HAIKU?

[jpenguin]

http://haiku-os.org/

It is an impressive OS, but I think they will have a hard time convincing developers/people to use it...

IMO-- it is more interesting than ReactOS

[Ole Juul]

Re: HAIKU?

To me the poll question is irrelevant as such. However, I had a good look at their website and it certainly looks good - if you like GUIs that it. I wonder how good it is on the command line. To me that would be the real test.

In all fairness to to the OP, if there is a "market" then there will be developers. What really makes a difference is the development of servers, codecs, and drivers. Can you plug in your camera? Does my USB wireless work? Will it run flash? If not then you won't have a functional browser. If Linux and other Unix like systems are struggling with those things then a newcomer most certainly will. To my way of thinking then the only hope of "success" (as in great usefulness) would be if they focus on some more narrow functionality and not a desktop system.

[toad]

Re: HAIKU?

Why is it an impressive OS? Just curious...

[jpenguin]

Re: HAIKU?

Why is it an impressive OS? Just curious...

Maybe that wasn't the best choice of words. BeOS was impressive (other tan than theme). Hiaku had nearly nothing when the started, and they have done a seeming good job mimicking BeOS.

[MoonRise]

Re: HAIKU?

Their website is certainly interesting and would make one want to try it out. Who knows. Time will only tell.

[claydoh]

Re: HAIKU?

mimicking rather does not do justice - Haiku is an actual f/oss recreation of BeOS, created by many of the folks from the BeOS user/developer community. It is a unique OS from the kernel on up, though i do believe they are using bits of the bsd networking stack and more recently cups for printing.

Obviously it may never get a large userbase, but then who cares if it does or not?

As a former BeOS user, I do have a soft spot for Haiku, but these days without decent wireless support (yet) it will be harder to gain any sort of strong base right now. The developers do not seem to be rushing things, which probably is a Good Thing

What made the original Be so awesome was it's almost overboard threading. EVERYTHING from top to bottom was it's own thread - even window buttons. The OS simply never crashed for me, ever. On my hardware at the time - a 233pentium mmx with only 512 mb ram (maybe less) I could run 10 - yes 10 - video files at the same time without crapping out (~480 pixels wide or so), where windows 98 could choke on more than 1. It's file system was unique back then as well, as it was a journalized one, with metadata support built-in. BeOS used that extensively for things such as contacts, idenities and even emails with extra info and data search-able and categorize-able - nepomuk/akonadi anyone?

[Ole Juul]

Re: HAIKU?

You make a good case claydoh. I looked through their website and there was very little actual information there to recommend it. Is a "theme" enough to recommend an OS? Perhaps it is, but to me information like yours is what's really needed.

[claydoh]

Re: HAIKU?

Yes, it is way more than a theme

But it does run rather well in a VM and is easy to play with - though it will feel like a trip back in time by a decade or so in a lot of ways, some ok, some maybe not

[Snowhog]

Re: HAIKU?

Haiku, Inc. accepts contract relating to package management
News posted on Mon, 2010-12-27 23:50
"the lack of proper package management is clearly one of the items that are delaying the release of R1. More importantly though, as package management is an actual lacking feature (as opposed to a bug in an existing implementation), even the beta cycle is being blocked as a result. In order to progress, Haiku needs package management."

:P

Doesn't have a package management system?! Not good.

[claydoh]

Re: HAIKU?

BeOS didn't need one back in the day. It's the availability of external bits such as qt, koffice ports that make things complicated There was a basic package installer/uninstaller, but in most cases it just simplified the 'drag the folder here' install process

[Ole Juul]

Re: HAIKU?

I'm not sure that a package manager is essential. It seems to me that one could implement a functional system by just having all the basics pre-installed. Perhaps having half a dozen pre-configured versions available could solve the problem. The solidity of something like that could actually be a deal-making feature.

Bear in mind that although many of us like to install programs and configure our systems to our taste, the biggest need for computers out there is for a relatively small number of tasks. Netbooks is an excellent example. Remember that most computer users only require a browser, and when it comes to editing a picture (for example) you are talking about a very small group. Even the desk job crowd has fairly well defined needs.

[ardvark71]

Re: HAIKU?

Hi...

Please pardon the inexperience but I'm not exactly getting it here. I was going to examine this OS in a VM but when I go to extract it using Ark (because it comes in a .zip file,) it sees it as a series of files and extracts it as such. An .iso file is one file and should be extracted as such.

Regards...

[claydoh]

Re: HAIKU?

what archive exactly did you download? there are 3 different ones -
-- an 'anyboot' image (extracted file ends in .image) which can be burned to a cd or flash drive or hard disk
-- a plain iso image
-- the vm package contains a number of files needed for running in vmware.

I suggest getting the iso archive if you don't use Vmware or don't want to convert the files to Virtualbox format

[GreyGeek]

Re: HAIKU?

Microsoft has the OEM pre-installed cheap (relative to Apple) OS advantage,
Apple has HIGH END fully integrated HARDWARE/OS/Software Mac boxes (to say nothing of iPod, iPhone and iPad), and
Ubuntu has a millionaire spending around $10M/year improving and promoting it, and Fedora has RedHat. SUSE and OpenSUSE? Only Ellison knows, but it doesn't look good for either distro.

RedHat has the Linux corporate server market tied up, Ubuntu is trying to break in to it, and into the destkop as well. HAIKU is in the same category as most of the rest of Linux distros out there - a small but dedicated group of developers operating on a shoe-string budget, if they have a shoe-string. Like PCLOS, Mint, MEPIS, Centos and others in the top 100 list at DistroWatch, they don't have the man-power, funding, marketing, or support base to appeal to the Joe and Sally Sixpacks, who use what comes on the PC they buy, and they don't have what RH and Canonical has shown is necessary to appeal to corporate.

IOW, HAIKU needs a millionaire and a miracle to even give Ubuntu a run for its money. To compete against Microsoft it would take an act of Congress making it illegal to use Windows on government computers (because of its vulnerability) and a large chunk of corporations would have to move away from Windows on their desktops .... but in that case they'd either bite the bullet and buy Apple, or use Ubuntu.

IMO, if Apple doubled its manufacturing facility and made significant price reductions they could take the PC market by storm. But, they won't. That's because their bean counters know how to use Linear Algebra and Max-Mins to compute slack variables -- maximum profit and minimum costs. They are probably at that price point now.

[ardvark71]

Re: HAIKU?

what archive exactly did you download? there are 3 different ones -
-- an 'anyboot' image (extracted file ends in .image) which can be burned to a cd or flash drive or hard disk
-- a plain iso image
-- the vm package contains a number of files needed for running in vmware.

I suggest getting the iso archive if you don't use Vmware or don't want to convert the files to Virtualbox format

Hi and thank you.

I downloaded the plain .iso file. When I try to extract just the .iso, Ark sees a multitude of files within the .iso and extracts it as such. Instead of one .iso file, I get a folder with a subset of folders with files inside of them. I'm not sure how I go about getting Ark to extract it as one .iso file so I can get VirtualBox to install the OS from it.

Thanks.

Regards...