5 ms·

I'm so happy. Haiku to me, is visually the most beautiful operating system out there. The icons, apps, designs. If there be anything that can ever steal the spo

by pmkary 1mo ago

I'm so happy. Haiku to me, is visually the most beautiful operating system out there. The icons, apps, designs. If there be anything that can ever steal the spotlight from Mac; it would be Haiku. And the OS is perhaps the one and only one that remains a tool in the old sense. All other operating systems are now service and signups and telemetry and notifications; this is the last resort remaining for the rest of us. I only wonder sometimes when it is going to become usable. With LLMs I'm wondering can't they be put to find the stability issues and make the solving faster?

montroser 1mo ago
I mean, Linux is still pretty squarely in service of the end user.
tokai 1mo ago
>All other operating systems are now service and signups and telemetry and notifications What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense.
cosmic_cheese 1mo ago
What really sets Haiku (and the preceding BeOS) apart is that it's built for the express purpose of being a desktop operating system. As good as desktop Linux has gotten it still suffers from servers being the chief use case for Linux-based OSes, seen in quirks such as how poorly it handles running out of memory (not as big of a deal in the server world, particularly in the container era; just tweak your setup and reboot your containers). It's not bogged down with corporate IT needs either. The last time we got an OS that was as purely desktop-end-user-oriented with no competing influences was Classic Mac OS, which had serious technical issues.
- LeFantome 1mo ago
  The problem is, Linux is improving too quickly for Haiku. I have been looking forward to running Haiku as a daily driver for years. And it is almost there. It may even be good enough now for many people. Modern browsers really help. But I was amazed recently when I put Haiku on an old laptop that was already running Linux. I remember Haiku being so lean and fast and multi-tasking so smoothly. But honestly Linux felt faster on this machine. The memory usage was about the same (a real shock to me). And I missed being able to use containers. So, I ended up putting Linux back on. This bummed me out because I have been a Haiku fan forever and it has never been better. But when I tried to use it, I could not convince myself there was any benefit (other than diversity). And the reason had nothing to do with applications or drivers.
  - ranger_danger 1mo ago
    There are Haiku/BeOS-style window manager/GTK themes if that suits your needs better.
    - em-bee 1mo ago
      could you point them out? i actually did a search but could not find much. there are GTK themes, but nothing i could find that converts a gnome desktop. stuff is either incomplete or outdated. i actually managed to get half BeOS theme together for KDE, and i still use that on my desktop. but it's inconsistent, and in particular the tab style window management is missing, which is really the best part of the interface.
      - ranger_danger 1mo ago
        https://www.opencode.net/phob1an/besot https://www.opencode.net/phob1an/besot https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Haiku https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Haiku https://github.com/B00merang-Project/BeOS https://github.com/B00merang-Project/BeOS https://gitlab.com/metsatron/BeOS-r5-GTK https://gitlab.com/metsatron/BeOS-r5-GTK https://gitlab.com/metsatron/BeOS-r5-XFWM https://gitlab.com/metsatron/BeOS-r5-XFWM https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1012423/ https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1012423/ https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1016430/ https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1016430/
  - flatiron 1mo ago
    > The problem is, Linux is improving too quickly for Haiku. Ain’t it the truth. It’s really great now the snowball is fully in flow down the mountain with Linux. But at the same time it’s sad that there’s little time for anything else. We are a bit of a victim of our own success. We beat the drum in the 90s that Linux needs to win and now that it won what does it really mean. Free and open source to do anything but at the same time, why in the world use anything else. We have come a bit of a Chromium in that regard (or it became us?)
  - dmacvicar 1mo ago
    Cosmoe and VitruvianOS are two different approaches of "Haiku" you may find interesting. Cosmoe works at the application toolkit level, allowing to build and run BeOS/Haiku apps on Linux. The toolkit is then implemented using Linux classic APIs. Vitruvian is Haiku on the Linux kernel (with some extra modules). https://gitlab.com/haydentech/cosmoe https://gitlab.com/haydentech/cosmoe https://v-os.dev/ https://v-os.dev/
- thataccount 1mo ago
  I guess this depends on how you see things. Windows was meant to be a desktop OS and crashed all the time. Probably still does, but the wise have abandoned that burning ship. Linux, however, rarely crashes on a desktop, and when it does, it is usually due to a graphic card driver that doesn't want to work there.
  - Demiurge 1mo ago
    Windows crashing all the time? I haven’t experienced crashes since WinXP… Or when trying beta drivers and overclocking. As a day to day windows and OSX user, I’ve had more stability issues with OSX than Windows.
    - trinix912 1mo ago
      Nvidia drivers crashed Windows 7 for me multiple times and so did virtualization software (VMware in particular). I had Windows 10 crash a few times when I last touched it doing really nothing special. I'm not using any ancient software or obscure peripherals. But yeah, if it works on your machine then I guess...
      - Demiurge 1mo ago
        Perhaps I’m contrasting it to my Windows ME experience… But, I have seen BSOD multiple times, it’s just that I could trace the problem pretty easily, to something like IRQ interrupts and faulty hardware, MB needs to be replaced, bad driver needs to be downgraded, things like that. And it used to happen a lot more often. Overall, I just think XP and NT kernels kind of solved this, in large part, by improving the system logging, sys internal tools, adding system restore, etc On my MacBooks, however, whenever I get the beach ball, I rarely have any idea what to do, and have reinstalled or changed random hardware multiple times. So yeah, I’ve had my share of problems with all systems, and worked in different environments, but personally I have rarely seen BSOD compared to all the other issues.
    - punchmesan 1mo ago
      Windows has gotten more stable, that's for sure, but I have seen BSOD's on every single edition of Windows, and that's only on my personal life. In my time in corporate IT I can tell you that Windows is generally much more problematic than MacOS for a variety of reasons, though modern MacOS certainly has its share of issues. But again, that's in a corporate IT environment, not regular consumer usage. Not sure how you got away with no crashing in your Windows experience, but congratulations!
- BoredomIsFun 1mo ago
  > such as how poorly it handles running out of memory What is interesting, FreeBSD last time I used it, had far ,pre simple predictable kernel OOM killer. Anyway, I always either switch off swap on Linux machines or install EarlyOOM.
commandersaki 1mo ago
> If there be anything that can ever steal the spotlight from Mac; it would be Haiku. I looked at the Haiku slideshow and I'm not seeing this. It looks like an eye sore, desktop environments familiar of the 90s. Even early OSX is a massive improvement (as it was to the NeXT desktop).
- pmkary 1mo ago
  Don't get me wrong; Mac is light years ahead. What I mean is the level of harmony and design integrity the Haiku has. I doubt that any corporation can ever have even the team that used to make the icons of Tiger/Leopard era. The scrollbars of the Leopard or the whole Aqua. But given their team size and small scale of Haiku; this is one amazing job. The apps, the website, the icons; the documentations... all are in harmony and you don't find it anywhere else.
  - carlosjobim 1mo ago
    All of that has been straight copied from BeOS, which was a real corporation worth millions of dollars and in the cutting edge of technology at the time.
    - pmkary 1mo ago
      Very good point!
- IshKebab 1mo ago
  I agree, it's arguably clean, and definitely an improvement over Windows 98 era GUI, probably also XP era. But the world has moved on. Even KDE looks better today.
  - trinix912 1mo ago
    I honestly don't get this, what have we gotten since that's a considerable UI improvement? Bigger paddings? Flat UI? IIRC you can even configure custom colors, have dark mode, etc. It might look dated with the gray color scheme but that's really the only thing I can guess would look dated to someone.
alasano 1mo ago
Looks like Windows 98. Which is of course a compliment.

by pmkary 1mo ago

montroser 1mo ago

I mean, Linux is still pretty squarely in service of the end user.

tokai 1mo ago

>All other operating systems are now service and signups and telemetry and notifications What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense.

cosmic_cheese 1mo ago

What really sets Haiku (and the preceding BeOS) apart is that it's built for the express purpose of being a desktop operating system. As good as desktop Linux has gotten it still suffers from servers being the chief use case for Linux-based OSes, seen in quirks such as how poorly it handles running out of memory (not as big of a deal in the server world, particularly in the container era; just tweak your setup and reboot your containers). It's not bogged down with corporate IT needs either. The last time we got an OS that was as purely desktop-end-user-oriented with no competing influences was Classic Mac OS, which had serious technical issues.

LeFantome 1mo ago
The problem is, Linux is improving too quickly for Haiku. I have been looking forward to running Haiku as a daily driver for years. And it is almost there. It may even be good enough now for many people. Modern browsers really help. But I was amazed recently when I put Haiku on an old laptop that was already running Linux. I remember Haiku being so lean and fast and multi-tasking so smoothly. But honestly Linux felt faster on this machine. The memory usage was about the same (a real shock to me). And I missed being able to use containers. So, I ended up putting Linux back on. This bummed me out because I have been a Haiku fan forever and it has never been better. But when I tried to use it, I could not convince myself there was any benefit (other than diversity). And the reason had nothing to do with applications or drivers.
- ranger_danger 1mo ago
  There are Haiku/BeOS-style window manager/GTK themes if that suits your needs better.
  - em-bee 1mo ago
    could you point them out? i actually did a search but could not find much. there are GTK themes, but nothing i could find that converts a gnome desktop. stuff is either incomplete or outdated. i actually managed to get half BeOS theme together for KDE, and i still use that on my desktop. but it's inconsistent, and in particular the tab style window management is missing, which is really the best part of the interface.
    - ranger_danger 1mo ago
      https://www.opencode.net/phob1an/besot https://www.opencode.net/phob1an/besot https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Haiku https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Haiku https://github.com/B00merang-Project/BeOS https://github.com/B00merang-Project/BeOS https://gitlab.com/metsatron/BeOS-r5-GTK https://gitlab.com/metsatron/BeOS-r5-GTK https://gitlab.com/metsatron/BeOS-r5-XFWM https://gitlab.com/metsatron/BeOS-r5-XFWM https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1012423/ https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1012423/ https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1016430/ https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1016430/
- flatiron 1mo ago
  > The problem is, Linux is improving too quickly for Haiku. Ain’t it the truth. It’s really great now the snowball is fully in flow down the mountain with Linux. But at the same time it’s sad that there’s little time for anything else. We are a bit of a victim of our own success. We beat the drum in the 90s that Linux needs to win and now that it won what does it really mean. Free and open source to do anything but at the same time, why in the world use anything else. We have come a bit of a Chromium in that regard (or it became us?)
- dmacvicar 1mo ago
  Cosmoe and VitruvianOS are two different approaches of "Haiku" you may find interesting. Cosmoe works at the application toolkit level, allowing to build and run BeOS/Haiku apps on Linux. The toolkit is then implemented using Linux classic APIs. Vitruvian is Haiku on the Linux kernel (with some extra modules). https://gitlab.com/haydentech/cosmoe https://gitlab.com/haydentech/cosmoe https://v-os.dev/ https://v-os.dev/
thataccount 1mo ago
I guess this depends on how you see things. Windows was meant to be a desktop OS and crashed all the time. Probably still does, but the wise have abandoned that burning ship. Linux, however, rarely crashes on a desktop, and when it does, it is usually due to a graphic card driver that doesn't want to work there.
- Demiurge 1mo ago
  Windows crashing all the time? I haven’t experienced crashes since WinXP… Or when trying beta drivers and overclocking. As a day to day windows and OSX user, I’ve had more stability issues with OSX than Windows.
  - trinix912 1mo ago
    Nvidia drivers crashed Windows 7 for me multiple times and so did virtualization software (VMware in particular). I had Windows 10 crash a few times when I last touched it doing really nothing special. I'm not using any ancient software or obscure peripherals. But yeah, if it works on your machine then I guess...
    - Demiurge 1mo ago
      Perhaps I’m contrasting it to my Windows ME experience… But, I have seen BSOD multiple times, it’s just that I could trace the problem pretty easily, to something like IRQ interrupts and faulty hardware, MB needs to be replaced, bad driver needs to be downgraded, things like that. And it used to happen a lot more often. Overall, I just think XP and NT kernels kind of solved this, in large part, by improving the system logging, sys internal tools, adding system restore, etc On my MacBooks, however, whenever I get the beach ball, I rarely have any idea what to do, and have reinstalled or changed random hardware multiple times. So yeah, I’ve had my share of problems with all systems, and worked in different environments, but personally I have rarely seen BSOD compared to all the other issues.
  - punchmesan 1mo ago
    Windows has gotten more stable, that's for sure, but I have seen BSOD's on every single edition of Windows, and that's only on my personal life. In my time in corporate IT I can tell you that Windows is generally much more problematic than MacOS for a variety of reasons, though modern MacOS certainly has its share of issues. But again, that's in a corporate IT environment, not regular consumer usage. Not sure how you got away with no crashing in your Windows experience, but congratulations!
BoredomIsFun 1mo ago
> such as how poorly it handles running out of memory What is interesting, FreeBSD last time I used it, had far ,pre simple predictable kernel OOM killer. Anyway, I always either switch off swap on Linux machines or install EarlyOOM.

commandersaki 1mo ago

> If there be anything that can ever steal the spotlight from Mac; it would be Haiku. I looked at the Haiku slideshow and I'm not seeing this. It looks like an eye sore, desktop environments familiar of the 90s. Even early OSX is a massive improvement (as it was to the NeXT desktop).

pmkary 1mo ago
Don't get me wrong; Mac is light years ahead. What I mean is the level of harmony and design integrity the Haiku has. I doubt that any corporation can ever have even the team that used to make the icons of Tiger/Leopard era. The scrollbars of the Leopard or the whole Aqua. But given their team size and small scale of Haiku; this is one amazing job. The apps, the website, the icons; the documentations... all are in harmony and you don't find it anywhere else.
- carlosjobim 1mo ago
  All of that has been straight copied from BeOS, which was a real corporation worth millions of dollars and in the cutting edge of technology at the time.
  - pmkary 1mo ago
    Very good point!
IshKebab 1mo ago
I agree, it's arguably clean, and definitely an improvement over Windows 98 era GUI, probably also XP era. But the world has moved on. Even KDE looks better today.
- trinix912 1mo ago
  I honestly don't get this, what have we gotten since that's a considerable UI improvement? Bigger paddings? Flat UI? IIRC you can even configure custom colors, have dark mode, etc. It might look dated with the gray color scheme but that's really the only thing I can guess would look dated to someone.

alasano 1mo ago

Looks like Windows 98. Which is of course a compliment.