That is until last week. I downloaded the CD image of Haiku Alpha Release 1. Then, I created a new system from spare parts for testing. My system specs are:
- CPU: Celeron 1000/128/100/1.75v [SL5XT] installed on CPU card [Slocket III]
- MB: Gigabyte GA-6BXD [440BX] with 640Mb RAM
- Video Card:
- vendor 10de: nVidia Corporation
- device 0110: NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400]
- Network Controller Card:
- vendor 168c: Atheros Communications Inc.
- device 001a: AR2413 802.11bg NIC (D-Link AirPlus G DWL-G510)
- USB Controller Card:
- vendor 1033: NEC Corporation
- device 0035: USB
- Multimedia Controller Card:
- vendor 1102: Creative Labs
- device 0002: SB Live! EMU10k1 (SBLive! 5.1 eMicro 28028)
- Drives:
- Drive 1:
- model number: Maxtor 54098U8 40Gb
- disk/ata/0/master/raw
- Drive 2:
- model number: Maxtor 6Y120P0 120Gb
- disk/ata/0/slave/raw
- Drive 3:
- model number: HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4440B
- disk/atapi/1/master/raw
- Drive 4:
- model number: LTN301
- disk/atapi/1/slave/raw
- Drive 5:
- 3.5″ floppy drive
- disk/floppy
After getting the system built and ready, I installed DOS 7.1 and Haiku OS into my test platform. For the past seven days, I have intensely stressed the Haiku operating system and its applications. I downloaded and installed the software that I wanted to use in Haiku.
In the following descriptions, I will describe my adventures of downloading, installing, using/testing applications and software. But first, I will describe my overall perception of Haiku’s performance. The OS is responsive and generally well-behaved. I did encounter a few incidents when I went into Kernel Debugging Land on three separate occasions, all unrelated situations. I did have more encounters with GNU gdb 6.3 “sessions”, due to problematic installs or applications. This usually caused me to reboot to either clear the screen and/or reset the system. Other than that, I am generally pleased with Haiku in its Alpha version.
I needed networking capabilities and I soon discovered about the new WiFi driver for Haiku. I downloaded and installed the Wifi driver (atheros-rev308-r1alpha1.zip, from here) to drive the D-Link DWL-G510 [AR2413] card in my system. It is very surprising to see and experience WiFi on BeOS/Haiku… I got WiFi!
On the first WiFi connection, I used the connection for 8 hours continuously with no connection issues on a poor-to-low-to-good connection [depending what my laptop with Vista stated its connection was]. On the same initial connection, I downloaded and stressed the connection by simultaneously downloading from BeZillaBrowser and BeShare, small to large files. Additionally, I Facebooked, e-mailed, downloaded, and surfed non-stop since I started.
I e-mailed Mr. Colin Günther about my success and forwarded him the systeminfo file from getsysteminfos.sh. Mr. Günther stated, “I’m impressed too! Never stressed it that long and diverse.” I really appreciate the work he is doing to maintain and to update this driver. Kudos for his great work!
I tested USB 1.1 and 2.0 in my test system. I used my USB Dane-Elec 1Gb memory stick, Archos 20Gb drive, and Seagate FreeAgent 1Tb drive with some issues. I transferred many files of various sizes with no problems for most part. Using the USB 2.0 card in my system, I transferred many 1024 Mb files to stress the connection and the driver. Checked out good; however, Tracker’s performance dropped significantly while moving/copying files from the USB mounts to local directories. For example, while ongoing transfers were in progress, if you right-clicked an icon or the desktop, you simply waited for a response with an average of 5 to 30 seconds wait time.
Another issue represents the moments when you attached an USB device, Haiku senses the device, due to the brief flash of the device LED, and then nothing. No automount activity occurs. I verified this also by checking the mount status of the device by using the right-click on the Desktop… The Mount menu displays nothing. I have to reboot the system to resolve this condition. It is most prevalent when the system has been idling overnight, multiple USB swaps, or when it has been “abused” by many files transfers. I receive no errors or any other indications of the USB driver/device failure, except when the Tracker Status window stalls. I believe once Haiku is released as Version 1.0 these issues will be resolved after the Dev Teams “tweak” Haiku.
On day 5, I installed a new update to the WiFi driver (atheros-rev315-r1alpha1.zip). I tested the WiFi driver just as hard as the previous version. I encountered no problems using this version of the Atheros driver. It works great.
During most of my testing time, I was locating, checking, and downloading software for Haiku. The following is my experiences for the past seven days in my attempts to install, test, and use software in Haiku.
“imcodessed“, “codefer“, did someone do a blind s/pr/cod/g on this article?
It would appear so. Seriously stupid stuff…
Thankfully there are people out in the internet ready and willing to point out other people’s mistakes in a kind and supportive manner, just like you!
Hmmm, that’s interesting, but last I checked I’m not publishing content, but feel free to point out my mistakes if and when I do…
I’d bet someone wanted to change <pre> tags to <code> tags.
Is this article a dup? I could swear I have seen a very similar one posted recently.
October 15, by Kevin Miller, using the Aspire One Netbook as a test platform.
It’s not a duplicate, just 2 experience using Haiku.
And from this experience, LOTS of stuff need to be done because not many software seem to install correctly. Too many missing files for my taste. That’s Alpha quality, I understand, but it needs to get better.
Two articles about one full week with Haiku Alpha R1.
Other article was mostly about hardware challenges (e.g. droped wireless connection).
This article is about software challenges. It is a good one and the details on how to go around them for the cases discussed can be used as blue-prints to resolve any other ones once sufficient courage has been gathered to dive in and install it.
that hardware is of prime importance when it comes to Haiku’s functionality/performance. For example, I have a Jetway Via chipset Socket A motherboard and a Asus nForce 2 chipset socket A motherboard.
For several years (at least since 2004, if not before), I have used the Jetway board. I ran BeOS R5 PE and the “WIND” distro version of it, later on. But within a last year or so, I noticed that my USB mouse would eat up to 50% of my CPU whenever I would move it, in Haiku. This was with it hooked directly to the computer, not through a hub. And my GLTeapot framerate seemed a bit lacking! I waited a couple THOUSAND revisions, for the USB issue to be fixed and it never was. I ran Ubuntu and noticed the same issue! This proved to me it was not just an issue with Haiku, alone.
At first I thought it was the USB driver… but other systems I ran Haiku on didn’t have the same problem, so I realized it must be the chipset.
I was able to finally test this theory, absolutely, when I got a bad caps Asus nForce 2 board. After replacing the caps, I put all the hardware from the one system into it. Mind you, NOTHING was now ANY different, EXCEPT the motherboard. Same RAM, same CPU, same video card, same hard drive. Everything.
Haiku no longer ate 50% CPU when moving the mouse (CPU usage barely blipped) and my framerates in GLTeapot went up about 5fps!
So, I think it behooves us to have the devs let us know what chipsets they are supporting more and which ones they don’t care so much about. Haiku working on a system doesn’t mean it will work ideally. You can have everything “working”, but overall performance is bottle-necked by lack of proper hardware support. I think we need to start identifying the weak/strong hardware support at this time.
HaikuWare’s hardware matrix would be a good place to start. I’ve posted my Jetway motherboard there, but now I believe it’s time to edit the post (if possible), to reflect this new knowledge.
Altough the introduction seemed to give me deja-vú from last week’s article, I think it was a farily thorough, altough subjective, review. I still can’t figure out his word selection, but anyway.
Any articles about Haiku should get support from OSnews and its readers.
Interesting read, thanks for submitting this article.
I just want to point out two things; USB file transfer rates have been drastically improved recently, grab a nightly build to check it out for yourself if you want to, and; when in GDB, type bt (or backtrace) to get useful debugging info.
Here is a few extra details about some of the errors.
4) Beezer
This has only ever worked for me on haikuware’s version of haiku. I don’t know what they are doing differently, but maybe if someone started it from terminal then you could maybe tell.
13) CivCTP Demo
I think all the real civ games use a dirty hack in beos that doesn’t work in haiku. Haiku ticket 2363
16) Freeciv
Try again with only files from http://ports.haiku-files.org/wiki/Downloads
18) Wesnoth
The same as freeciv, the beos libraries are a bit crusty.
21) AbiWord
&
22) AbiWord File: gluckalo-alpha2.zip
These versions of abiword don’t work with haiku any more, you need to compile it from http://dev.osdrawer.net/projects/abiword
I have been a BeOS users from the some of the early days. Not as far back as some. When they said it would take years to complete a clone of BeOS I didn’t believe it. Well,,, many years later we finally get a great start. I wish to thank all the hard workers for a job well done.
The reviewer could have probably saved a lot of time, before the review, by downloading and installing the Haiku Ports Package:
http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/system-files/shared…
Contains all Haiku Ports in a single package (GCC2).
Also, I’ve been able to get FreeCiv and Wesnoth working.
Ah. Good advice!
This article is a great validation of the Alpha release. All the basics are working, some assembly and tweaking is required. This is exactly what an Alpha is for, to get an early version into the hands of the early adopters and hackers, and get the bug reports back to the developers.
We have a achieved an important milestone, congrats to the Haiku team!
Can’t wait for the Beta…
The s/pre/cod/ is bit annoying but apart from this, it’s very interesting to see the state of Haiku, I’m wondering though: what needs to be done so that every user don’t have to chase dependency as the reviewer did?
Does software like BoW has branch for BeOS/Haiku?
My guess is that, at this point, they’re trying to keep the base install as minimal as possible to make it as easy as possible to track down and fix bugs.
I suspect that, once Haiku gets closer to a stable release, the devs will start including more common libraries. And if not, there’s always the possibility of 3rd-party distributions stepping in to fill that gap.
Yes it is, I know. I’m sorry. I thought I did it properly by replacing <pre> with <code> instead of just replacing pre with code, but I guess I messed up. There was no opportunity to fix it, because OSNews has been flaky the past 24 hours – as you no doubt noticed.
Sadly, I’m studying my ass off right now, so I have no time to fix it. Sorry boys and girls.
I hope you pass your bowling course!
You probably won’t notice much difference with the system itself – although video/audio encoding should be noticeably faster. BeOS (and presumably Haiku as well) doesn’t really run faster with multiple CPUs/cores, but but it becomes next-to-impossible to make it lag or slow down.
I’m guessing you’ve already checked – but just in case, have you looked in the Media prefs to ensure that the CD audio input isn’t muted? That was the default in R5 (not sure about Haiku), I remember that being one of the most common questions/complaints on the old comp.sys.be.help newsgroup.
Strange, I clearly remember Be advertising dramatic performance improvements with each additional processor added to a machine.
Sure Haiku can’t have the same tech at that low level, but are you sure about BeOS?
That was true, but it mainly applied to tasks that were CPU intensive and performed using BeOS-native, multi-threaded applications. It makes less difference in terms of basic, day-to-day tasks – it’s not going to reduce boot time, Firefox isn’t going to start any faster, etc.
Also, keep in mind that 1Ghz CPUs were just starting to become available around the time of the last BeOS release. So, for most of Be’s existence, running BeOS on dual processors meant dual 66Mhz PPCs up to dual 1Ghz P3s. For most uses, going from a single to a dual P3 450 setup resulted in much more noticeable performance gains than going from a single to a dual 1Ghz P3 system. Mainly because, for most uses, BeOS simply doesn’t need anything faster than 1Ghz.
Edited 2009-10-21 23:37 UTC
// since it would do everything that I needed to do, except for gaming and academic works.//
So … it didn’t do everything you needed it to do.
… You can read!
… You can’t see the point! It just went over your head!
Eh, that battle was lost long ago – even professional writers seem to have forgotten that you cannot have degrees of an absolute (just this morning, I read a newspaper *headline* that included the phrase “very unique” and there’s my personal favourite, “more/less free”).
This is nothing at all wrong with saying “everything except <list>”. I’m not sure whether or not I would have put in the comma. And it might have been a problem if the comma had been a period. But the way it is written is perfectly fine, and a completely different situation than “very unique”.
I think rockwell is just looking for another angle on bashing a non-MS OS, as per usual.
Edited 2009-10-21 19:44 UTC
Ah yes, on re-reading I see he was stating exceptions to (rather than degrees of) an absolute. Mea culpa, constant exposure to poor writing must be causing my brain to atrophy (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it).
//I think rockwell is just looking for another angle on bashing a non-MS OS, as per usual.//
Nice try, freetard.
Linux rocks on servers. It sucks on the desktop. I’ve always maintained this stance.
OS X is great, but price for entry is too steep for what you get (even new Mac mini is $100 too much).
AIX is for big iron (doubt you’ve ever even seen “big iron” but that’s another matter).
Rest of them are pointless.
The nice thing about arguing with you is that you do such a great job of destroying your own credibility that I don’t even have to clean up. 😀
Edited 2009-10-22 15:10 UTC
I destroy my credibility by calling you what you are? Whatever floats your boat!
What would be a correct way of using the word ‘except’ then?
Maybe he wanted to say:
Haiku meats all of my needs excluding the list of items below:
1. Gaming
2. Academic works
(In other words “it would do everything that I needed to do, except for gaming and academic works”).
Back on topic, I enjoyed both reviews of Haiku and will give the alpha a go.
Edited 2009-10-21 21:25 UTC
I would love to see how Haiku would perform on a quad-core processor system that is built to gaming specifications.
So, for all your vouyeristic needs, check here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/zer0xEB
Edited 2009-10-22 05:05 UTC
Haiku fly with four CPU
http://louviaux.be/home/haikur1alpha/screenshot1.png
(Phenom X2 550 hacked to X4)
Edited 2009-10-22 06:38 UTC
Wow this is cool! I am very impressed by the Haiku team taking the project this far!
Just to say it works great with VirtualBox in Ubuntu Karmic Beta. Use the vmware image and create a new machine with that drive image. Good seeing the great Beos getting full of life again!
I wish they’d do a monthly refreah of the ISO image with all the fixes and additions from the previous month of work.
I’d bet a lot of things have been improved since the release of the Alpha.
The monthly images could be considered bleeding edge.
I don’t see a link to the nightly builds on the website.
I’m looking forward to Alpha 2, or Beta 1 or whatever they decide the next release is.
They have daily images you can find them here: http://haiku-files.org/cd/
you find the nightly builds on:
http://www.haiku-files.org
there you can download raw images, VMware images, or CD Images.
I use the gcc4 hybrid version.
Why seven “7” days? why not 6 or 8 days of using it? ARE YOU MAKING SUBLIMINAL ADVERTISING??!!! XD XD
Yes.
In regards to the missing and broken libraries, many of these are being rebuilt for Haiku. I’m in the process of rebuilding the SDL Libs:
http://ports.haiku-files.org/wiki/SDL-LibPak
Many of these have other dependencies so those may need rebuilding as well. We could always use a few more hands over at HaikuPorts to help rebuilding these.
http://ports.haiku-files.org/
As for ArmyKnife, that one will soon see an update, the project page for it is at:
http://dev.osdrawer.net/projects/armyknife
Beezer: http://dev.osdrawer.net/projects/beezer
Hare (renamed FlipSide AE not yet released):, correct the GUI on this one is broken, and that’s one of the holdups on a new release, that and the missing updated audio encoders to do the actual work. If anyone wants to take a shot at fixing it the source code it posted: http://dev.osdrawer.net/projects/hare
BeAE: http://developer.berlios.de/projects/beae
If you find any bugs in these apps be sure to report them on their project pages, bugs reports help the devs make the programs better.
There’s many ported libaries and such on the HaikuPorts download page, but many of these have seen little testing:
http://ports.haiku-files.org/wiki/Downloads
If you have any troubles with them be sure to report them on HaikuPorts trac.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the review is great, but wouldn’t it be better to collect reviews somewhere else. Maybe even on the projects website, so the developers discover this kind of feedback easier. I just mean, when I want a review I would find it easier, if it’s on a web site related to the project.
However, it’s just a suggestion 😉