8 ms·

I have said it before, Haiku feels like it is simultaneously 20 years in the future and 20 years in the past. The interface is so incredibly snappy but there is

I have said it before, Haiku feels like it is simultaneously 20 years in the future and 20 years in the past. The interface is so incredibly snappy but there is a lot of basics missing such as WiFi support. Seeing a modern browser supported does fill a big gap however. Who knows maybe one day through a series of silly unpredictable events it will be the OS of choice and running Ladybird browser in a similar fashion.

ksp-atlas 2y ago
I ran Haiku on a laptop and the Wi-Fi worked just fine
popcalc 2y ago
>WiFi support Works on my old Thinkpads.
BlackLotus89 2y ago
WiFi support missing? Afaik it uses *BSD network "drivers" and I remember having a wifi dialog/support Edit: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/workshop-wlan.html https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/workshop-wlan.htm... here wifi seems to be working (which another commenter pointed out as well)
- rcarmo 2y ago
  It doesn't support a lot of modern Wi-Fi chipsets. There was an entire wave of Broadcom-powered stuff that they weren't able to develop for.
  - katzinsky 2y ago
    That sounds more like licensing issues than "being 20 years in the past."
    - broodbucket 2y ago
      The result is the same for users, regardless of where the blame lies.
      - consteval 2y ago
        Right but we need a dose of realism. They don't develop the drivers, and they don't make the hardware. If the manufacturer doesn't care, then that's that. It's a network problem. Manufacturers aren't gonna care unless it's a big OS with lots of users. Your OS won't get a lot of users unless it has drivers. So the result is stagnation, and only the Big 3 OS continuing. Well... really the Big 2. Mac OS is a unique situation.
    - uncanneyvalley 2y ago
      There was some licensing drama[0] around BSD’s Broadcom bcm43xx driver. No idea if another driver was ever implemented as I’m not a BSD user. [0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20070405163434.GA18477@gollum.nazgul.ch/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/20070405163434.GA18477@gollum.na...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
drooopy 2y ago
I absolutely adore the way that HaikuOS looks and feels. It's like a direct evolution of the classic Mac OS UI. So incredibly snappy and responsive and with minimal visual clutter. I keep an old thinkpad around with Haiku just for when I need to do word processing with no distractions.
Beijinger 2y ago
If you like Snappy, try Bodhi Linux with the Mosksha desktop. https://www.bodhilinux.com/ https://www.bodhilinux.com/
- Beijinger 2y ago
  Why is this downvoted so badly?
  - KTibow 2y ago
    Perhaps one reason is that it seems off topic and you treated "snappy" as a proper noun
  - memsom 2y ago
    My guess - BeOS and Haiku are not Linux based systems (not BSB, nor any other OS.) People that use Haiku probably do so out of choice and I guess they already know Linux exists. If they wanted to use Linux, they probably would. IMO, stating "just use Linux" therefore seems super obnoxious.
tetris11 2y ago
Is there good laptop support? By that I specifically mean, good power control management and display brightness control.
- lukan 2y ago
  I would seriously doubt that, when even Linux, which has broad support now conpared to 15 years ago, struggles with that. I guess certain laptop models, those that the devs use, might be allright.
  - rcarmo 2y ago
    Nope. I run it under QEMU since even the nightlies don't support Ryzen power states.
- yellowapple 2y ago
  I had decent success with it on an 11th-gen Framework 13. Power management was finicky, but it was also finicky under OpenBSD, which makes me think it was a hardware or firmware issue. I haven't tried it since upgrading to the latest firmware, so maybe the combination of that plus whatever bugfixes have happened in the last couple years might've improved things.
graemep 2y ago
> The interface is so incredibly snappy So that feels like its 20 years in the past > there is a lot of basics missing such as WiFi support. So that sounds like 20 years in the past too Where does the future bit come in?
- desdenova 2y ago
  Exactly what I thought as well. UIs get increasingly slower as time passes, not snappier. We had snappy UIs in the 80s and 90s.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    We had bloated UIs in the 80s and 90s, it's just that what's come after is so much worse. Try using the old analog control systems where responses are basically instant. It feels like the controls are reading your mind.
    - jwells89 2y ago
      Mac OS 9 felt pretty darned fast on my 400Mhz iMac G3 back in 2000. Same for Windows 2000 on my parents’ PIII 750Mhz Dimension 4100. The only time anything felt slow is when a significant amount of data needed to be loaded from their hard drives. Not all machines were like this though, we also had a Compaq Presario with some kind of Celeron running 98SE and that thing did feel slow more often than not, especially after several months of usage with the cruft buildup that comes with that.
      - tivert 2y ago
        I think the rule (at least while Moore's law was in force), was UIs start out boated but become fast as the hardware catches up. For instance, your example: > Mac OS 9 felt pretty darned fast on my 400Mhz iMac G3 back in 2000. You were using a UI that (at its core) was built for 1984 machine, with sixteen additional years of hardware performance improvements. Every once in a while I boot up a Mac from 1989, and Mac OS is definitely not snappy on it. I think if you want speed, you need to find something built for a system far more constrained than the one you're actually using. The choices the developers made to make the system merely usable under those constraints will make it fast once they're removed.
qwerty456127 2y ago
How would you use WiFi on Haiku if it were there? I thought people mostly use Haiku inside VMs like VirtualBox so network connection goes through an emulated fiber. I dream of Haiku being ported to Raspberry Pi and I even was sadly surprised it isn't - to me the primary value of Raspberry Pi seems it being an uniform standard hardware platform, this sounds like a great enabler for alternative OSes as lack of need to support all sorts of different hardware makes the thing a lot easier.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  The raspberry pie is a very odd computer which is hard to develop for. There are much better targets that are both simpler to develop for, cheaper, and easily available.
  - rcarmo 2y ago
    And we never really got any of them working, so I would contest that. Many years ago, I asked about Pi 2 support on the Haiku forums and there was a lot of ill will towards Broadcom closed binaries. I pointed at the Plan9 port and a couple more examples and nothing happened. I tried the same thing several times with the Pi 3 and the Pi 4, and someone more vocally pointed towards RISC-V. Some four years later, there is a somewhat working RISC-V port, but in the meantime there is still no working ARM port of any real use. On the whole, I was not overly impressed with the Haiku OS community where it regards exploring widely popular platforms that, despite having some challenges, would provide them with a larger audience. It's their call, but as an original BeOS user (and who can actually spot the Be Book from my couch as I'm typing this) and someone who's spent the past two years delving into the Rockchip ecosystem, I'm quite saddened by the way things went. It's not as if they lacked other ARM options, they just a) didn't have the resources and b) were perhaps a tad too opinionated.
    - waddlesplash 2y ago
      The RISC-V port was done almost entirely by one developer who took an interest in it. It wasn't as though the project got together and decided to prioritize RISC-V over ARM; it was just that someone did a port, and then it got (mostly) upstreamed. Nobody has taken an equivalent interest in ARM, in large part because, well, the developers are all running x86 machines as you might expect, so that's what Haiku gets developed on. If someone comes along (or one of the existing developers takes interest) in working on the ARM port more, we will hardly reject the patches!
smallstepforman 2y ago
I have 3 x64 boxes with 3 different wifi chipsets that work with no issues. The only chipset that doesnt work for me is the bm4360 chips used in Apple hardware. A 7$ usb wifi dongle solves that problem.
pjmlp 2y ago
There is an alternative universe where Be is acquired, BeOS turns into MacOS, C++ wins the desktop wars, and POSIX on the desktop never makes it. However in this universe Steve Jobs never rejoins Apple, and most likely it closes doors a couple of years after Be's acquisition.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  What would be interesting is if AppleBe still ends up merging with NeXT a few years later, and Jobs doesn’t immediately scrap the hybrid BeOS platform immediately…
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Given the famous keynote where he announced killing OpenDoc and other efforts, I am not so sure about that, regarding scrapping the hybrid BeOS platform.
undersuit 2y ago
Maybe it's because setting up a Wifi connection is 20 years old.

ksp-atlas 2y ago

I ran Haiku on a laptop and the Wi-Fi worked just fine

popcalc 2y ago

>WiFi support Works on my old Thinkpads.

BlackLotus89 2y ago

WiFi support missing? Afaik it uses *BSD network "drivers" and I remember having a wifi dialog/support Edit: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/workshop-wlan.html https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/workshop-wlan.htm... here wifi seems to be working (which another commenter pointed out as well)

rcarmo 2y ago
It doesn't support a lot of modern Wi-Fi chipsets. There was an entire wave of Broadcom-powered stuff that they weren't able to develop for.
- katzinsky 2y ago
  That sounds more like licensing issues than "being 20 years in the past."
  - broodbucket 2y ago
    The result is the same for users, regardless of where the blame lies.
    - consteval 2y ago
      Right but we need a dose of realism. They don't develop the drivers, and they don't make the hardware. If the manufacturer doesn't care, then that's that. It's a network problem. Manufacturers aren't gonna care unless it's a big OS with lots of users. Your OS won't get a lot of users unless it has drivers. So the result is stagnation, and only the Big 3 OS continuing. Well... really the Big 2. Mac OS is a unique situation.
  - uncanneyvalley 2y ago
    There was some licensing drama[0] around BSD’s Broadcom bcm43xx driver. No idea if another driver was ever implemented as I’m not a BSD user. [0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20070405163434.GA18477@gollum.nazgul.ch/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/20070405163434.GA18477@gollum.na...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

drooopy 2y ago

I absolutely adore the way that HaikuOS looks and feels. It's like a direct evolution of the classic Mac OS UI. So incredibly snappy and responsive and with minimal visual clutter. I keep an old thinkpad around with Haiku just for when I need to do word processing with no distractions.

Beijinger 2y ago

If you like Snappy, try Bodhi Linux with the Mosksha desktop. https://www.bodhilinux.com/ https://www.bodhilinux.com/

Beijinger 2y ago
Why is this downvoted so badly?
- KTibow 2y ago
  Perhaps one reason is that it seems off topic and you treated "snappy" as a proper noun
- memsom 2y ago
  My guess - BeOS and Haiku are not Linux based systems (not BSB, nor any other OS.) People that use Haiku probably do so out of choice and I guess they already know Linux exists. If they wanted to use Linux, they probably would. IMO, stating "just use Linux" therefore seems super obnoxious.

tetris11 2y ago

Is there good laptop support? By that I specifically mean, good power control management and display brightness control.

lukan 2y ago
I would seriously doubt that, when even Linux, which has broad support now conpared to 15 years ago, struggles with that. I guess certain laptop models, those that the devs use, might be allright.
- rcarmo 2y ago
  Nope. I run it under QEMU since even the nightlies don't support Ryzen power states.
yellowapple 2y ago
I had decent success with it on an 11th-gen Framework 13. Power management was finicky, but it was also finicky under OpenBSD, which makes me think it was a hardware or firmware issue. I haven't tried it since upgrading to the latest firmware, so maybe the combination of that plus whatever bugfixes have happened in the last couple years might've improved things.

graemep 2y ago

> The interface is so incredibly snappy So that feels like its 20 years in the past > there is a lot of basics missing such as WiFi support. So that sounds like 20 years in the past too Where does the future bit come in?

desdenova 2y ago
Exactly what I thought as well. UIs get increasingly slower as time passes, not snappier. We had snappy UIs in the 80s and 90s.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  We had bloated UIs in the 80s and 90s, it's just that what's come after is so much worse. Try using the old analog control systems where responses are basically instant. It feels like the controls are reading your mind.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    Mac OS 9 felt pretty darned fast on my 400Mhz iMac G3 back in 2000. Same for Windows 2000 on my parents’ PIII 750Mhz Dimension 4100. The only time anything felt slow is when a significant amount of data needed to be loaded from their hard drives. Not all machines were like this though, we also had a Compaq Presario with some kind of Celeron running 98SE and that thing did feel slow more often than not, especially after several months of usage with the cruft buildup that comes with that.
    - tivert 2y ago
      I think the rule (at least while Moore's law was in force), was UIs start out boated but become fast as the hardware catches up. For instance, your example: > Mac OS 9 felt pretty darned fast on my 400Mhz iMac G3 back in 2000. You were using a UI that (at its core) was built for 1984 machine, with sixteen additional years of hardware performance improvements. Every once in a while I boot up a Mac from 1989, and Mac OS is definitely not snappy on it. I think if you want speed, you need to find something built for a system far more constrained than the one you're actually using. The choices the developers made to make the system merely usable under those constraints will make it fast once they're removed.

qwerty456127 2y ago

How would you use WiFi on Haiku if it were there? I thought people mostly use Haiku inside VMs like VirtualBox so network connection goes through an emulated fiber. I dream of Haiku being ported to Raspberry Pi and I even was sadly surprised it isn't - to me the primary value of Raspberry Pi seems it being an uniform standard hardware platform, this sounds like a great enabler for alternative OSes as lack of need to support all sorts of different hardware makes the thing a lot easier.

llm_trw 2y ago
The raspberry pie is a very odd computer which is hard to develop for. There are much better targets that are both simpler to develop for, cheaper, and easily available.
- rcarmo 2y ago
  And we never really got any of them working, so I would contest that. Many years ago, I asked about Pi 2 support on the Haiku forums and there was a lot of ill will towards Broadcom closed binaries. I pointed at the Plan9 port and a couple more examples and nothing happened. I tried the same thing several times with the Pi 3 and the Pi 4, and someone more vocally pointed towards RISC-V. Some four years later, there is a somewhat working RISC-V port, but in the meantime there is still no working ARM port of any real use. On the whole, I was not overly impressed with the Haiku OS community where it regards exploring widely popular platforms that, despite having some challenges, would provide them with a larger audience. It's their call, but as an original BeOS user (and who can actually spot the Be Book from my couch as I'm typing this) and someone who's spent the past two years delving into the Rockchip ecosystem, I'm quite saddened by the way things went. It's not as if they lacked other ARM options, they just a) didn't have the resources and b) were perhaps a tad too opinionated.
  - waddlesplash 2y ago
    The RISC-V port was done almost entirely by one developer who took an interest in it. It wasn't as though the project got together and decided to prioritize RISC-V over ARM; it was just that someone did a port, and then it got (mostly) upstreamed. Nobody has taken an equivalent interest in ARM, in large part because, well, the developers are all running x86 machines as you might expect, so that's what Haiku gets developed on. If someone comes along (or one of the existing developers takes interest) in working on the ARM port more, we will hardly reject the patches!

smallstepforman 2y ago

I have 3 x64 boxes with 3 different wifi chipsets that work with no issues. The only chipset that doesnt work for me is the bm4360 chips used in Apple hardware. A 7$ usb wifi dongle solves that problem.

pjmlp 2y ago

There is an alternative universe where Be is acquired, BeOS turns into MacOS, C++ wins the desktop wars, and POSIX on the desktop never makes it. However in this universe Steve Jobs never rejoins Apple, and most likely it closes doors a couple of years after Be's acquisition.

Apocryphon 2y ago
What would be interesting is if AppleBe still ends up merging with NeXT a few years later, and Jobs doesn’t immediately scrap the hybrid BeOS platform immediately…
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Given the famous keynote where he announced killing OpenDoc and other efforts, I am not so sure about that, regarding scrapping the hybrid BeOS platform.

undersuit 2y ago

Maybe it's because setting up a Wifi connection is 20 years old.