really rocking on a raspi, i would suggest to take a look at RiscOS ;-)
- lproven 4y ago
  :-D It's true, but Haiku is multithreaded now, and has SMP support and wifi... ;-)

ofrzeta 4y ago

With so much compatibility now how much work would it be to port Firefox? What are the showstoppers?

shrubble 4y ago

Installed this beta4 on a ThinkPad T410, 4GB RAM, 1280x800 display, SSD drive. Seems pretty fast, the Emacs UI is nice, everything is VERY responsive. It detected only 1024x768 when it started up, which made things look blurry; fixed by going into the Screen app and changing it. Haven't figured out the Wifi yet, but the Ethernet was detected and worked immediately. With both Web and WebPositive browsers up and with a page or two loaded, 1.2GB RAM was in use, total, for everything.

LeFantome 4y ago

Both Haiku and SerenityOS seem to have enough momentum to potentially become viable contenders for the Open Source Desktop someday. Both of them highlight how much nicer a vertically integrated user experience can be as well as how much lighter weight a modern desktop can be as well. They also demonstrate that it does not take dozens of corporate paid engineers to do it ( not that I would turn them away ). Haiku has a long lead over Serenity in terms of hardware support and now app compatibility ( with the new X11 and Wayland stuff ). That said, having to drag along binary compatibility with BeOS must really be slowing Haiku down at this point. I am looking forward to using one or both of them in the future.

bionsystem 4y ago
I like RedOx too although it's going to be quite some work before it runs on a reasonably wide variety of hardware. Haiku was fun to play around a few years back, I remember being able to write a toy gui app in an afternoon with no particular dev experience (although some programming knowledge). Indeed everything seemed well integrated and coherent.
httgp 4y ago
Is elementaryOS still going strong?
- dogma1138 4y ago
  Isn’t ElementaryOS just another Ubuntu Linux based distro?
  - LeFantome 4y ago
    Debian now I think but otherwise yes.
dogma1138 4y ago
It seems that both are struggling with drivers and more advanced system states, both are in a far worse position than Linux desktop was in the mid to late 2000’s… And this is really where it’s difficult to get any real progress without massive industry backing. So I’m not sure how either will become a contender for any real word desktop use without someone at the scale of Google putting their weight behind them.

bluepoint 4y ago

> One of the newly available GTK applications is GNOME Web aka. Epiphany, which is based on a very recent version of WebKitGTK. This provides an unfortunately non-native but largely functional web browser for Haiku for the first time in many years, with “just works” status for major websites like YouTube and others. I was really waiting for this! I want to install Haiku in an old computer for an old lady friend to use (and for me to see how she will use it). They only problem always was that youtube never really worked. That is the chance!

themodelplumber 4y ago

> The thumbnails themselves are stored in extended attributes of the files themselves, which means applications can create their own thumbnails for custom filetypes, if they want (for example, a screenshot might be the thumbnail of an emulator’s save-state.) This is pretty neat. Is it something that script-type applications can do, as opposed to more formally-programmed applications? Or for that matter is there that kind of system scripting language for the OS, like an ARexx for Haiku? I've used Haiku but not at this level.

euclaise 4y ago

> This means Haiku is only the third open-source operating system (to the best of our knowledge) after Linux and OpenBSD to support 802.11ac WiFi, as not even FreeBSD supports it (yet?) despite having worked on it intermittently for years. 9front also uses OpenBSD drivers for Intel cards, so it might also be one