Submitted by “Discover HAIKU” is your gateway to the world of HAIKU. Delivered to you on a premium quality 8GB USB stick, you can boot to it directly, or install it to an empty hard drive volume on your computer. It comes with a new, up-to-date version of HAIKU, introductory videos, and a mile-long list of tested, proven programs and tools that will make your adventure exciting.
Looks like it’s made by TuneTracker Systems – not exactly an unknown name in the BeOS world. Still, couldn’t you just download the latest Haiku nightly? I don’t think Haiku has an update system in place yet, so I wonder how this ‘distribution’ keeps itself up to date.
I consider myself a fairly proficient Haiku (and BeOS R5) user, and this is utterly ridiculous.
Haiku is nowhere near completion. Heck, many “normal” web sites cannot even be visited anymore, because the webkit browser is left in a broken state, and the sole developer of the browser (and many other things) has moved on to other things due to lack of funding [1]
I wish Haiku all the best, but this is appears to be yet another attempt from TuneTracker to distribute trial versions of their products (all of which are included on the USB). Both the products and the Haiku “distro” costs money.
You’re better off downloading the nightly and put money into the fundraiser, instead of this radio software company which is apparently in desperate need of money…
[1] https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/pulkomandy/2015-02-18_end_contract_clo…
(edit: add link)
Edited 2015-03-13 21:28 UTC
FWIW, we just donated more to Haiku than we’ll *ever* make on this, so you’re wrong about the desperate need for money. Also, Haiku IS updatable, and the the main browser we’re featuring right now is Qupzilla, which works great in our experience.
I agree that nightlies are another good way to get a current or recent build This distro is for people who might not comprehend “nightlies” and “images,” etc. As with BuzzCD, the goal is to get Haiku into as many hands as possible, including the hands of those who aren’t as tech saavy as OSNews people.
Agreed also about making donations to Haiku. I recently created a video to encourage people to do that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKRUCSX5fx0
Edited 2015-03-14 03:22 UTC
That was a perfectly polite, accurate and to the point ass-whooping that even the whooped must have enjoyed.
Continue what you are doing sir, and continue doing it the way you are doing it
https://www.haiku-os.org/guides/daily-tasks/updating-system
Works some of time (well.. not if on 64-bit, but almost nothing works there anyway)
You are right that it is not ready yet. The people working on it are making progress though.
If anyone has the interest/ability to make WebPositive work (again) in Haiku x86_64, I’m willing to pay to have it done. Name your price and let’s talk…
That’s idiotic. What happens the next time it breaks. You’re going to ask for a price again?
What is needed is a healthy open source project with continuous maintenance of core components, like WebPositive.
Haiku just lost the only guy who did anything near that.
Web+ is not a core component
I believe the developer was very clear about what it would cost to get and keep him as a developer to get Web Positive and other BeOS programs up to date in his blog posts in Haiku’s website. If you need a link I can find it for you.
It does work well in my experience.
I never tried the gcc 64 bit version, I always installed the hybrid gcc 32/64 bit version.
I’m downloading the most recent “nightly” ISO. Curious to check the current status of Haiku, and whether it’s stable and functional enough to justify releasing a semi-commercial distro.
Will report back…
This is the nightly ver. 48893
It failed to boot on one computer, the oldest where I often run alternative OSes.
Booted just fine an second, newer computer.
I thought the internet browser was doing ok. Some of the menus at CNN didn’t seem to work, but all of the content was there. Worked well on facebook, and even YouTube. OSNews is where the trouble began…
It would show some ads, but not others (that’s good or bad depending on your POV). The google adsense (thankfully) wouldn’t load, but the underwear ad was perfectly displayed.
The real problem was comments. On the current “Shut up power users” story, only two of the six comments displayed. Ironically, no comments were visible under the Haiku story. What’s the difference is between the two, I have no idea.
The tea kettle turned so fast I couldn’t see it, and the sound was working very well.
Get the operating system, over 60 programs, documentation, and radio automation system with sample radio station, for just $14.95, with free shipping anywhere in the continental United States.
It’s actually not a bad deal, Dane Scott is one of the biggest supporters of haiku and I wish him luck, looks more than what the buzz CD was, and that was a big hit
Haiku can be updated, for quite a while, it’s still in alpha, but beta is coming soon
Or download the nightly for free and donate 15 bucks to the project, who sorely need it.
The previous year i was the #2 donor to Haiku, Inc. I didn’t donate this year because of a fire. I’m sure I did more than $15 last year, and will do so again this year, and still have room to support Dane
The existence of this “Haiku Stick” may be beneficial to further the cause – more so once it is the R1.
It is a fair value:
-The $14.95 price includes shipping (in the USA).
-The going price for a USB 2 flash drive when on sale is from around $1.00 to $1.50 per GB (depending on brand).
-It is an all-inclusive package with documentation and a complex/non-trivial demo application (Tune-Tracker).
-Just “plug” and “play” – although one has to be knowledgeable enough to properly set the boot options on the system.
-Ease of verification of hardware compatibility with minimization of doubts about the download being properly set-up on the stick.
The project needs as much good exposure to attract application developers as money to keep progressing towards R1. Who knows, this may indirectly lead to increase donations to the project.
1998-ish, on a computer that (when booted into Windows) barely could do any quality OpenGL rendering, I could fire up two or three windows with spinning teapots when booted into BeOS.
At least one man tries to show something usable.
Haiku is in PRE-BETA stage for years… with near #70 bugs to a release;
But is very stable in many ways..
Very respectable system requirements:
I’ve installed it on a PC like this:
Pentium 3 667 Mhz, 256 MB RAM, Intel i815 graphics circa 2005?, 20 GB HD, 3 partitions (the one with Haiku nightly is 8 Gb or so)
Read the specs and ponder why Windows, OS X and mainstream Linux/Unix require 10x more? Or why something like Skype “requires” a Core 2 Duo? Because of greedy corps (planned obsolescence) and lazy programmers (why fix bugs or optimize when people will buy it because the have no other choice?) I think.
It boots in a reasonable time, runs ok, shutdown is fast.
I don’t think any but the lightest Linux distros (Tiny Core, Puppy, Damn Small Linux) can compete, and they often have simplistic/cut down GUIs (no Desktop Environment (aka xfce, lxde), only a window manager (openbox, fluxbox…)
I also think their combined CLI/GUI approach (similar to Classic Mac OS) makes far more sense than the awful mess that X11 is. Time to admit that most people don’t care about Network transparency (hello VNC/RDP), if it comes with confusing reversals of the term server and client, plus incompatibility, lack of drivers…the list goes on. GUI-wise I think they are equal to Classic Mac OS and far better than Windows, Linux or even OS X in some ways. I think they have the GUI similar to what Wayland should be, now! Not sometime in the future, NOW!
And then many common Open Source software is already ported or being done. So you can have bash, webkit based browsers, etc.
The worst flaw software wise is IMHO that it is single user, due to the BeOS compatibility I think.
Probably not fixed due to:
Almost no one knows it exists, little to no exposure (no pr budget)
Even the few who know it, are discouraged/tired of waiting years (quite justified if you’ve donated)
Developers who can’t justify contributing, because the need a “real” job to pay bills.
But then it has some upsides too (BeFS for one).
P.S. the built in Webkit browser rates around 380/550 on html5test.com better than Safari 5!
Edited 2015-03-14 18:13 UTC
It is actually capable of multiuser, but software compatibility is hindered and it is a low priority before R1 is even released.
A lot of decisions need to be made, of course, such as how to treat the historic “baron” user, and development resources are best spent elsewhere at this time.
However, if you just want the ability to login users to different desktops and settings, that can be done fairly easily. I wrote a multiuser system akin to what you found in Windows 9x by myself for BeOS R5.1 over a decade ago when I wasn’t much more than a script kiddie. I could do much better today, in less time, if it seemed that anyone really wanted such a system…
Linux, at least, doesn’t require more than that. I regularly install virtual machines with about those specs.
Certain desktop environments do require more. The reason is a mix of performance and a lack of programming care. Caching things in memory, like ten thousand Unicode glyphs is faster than drawing them on demand. And there’s a lot of code in Gnome especially where a job that could be done with 10 MB is done in 100 because the programmer didn’t bother to use a memory efficient data structure.
If memory was actually tight then software could be tightened up a lot and Gnome could fit back in 256 MB.
As for Skype I think the dual core CPU use is to save on network bandwidth and is mostly for the video. Skype audio takes almost nothing. But video encoding is a lot of work. I doubt Haiku could do it any faster.
This inspired me to give haiku a go again, and it has really improved a lot. In fact, in some ways, I would go so far as to say it is the most useable OS on the system I installed it on (well, XP might fair better, haven’t tried it though; Linux has been a no-go due to hardware issues, and Win 7 is too slow on it). I was really happy to see that wifi was working, and even web positive isn’t terrible. I may start toting this little laptop around again afterall.
You’d probably enjoy trying a recent nightly build too. The OS has come a long way since A4. Many improvements to behavior, performance. QT has helped fill some of the holes where strong native apps don’t exist yet. At this point, I can do a lot of my work right in Haiku, which is great, because I love that desktop environment.
Qt. Get it right. QT is QuickTime.
I stand corrected, thanks. 🙂