Submitted by Two news items about alternative operating system news in a row? What is this, Christmas? In any case, the Haiku project, the darling of OSNews (hey it’s okay now), has released its second alpha release. This new stable development release contains some serious improvements over the first alpha.
‘Twas only eight months ago that we finally got to meet the first Haiku alpha release. She was a pleasure to work with, especially considering it was the project’s first actual release, and an alpha one at that. It was relatively stable, very light, and looked incredibly good (although that’s inherent to the BeOS).
The second alpha release is upon us today, and she comes packed with some very fine and welcome improvements, most notably the new WebKit multi-process browser and wireless networking support with WEP support. Oh, and bootloader installation!
In summation, these are the most important changes:
- WiFi support with WEP encryption introduced
- WebPositive – a native Webkit based browser
- New Locale Kit allows localization/translation
- Improved USB mass storage performance
- ACPI enabled by default
- Bash command-line shell updated to version 4.x
- Message Signal Interrupts (MSI)
- Increased POSIX compliance
- Increased performance
Go and grab it from the download page. Since I’m out of spare hard drives, I’ll need to order a new one specifically to test the new alpha release (no spare machines either). I’ll see if I can fit it into my budget so I can write a review – Haiku certainly deserves it.
Topical song? Garbage performing The Ramones’ “I just Wanna Have Something To Do”. Also a modern remake of something that was already really good.
“the new WebKit multi-process browser”
Which WebPositive is not. The Chrome/ium design is interesting, in particular for both security and parallelism concerns, but currently Web+ don’t do that. Maybe it will in a future Haiku release, thought.
Edited 2010-05-10 10:17 UTC
Especially thanks to what’s cooking in the WebKit kitchen
Are you sure? The multiprocess thing is now part of webkit.
For Windows and Mac only, it have yet to be ported to pure POSIX. Multiprocess is not something cross platform by design, it is quite the opposite.
Actually, the previous news was not about an alternative OS, rather than alternative hardware 🙂
Now, this is an alternative OS everyone can play with, without having to buy costly and exotic hardware. Just downloaded, and running on vmware on my Mac, alongside XP in another VM.
BeOS user since 1999 (TM)
(Mac since 2004, Linux since 1997, Windows since 1993, DOS since 1989, and C64 since… oh well, before I could even understand what those strange shapes on the keys meant)
The Haiku developers are doing great work, but it seems to lack a security concept. With concept I really just mean a concept, because I understand there are other priorities now.
Would be cool, if they would come up with something new in this field
It’s my understanding that they are going for full BeOS R5 compatibility with this first release. R5 came about during Windows 98’s heyday; at that time, security on home computers was not a big issue. Given that it was such an obscure OS, there were no viruses for it, few exploits, and overall no real need for security beyond the basics. It was a perfect example of security by obscurity. Granted, there were inherent security features from being partially POSIX compliant, but that left a lot of room for improvement.
Let me be clear: I don’t agree with BeOS R5’s lack of security, and I hope the Haiku team has some great ideas for future security measures. I’d love to see a password barrier before the desktop loads, at the very least. Even though it’s meant to be a single-user system, there exists the ability to add user accounts and set permissions.
As it is an open source project, why not build on this foundation and help them to achieve a security concept?
I am going to dedicate a machine to this.Its certainly worth it.
I have aswell, my old amd x2 4400 has been Haiku only for a while. Looking forward to running it in 64bit thanks to the google summer of code projects. Haiku is on a roll it seems, here’s hoping we’ll see more developers trying it out and hopefully do some native applications. As for ports, I’d like to see Inkscape and Blender. Also hoping to see accelerated 3d through the gallium framework sometime this year (although that might be a bit overly optimistic).
Congrats !
A very nice and steady progress of Haiku.
I am pretty sure it can get quite some attention also on the desktop side when its ready.
What is the current state of the graphics drivers? In alpha 1, many modern videocards revert to VESA, and are barely usable in current TFT monitors with non-VESA resolutions. Any progress in this area?
As you mentioned, if Haiku doesn’t have a driver for your video card then it will use the VESA driver. The VESA driver is very good, but it is only possible for it to support a specific set of screen resolutions, none of which are wide screen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions
You can learn more about which video cards have native drivers in Haiku by looking at the source code:
http://git.newos.org/?p=haiku.git;a=tree;f=src/add-ons/kernel/drive…
As far as I can tell, Radeon cards up to R420 are supported, and Nvidia cards up to the GeForce 7 series are supported, and it looks like most of the Intel integrated video cards are supported. Other video cards are supported as well. Work is being done on the “radeon_hd” driver.
My Radeon X850 works well.
Edited 2010-05-10 14:09 UTC
Using boot menu option, you can get it to work on wide screen resolution. Might be very specific case, but option to try.
http://www.haiku-os.org/community/forum/haiku_vaio_vgntxn15p
The Sony Vaio TXN15P has an Intel GMA 950 video card. It was probably not using the VESA driver.
Questions about using a native monitor resolution with the VESA driver caused the Haiku developers to add this section in the FAQ:
http://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq#12
That’s actually not correct, most modern graphics cards will query the monitor for its preferred resolution and add a VESA mode line for that one specifically to the BIOS’s exported list.
I apologize. Thank you for correcting me.
Also, that’s really cool! I wonder if my video card is too old for that feature.
Shouldn’t be, it uses the same DDC/EDID mechanism that the actual OSes do, it’s just a recent development that they use it to supplement the BIOS mode list, since the proliferation of widescreen displays is still a comparatively new trend and it didn’t really matter as much prior.
I booted up the alpha 2 live disc as mentioned and got a very nice accelerated graphics display to come up on my 5 yr. old laptop (NV34 chipset).
I believe it’s using a version of Mesa out of the box.
WiFi support with WEP encryption introduced
Oh YES!
…and games…
With Haiku I don’t think I really care!
With wifi and wep encryption working it is time to play with haiku for real:)
…what new software is available for Haiku?
Say you install the system, all hardware works–you have WiFi and everything else works just perfectly on your hardware–now what?
Has there been any active software development in BeOS or Haiku in the last few years or is everything still from back in the late 90’s when the plug was pulled? I’m not trying to troll here, I honestly want to know! (Besides I’m still smarting from the beating I got from the Zeta days when I and others were predicting that saga would end in tears, something we were right about as it happens… so the last thing I want to do is inflame all the fanbois but the question must be asked.)
Can I get a feed reader? What about an MP3 player and or organizer? We all know the state of the web isn’t all that great, hence the need for webpositive. I won’t even ask about games!
What is there for Haiku that isn’t poorly optimized code from ten years ago or a port from Linux or *BSD?
I really want to know, because I’m downloading the Alpha 2 now in hopes of running it on my eeepc 901 and want it to be useful on there. I know that with Alpha 1 everything seemed to work well enough except the WiFi, so I have hopes of dual booting–only what can Haiku do?
–bornagainpenguin
Haiku comes with a collection of software packages. They are either installed by default or you can install them with the “installoptionalpackage” command. You can read the list of optional software packages here:
http://git.newos.org/?p=haiku.git;a=blob;f=build/jam/OptionalPackag…
Haiku comes with “Media Player”. It has playlist support. It can play every audio format I know of and most video formats I’ve tried. Although it is a native Haiku application, I THINK it is based on ffmpeg, but I might be remembering incorrectly. I don’t know about feed readers since I don’t use them.
As for native applications that I use, WebPositive is a great web browser, Media Player I already mentioned, WonderBrush is great for graphics, the Terminal is very comfortable (BASH), there is a nice text editor, and there is the Pe editor for editing source code. The only program I really want that is missing is a native instant messenger program, but there is a very nice IRC program. As far as I have seen, there aren’t any games worth mentioning, but I haven’t been looking for any.
A lot of work has been put into porting open source software to Haiku. For example, many many Qt4 applications work on Haiku. I haven’t been interested in using them, but if you’re interested, you can find more information by searching for “TiltOS”.
I don’t think you will upset anyone with your question. As far as I can tell, besides the Haiku developers, not many people have been writing native Haiku software. That makes sense to me, because there isn’t really a “finished” operating system yet to program for.
Even so, I am an open source software developer myself, and have started working on some small Haiku projects simply because I find the API is SO AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL.
drcouzelis pointed out…
Fair enough.
drcouzelis pointed out…
So we could see this changing pretty quickly then? Great!
The API? No, it was designed by Be and has been stable for at least nine years.
Edit: WAIT! Sorry, now I understand what you meant. Yes, it is great.
Edited 2010-05-10 18:51 UTC
You can run some KDE apps, but they are not really native.
Is qt creator ported?
Paritally yes, the russians which ported QT4, have shown some screenshots of QT Creator, but they didn’t release binaries. I think the reason is that is doesn’t work 100% as it should. Perhaps after they update the port to qt4.7, they will also release binaries for qt creator.
They should clearly transition to Qt being the native Haiku toolkit. It is very good, well supported and has lots of pre-existing code.
Nobody is really going to learn the BeOS API if they can write stuff in Qt and have it work on windows, linux and mac too.
Add multiuser support and it starts to look like a very nice OS. I wish they had left bash out though. Including it might lead to people actually writing bash scripts which is generally a Very Bad Thing(tm).
There is experimental multi-user support, although I haven’t tried it. Haiku already does a pretty good job of separating the parts that the user is allowed to change and the parts that the user shouldn’t touch.
Why is writing Bash scripts a bad thing?
Why would they ditch the Haiku API after 9 years of hard work?
Besides QT programs being cross platform, I just don’t see any other benefit to use QT API over the Haiku API. Saying nobody is going to learn the Haiku API because they can write code in QT is like saying nobody is going to learn the Cocoa framework because they can write code in Mono.
How is writing Bash scripts a bad thing?
How about Qt Creator?
Why should developers bother learning the API of an OS that doesn’t have a userbase? Because you think the system is cool? Yea good luck with that.
Building around Qt is good advice. The Haiku team needs to remember that most developers do not share their nostalgic attachment.
I wouldn’t know how good QT creator is on Haiku because I use Paladin. I might try it out and give my feedback about it.
I don’t think Haiku is going to have a problem attracting developers to their API. IMO it’s a great API and easy to learn. Developers are going to weigh their options and pick the best tool for their needs.
The QT port gives the Haiku users more software to choose from and that’s a good thingâ„¢.
Because it’s a great API
Powerful and simple to learn and use. I actually whish I could use it on other OSs.
Haiku was born mostly because of it. Remaking it on QT means turning it into something else, trashing half of the work done, and rewriting a lot of stuff. Haiku devs just aren’t interested.
Why not write things in Java then? Or in Mono? Or in GnuStep? You name it.
Edited 2010-05-12 15:01 UTC
See haikuware.com
There is a twitter client there.
Lots of casual games (Tetris still rocks!)
Some multimedia Software like soundplay which btw. still rocks
I am using the file manager (tracker) and queries to keep my music and image collection up to date.
It needs perhaps a little bit time to kind of “convert” your collection to this system of classification but you won’t want to miss it if you once have it.
VLC is there for anyone having problems with video playback and the media player (please report a bug if its so)
and for Office there is a Koffice Port aswell as some other qt4 based applications.
Leszek Lesner reminded…
Oh! I’d forgotten about that site…I was thinking about BeBits when I asked my question, and quite frankly the sad degradation and bit-rotting of that site made me think no one else cared about BeOS or Haiku any more. Nice to see there are still some holding the fort down as Haiku ramps up for its R1!
I’ll have to ransack the site after I get Haiku installed later…
–bornagainpenguin
There are of course tools to help extract media attributes and put them in the filesystem. Never leave for the media tag jungle without The Army Knife :0)
http://haikuware.com/directory/view-details/system-files/tracker-ad…
Really ?! you got me
Anyay, instead of asking what does Haiku can do, may be you should tell what you are trying to do. It’s an Alpha2 version… it’s for testing purpose.
Ikshaar suggested…
I’d like to test Haiku as a daily driver for my eeepc 901, as a possible replacement for the Ubuntu I currently have installed. I know, I know it’s only Alpha yet. Still you can’t really test out an operating system without adding some applications, so I was wondering if there had been anything written over the last few years as Haiku became closer and closer to a reality.
–bornagainpenguin
I’m with you on this, as great as BeOS and Haiku are as an operating system, good apps are what will make it popular among the uninitiated. I too would love to run it on a netbook, and as the price of last generation’s devices keep coming down, I may just do that, alpha or not.
After all, I can then get serious about learning to program in C using the BeOS API, and I may just churn out a few good apps myself! (Don’t hold your breath though, my talents lean more towards hardware hacking than software development).
I don’t know, the hardware is yours. Burn it if you want
Seriously, now is the hour to you play or help (it’s an alpha, remember)
Yes, after the alpha 01, and with Haiku gaining stability, the developers are slowly coming back. More OS stability = rock solid apps
I never imagine that someone use news feeder these days, but you can take a look at BePodder
http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/internet-network/ne…
or Album
http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/multimedia/graphics…
The MediaPlayer from Haiku do the task very well for MP3
Here comes to an area that have some progress lately
Widelands
http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/games/strategy/wide…
Heroes Of Might and Magic II
http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/games/role-playing/…
Netpanzer
http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/games/strategy/netp…
Wormux
http://www.haikuware.com/remository/view-details/games/2d/wormux-09…
Jagged Alliance 2 – Stracciatella
http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/games/role-playing/…
to name a few…
Sadly, 3D games doesn’t work yet (even win95 do)
What is there for Haiku that isn’t poorly optimized code from ten years ago or a port from Linux or *BSD?
What “open source software” means to you? Now only because an app is open is because is a linux ‘native’?
But I have something to show you
HaikuTwitter
http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/internet-network/ch…
Seems very native for me, not? It’s a best piece of Haiku functionality, a **f–kING AWESOME** app
So give a try!
Edited 2010-05-10 17:29 UTC
Would you happen to know an mp3 ENCODER that works on Haiku? The player seems to work quite well, but haven’t found an encoder that works.
LAME is available through Haiku Ports. I have installed some software through Haiku Ports, but I haven’t tried LAME.
http://ports.haiku-files.org/
And I believe LAME will compile in Haiku/BeOS without any special effort (beyond running ./configure && make && make install).
There’s also Flipside A.E., which provides a nice front-end for LAME.
Michael Oliveira replied…
The kind of feed reader I mean is something like Liferea or Straw, particularly Straw truth be told, as it has the killer feature of being able to cache feeds for offline reading, text, images and all. Currently it is the only feed reader capable of doing so in Linux and has been slowly wasting and bit-rotting away…
Michael Oliveira boasted…
Whoa! I’m still impressed! I didn’t imagine there had been any games available (besides the ubiquitous DOOM or QUAKE ports.)
Michael Oliveira boasted…
I don’t use Twitter much (or at all) but this is something I’ll have to look into. There seems to be much more movement in Haiku than I anticipated!
–bornagainpenguin
EDIT – fixed dangling tag
Edited 2010-05-10 19:04 UTC
BePodder should work quite well for this:
http://www.funkyideasoft.com/bepodder.html
It is still a BeOS-specific app, but it works fine in Haiku.
Ah! thanks for pointing that. They are very gnome specific app… but have few dependencies. I’ll take a look. But BePodder does fine the job…
I am at present what could be called a Haiku fanboi, but I have the same question (: As other commenters have pointed out, there are definitely examples of new software being developed. The question is, how many new programs are there? What sort of programs are still waiting to be written? How many old ones are still nice to use?
I’ve been rooting around http://www.haikuware.com/ and http://www.bebits.com/
Once I install Alpha 2 and start playing with all the software that is out there on the sites above and in the “Optional Packages” collection, I’ll start to get an idea as to what’s good, both old and new.
Hopefully it’s not all “from ten years ago.” Even if that’s the case, however, sometimes those programs are clean and useful and well-designed. I believe BeAE (found on Haikuware in the Multimedia/Audio/Audio Editing section) is an open source version of a venerable program written many years ago for BeOS. I’ve yet to test it out though. I am especially interested in what’s availabe for sound recording and editing. I understand this was one of the primary uses of the BeOS. (And, it would seem, still is. See iZ Systems RADAR.)
[I realize Haikuware was mentioned in an earlier comment, but I don’t think repeating the link can hurt.]
At the moment, Haiku still somewhat suffers from the chicken-and-egg problem of software and users. It’s not completely devoid of useful software, as other people have shown, but the situation definitely isn’t great, so may not yet be something the average person wants to use.
Still, there’s a few positives to be found.
It has a half-decent modern web browser. No, the web isn’t going to replace all native software anytime soon, but a modern web-browser can make a system functional and useful, even without all the other bits.
Compared to other platforms, there *is* software, both in terms of native software and ports. Yes, some of it is a decade old, but there is quite a bit of it out there.
It has a well-established consistent reasonably stable API with no aversion to closed-source or commercial software. As a bonus, quite a few developers already know it from the first time around. All of this should help encourage developers.
So while it may not be ideal today, Haiku shows quite a bit of promise in this direction. There’s still a long way to go, but there’s a lot of potential.
Well if you are a developer there is good news. The Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) supports Haiku (and about 18 other platforms), and the Lazarus IDE works under Haiku too. So developing new modern software would not be a problem at all. FPC can rival any compiler and language out there with features and speed.
I am even considering creating a Haiku backend for my fpGUI Toolkit project. I must be honest, this was the first time I looked at Haiku, but so far I like it a lot, and will definitely spend some more time getting to know the OS better.
Kudos to the Haiku developers!
What you find largely depends on what you’re looking for. For example, while I was for years what some would consider a notable Haiku developer, I’m more into checking in patches and stuff now, *but* I actively develop programs for Haiku, like the IDE I’ve been working on called Paladin. There are other active community developers as well, but I’ll be the first to admit that there aren’t very many. The photo manager Album has seen a recent release, for example.
Some software has been around for a while but works quite well. BePodder is a great example. Quite a lot of available software is open source (some of it very well -written) that the original developer has moved on to greener pastures.
Right now, Haiku as an operating system just needs developers, both on the project itself and in the community developing applications. I’ve been writing a series of lessons for people who’ve wanted to learn to program, but never had the time or someone to teach them or whatever. I’m no genius, so if I could learn to write code using the BeOS (and now Haiku) API. why not someone else?
Anyone who wants to get hold of some good software should go over to Haikuware (http://www.haikuware.com) and download some stuff. There’s lots of good stuff over there!
I’m very happy about the progess haiku makes every day. If it continues like that, I think with alpha 3, I won’t need linux anymore, and I will have just haiku and windows7 on my notebook.
For that webpositive, even if it already works great, has to improve a little more (e.g. html5) , and a gui for Wifi (+wpa2) and perhaps 3d hw acceleration.
It also great, that even QT 4.7 is not yet released, the russians are already working on a port. Visit http://www.qt-haiku.ru to see a nice screenshot 🙂
It’s really a pleasure to see that haiku makes great progress, even if his direct competitors have nearly stopped making progress (e.g. SkyOs,….).
Yay, my WiFi chipset is now supported!
Yet again another great day for me in getting out from under the large corporation operating system thumb. Apple is just too big and bulky for my tastes these days, and the company itself has become quite evil. Go Haiku, thank you for all your efforts and results!
Well, the team has made some progress since alpha 1, including some visible ones (faster boot, better look, less crashes in user apps). Haiku is on its way to becoming a full-featured modern desktop operating system. It provides good to excellent developer support, and it is technologically-wise very interesting (except that it seriously lacks some security features and package management).
But, right now, Haiku still lacks something. Some unique features, some “cool factor”. Let’s put it differently : right now, I’ve got a full linux system which works perfectly well, does not annoy me with popups, is packed with a lot of powerful free software, and globally satisfies my needs. Why should I, as an user, move to a new system that has a highly different UI (and is proud of it, so it’s not going to change) and go through some learning pain ?
Even if Haiku would introduce support for every single linux software in the world, this issue would remain. For modern desktop Linux distros, the cool factor was something about performance and resource usage, package management, customization, powerful CLI, ease of software development, and all hardware working out of box. Now that I’m a full-time linux user, if someone wants to make me use a new OS, he has to introduce something more. Something unique, targeting users (not only devs), and which my current OS does not provide.
Edited 2010-05-10 17:44 UTC
Right now Haiku aims at a different kind of users. The one who are able to produce stuff or at least are willing to give some meaningful feedback, file bug tickets … the trailblazers. The second wave can only come after the hard part is done.
That’s fair, except that developers are users too. Why would people work on an OS which they don’t like as users, which they wouldn’t use on a regular basis ?
I am a developer *and* an user. As a computer user, I like Linux for the reasons given above. So if I want, as a developer, to code some user-oriented app, I’ll probably do it on Linux, because it’s my preferred OS. And code for Linux, too, be it for testing purposes or because I want to use my soft too. All that even though I think that anything GUI-related on Linux is just horrible.
Now what if, as an example, I got a Linux-like user experience, but with a better API like that of Haiku ? As an user, I wouldn’t care. As a developer, I’d prefer Haiku’s API. So then I’d switch to Haiku. But user decisions always win facing developer’s decisions, at least in my brain ^^
Edited 2010-05-10 18:58 UTC
You shouldn’t work on an OS you don’t like.
Wouldn’t make sense, so maybe Haiku just isn’t the OS for you.
But don’t assume that if you don’t like it, that every developer won’t like it either though.
Edited 2010-05-11 16:24 UTC
That was not a sentence about Haiku in particular, but rather a general thought about the fact that, in my opinion, an OS should first target people as users and only then target them as developers, since to attract devs you must attract them as users first ^^
Edited 2010-05-11 16:43 UTC
Unlike Linux, Haiku is designed from the ground up to be a desktop system. Everything from performance tradeoffs and how you install software to presenting a consistent user interface and a stable ABI (less need to compile from source and more friendly for commercial developers) is geared towards being a solid desktop operating system. THAT is what it brings to the table.
It also has some real niceties that you don’t see elsewhere, such as its use of extended attributes, which in the BeOS days was referred to as “a database-like filesystem”. Please note that although all major filesystems today support extended attributes, only the BeOS inspired systems really make use of them. The difference lies in the userland. You have to try Haiku and get under its skin to really see what this means. And this part will only become better once the index feeder is in place.
That’s a fair design goal, but what about the resulting decisions ? I’ll answer the following post which goes into more detail about those.
Is this used in order to improve search ? What do I use this feature for ? Which kind of task does it help ?… See where I’m going ? ^^
Edited 2010-05-10 19:08 UTC
In a nutshell, individual filetypes in Haiku are roughly analogous to database tables – and each filetype can be given attributes (roughly analogous to fields in a DB). Then the Tracker (filemanager) lets you display those attributes as columns so you can easily view, edit, or sort by attributes.
The three best-known examples of practical uses are managing contact/address book data, EMail messages, and audio files. So, for example, the filemanager can display columns like track number, artist, title, year, etc for audio files – essentially giving you iTunes-esque functionality, except at the OS level.
So, yes, it does help with search – but there’s quite a bit more to it as well. Attributes, queries, etc, are as a fundamental to the way Haiku works as piping and redirection are to the UNIX shell – and, in fact, they’re used for many of the same purposes (allowing applications to be small and focused, while still being able to share data & communicate via standardized means).
Okay, if I understand well it is something like OS-managed metadata. Sounds pretty nice, though I wonder how well it would scale if millions of attributes were to appear in various applications with time…
Attributes do add some overhead – E.g. emptying the trash with a large number of files often takes longer than it does on other OSes, because the attributes have to be deleted too (and not just the files). But, IME, the benefits outweigh the costs.
I have been using Linux as my only OS for many years, until I recently started dual booting Haiku. I can tell you the reasons why I am interested in using it. By the way, I have never used BeOS, and didn’t know anything about it until after I started using Haiku.
Single group of developers
I like the way everything works together in a desktop operating system where the kernel, GUI, and API have all been designed together. It has a sort of “solid” feel to it. One example of this is, I can click and drag almost anything onto anything in Haiku and have the expected result. (file onto application icon, selected text into another application window, image onto the desktop…) Hmm… I realize I’m not making a very good point, but anyway, that’s how I feel when using Haiku.
Free and open source
Also, free and open source software is important to me, so even though Windows and Mac OS X are made by single companies, I am not interested in them.
User in control
Haiku does does not have the concept of being “busy”. There is nothing equivalent to the Windows hourglass, the Mac OS X pinwheel, or the (rarely seen) Linux hourglass. Haiku doesn’t even have a mouse cursor for that. The user is always in control.
Nice user interface
I found the GUI to be very pleasant to look at and easy to learn. The major different I found was how the deskbar works, but you can click and drag the little “handle” to make it look like GNOME or Windows if you want.
Good default settings
I like how the default settings are very nice. I find that Haiku has a good balance of “setup everything nicely for me and don’t let me mess it up” and “give me the power to do whatever I want on my computer”. I am often tweaking Linux, or in other words, working ON Linux instead of working IN Linux. I don’t find that to be the case in Haiku. (Or Mac OS X)
Good default API
As a software developer, I like the standard API that is included on all Haiku installations, which includes widgets, graphics, and sound.
“Clean” software packages
There are philosophical differences in how software is packaged and run. There isn’t really a concept of an application being “installed”. Instead, all of the files for an application just sit in a directory. To “uninstall”, just delete the directory. You could put all of your Haiku applications on a USB drive, stick it in any Haiku computer, and just run the applications right off the drive. I know Linux software can be setup to run like this, but in Haiku it is expected.
…That’s all I can think of now. It may not be enough to “convert” many people, but I think Haiku is different enough from other operating systems that some people will find it to be what they want in an OS.
I can understand that. GUI developed separately from the kernel on Linux feels just horrible. I’ve learned programming with Delphi (RAD development on top of Windows API), and have been the “unified” feeling of it ever since.
I agree that the issue is relatively important. That’s not a major selling point for most users however, and won’t make any difference for a Linux user.
Well, on VirtualBox at least said user has to wait from time to time.
But I suppose that you talk about the hourglass without the mouse pointer attached to it, the one that forbids you from doing anything, and then you’re totally right. No program-accessible functions should *ever* allow slowing down the UI to the point where it does not respond to user input. User control is more important than performance on a GUI system.
There’s one area where Haiku does this the wrong way, though : startup, where the mouse pointer is already there while you can still do nothing useful and have to wait for some time before UI gets actually loaded.
Didn’t know about that. The Windows/GNOME way of doing things is a waste of space, though, so I’ll keep it as a vertical panel. What I found while playing with the deskbar, however, was an option that I was deeply missing : always on top. For the user to stay in control, the deskbar must stay easily accessible. With always on top, it feels clunky though (windows are not resized in order to stop going behind the deskbar), it’s clear that it’s not the developer’s preferred options. It’s sad, I think it should.
Other things which I dislike about Haiku’s UI…
-> The tabbed windows border. It would become something useful if I could move the tab all around the window (including around the left, right, and bottom borders) and create tabbed windows in the way the newer KDE 4 does, but at the moment it’s just harder to grab windows border with nothing in compensation.
-> I miss windows grabbing with Alt + Click in the middle of the window. It’s one of the few powerful and distinctive features of Linux’s window management.
-> I dislike the ways file browsing and management is done currently, because…
1/I get tired of seeing “mount” menus everywhere. Is mounting and unmounting really such an important task ?
2/The current way of managing file icons is not Fitts-friendly. To make file management an easy task, icons must be bigger, so that they can be targeted easily even when you move the pointer with little precision. Use of list views does not allow that. 16×16 icons have very low readability and are hard to target (especially in 1280×1024).
Moreover, icons in folders are a mess as soon as you stop using list view, just like in older releases of Mac OS… And just as annoying. Last issue with icons : apparently, you can’t have a global setting for all folders, which means that if you want to get rid of the list view, you must go into each and every folder, one by one, and change this settings. This is horribly bad.
3/Spatial file browsing is bad as a default settings. It fills your desktop with loads of windows that you don’t care about, and once you’ve done with it you must close all those windows, one by one. That mistake was introduced by older Mac OS too, if I remember well… Some people like it, most do not, hence don’t make it the default.
I tweak Linux and Windows more than Haiku myself, that’s true. But I’ve still some issues with default settings, as shown above…
That’s one of Haiku’s selling point as a developer, sure
But it does not improve everyday user experience…
It’s true that it’s simpler. But I wonder if this behavior is here to stay when Haiku devs begin to have security in mind. Good security without some kind of installer is difficult. I’m personally a packet advocate : it allows caring about security and centralized software management, without introducing some “next” hell…
Edited 2010-05-10 20:15 UTC
have been missing*
You can slide the tab on the window press shift or control don’t remember which also you can drag windows by thier borders…
Another thing Alt+click is an X11 feature… not Linux since you get it on solaris and bsd too I think anyway
Yes, I know that. But I think this ability is close to useless at the moment, the benefits don’t overcome the drawbacks.
What I would like it the ability to create *real* tabbed, grouped windows. Something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCL_6YNgc8w (around 2:20). This, imo, would make more sense than current tabbing features.
You’re right. When I said linux, I implicitly meant the kernel + whole library&app set you get in the average distro. Forgive me for that.
Edited 2010-05-10 20:43 UTC
The features you are looking for have been under development for some time by a group at the University of Auckland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccniJHjo_Uw
It has generated lots of interest and discussions. Try searching for “Stack and Tile” on google and/or in the Haiku mailing lists. Sooner or later this will be part of Haiku, but stabilizing the code and merging it into trunk is a lot of work.
You can drag the tab by holding SHIFT, but it stays on the top side. I really like your suggestion of being able to drag the tab all around the window, though.
Recently I saw a video that demonstrated the grouping of multiple windows into one, just like KDE can do, but I don’t think this functionality is in this Alpha release.
I’ve been trying the new Haiku release for the past few hours and although it isn’t perfect, it has been a very solid experience so far. ( and yes, I’m enjoying it in my lappie’s native resolution
)
Edited 2010-05-10 20:52 UTC
found it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccniJHjo_Uw
Highly interesting ! I’d love to see all of this make its way into Haiku, it’s just brilliant !
Some afterthoughts, after the “wow” effect stopped :
-> When windows are grouped in an “horizontal” fashion (ie you see both at the same time), the border between them should be thinner, to let the user know about the different resizing behavior.
-> Why not introduce a “dummy tab” which allows closing all tabs and gets the resizing button while removing it from all other tabs ? It’d also allow moving all grouped tabs at the same time but easily managing tabs independently through left click (in a google chrome-like way)
Edited 2010-05-11 06:11 UTC
I think the idea is that by using a “tab” on top of each window it allows the deskbar to always be clickable, even when a window is fullscreen. If there is a window covering the deskbar, you could right click (or middle click, I can’t remember) the windows’s tab to push it behind everything.
Moving the tab all around the window is an interesting idea. As for now, you can slide the tab along the top of the window by holding the shift key. I’m sorry, I can’t remember if they plan on adding the functionality to group windows into a single window with tabs, but I think they are. You can simulate it by placing windows on top of each other and sliding the tabs around, but I agree that having the functionality built in would be very nice.
It’s there. I think it’s shift + ctrl + click, but I can never remember. I always have to hit a bunch of key combinations before I get it.
Haiku has been the only OS where I’ve tried sticking with spatial file browsing. It’s been good for me. It behaves correctly, for example, by remembering the location and size of every window. Sometimes I find it nice to have the “trail” of windows open. Sometimes, when I know I what I want and want to get to it quickly, I just right click on the folder and “drill down” through the menus to get it. Also, I sometimes just double click on folder after folder while holding the “opt” (“Windows” key), which will close the last window I was in while opening the new one.
By the way, I love the “resize” button of each window. I never use the maximize button in any other user interface, but I find I use the resize button all the time.
Edit: Eugenia had an interesting comment about spatial file managers here:
http://www.osnews.com/story/7344
You may be interested in reading the discussion on package manager ideas for Haiku:
http://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/PackageManagerIdeas
Edited 2010-05-10 20:58 UTC
Good to know, though I still feel a bit critical about this :
1/Contrary to the always on top behavior, it is highly non-discoverable. If you don’t know that it’s there (and, as a new user, you probably don’t know), good luck finding it or even having the idea to look for it in the manual… That’s fine for power-user tricks (like opening an app-menu by middle-clicking on the desktop in kde 3), but deskbar manipulation is something you have to learn very early in the process of getting used to haiku so it doesn’t fit this category…
2/If several windows are covering the deskbar, you have to put them behind one by one. You should act on the deskbar itself, not on the windows. As an example, I think of my girlfriend : she doesn’t like tabbed browsing (because it often makes she close all tabs accidentally. She uses Safari, yeah…), so she just opens a lot of browser windows. As far as I know, there are other people who browse the web this way (generally old-time IE 6 users who never took the time to learn about tabs and overcome the disgust it may inspire first). That’s a typical case where your desktop can be filled with such windows, covering the desk bar.
Tried a bit out of fun, but it looks like a hack, not like something I’d do in everyday life. Windows still move independently (Ie there is no unified tab controls like “close all tabs” and some way to move all tabs at the same time), and tab moving + windows resizing in order to get a tabbed window is too much time-consuming to be something that I’d do all the time.
Tried harder because of this post, and indeed I finally found it, it’s Ctl+Alt. I feel better now. Just something : this may be a bit subjective (like everything I say about UX), but I think that using two modifier keys for an everyday shortcut is a bit too much (I dislike it as much as I dislike Ctl + Shift + Z shortcuts in KDE apps and Alt + Shift + Tab shortcuts in every windows manager). Why not use this “Flag key” on the bottom of every current keyboard which only waits for someone to use it for all system tasks ?
Well, since most people are used to non-spatial file browsing, why not make it work the other way, ie flag key for opening the new window and simple double click for opening the folder in the same window ?
Didn’t try it much at the moment. Only tried in WebPositive, and it provided a full screen behavior (making me mentally scream “hey ! Where’s the tab gone ???” for a second). I agree that there’s room for improvement in windows resizing buttons though (on those new very large screens, fully maximized windows feel clunky, though it’s fine on 17-inch screens). Can you please quickly explain me what Haiku has to offer in this area ?
Well, I understand her point of view, but I dislike the way she dictates how one should organize his/her files.
1/For some things, I need a big hierarchy. Typical exemple : my OS dev folder directory structure.
Top : Blog/ Code/ Doc/ Results
Code/ : arch/ bin/ debug/ include/ init/ lib/ process/ support/
arch/ : x86_64
x86_64 : bootstrap/ debug/ include/ init/
bootstrap : include/ lib/
That’s a 6-level directory structure, however I can explain why I need each level :
-1st because I have several things to store in the OS dev area
-2nd because otherwise there’s code everywhere in the main folder and it’s a mess. I hate messy folders.
-3rd because I plan to go multiplatform
-4th because otherwise it’s a mess, again.
-5th because it allows to quickly locate the main source files.
2/Since when does the machine’s capabilities decide for me ? I’m the user. It’s the slave. Doesn’t it work that way ?
Interesting thoughts, but I don’t think that having two ways of managing programs (installed and non-installed ones) is a good idea. Non-installed (and hence non-updated) software would become the norm, because locating /boot/apps would be too slow compared with simply unpacking the zip file. It could be interesting, however, to be able to try a package in a sandboxed environment before installing it. This makes trying an inherently clunky behavior (you cannot save any data and so on), so that users install the app in the end, but it offers the possibility of doing so…
Edited 2010-05-11 06:13 UTC
On the old AthlonXP 2800 that I use for Haiku and BeOS (not exactly a powerhouse machine), the mouse cursor is visible for maybe 2-3 seconds before the desktop appears.
Haiku Menu > Deskbar Settings > Always on Top.
Not sure I see the utility to moving it elsewhere on the Window (on the left or right sides, the text label would become vertical – and therefore much harder to read quickly).
Even without stack-and-tile, the title tabs are still useful – mainly because they make it possible to have a group of arbitrary windows that overlap, but are still easily-accessible because the tabs are visible.
I’m fairly certain that someone released an input_server plugin to implement Alt-drag a few years back, but sadly I can’t remember the name.
“Everywhere”? By my count, the “Mount” menu exists in exactly one place: Tracker’s right-click menu.
Sure, if you have multiple drives/partitions, or regularly insert & unplug removable media.
Honestly, I can’t say that’s ever posed a problem for me in a decade-plus of using BeOS and Haiku. Files can be dragged by the text label too, as with just about every other GUI filemanager in existence.
Ctrl-Shift-K.
That “problem” is a side-effect of a intentional feature: namely, the way that Tracker preserves folder window size & display settings. But yeah it would be nice to have an “Apply to all folders” option.
There are 2 keyboard shortcuts & 1 modifier that make that issue trivially-easy to avoid.
Ctrl-Opt-Up: open parent folder & close current folder
Ctrl-Opt-Down: open selected sub-folder and close current folder, double-clicking a folder with Option (Win-key) held down accomplishes the same thing.
Spatial file management has been the default in BeOS/Haiku since long before the term “spatial file management” was even coined. Given that most current Haiku users probably former BeOS users, that default makes sense.
Maybe that will change in the future, but even then I still think there’s a benefit to exposing new users to a file management approach they may not be familiar with. Sure, some will hate it and immediately change to single-window mode (which takes all of 5 seconds). But there will also be people who come to prefer “spatial mode” and appreciate having been introduced to it (speaking as a spatial file management “convert” who used to prefer 2-pane/single-window file managers).
True, but a good API can enable/ease the development of software that DOES improve everyday user experience.
Okay, so it’s just a Virtualbox-specific bug (on my Athlon64 3000+, with ~500 MB of virtual RAM and 64MB of virtual video ram, it takes around 20-30 seconds to fully load desktop + deskbar + tracker).
No, what I’m talking about is using tabs on the left and right side but with horizontal labels. If you wonder why this may be useful, compare how much apps the deskbar with default settings (vertical list of horizontal buttons) can show with how much it can show when it’s put at the bottom of the desktop. This would allow much more tabs to be put on the side of a window. Currently, you can put 3-4 tabs side by side as a maximum, with tabs on the left or on the right, you could make ~10-tabs windows easily.
It seems to have been integrated (see previous pages in discussion), sadly someone thought that Ctl+Alt+Click was smarter in meantime…
Right click on desktop + Deskbar menu. I thought I had seen more, though. IMO, it should be in only one place, or, even more nice, not appear in menus unless an option is set somewhere…
Problem is that manual drive mounting is a geek-only feature. Normal users don’t manually mount/umount their partitions everyday, they just have them mounted automagically as needed and unmount them through a right-click menu. As an example, Windows automatically mounts drives/partitions, why some linux desktops do not but show an icon for the unmounted drive/partitions and mounts them automatically when you want to access them. I prefer the second option myself : it’s not resource-intensive, it works without the need of going through some manual mounting (and hence learning about mounting), and it’s easily discoverable too…
Alt+K (Ctl+Shift+K does not work, so I suppose that’s what you meant) still leads to messy results, just like mac OS classic.
1/It does not reorganizes the icons on a grid, it wastes space everywhere…
2/…and hence icons finally get out of the window, leading to the need of scrolling or resizing the window.
Random example of both : http://yfrog.com/jmmesshp
Yeah, or a way to disable per-folder display settings, like in Windows XP.
This still means that spatial browsing is not the preferred way of browsing files : you have to learn some keyboard shortcuts or play with preferences in order to do otherwise.
My problem is with having this used as a default setting. But then, as you said…
Actually, that argument, while perfectly valid, is one of the things that make me less enthusiastic about Haiku than as usual : in the end, wouldn’t bearing the BeOS legacy have the same effect on it as the one bearing the DOS legacy has had on Windows for a very long time ?
Maybe, though ergonomically-wise it’s generally better to make people use the knowledge which comes from using other OSs, in order to reduce learning pain. However, you’re right that applying this principle everywhere is bad for innovation. I dislike spatial browsing because of my love for big hierarchies in file storage, but it may be better in the long run.
That’s a design choice which I, and many potential users, happen not to like. Let’s see how well it’ll perform in the future ^^
Only if you can make usability-aware devs use it, which requires more usability in the whole OS first
That’s a chicken and egg dilemma, isn’t it ?
Edited 2010-05-11 16:50 UTC
Yes, I completely agree. This should require a single modifier key only, it doesn’t matter which modifier, but it needs to be only one key.
For deep hierarchies, I’m sure you will love Tracker’s right-click drill down. It just might make spatial browsing bearable for you
Maybe ^^ Once Haiku reaches beta quality and handles USB pens + FAT filesystem and WPA encryption + Atheros chips, I’ll try to install it on my hard drive, and do my everyday work using it + a 8 GB usb pen, in order to definitively decide if I like it or not. At the moment, in VBox, I can play with the OS and stress-test it a bit, but performance is not good enough for everyday use, which I need for a more in-depth usability test. Moreover, I need some OS development environment in order to play with my code (at the moment I use 2 custom GCC+binutils builds, one for i686 and one for x86_64, Kate as a C/C++/asm code editor, Bochs for testing purposes, and a bash-like command interpreter along with mtools and dd for repetitive task automation sake), and I don’t know if I could set up one in Haiku easily.
Edited 2010-05-11 21:21 UTC
Did you ever consider the problem might be you and your approach to Haiku?
Boot times if more than 15 seconds for Haiku suggests something is very wrong with YOUR setup. My system boots in less than 10 seconds off a hard-drive and less than 5 seconds off a SSD.
There are two working development systems available, what have you tried?
USB drives work fine for me. 2GB and 8GB models.
FAT partitions are R/W for me.
My Atheros chipset has been working since the start of February.
WPA encryption I have no need for.
Surely. Until now, I’ve mainly been arguing about why Haiku is going to give new users some headaches before they get used to it (if one tells them that *they* are to blame because they can’t adapt themselves to the computer, they’ll just laugh and get out), and discussing some design decisions from my exterior Linux user point of view. This is important, at least if Haiku wants to attract some new users someday (and they’ll probably find them in the Linux crowd first). And when you’re deep into an OS, it becomes harder to see some flaws, which you see more easily at first look. Hence my “first look” comments.
Now, for everyday use testing, I need to quit Linux thinking and go into Haiku thinking, which noticeably needs using it as my main OS (instead of under vbox emulation) for some time. I’ve hence described which requirements Haiku must meet before I use it in such a way. I am aware that some requirements are already met.
I tried Alpha 2, but don’t search too far : as I’ve explained before, the issue is that I’m using Virtualbox. I don’t know if VT/AMD-V brings near-native performance as advertised, but without that you get sluggish performance as long as you don’t have guest additions installed. I need to get out of Virtualbox for performance testing and everyday use, it’s just useful for having a general look at the UI and stress-testing app behavior (especially under high CPU load).
Thanks for that information ! Didn’t know that the Haiku already went so far ^^
I just had some doubts about USB pens, because some posts ago someone say that it was not working for him.
Now, for what’s left…
-> Beta-quality : I wait for Haiku devs to be sufficiently confident on their OS to call it a Beta before installing it on a real machine. I don’t want to get my HDD killed because of some random driver/partition handling issue, and from the post above it looks like even the boot process is not perfectly stable yet, so I should better wait a bit.
-> WPA : Yes, I really need that. I won’t switch my router to WEP simply because of Haiku. WEP is outdated encryption technology that you can probably crack with a simple smartphone now (as long as aircrack has been ported on it), no one should be using it in 2010.
-> OS Dev environment : Don’t know much about development on haiku. Is there a way to build a custom ELF toolchain ? A port of mtools or some other command line tool for FAT image file handling ? A way to execute some variant of script shell (don’t care about the syntax, just need something that can execute common commands and is as easy to edit as modify) ? Has bochs or a similar x86_64 emulator been ported to Haiku ?
Edited 2010-05-12 06:17 UTC
There’s your problem. VirtualBox. Believe me, native Haiku is so fast that you will not believe your eyes. Even with VESA and 100% CPU Haiku won’t make you wait one bit.
I always use Auto-raise. Nice balance between having the Deskbar out of the way and still it being accessible.
Shift-click should to the trick
Other than volumes, I didn’t see any Mount and Unmount menu items.
There is no “next” hell in Haiku
If you ever get the chance to install a .pkg, you will see how fast it is to install one. Double-click, install, done. Just like in Linux.
Yes, that’s what I improperly called a packet in that post (I know that the good word is package, but both words happen to be translated as “paquet” (reads as [päkè]) in French so sometimes I make the mistake).
Packages are the best way of distributing software that I know of. It works with *or* without a central server, it doesn’t require everyday admin access for some untrusted “installer” program, it’s easy to install and behaves in a consistent way across multiple software…
Edited 2010-05-12 15:05 UTC
… you do realize that rhymes, right? 😀
I am utterly amazed by the progress that has been made… in ONLY 8 months since Alpha 1? I had no idea it had been that recent. Time flies when you’re having fun, eh?
The biggest improvement (something I had no idea had even been stepped up), as far as I’m concerned, is WEP. I knew Haiku had WiFi (unprotected), but I never heard a peep as far as reaching the level of WEP. I only wish that our network was still set to that… but we’re using WPA2 now.
If Haiku can keep the same progress “stepping” as this revision, then I suspect it may be no later than January 2011, before we reach Alpha 3. If every official release yields a faster official release the next time, then I imagine we may see Alpha 3 (or more) before the end of this year. I can only hope!
I was having trouble with the nightly Alpha 2 builds on Haiku files not running on either QuadSlacker or Athlonica. It kept crashing on both systems, no matter what I did.
So, time to download the official Alpha 2 and “have at”, as the saying goes.
Great work guys… you guys RULE! Haiku RULES! Long live Haiku… FOREVER!!!
I’ve been trying this alpha for a few hours. So far, I’m amazed: VESA performance in Haiku is impressive, and comparable to a fully accelerated desktop in any other OS. No native resolution available for me, though.
The OS itself doesn’t look like an alpha at all. Everything is stable and there is a high degree of consistency between apps. The included ones surprised me: WebPositive looks like a fast and decent browser with only some major features lacking (I miss a Google search box, for example), and WonderBrush is an impressive painting app that goes way beyond the Paintbrush clone I expected.
Give me native resolution support and the ability to mount network shares, and it would be almost 100% usable for me as my primary desktop.
May I ask what your video card and native resolution is?
ATI HD4800. The native resolution is 1920×1080, but I’m forced to use standard VESA resolutions.
I downloaded the new alpha and actually got it installed on a 2GB USB stick. (No need for a separate hard drive to try Haiku.) My jaw dropped when I saw how fast it booted to the desktop!
And then, I was like… Now what?
It seems to me like I was able to get aroud the alpha 1 live CD easier than with alpha 2. Like the subject title says, I might be getting rusty though because it’s been a while since I last tried the first alpha release of Haiku.
Find some apps and run them, see if the OS will work for you. Its hard to take off the “I use my computer like this” blinders, people get set in how they compute (look at the windows XP crowd). Just keep in mind that different isn’t always unproductive. atm though Haiku is more targeted towards developers and techs, keep in mind… only computer nerds used to work on DOS back in the day
<shameless plug>
If your looking for applications, http://haikufire.com is an alternative to HaikuWare. Everything on HaikuFire is tested and if an application requires external libraries, it’s well documented.
</shameless plug>
Edited 2010-05-11 04:14 UTC
Once it has WPA encryption support, I will seriously consider moving to Haiku full-time. Hopefully while I’m waiting WebPositive will mature and KOffice will drop the “K” and be given a first class Haiku port.
The amazing thing is the Haiku developers are still very much in the trenches. I can’t wait to see the end product, all the rough edges smoothed off.
So it will just be “Office”? As long as it doesn’t have that annoying K right?
Amazing speed and memory use. I only noticed it using around 150 megs at most out of 1GB. nVidia card and 20″ Dell monitor ran at the correct resolution of 1680×1050, as did the onboard audio (my new SB Audigy didn’t work though–damn newer, unsupported chipsets; the BSDs don’t work either AFAIK). Ogg Vorbis files seem to play fine (as do MP3s) but often produce a noise between files.
Also, I noticed that the web browser can take a lot of CPU on certain sites when scrolling to the point of screwing up the playing music file (can’t remember if the site had Flash applets or not, but it probably did; I’m used to no flash thanks to NoScript and Adblock, which are not available in Web Positive). And on that note, the included Flash substitute, Gnash I believe, sucks (even worse than Flash itself). It doesn’t even play YouTube videos.
On my 2001 Gateway (1.7GHz P4 w/ 256MB RAM), I unfortunately got disc read/timeout errors leading to a kernel panic upon boot. Thinking that maybe it was one of those bugs potentially only effecting the “anyboot” image, I burned the regular ISO. Unfortunately, the same exact thing happens.
I wish the Flash problem could be fixed–IMO it’s the main weakness. Flash sucks, and Gnash sucks even worse. Honestly, I’d rather see Haiku not have Flash support at all, or have Adobe port their player. But yes, I know there’s not a slim chance in hell of that happening unless Haiku gets big enough (which obviously won’t happen for quite a while, and certainly not before it’s officially out of alpha/beta).
This is great news. Lack of wifi encryption held me back from installing it on my Acer One.
No more the long waiting for Ubuntu to boot up -even with a faster SSD- on that machine. Enter Haiku.
The steady pace at which Haiku moves is just awesome. The developers are very comitted! Thanks guys.
I remember staring at the progress bars ~9 yrs ago on the open-beos site, where all parts of the OS where still in the planning fase. The wait is over 🙂
Edited 2010-05-11 07:49 UTC
I don’t understand why… but Alpha 2 will NOT boot on any of the 3 systems I have. It KDL’s on one, before finishing the boot icons. It locks up at the Language preference menu on another. And it locks up at a blue desktop screen (no icons, just the mouse pointer) on the 3rd one.
Yet, Alpha 1 ran PERFECTLY on all these systems!
Anyone else having these types of problems?
Have you tried burning the ISO on a larger CD-ROM or DVD-R? Apparently some people on the mailing lists had issues with 650Mb CDRs, which disappeared when they burned the image to larger capacity media. Don’t quote me, though …
It’s very common… so I installed ubuntu, download the sources and build Haiku into a new partition… and just works…
I’ve been struggling to get it running on my IBM Thinkpad X30, which also runs Alpha 1 fine, albeit only in safe-mode VESA video (which doesn’t bother me, it’s still my monitor’s highest supported, 1024×768). With Alpha 2, I’ve had it stop before ever getting to the blue screen and had it stop with a stuck pointer on the blue screen, depending on what “Safe Mode” options I chose.
I finally got the CD to boot all the way to the Live Desktop/possibility of install (haven’t installed yet) by changing the following “Safe Mode Options” in the bootloader (hit the spacebar while the bootloader is displaying it’s line of dots to get to the options screen):
I had to Disable DMA Mode, Use Safe Mode Video, and Disable ACPI.
I also had to go to the “Boot From Volume” sections and explicitly tell it to boot from only the CD-ROM (vs. Hard Drive or CD). Only then would it get past the stuck pointer on a blank blue screen.
I’ve had no luck whatsoever with USB sticks, only with a CD-R using the ISO image.
Hope that helps. I guess the moral of the story is to fiddle with the various booting options to see what works. I of course plan to file some bug tickets sometime soon. That’s the whole point of Alpha releases, right? (:
Edited 2010-05-11 19:33 UTC
Stupid me… I completely forgot about the boot menu thing… I can get to that and see how that helps. Thanks for reminding me!
try disabling acpi in the boot menu (press spacebar quick at boot)
On Athlonica (An Athlon XP 2000+ system, running on an nForce2 chipset board), I have even tried disabling EVERYTHING (not just ACPI) and all it does now is KDL with a “no bootable partition” (or whatever) message.
It either goes to and freezes at a blue (no icons) desktop or it KDL’s. Fun.
I’m guessing that the only way to get a usable revision of Haiku on any system is to install Ubuntu and create it that way.
Haiku is the only FOSS project that I’ve ever donated money to, so it’s great to see an awesome new version coming out.
Want to write an app for Haiku? Here’s where to start:
http://www.osnews.com/story/22903/Writing_Applications_for_Haiku
I’d suggest trying darkwyrm’s articles too. Quickly had a look at them and they sounded like a great introduction to C++ and Haiku development
See following blog post and subsequent ones
http://www.haiku-os.org/blog/darkwyrm/2010-01-20_calling_all_haiku_…
Edited 2010-05-11 20:44 UTC
This might be a dumb question, and I guess I could just check google for the answer, but does anyone know if you need to reinstall haiku when you upgrade ? Can you do an apt-get dist upgrade or something similar?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
There is no form of centralized package management in haiku at the moment, so it won’t be as simple as an apt-get dist upgrade. However, if I remember well, there’s a way to update packages manually, by downloading updated versions from a mirror and installing them one by one. Sadly, I don’t remember where said mirror is… And it was at alpha 1 time, so maybe things have changed since then.
Edited 2010-05-12 19:55 UTC
it’s simple. You just install it over, and it will replace only the needed files.
Sometimes I do that nearly daily, when trying out the nightlies, and it works great, fast and without complications.
I’m posting this with WebPositive on the new Alpha 2. Haiku is gradually improving, but it’s still not even close to the stability of BeOS. There are random little crashes and graphical corruptions and lots of little things that don’t quite work properly (not refreshing, not displaying properly, etc). I’ve been waiting a LONG time to move from BeOS to Haiku, but it looks like I’ll be waiting still longer.
WebPositive works, but it’s slower and buggier than FireFox 2 on BeOS. I can’t do things like download YouTube videos like I do on BeOS with DownloadHelper in FireFox 2. I hope WebPositive gets a search bar soon. I’ve come to rely on integrated search bars – ever since IBrowse 2.4 on my Amiga – so it feels a bit tedious to have to go to a site and search now.
I still appreciate all the work done on Haiku and WebPositive and I hope they continue to improve.
Edited 2010-05-13 18:57 UTC