6 ms·

Haiku OS (BeOS clone)

119 points by exim 14y ago

ElCabron 14y ago
The humankind will be much better of, if you use and improve Linux. On the other hand, I understand your passion.
- dfc 14y ago
  Because monocultures have always been good for development and progress.
  - ElCabron 14y ago
    I didn't say "wipe OSX, iOS, Android and Windows from the face of the earth". And Linux itself is sooo far from a "monoculture".
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      Sorry, we shouldn't be questioning the ordained oligarchy, I guess.
      - ElCabron 14y ago
        So many challenged people over here. I only said (my opinion) that humankind will be much better of if you use and improve something, but you insist on seeing something else. Do yourselves a favour and have some deep introspection folks, cause lots of people get in trouble for hearing and seeing things that are simply not there.
        stcredzero 14y ago
        humankind will be much better of if you use and improve something Haiku OS qualifies as "something?"
        ElCabron 14y ago
        Ouch. English is not your first language. Sorry.
reedlaw 14y ago
Can anyone comment on the code quality in Haiku? From the FAQ it appears most of the code is new and little was carried over from BeOS. Also, will it include the GNU toolchain and standard libraries such as SDL? How difficult will it be to maintain cross-platform applications?
- gecko 14y ago
  No code was kept from BeOS except for a few high-level components that were open-sourced while Be was still around (e.g., the Tracker). I've general found the new code to be high quality whenever I've delved into it, but I have only ever run Haiku in a VM, and then, only in short bursts. In other words, my experiences were all good, but there are few of them. As far as development: the GNU tool chain exists, and is indeed the foundational tool chain. There's also a high level of de facto POSIX compliance (though neither BeOS nor (current version of) Haiku are multiuser), and many libraries you'd expect are available just fine. Even some large ones, like Qt. This makes porting fairly easy—and much like on OS X, it's easy to wrap a native Haiku GUI around existing tools. The one bad part of development on Haiku is that the old-world C++ API has resulted in some compiler weirdness. Haiku aims for full binary compatibility...with C++ apps written on GCC 2.95. But developers, of course, want GCC 4. So what happens is that, much like OS X has fat PowerPC/x86 binaries, Haiku has fat GCC 2.95/GCC 4 libraries. This doesn't actually make development a pain, but it requires a bit of heads-up to navigate the linking situation
  - tqh 14y ago
    We don't have fat libraries. We do have a hybrid system, either a gcc2 based system with additional gcc4 libraries so a gcc4 application uses gcc4 libraries. Or the other way around a gcc4 system but with gcc2 libraries for old apps. gcc2 is still the default system, and changing it has been discussed.
    - gecko 14y ago
      Got it. I misunderstood how the hybrid part worked.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
EternalFury 14y ago
There are literally millions of smart hackers out there and only 1 entity has ever managed to put a state-of-the-art UI on top of a Unix core: Apple. [I will get flamed for speaking that way about Gnome and KDE, but they fall a little short, IMHO. This being said, I don't blame the Gnome or KDE teams for it. I blame the gazillions of distributions that add nothing beside a theme or a background picture to the base packages they get from Ubuntu or Red Hat. At least these Haiku guys seem to be adopting a more ambitious approach.] Why is that? I think an awful lot of people take on projects solely to make a name for themselves...or because they truly believe they know better than Linus or some other pundit they happen to despise. A prophecy: The first entity to put a state-of-the-art UI on top of Linux will have an opportunity to compete with Apple directly.
- ElCabron 14y ago
  Everyone wants to (re)build their own pyramids (often from scratch) instead of just uniting to finish the top of the most promising one. But I don't judge too harsh the developers: my contribution to free & open source is quite small until now and free & open source it's a lot about free will and passion and not necessarily for the benefit of the world.
  - dkubb 14y ago
    That's the thing though, everyone has a different perspective of where they are working on the pyramid. One person's peak is so far below another's abstraction level as to be considered part of the foundation, and vice versa. In oss, I think you can make contributions in two ways: refine or invent. To do either of these you have to learn the past. Even if all the only result is an exact clone of BeOS an entire group of developers will have learned a whole lot about something state-of-the-art at the time it was created. That's knowledge that was previously available only to a tiny group of people.
  - ebiester 14y ago
    That's the thing -- what does Linux need at this point? Not much, and the things that are needed are not at the kernel level. The things on the kernel level that are needed are mostly from device manufacturers -- there is no shortage of people to do the work of writing a video driver, for example, if the specs were there. Nearly every incompatibility we see right now is a result of a hardware company not releasing complete specs. It isn't for lack of coders that suspend/hibernate isn't working universally. There are enough people working on the big pyramid.
joshuamerrill 14y ago
I always liked the BeOS interface—at least, in the context of the early 90s, when its popularity peaked—but I find it pointless to clone a 20+ year-old UI. With Kinect, Leap Motion, and other forms of input, it seems like there's a huge opportunity to get away from the traditional windowed UI that has dominated desktop OSes. Not to knock Haiku OS—I just feel that if someone is going to create a desktop OS from scratch, it's a chance to do something really different. I see this as a missed opportunity.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  It's not the UI that excited technologists enough to recreate it from scratch. It was the design of the operating system and its API. BeOS was state-of-the-art when it was written, in the sense that it took the accumulated wisdom and academic research up to that point as its starting point. And in many ways it is still state-of-the-art.
  - eloisant 14y ago
    Then why don't they keep the OS and API and write a brand new UI, like Apple did when they made OSX from Nextstep?
    - hellerbarde 14y ago
      why don't you? I assume they don't exacly have a huge community of active devs. combine that with the fact that user interface design is hard and needs experienced people working on it and you got the reason for cloning a perfectly functional UI instead of completely messing up while innovating a revolutionary new one. This is pure conjecture, of course :)
    - geon 14y ago
      Because it is extremely much work, both in the research/prototyping/design and in the implementation. And when you are done, there are no apps that supports it.
    - gecko 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
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deleted 14y ago
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krollew 14y ago
Well, I see Haiku becomes more and more popular. I wonder on one thing - why would I be interested in next operating system if I have Windows 7 and Linux? What does it have that those systems haven't? I think authors of Haiku should find that and make sure that people that visit their site will read about that.
- toemetoch 14y ago
  IMO BeOS was to operating systems what Opera is to browsers. Innovative, good ideas, efficient, ... but few people use it. I remember demo-ing BeOS to a friend by opening a ton of videos at the same time. He replied that Windows did that as well, until he tried it and the system was trashing after the 3rd video. The "pauze" button in the copy/paste progress bar ... a revelation.
JulianMorrison 14y ago
Is it still single-user, run-as-root and unsecured?

119 points by exim 14y ago

ElCabron 14y ago

The humankind will be much better of, if you use and improve Linux. On the other hand, I understand your passion.

dfc 14y ago
Because monocultures have always been good for development and progress.
- ElCabron 14y ago
  I didn't say "wipe OSX, iOS, Android and Windows from the face of the earth". And Linux itself is sooo far from a "monoculture".
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Sorry, we shouldn't be questioning the ordained oligarchy, I guess.
    - ElCabron 14y ago
      So many challenged people over here. I only said (my opinion) that humankind will be much better of if you use and improve something, but you insist on seeing something else. Do yourselves a favour and have some deep introspection folks, cause lots of people get in trouble for hearing and seeing things that are simply not there.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        humankind will be much better of if you use and improve something Haiku OS qualifies as "something?"
        ElCabron 14y ago
        Ouch. English is not your first language. Sorry.

reedlaw 14y ago

Can anyone comment on the code quality in Haiku? From the FAQ it appears most of the code is new and little was carried over from BeOS. Also, will it include the GNU toolchain and standard libraries such as SDL? How difficult will it be to maintain cross-platform applications?

gecko 14y ago
No code was kept from BeOS except for a few high-level components that were open-sourced while Be was still around (e.g., the Tracker). I've general found the new code to be high quality whenever I've delved into it, but I have only ever run Haiku in a VM, and then, only in short bursts. In other words, my experiences were all good, but there are few of them. As far as development: the GNU tool chain exists, and is indeed the foundational tool chain. There's also a high level of de facto POSIX compliance (though neither BeOS nor (current version of) Haiku are multiuser), and many libraries you'd expect are available just fine. Even some large ones, like Qt. This makes porting fairly easy—and much like on OS X, it's easy to wrap a native Haiku GUI around existing tools. The one bad part of development on Haiku is that the old-world C++ API has resulted in some compiler weirdness. Haiku aims for full binary compatibility...with C++ apps written on GCC 2.95. But developers, of course, want GCC 4. So what happens is that, much like OS X has fat PowerPC/x86 binaries, Haiku has fat GCC 2.95/GCC 4 libraries. This doesn't actually make development a pain, but it requires a bit of heads-up to navigate the linking situation
- tqh 14y ago
  We don't have fat libraries. We do have a hybrid system, either a gcc2 based system with additional gcc4 libraries so a gcc4 application uses gcc4 libraries. Or the other way around a gcc4 system but with gcc2 libraries for old apps. gcc2 is still the default system, and changing it has been discussed.
  - gecko 14y ago
    Got it. I misunderstood how the hybrid part worked.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

EternalFury 14y ago

There are literally millions of smart hackers out there and only 1 entity has ever managed to put a state-of-the-art UI on top of a Unix core: Apple. [I will get flamed for speaking that way about Gnome and KDE, but they fall a little short, IMHO. This being said, I don't blame the Gnome or KDE teams for it. I blame the gazillions of distributions that add nothing beside a theme or a background picture to the base packages they get from Ubuntu or Red Hat. At least these Haiku guys seem to be adopting a more ambitious approach.] Why is that? I think an awful lot of people take on projects solely to make a name for themselves...or because they truly believe they know better than Linus or some other pundit they happen to despise. A prophecy: The first entity to put a state-of-the-art UI on top of Linux will have an opportunity to compete with Apple directly.

ElCabron 14y ago
Everyone wants to (re)build their own pyramids (often from scratch) instead of just uniting to finish the top of the most promising one. But I don't judge too harsh the developers: my contribution to free & open source is quite small until now and free & open source it's a lot about free will and passion and not necessarily for the benefit of the world.
- dkubb 14y ago
  That's the thing though, everyone has a different perspective of where they are working on the pyramid. One person's peak is so far below another's abstraction level as to be considered part of the foundation, and vice versa. In oss, I think you can make contributions in two ways: refine or invent. To do either of these you have to learn the past. Even if all the only result is an exact clone of BeOS an entire group of developers will have learned a whole lot about something state-of-the-art at the time it was created. That's knowledge that was previously available only to a tiny group of people.
- ebiester 14y ago
  That's the thing -- what does Linux need at this point? Not much, and the things that are needed are not at the kernel level. The things on the kernel level that are needed are mostly from device manufacturers -- there is no shortage of people to do the work of writing a video driver, for example, if the specs were there. Nearly every incompatibility we see right now is a result of a hardware company not releasing complete specs. It isn't for lack of coders that suspend/hibernate isn't working universally. There are enough people working on the big pyramid.

joshuamerrill 14y ago

I always liked the BeOS interface—at least, in the context of the early 90s, when its popularity peaked—but I find it pointless to clone a 20+ year-old UI. With Kinect, Leap Motion, and other forms of input, it seems like there's a huge opportunity to get away from the traditional windowed UI that has dominated desktop OSes. Not to knock Haiku OS—I just feel that if someone is going to create a desktop OS from scratch, it's a chance to do something really different. I see this as a missed opportunity.

jacques_chester 14y ago
It's not the UI that excited technologists enough to recreate it from scratch. It was the design of the operating system and its API. BeOS was state-of-the-art when it was written, in the sense that it took the accumulated wisdom and academic research up to that point as its starting point. And in many ways it is still state-of-the-art.
- eloisant 14y ago
  Then why don't they keep the OS and API and write a brand new UI, like Apple did when they made OSX from Nextstep?
  - hellerbarde 14y ago
    why don't you? I assume they don't exacly have a huge community of active devs. combine that with the fact that user interface design is hard and needs experienced people working on it and you got the reason for cloning a perfectly functional UI instead of completely messing up while innovating a revolutionary new one. This is pure conjecture, of course :)
  - geon 14y ago
    Because it is extremely much work, both in the research/prototyping/design and in the implementation. And when you are done, there are no apps that supports it.
  - gecko 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

krollew 14y ago

Well, I see Haiku becomes more and more popular. I wonder on one thing - why would I be interested in next operating system if I have Windows 7 and Linux? What does it have that those systems haven't? I think authors of Haiku should find that and make sure that people that visit their site will read about that.

toemetoch 14y ago
IMO BeOS was to operating systems what Opera is to browsers. Innovative, good ideas, efficient, ... but few people use it. I remember demo-ing BeOS to a friend by opening a ton of videos at the same time. He replied that Windows did that as well, until he tried it and the system was trashing after the 3rd video. The "pauze" button in the copy/paste progress bar ... a revelation.

JulianMorrison 14y ago

Is it still single-user, run-as-root and unsecured?