Haiku Alpha 3 has been in development for more than 14 months. In that time more than 800 bugs have been identified and fixed, major sections have been updated, applications have been added and updated, and great progress has been made in supporting additional hardware. Here is a summary of updates, more details can be found here. Also inside, interviews with some core Haiku developers.
Haiku Alpha 3 OS Highlights
- Supported file systems now include: BFS, btrfs, exFAT, ext2, ext3, ext4, NTFS, and UDF.
- Gutenprint was ported and now provides support for more than 700 printers, thanks to Michael Pfeiffer.
- Improved hardware support for ACPI, video card drivers, network drivers, USB, and IO-APIC. Thanks to Michael Lotz for ACPI, USB and IO-APIC work.
- Addition of Stack and Tile window management, thanks to University of Aukland.
- Support for numerous scanners through the SANE/BeSANE library and GUI, thanks to Philippe Houdoin.
- Updates to 3D functions in OpenGL, thanks again to Philippe Houdoin.
User interface updates for BootManager, DiskUsage, MediaPlayer, ShowImage, and ReadOnlyBootPrompt. - A major refactoring of the Media Server for improved audio and video support, thanks to Stephan ‘Stippi’ Assmus.
- Addition of a general MIDI sound font, enabling many classic BeOS MIDI applications, thanks to Tim Brechbill.
- Big improvements to the Locale kit, enabling international language and font support.
- Addition of WiFi with WEP encryption. Thanks to Axel Dorfler.
- Ability to install to and boot from USB flash drive. OK, it’s not new but it’s very cool and very useful. More here on Haikuware’s wiki.
The First Independent Haiku Distribution
Provided by Haikuware, Senryu is based on the latest svn version (not forked), and brings the best quality applications and libraries from the Haikuware community. The goal of Senryu is to provide a friendly installation of Haiku with configuration and applications pre-loaded. Thanks to Karl vom Dorff and Michael VinÃcius de Oliveira.
Applications New and Updated Since Alpha 2
| TAXACCTS | TAXACCTS is a single entry bookkeeping system designed for sole proprietorships, partnerships, and tightly held corporations. TAXACCTS is ready to run upon installation with no lengthy account set-up required. With TAXACCTS, simply enter the data and print the reports. |
| RelatedMail | This application emulates a replicant view on Desktop, where you can drag & drop an e-mail or person file onto it and quickly have a query for any email that shares the attributes you selected. Updated. |
| Windows Decor | Window Decor is a simple program to change the Window look in Haiku without having to remember the sneaky key combination that puts Window Decor on the Haiku menu. Updated. |
| Vacuum IM | StreakX says this is the best IM for Haiku. Updated for Qt 4.8. |
| SDLGameLibraries | Now in GCC4, with include files and many updates! This suite will enable you to play the most modern SDL-based games! |
| Genealogie MyFamily | A Zeta genealogy app updated for Haiku. In German. |
| Caya | A multiprotocol chat client for Haiku. |
| robotfindskitten | A mellow rid game. |
| XvideoServiceThief 2.4 | Program for downloading streaming video from popular video sites. Updated for Qt 4.6. |
| PSI+ | IM Jabber client. Updated for Qt 4.8. |
| Cherokee | A very fast, flexible and easy to configure Web Server. Updated. |
| EiskaltDC++ | A cross-platform program that uses the Direct Connect and ADC protocol. Updated for Qt 4.8. |
| Corkboard | A proof-of-concept effort to emulate MacOSX Dashboard functionality. |
| Lelldorins Backup | Saves the settings of Haiku, before you reinstall it. You don’t need to change settings in your new Haiku install, just unzip the packages created by LBackup. |
| Run Programs | A quick command launcher that lets you run just about any app quickly from the command line — Terminal app, Deskbar apps, etc. Inspired by the Windows Run command, works with preferences. |
| Paladin | The best replacement for the BeIDE development environment. Numerous updates, including the ability to read legacy BeIDE project files. Highly recommended. |
| Bochs | New and Improved x86 emulator. |
| Arora | A free and open source lightweight cross-platform web browser. Updated. |
| MPlayer | A free and open source media player. MPlayer supports a wide variety of media formats and can also save all streamed content to a file. Updated. |
For a list of recommended Haiku applications look here.
Interviews with Core Haiku Developers: Michael ‘mmlr’ Lotz
What is your role?
Well, my contributions mostly revolve around the core system, drivers
and other infrastructure and less around apps.
Can you give us a description of some development you worked on?
I’ve recently worked on IO-APIC support (see Haikuware interview for
more details), usb_hid extensions for joysticks/gamepads as well as
tablet-like input devices (including absolute input devices as found
commonly in virtualization software) and completeing the usb_serial
work I’ve started some years ago.
In your opinion what were some of the biggest bugs you worked on?
Implementing IO-APIC support and its dependencies (PCI Interrupt
Routing) was probably the work with the most important impact on
hardware support. It solves various issues due to non configured
hardware devices. It was one of the larger hold-ups for hardware support
on modern systems.
What are some new features you think users will appreciate?
Well, broader hardware support. The usb_hid changes, while nice, won’t
affect quite as many right now (due to there being a limited amount of
software around to actually make use of the new features). Also the
usb_hid changes are more “nice to have” than critical because their
absence don’t prevent you from using a system.
What are some of your favorite Haiku apps and why do you like them?
Ehm, I usually use Mail, WebPositive and the Terminal to work on Haiku.
Those usually work well, at least good enough for my usage pattern.
Since I’m mostly doing “plain text” work, I don’t have too high a demand
on these applications. For example I don’t really care that I can’t do
youtube or that some more exotic websites aren’t displayed correctly.
So I’m not so good a reference for “end user” experience.
On the mediacenter PC the MediaPlayer is the most important. I’m really
glad that I don’t have to use any external media players anymore as the
format support has been very good.
Any additional thoughts on Hiaku you wold like to share?
As a general note from for Haiku users: if you find bugs, report them! I’m
often and increasingly confronted with the situation that someone
complains in IRC or in some random forum that things don’t work and
Haiku “is not ready”, “fails completely” or “doesn’t even support bla
bla”. It is very frustrating to hear those things when there are
no bug reports to go with them.
As a developer you implement stuff and get things working, most often features that you personally need or
hardware support for devices you have access to. Since there are nearly
endless combination possibilities of hardware (and to some extent
software) we can’t possibly test our changes for every combination. As
a result there’s a high chance that something works perfectly well for
the hardware or software the developer has available, but doesn’t on
other such combinations (like similar but ever so slightly different
hardware or software that does things just that bit different). Without
bug reports the developer can only assume that “it probably works” even
if that is not the case. So if you see issues with something not working
right or not working at all, the only right thing to do is file a bug
report or add your findings as a comment to an already existing report.
Otherwise us developers have a really hard time moving things forward.
Interviews with Core Haiku Developers: Adrien ‘PulkoMandy’
Can you give us a description of some development you worked on?
I for myself didn’t do much, as I had little time because of school. Other
devs started to work on the Locale Kit and it’s living it’s own life as part
of Haiku now. The improvements are listed in the release notes that I linked
above.
If you want to know what I did, I think the latest interesting piece of
code was the driver for usb-floppy drives. I needed it, so I wrote it. But I
don’t think many other people will have an use for it…
In your opinion what were some of the biggest bugs you worked on?
mmlr did a great work on improving the ACPI support, which means Haiku should
now be compatible with a lot more hardware. We are looking for reports on
that, to know what is the status, of course.
There was a lot of improvements on stability ; and a lot of fixed bugs, both
in the system and in the bundled applications. Localization is now much more
complete, up to items in the deskbar and tracker.
What are some new features you think users will appreciate?
Stack and Tile is now included in the images. It is not enabled by default,
but you can switch it on. It makes managing your windows a lot easier, and is
also one way more to impress people with what Haiku can do, alongside with
live queries and playing 10 video at the same time.
What are some of your favorite Haiku apps and why do you like them?
The apps I use more are Caya, Beam, Web+ and development tools. I’m not sure
I have anything special to say about them, however, they just get the job
done. The world of Haiku applications is just starting to live, I hope we
will see more and more quality applications developped for it. The system
allows for a great integration of the various apps that could really show
it’s power with an office suite or similar tools (with drag’n’drop
integration accross the system, and the very reactive user interface we all
got used to). Unfortunately, the core Haiku developpers are busy with other
things.
I’d also like to have an electronic circuit design application on Haiku,
since that’s one of the few reasons that makes me boot other operating systems.
I guess it’s the same for most people, Haiku is great for basic computer use
but it lacks apps dedicated to many specific stuff. Time will solve that, I
guess.
Are there any additional comments on Haiku you would like to share?
Haiku is making great progress across releases. After Alpha3, we are going
to start planning the roadmap to R1 more clearly, and try to set the
schedule for the first beta. The big missing part is the package manager, I
hope we can get that working soon.
We have some other things to sort out, for example making sure Haiku works
well in languages using a different font. Currently, Japanese does work, but
Chinese doesn’t. I think a lot of other languages are broken too. But it’s
not easy to fix without a developer knowing how it should look.
We have a lot of other things to solve before R1. But it may be a good thing,
since we’re not really ready for starting the work on R2 either.
Looking Forward
- Haiku still lacks a decent word processor. Rumor has it that there is work being done on KOffice.
- The VLC media player has been stalled at v.86 waiting for support for optional POSIX signals. There may soon be some progress to report on.
- Gene Ragan, formerly of Mediapede, has donated the source code for UltraDV.
- It would be great if someone could identify and resolve the GCC issues that prevent OpenJDK from running on Haiku.
- Haiku development is the result of many people working together and not everyone who did great work is mentioned here. For that I apologize.
UltraDV is a BeOS video editing application. It is not yet open sourced and there is a fair amount of porting work to be done. The project currently needs a dedicated developer. UltraDV offers the promise of a native video editor to make use of Haiku’s awesome Media Server. Any takers?
About the author
Andrew Hudson is a technical project manager living in Maine, USA. He is currently working on non-profit software infrastructure, data mining projects, and loves the band Camera Obscura.
Haiku OS has improved greatly from last time I check it. At least no stability problems right now (I am using it with WebPositive) and much more responsive. I think it is going in the right direction.
I can’t imagine Haiku being even MORE responsive than it already is! I’m curious, are you using Haiku in a VM?
I can’t wait to test it. Haiku seems the only alternative OS with a shot of becoming usable as a desktop OS. Seeing new releases and progress being made makes me really happy. Congrats and keep up the good work guys.
Just to know, what do you categorize as an alternative OS ? Do you consider desktop Linux or PC-BSD as alternative OSs ?
Edited 2011-06-20 11:04 UTC
Nope … I’m not including here Linux and other Unixy OSes.
I am not sure what he meant but I believe that Haiku has a better long-term shot at going mainstream on the desktop than Linux does. Certainly better than PC-BSD.
It is certainly early days though and only time will tell.
A sentiment I share, Linux consumer PC desktop computing, its a bad joke.
Really looking forward to seeing Haiku ready for production. I have followed this project since the very first minute of it’s existence.
I spent a few hours the other day browsing the source code and I was really impressed with it’s design. It’s kernel is of a hybrid design that is up to par with (if not better than) modern OS’s like Windows NT and OS X. Fully integrated GUI, and pretty much designed from the ground up to kick ass. The same cannot be said of GNU Linux, which is nothing more than a hack job built on top of an outdated monolithic kernel design.
I know it’s still several years away, but when the multi-user and server versions of Haiku are ready, I’ll switch all my Linux/BSD stuff to it in a heartbeat.
Edited 2011-06-20 11:20 UTC
You might be right but you’ve been downvoted (not by me). I’d hazard that the reason is the little thing you wrote about untouchable-pure-gold Linux being a hack.
The problem I see with Haiku is that it’s only “alpha 3″… and after that maybe a beta phase, before maybe a train of RCs. And that’s before the actual release of a first version.
I’m concerned about how relevant Haiku will still be by that time and how many people would have any incentive or reason to actually use it as their main OS.
But this alpha 3 is still good news, maybe that it’ll finally install on one of my systems.
OT: can a native speaker tell me what this means, the sentence construct feels weird: “It should be noted that over 800 bugs closed as fixed since R1 Alpha 2.” Thanks.
Edited 2011-06-20 12:22 UTC
The down vote was expected.
All it means is that approximately 800 call tickets were acknowleged as actual bugs and were corrected. This implies that the figure stripped out all of the call tickets that had resolutions like “won’t fix”, “cannot reproduce”, or “duplicate”.
Edited 2011-06-20 17:42 UTC
When a bug is closed in a bugtracker it doesn’t always mean it is fixed. 800 bugs are closed _and_ fixed.
Thanks (@atriq too). It feels ironic, being a software engineer, to have bugtrackers explained to me 🙂
The thing that seemed odd to me is the active voice on “close” with “bugs” as the subject. Instead of “bugs closed as fixed” I would have expected “bugs are closed as fixed”. But after a couple of rereadings, it made sense.
No, you’re correct. That would have been better english
Bugs can be closed for several reasons, and bug-tracking systems usually give you a way to state the reason a bug was closed. “Fixed” might be one. “Won’t fix,” “Unreproduceable,” and “It’s a feature, not a bug” might be others.
Apparently, at least 801 bugs were closed by being marked “Fixed.” Obviously it would have been much clearer if they had just said “over 800 bugs were fixed,” and left it at that This not so much a native-speaker issue, I think, as a Programmers-aren’t-always-the-best-communicators issue.
[q I’d hazard that the reason is the little thing you wrote about untouchable-pure-gold Linux being a hack. [/q]
That’s a risky bet, there was so much silliness in the previous post to focus on just one line as being the culprit.
It means that 800 bugs have literally been fixed not just closed as duplicates or as invalid and such.
By that definition, all modern kernels are hack jobs:
* NT is constantly undergoing source chopping of outdated / redundant features (aka the MinWin project) * XNU (OS X’s kernel) runs heavily hacked versions of Mach and BSD.
* SVR4 (of which Solaris has evolved from) was built from a need to unify the different UNIXs – so has code hacked from all over the shop.
It’s impossible to maintain a working kernel without having to hack bits from time to time – and this is more so the case in open source where projects will share schedulers (et al) from one and another.
In fact, I’d be more worried if a modern kernel hadn’t seen it’s fair share of hacking.
Lol, what seriously is a “modern” kernel. What’s next a postmodern kernel?
Software engineers really have no idea how haphazard their work really is.
Is that a serious question? <_<
Users really have no idea how immensely complicated kernel development really is.
Yes, that’s a serious question. WTF is a “modern” kernel, and WTF is a “premodern” kernel when the few decades-long history of “modern” computer science reveals a recycling of old ideas “rehashed” as innovative.
Modern, lol. Also spare me the User ad hominem. Been doing this alot longer than you, trust me. That is the whole point of microkernel (no wait, nanokernel!, no wait picokernel!) design.. simplicity and correctness at the cost of performance (to an arguable extent).
Finally, I think you overestimate kernel development effort, probably because you are doing some hobby work in that area yourself? Compare the effort involved in the Linux kernel by any “engineering” metric (man-hours, SLOC) and it pales in comparison to projects in userspace. The hard “work” in operating system delivery is HAL/drivers. Plain and simple. Some people wanna call that kernel development, but we know better.
Take a step back from what you are doing before throwing around black-box terms like “complexity” unless you are prepared to discuss what that actually means because generally speaking the cyclomatic complexity of kernel code is (and should) be signficantly lower. But there aren’t even real metrics to talk compare 2 bodies of code now are there? That is how haphazard software engineering is.
Anything current, clearly.
It’s something you made up.
Riiiight….
Well given that I know nothing about you and you know nothing about me, I think I’ll pass on that comment
Well, not exactly.
It’s about modulising core components and then porting them outside of kernel space – the goal often being to eliminate kernel panics.
There’s nothing more or less correct about a micro-kernel design. It’s just a different way of tackling the same problem.
You like to make a lot of assumptions
Maybe for micro-kernels, but most OSs these days use hybrid kernels so that means that things like filesystem drivers do reside in the kernel.
As above, that really depends on the kernel.
I’m not aware of what a “black-box term” means specifically, but given the context you used it in, I’d beg to differ.
I do think you’re dismissing how complicated maintaining a -modern- current kernel that has been in production use for 10/20 years and is still evolving.
Particularly when most kernels in production use are not tidy little micro-kernels like you seem to favor
What attracted me to programming is while there are better methods in terms of readability, scaleability and effeciency; there is not always a “right” way of coding a solution – much like solving maths equations.
So you might call it ‘haphazard’, but I call it ‘inspiring’ and consider it a charm.
What a stunninly useless term then. Thanks for the clarification. I would simply use the term “current” from now on as it is more clear. Most people use “modern” as a descriptive term and it has connotations with respect to design and form. See (“modern aesthetics”, “modern science”).
Lol, so, how do we refer to anything before modern (whatever that is because current seems to change every couple of years? Also, what does current mean “currently on the market” or “currently developed” or ..?
Um, that’s exactly the same thing. I can see how you don’t want to equate those terms I suppose.
I don’t think I can continue responding to you further as you clearly haven’t put much thought into what you are writing or don’t share the terminology most people use to discuss these topics. You might want to read into the benefits of a trusted code base and a provable kernel for operating system security. Thanks for the comment.
Ahh so you don’t have a point to make other than to argue semantics?
You might as well mention Hitler now and finish the thread completely :p
Is that why I’ve corrected you on a number of points and the only comeback you’ve had thus far is the usage of the term “modern” over “current”?
I already understand those points thank you very much. Perhaps you want to get off your high horse and admit when you someone calls you on your other the top “knee-jerk” comments.
Nobody was disputing that micro-kernels have their benefits (there’s pro’s and con’s for all sides of the argument), however the comments you made were biased beyond reason.
Edited 2011-06-22 09:05 UTC
You know what, I was enjoying reading your two quite well informed opinions on this … Right up until the last three posts. Why the need to get so personal? You were debating, and could have continued to do so profitably without the “yeah, well, your mum codes like that” attacks. What is it about internet forums, eh?
wait for the nielistic kenrel
So nihilistic in fact that the developers go the extra mile to mispell both nihilistic and kernel.
Edited 2011-06-21 10:14 UTC
A modern kernel obviously uses some form of distributed microkernel design with Internet and social networking integration.
You see, each time such a computer connects to the internet, it becomes automatically parts of the “hive mind”. When someone starts a power-intensive calculation on such a modern OS, like a Blender render, that calculation is distributed across all available nodes, resulting in render times that are pretty close to the latency of the slowest connexion for still HD images.
And because this modern OS is based on a microkernel with AES-encrypted message passing as the main IPC method, security breaches never occur.
(Note : This was a joke, based on my vision of current academia OS design fantasies. You are asked not to take it seriously. Please. Pretty please.)
Edited 2011-06-21 05:41 UTC
In my book, Hacks are good. Grand Designs are bad. Real Artists Ship. IMHO, there is a good reason why Linux and not Hurd or Minux took off like a rocket.
Haiku gets a break as it was an existing design with a real working example to compare it with.
You’re spot on about everything except Minix. Minix didn’t take off because Dr. Tanenbaum wouldn’t let it take off. The first versions of Minix were purely for teaching purposes. Linux was created mainly because Linux had improvements to submit, but they were improvements that were out of scope with Minix’s purpose. So, he created his own kernel based on what he considered good & bad in Minix (monolithic vs. ukernel, etc.). So, please don’t throw Minix into that category.
It was labelled as “outdated” 20 years ago by Tanenbaum and for some reason is dominating all other Unixes.
If you wish to revisit the discussion, I think the archive is still there from 1991.
PS: If you don’t like monolithic so much, why don’t you switch to Darwin?
Wow its dominating 5% of the market space for pc’s. so, its dominating other OS software and only becuase it was the only opensource nix clone kernel for many years.
So lets review, windows, hybrid microkernel, mac, hybrid,linux monolithic, given marketshare. the hybrids have it.
the professor appears to be correct.
minix isn’t a hybrid. it is a true micro-kernel. Technically, none of the above are true micro-kernel OS’s. (I think the OS-periment by Hadrien Grasland is attempting to be a true micro-kernel design. At least that is the way I read it).
I don’t think Be or Haiku is micro, either, but a hybrid (which is just that, a hybrid. It has micro-kernel features and monolithic features.)
Also, what about Linux’s dominance in the server and HPC markets? Those don’t count right?
Edited 2011-06-21 01:59 UTC
If you think that accounts for the bulk of computing devices, please continue. It also negates the fact that often linux and windows server are often running on the same hardware, often one virtualized. The market split is more like 50% and has been and will continue to be so for a long time.
Last year the PC market was around 300million machines IIRC. who sold 300 million servers last year ?
Yup
I’d never have thought that my pet project would be used one day in an argument about micro vs monolithic kernels…
In the micro family, one can add QNX, Mach, L4, and I think that Symbian too has a microkernel structure but check my words on that. Tanenbaum also mentions some microkernels used in critical environments on his website.
I always have a hard time defining hybrids myself
Most known hybrids sound to me like extremely modular monolithic designs : a huge lot of functionality is still in kernel mode, sharing a common address space, but in separate and easily replaceable code modules.
Edited 2011-06-21 05:44 UTC
Symbian EKA1/EKA2 are (were qq!) different beasts altogether.
Do you know of some more extended online doc on the subject, so that I can improve my knowledge ?
The source code for EKA2 was placed under the EPL by the Symbian foundation and a reader might have a code drop. However when Nokia officially took over it pulled it from the web and repeated requests to make it available have not met with any response.
Aggravating to say the least.
I was rather thinking about things like web or PDF docs that describe the general Symbian design, without going into the specifics. It’s hard to understand software just by looking at its code, no matter how well commented it is, or at least I have a hard time doing it myself.
EDIT : Something like this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT
EDIT2 : Found it. The wikipedia doc on Symbian has much improved since my last visit.
EDIT3 : Link for those interested – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian#Architecture
Edited 2011-06-21 07:12 UTC
Would this article be of interest?:
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1578523
Thanks ! Have read it some time ago, but didn’t remember where nor the contents.
IANAKH(I am not a kernel hacker), but that is the way I read hybrid kernels, too. If you make that argument, then wouldn’t the LKM in linux kinda be (almost) a hybrid design? It is runtime loadable drivers and subsystems. Not quite a micro kernel, but not quite a monolithic either. just right.
*edit: stupid me, forgot that a microkernel design requires the pieces to be outside of kernel space. I should really pay attention when reading “OPerating Systems, Design and implementations.”
Edited 2011-06-21 11:53 UTC
Yup. I have a hard time distinguishing “modular kernel” and “hybrid kernel”, but if both means the same, on which we seem to agree, then I have to say that Linux definitely qualifies as a modular kernel.
Edited 2011-06-21 13:19 UTC
For instant fun…
http://wiki.osdev.org/Monolithic_Kernel
http://wiki.osdev.org/Hybrid_Kernel
Notice that Linux is in both categories, but that NT and XNU somehow escape the monolithic kernel definition.
Pictures pretty well how much blurred the lines are.
Myself, I tend to base myself on the following categorization :
Monolithic (non-modular) : Old designs. The kernel includes lots of features in an inflexible way.
Modular : Most modern desktop kernels. Still lots of stuff in the kernel space, which gives some credit to people who also classify them as monolithic, but code modules are sufficiently independent from each other that you can selectively add and remove them at run time.
Microkernels : There is an explicit intent to put every functionality which does not need full system access (as an example, the VFS) outside of the kernel.
Picokernels, nanokernels : Microkernels which want to show off.
Hybrid kernels : Modular kernels which want to show off.
Edited 2011-06-21 13:44 UTC
I haven’t followed Haiku over the past couple years due to lack of mindspace, but when the project started (openbeos.org!), Haiku was using the work of a former BeOS engineer: a fairly straightfoward fork of the NewOS kernel — http://newos.org/features.php
How much that of that code/architecture has been retained someone else probably is better equipped to answer.
There are other market spaces other than the desktop, things like server, embedded and mobile. Also there are/were plenty of other opensourced unix clones for many of those years, the BSDs predate Linux by a fair bit for example.
That is not much of a review, but rather a fairly selective enumeration without any sort of figures. Why don’t you review the market share from a mobile or embedded standpoint What about the server or cloud infrastructure space, for example.
Oh, and the professor was not advocating “hybrids” BTW, but actual microkernels. The only commercial example of which I can think right now is QNX. Wanna compare the market share numbers of QNX vs. Linux to see who was right? Not that it matters since you were building an argument to popularity (and a silly one at that), which is a fallacy anyway.
Edited 2011-06-21 02:38 UTC
some of us can read, I know its hard to fathom, he said that the hybrid have won, back in 1992. So was he correct. Yes he was.
last year the pc market sold around 300million machines. How many linux server are in the whole world ? Not that many.
So… All other devices running a monolithic kernel don’t count? That 300’000’000 PCs pails in face of everything else that has a kernel on it.
Tanenbaum’s statement is wrong today simply because it fails to acknowledge the spread of computing power today.
Tanebaum was correct, linux developers continue to be wrong. Get over it already. Secondly, we are talking about a desktop operating system, not a phone OS or a server OS or a toaster OS.
Linux and every other get their clock cleaned in Realtime delivered kernel.
Who fing care, Personally I always find posting things about Haiku here pointless becuase you get 100’s of reply about drivel about linux.
STFU already we get, you think your kernel is special, go be special with it.
Well, technically you are the one who refuses to STFU about how “special” those hybrid kernels (whatever that means) are?
For a person whose handle name is “spambot” you doth projecting waaaaay too much. LOL
Edited 2011-06-21 22:48 UTC
I was talking about hybdird kernels ? No other were, I just told you to take you elitist linuxism and place it squarely back up your ass, obviously where your head is lodged.
As to comprehension, look up functionaly illeterate. You define it.
Oh… Sh***t! You seem to be a crazy person. I replied to a broad statement that monolithic kernel designs are outdated, and you get to this?!?!?!?!?!
This isn’t about Linux even more, it’s more about you freaking out.
EDIT:
Read my 2 posts about it. I don’t even reference Linux. Though the discussion about monolithic vs micro kernels was in context of Linux kernel development.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?477888
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?477964
Edited 2011-06-22 05:31 UTC
Your reading and comprehension skills seem to be rather lacking. You still have not defined what “winning” means in your very particular context.
Do you realize that in that figure you are listing, over half of those units come from Commercial applications. Which include enterprise and server duties?
Android devices have been sold upwards of 20 million units per quarter, for example, so there is a significant volume of linux devices out there. Wether or not you can fathom that, however…
Edited 2011-06-21 22:45 UTC
Wow 20 million per quarter, unreal. How many PC total last year ?
Wait, I think winning is defined by marketshare, and linux isn’t “Winning” there either.
thanks for proving my point regarding you poor lack of reading and comprehension skills.
The point was that Linux was far from having a minuscule market share. Esp. if compared to real microkernel OSes, like QNX.
BTW, Tanenbaum argument was regarding microkernels, not hybrid systems like OSX or modern NT kernels. Because that is what Minix, his creation, is: a microkernel. He may have been technically correct, in fact I agree with him in some of his points/views.
However, given the minuscule market share of minix vs. linux, I would have expected you to know better than to use a fallacy like an argument to popularity. You should provide actual technical reasons as to why Tanenbaun “won” according to you.
But that clearly won’t happen, as it is clear you’re just a kid with waay too much time during the summer and obviously learning is not one of your priorities. So have fun trolling instead.
Edited 2011-06-22 01:39 UTC
your idiocy is getting really tiring, when I troll some linux threads, then you can say I am trolling, the troll here is you. How does linux end up in every Osnew thread here ? Becuase linux users are trolls evangelizing to people who don’t care.
I don’t care and neither does some 85%+ of the PC market. In all honesty they don’t care about Haiku either, but then Haiku hasn’t had the hype, evangelizing,advertising and push that linux based OS’s have had.
Secondly, keep your linux comments in Linux threads.
Linux is, has and continues to be a massive desktop computing fialure for everyone but people who likc dicking around with their computers.
You should just stick to linux, you like it. We can get by without folks like you just fine all day.Linux sucks to bad at desktop computing that even with a pricetag of zero, hardly anyone uses it on the desktop and by hardly anyone I mean out of they roughly 1 billion pc’s on the planet, maybe 2-3 million use linux as a desktop OS.
Don’t try throwing in redhat, those are professionally developed solutions that could hardly be called Linux, they are specifically configured workstations, including all those PC’s might get you 6 million desktop linux users.
Linux should stick to CLI server applications, its great there. the problem with linux however is that its not a OS, its just a kernel.
At least the Haiku team is building a OS, not a do it yourself kernel with a bunch of shit bolted together and sawn up and called a OS.
Enough already. You linux a$#%@#$%es need to stop f%%%king up this website.
Edited 2011-06-22 02:47 UTC
The Nazi’s would do that. There, Godwin’d. Leave it.
*cough cough cough*
Most Windows drivers still reside in kernel mode, to the best of my knowledge. The file system driver is also there, in the I/O subsystem. I believe GDI also resides in the NT kernel…
In short, NT is probably highly modular, which to the best of my knowledge is the core point of the “hybrid” appellation (lots of system services residing in independent low-level modules, but a mad pointer or a buffer overflow is still all it takes to take over the world), but calling it a microkernel is maybe a bit of a stretch.
Same for XNU, which started as a microkernel (Mach, IIRC), but has been shoehorned a lot of BSD kernel code in it to the point where it’s now closer to a monolithic kernel in terms of kernel-mode functionality.
Edited 2011-06-21 05:43 UTC
That being said, Microsoft are aware of this design deficiency of NT, and try to slowly improve things. As an example, newer Windows GPU drivers (WDDM) partly reside in user mode and can crash without crashing the whole kernel (in some circumstances), which is good news already.
Edited 2011-06-21 06:07 UTC
Why PCs?
If you wish to use commercial success as a measure of technical merit (so I presume you’re a business major ;-), then I would expect you to examine the fastest growing market segments, where smartphones (Android Linux) and tablets (iOS) are kicking butt.
On the other hand, if you wish to use the selection for the most demanding performance challenges as a measure of technical merit, then I would expect you to examine supercomputers, where Linux is all but ubiquitous.
Using an aging market in which a particular vendor has held a monopoly for well over a decade, since before introducing a totally new kernel in fact, seems like a really bizarre quality measure, frankly. It’s almost as if you’re selecting data to support your thesis. Hmmm….
The Darwin/Mac os X kernel is not a Microkernel
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/0506.mk3.html
And I never claimed it was. It’s just not monolithic.
Reading this has just dismayed my little me:
“Haiku does not yet support WPA encryption for wireless networking, only WEP encryption is supported.”
Yeah, sort of. But I’m used to having *no* wireless, whatsoever, in Linux… so it could be worse. It’s only an alpha, so the lack of WPA is completely acceptable to me. If the final R1 release doesn’t support it, then there’s a problem.
Edited 2011-06-20 20:49 UTC
Year 2000 called to remind that it’s no longer true for quite a few years.
You are more likely to not have any support for old WiFi cards on Win7, than Linux.
(My Vista certified MoBo’s sound drivers are crap under Win7, and released in 2007 no chance of getting any updates)
I think Haiku is doing excellently for its 3rd alpha.
However Linux has better support for wifi at the moment. The difference between 2008 and now for me is wifi not working or buggy to working out of the box.
With the recent package management work in Haiku, it would not surprise me if R1 initially lacked driver support but was followed by a set of packages that contained drivers for wifi and other hardware.
I see no pppoe support or did i missed it?
What happened? the article changed from the one published this morning. Though the original comments and recommendation were kept intact.
Now we get a “review” of an old Senryu 3rd party distro. Not even a link where to download alpha 3.
Edited 2011-06-20 17:48 UTC
I think the article was published prematurely, then unpublished. Here is the link for the Haiku Alpha 3 download, the site seems to be under heavy load: