Haiku (OpenBeOS)’s third birthday was a few days ago. While some BeOS parts have been successfully re-implemented so far, these were mostly the ‘trivial’ parts: screensaver kit, printing kit etc. Read more for a mini-editorial.The meat of the matter, the app_server, the interface kit etc, are still pre-pre-alpha. Even the kernel used is NewOS’ kernel, it was not created from scratch by the dev team. However, the filesystem, OpenBFS, was created from scratch, mostly by one of the 2-3 very active and very knowledgable Haiku devs, Axel Dörfler. But the rest of the team seems to lark, and in three years they still haven’t reached a user-usable operating system status (despite the fact that they had to re-implement a documented API instead of inventing it, and despite the fact that the kernel was pretty much ready-made). AtheOS, SkyOS had something usable by a three-years time, and remember, they only employed 1 developer each.
The reason I write all this is because I had enough of people being unhappy everytime I would write that “it took 60 full time Be engineers 10 years to bring BeOS to the BeOS 5 level, do you think that a team of 4-5 devs (the rest volunteers can’t help much, not enough system software knowledge) can do it in 2-3 years in their spare time?” But the fanatics, prefer to only think what they want to think. Whatever suits their beliefs. Instead of embracing YellowTAB’s Zeta OS (which is 100% BeOS, and it IS fully working today — not in 10 years from now), they make it a Zeta Vs Haiku war on each opportunity. This is just silly. Yes, I don’t like Zeta’s questionable legal status either, but when it comes to “whatever works to do my daily job”, Zeta works today, Haiku doesn’t and won’t, for many more years. Make no mistake, I don’t take YellowTAB’s side, as I don’t believe that YellowTAB has a bright market future either, but at least they have something to show, today!
I find it absolutely laughable when BeOS users say “oh, well, Zeta looks ok, but I will wait for Haiku”. So, they prefer to financially crucify a company that offers them today a solution (not a perfect solution by any means, but a usable BeOS solution nontheless), instead of showing their support for *BeOS*. To me, these people are not BeOS users. They are simply “OS-curious”. Once, they had some nice experience with BeOS 5 Free edition, but since then, they have moved on to other OSes. And when a company is serving them the next generation of BeOS, they simply, don’t wanna pay, but they “prefer to wait” years after years for a “free” solution (that might never come). That’s not what I call a “BeOS users, who care about BeOS”. I call it a “user who have been impressed by BeOS once, but he doesn’t care enough anymore”.
And that’s the real death of BeOS. Most people don’t care anymore (and why should they? No one wants to support an OS that sees official OS updates). And if Haiku is “ready” by 2010, no one will care. Too little, too late. What’s the point re-implementing BeOS in a way to even have binary compatibility and targetting the functionality of BeOS 5, when by 2010 Longhorn 2, Mac OS X 12 and a more mature Linux will be available offering out-of-this-world features?
You could always argue that Haiku is just like AtheOS and SkyOS or MenuetOS: a hobby OS, created out of love of studying OS technologies. I am sorry again, but Haiku never had such goals. Haiku is not an experiment, like AtheOS was. Haiku was created with the direct target of replacing BeOS 5 by creating an exact clone of it in order to accomodate the thousands of fleed BeOS users after the demise of Be.
If Haiku was able to release this exact clone one year ago (fully stable that is), they would have a good chance of me calling them “successful” to their goal (and then set their roadmap on catching up with OSX or Longhorn). But even if they release that Haiku 1.0 tomorrow morning, it’s already too late. Haiku does not have the luxury of time anymore (realistically speaking) to achieve its own goals. To my mind, it’s a failure.
Haiku needs to move on, it needs to re-set its goals, simply because its current goal, has already failed through market irrelevance. Timing was important for that goal, and now it’s just too late trying to “sell” a BeOS 5-alike OS to the world. I would suggest creating an OS that tries to innovate and competes with future/modern OSes, while keeping its BeOS roots and code, but not by copying Be’s mistakes and the irrelevant, right now, overall BeOS experience one could get out of a BeOS 5+.
— Eugenia
Very good statement Eugenia, it represents my opinion exactly.
And just because something has more features, does not make it better.
There are other factors to consider such as speed, code quality, security, consistancy, etc.
It really is a shame that such a great idea doesn’t have any serious backing. Yeah, there is yellowtab, but even they are slow to show any progress. I’ve tried zeta, and yes most everything works. But unfortunately most third party development is aimed at Windows, MacOSX, and linux. Not really much room left to support another platform.
Which is quite unfortunate. On one hand we have Mac OSX and linux, which were designed initially to be server systems that we have frankensteined to be desktop systems. And we have Windows that was designed to be a jack of all trades (master of none). BeOS was one of the first OSi that I heard of that was marketed for desktop use, besides Mac OS9(and previous) – And it showed. Too bad it died. And yes BeOS in all of its forms is dead.
>And just because something has more features, does not make it better.
Maybe yes, and maybe not. But by 2007, you better have these extra new features that Longhorn/OSX will have by then, or your OS will be treated as a TOY.
>speed
When my room has nothing in it, it is very tidy indeed.
> code quality
I don’t have any reasons to believe that the Haiku developers are better or worse than the MS/Apple/Linux engineers.
>security
BeOS was always the _worst_ OS in security.
> consistancy
Unfortunately, consistency is mostly achieved through very well defined teams of working closely together. OSS projects do not normally show consistency, so I am still not convinced on this one.
I agree with ALMOST everything. but i will not write another article here.
But i have to say that PhosphurOS should have been mentioned. The fact that the article is so REALISTIC and ignores PhOS, just make me think that it was a PAID article from yellowTab.
It’s sad, and I may be commiting some injustice here. But as i said, it’s what seems to *me*.
4 years ago I would have agreed. But after my experience with the demise of Be I learned the lesson that with closed source software you risc spending hundreds of hours only to be left in the dark due to some business decisions.
I don’t argue that because of that Haiku is the best choice. (you have good points and there are other things I don’t like about Haiku), but I’ll think twice before going to Zeta. Not that I don’t want to pay, but because I don’t want to be left in the same situation if YellowTab folds in a year or so. The doubtful legal status of Zeta doesn’t make it better.
Had Zeta been Open Source and legally clean, then I would not think twice about paying YT for a copy.
My computer still only runs BeOS, and I must say I agree with what you stated in this mini-editorial. Even though I spend more time on my iMac lately (hey it’s all new to me). I will never ever delete my BeOS. You said once in an interview that BeOS felt as if it had a “soul”, and you couldn’t have said it better.
And yes, Haiku needs to get their act together or else they will go down in history as “that failed attempt at recreating one of the best OS’s ever.”
A shame, really.
>The fact that the article is so REALISTIC and ignores >PhOS, just make me think that it was a PAID article from >yellowTab.
PhOS is a joke, a HOBBY of a single developer. At least YellowTAB is a real company (to the best of my knowledge, however there will be people who won’t agree with this either). No, YellowTAB hasn’t paid anyone to write the article (I don’t need money, I have enough), and I don’t care less about yTAB anyway. However, at least they *seem* more of a real company trying to make a difference by developing some things of their own rather than creating a distro of a leaked BeOS version. Zeta is probably also based on a leaked version, but at least yellowTAB has done SOME engineering on top. It didn’t just package things. They recreated a full USB-2 stack for starters, and that’s huge.
BeOS died the way the Amiga did. Who knows, I also wrote off Next then I bought a OSX box.
I dont agree with Eugenia on all her points.
The goal is to recreate BeOS R5, I dont ever think they mentioned a timeframe, or did they? BeOS is so very well designed ( modularity comes to my mind ) where you can replace parts with ease, without harm other parts of the system. Even if it takes 10 years ( ~6y from now ). I will enjoy replacing my modular OS that Iam using with new ( first buggy and then stable new parts ) from the Haiku tree. Crucial parts like Kernel ( I guess I need to upgrade my hardware during thoose 6 years ) will be the hardest task, if its possible. When a Kit is complete, do you think they will say, -“oh, lets go back for 4 years and wait for a complete app_server/kerne!”l, or do you think they will continue to improve, add features new feature to the part they were working on?
To make one thing clear, BeOS isnt perfect, I miss some apps, ( no drivers yet, knock on wood )
Iam so dissapointed on SkyOS ( from a innovation perspective ) where I think they accomplish nothing. The speed they are developing is amazing though, so credits to them.
Congrat Haiku team!
A BeOS users and in 6 years a 100% Haiku user =)
I bought Zeta. Personally I have had issues that so far have prevented me from being able to really use it. Mostly driver issues. I am hopeful that most of these will be worked out. That said, I like Zeta. I only hope that they put to rest all the issues regarding source code and kernel things that everyone knows about. I loved BeOS and for me Zeta is the replacement. Now if only I could use it for my daily work.
i was a BeOS lover, and used it all throughout school, but haven’t really touched it in the last year (been trying to get it going in VirtualPC with little luck).
but now that several Be engineers are going to get their ideas released to the public in 9 months or so (this time under the apple name), is BeOS still relevent?
Here are the things i loved about BeOS: the interface (snappy, unobtrusive, and good looking), the file system, the open standards support, and the community.
if Tiger is everything it says it will be, it should have a snappier interface (and not bad looking, but that’s debatable), HFS+ w/ spotlight looks like it may be an acceptable replacement for BeFS, Apple’s doing great on standard’s support, but the community is only so-so (to many people looking to make a quick buck if you ask me).
so maybe its that i haven’t booted into BeOS in the last year, but what does it still offer that OS X doesn’t already (or Tiger won’t in a few months)?
BeOS was the best operating system I’ve ever used, unfortunately, atm, i don’t find it practicle anymore.
>The goal is to recreate BeOS R5, I dont ever think they mentioned a timeframe, or did they?
They have mentioned timeframes many times in the past (check their mailing lists of 1-2 years ago), mentioning the release of the first alpha version that was never materialized.
And besides, it doesn’t matter if they didn’t mentioned a release time. You see, the goal was to ACCOMODATE the FLEED BeOS 5 users right after the demise of Be. EVEN if you never set a release date, you only have 1-2 years to materialize a fully stable release before you fall back to the OS technology race and lose pace. That’s the market reality. After that time has passed, you are screwed for many reasons that I am too bored to mention them again.
Zeta is unstable beyond belief on my machine. Somehow, the updated zlib from one of the SP’s (SP2 I think had it) managed to prevent my system booting. To this day I’ve no idea what in the boot process relies on zlib (other than the very start of the bootloader, which has it built it and was well past, I was at sysinit22 or so).
Their USB2 stack KDL’s me. It KDL’s a lot of people, it seems. Their USB mass storage drivers don’t support my digital camera. They did something to the media kit that burns my ears out with noise on each bootup (EMU10K card).
I can actually use a horrible messy hybrid of R5 Pro, BONE, bits of Haiku, small bits of Dano and drivers from Haiku and others. My system boots reliably, my digital camera works, my ears don’t get eaten by the media kit. I can’t use Zeta. I’m more than willing to wait for Haiku R1 (and hopefully help it somewhat along the way) for as long as it takes. Zeta isn’t even up to the level of being a stopgap for me.
Oh, and PhOS is even worse than Zeta. app_server lockups abound.
>Zeta is unstable beyond belief on my machine.
I agree. Still, it’s much more usable than Haiku, which doesn’t even have a usable UI yet!
I’m stably using the translation kit, print kit, a number of pref apps, most of the CLI apps, bits of the media kit (considering going over to all soon), and not-quite-so-stably using the screensaver kit. However, anything stable in Zeta is from Dano. And what they’d added, particularly at the low level, is so unstable it makes the system unusable.
Haiku has a future. YellowTAB are selling to an ever dwindling market and paying developers. If Be couldn’t make it, YellowTAB can’t. Haiku doesn’t have to make money, it doesn’t have to pay developers. It can make it.
>If Be couldn’t make it, YellowTAB can’t.
FULLY AGREED.
> Haiku doesn’t have to make money, it doesn’t have to pay developers. It can make it.
This is NOT a reason to succeed either! Based on the current situation with Haiku, it moves on WAY TOO SLOW to be taken seriously. And WHEN it is ready, it will just be a BeOS 5, pretty much.
Can you imagine trying to “sell” a BeOS 5 to the users of 2010 that are used to crazy Longhorn/OSX stuff? This is just laughable!
Haiku had its chance, it failed. Now, it’s too late to do ANYTHING. At least, not with these 5 developers it has overall who know what they are doing! You can’t make a difference with the current situation! Be realistic please!
Haiku has a future.
Not if it’s too out of date for anyone other than the small handful of remaining BeOS users to be interested in it. It won’t have a future without real apps, etc., which is and always has been BeOS’s main problem. It has no future if you cannot practically get your work done with it, regardless of whether it’s dependent on financial backing or not. Haiku will not have a component architecture, it will not have 3d accelerated graphics, vector UI, or any one of a number of other features every other OS will long since have by the time it’s complete. Not unless they scrap their goal of making an R5 clone and start designing something new, and attract a hell of a lot more devs than they have now.
Ok, you’ve got me riled up, Eugenia (which was likely your goal…:) I’ve sat by long enough – I’m getting involved!
Theres people still selling GEOS. Its what, fourteen years out of date?
Its also unlikely to be as far as 2010 before its usable. I’d say 2006 is much more realistic for R1.
To this date, I get comments on BeOS’s usability, speed, etc. If Haiku can even *partially* recreate this, it will find a market. Maybe not a big one, but big enough to keep development going, and ensure that theres enough of a driver and software base to ensure people will continue to come to it.
Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on.
>> So, they prefer to financially crucify a company that
>> offers them today a solution (not a perfect solution by
>> any means, but a usable BeOS solution nontheless),
>> instead of showing their support for *BeOS*.
I am one of those who decided not to use Zeta. My decision isn’t to “financially crucify” a company. A large part of it is that BeOS R5 is still working quite well for me (with a few minor problems due to lack of drivers). Another part of my decision is that they still aren’t at 1.0 yet. They have more in place than Haiku, but they also started with the existing system. I have no problem paying for something that meets my needs, but Zeta doesn’t offer enough beyond R5 for me, at least not yet.
>I’d say 2006 is much more realistic for R1.
Kian, you are really naive. In 2002, people were saying that 2004 would be the R1 release. In two years, you will be telling us about 2008. Just read the archives here at osnews of what people were saying about haiku’s release date! Trust me, Haiku is A LONG WAY OFF.
>Theres people still selling GEOS. Its what, fourteen years out of date?
Yeah, they sell 3 copies per month. Big deal.
>Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on.
Windows XP is already WAY MORE USEFUL than BeOS 5, and it is available since 2002. So, even if Longhorn comes out in 2020, MS can beat BeOS5 straight, with XP.
> but what does it still offer that OS X doesn’t already (or Tiger won’t in a few months)?
What it offers me that OS X doesn’t is the ability to run off cheaper hardware. I am interested in OS X. I want the polish of a commercial OS (which isn’t Windows), but I don’t want to buy their hardware. It’s too expensive.
In 2002 people were saying it would be there in 2004, based off nothing. There was what, a few half finished preferences apps skeletons and a printing kit.
Now, theres a booting-from-HDD kernel, a relatively complete app_server and interface kit, and almost total completion around the rest. DHCP and a media encoder API are missing, as are a few other random pref apps.
Windows XP is no more useful to me than BeOS R5. I use a lot of relatively old hardware; XP is painfully slow on even my fastest BeOS laptop.
Now that Haiku has the non profit status, donations can soon be solicited. Those can be used to (hopefully, if theres enough) pay Axel to work on the kernel at least as if it were a part time job. Once the kernel is somewhat more complete, the app_server will be launchable. There, basically, is an RC1. The total binary and driver compatibility is whats going to take by far the longest time. *That* might not be there until 2008, yes. But launching the OS and being able to run a majority of BeOS applications, and actually *use* them, thats should be possible by 2006, *at the latest*
“Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on.”
It will. But not that one which was promised. Bussiness is bussines. Do you remember story with Windows Chicago planned for 1994? Instead we got Win 95 actually in beginning of 1996. Not so bad for the time, but not what was planned/promised.
About haiku. I think there is still desire for Open Source DESKTOP OS. Be it Syllabe/AtheOS, ReactOS or Haiku or whatever else.
What can I say. That was very, very harsh.
Yes, Haiku is not usable. But a lot of work has been done, and continues to be done. The efforts of the existing developers are quite amazing at times. Their problem is the team is not growing at all though, so all they can do is continue to work on their goals.
Your talk of Aethos and SkyOS is laughable. Their goals and approach were completely different. They implemented very few features first and the evolved their OSes from there. This has lead to future problems where parts must be re-evaluated and rewritten.
Haiku was designed to be a BeOS5 implementation. Therefore it has the design of a BeOS5 implementation. That’s not a few easy features, or a small tightly-coupled bit of code. It’s a large, well-engineered, non-trivial piece of software engineering that will take 10s of, if not 100s of, man years to create. Just look at the resources Be Inc put into R5. Whilst much of that is fortunately inherited by Haiku in terms of R&D, it is not an easy thing to reproduce and you are certainly unfair in your assertions.
The problem with users is they expect too much, often the impossible, because their perspective is a really narrow and (in this case) unfair one. Yes, Eugenia, you are a user. And one who is letting her emotions cloud her judgement in this instance.
Haiku has a future, even if it’s just as a niche OS. The efforts of the few core team members ensures that. 2 millions lines of code is not a failure. It’s a giant leap towards achieving a goal that is not as far away as you say. The app server, from what I read on the frontpage, is nearly there. The kernel is working even if it’s imperfect. Perhaps a bit more involvement might be more helpful for Haiku rather than smart alec cheap shots through your precious OSNews. This was not news, it was a low-down-dirty TROLL.
As goes there being a market for a good opensource desktop OS. The Irish state has rejected Linux as being unusable on the Desktop. They also want to reduce hardware renewal costs, as they’d like to move to an OS that doesn’t force a complete upgrade with every major revision. I’m sure hundreds of schools, businesses, etc around the world have similar opinions.
If Haiku can get even a small number of these, its got its market.
Someone! Please come out with a usable update to (what was) BEOS 5.x!
And please… no “ports” to Linux kernels!
It was the best OS (and hope it doesn’t go the way of the Amiga).
I am quite willing to pay (I purchased the BEOS 5 Pro and GOBE suites). There is just too much floundering out there (yes, I tried SKY, Syllable, BE MAX Edit. etc).
Anyone have a good, informed opinion of what/which to use?
> But launching the OS and being able to run a majority of BeOS applications,
> and actually *use* them, thats should be possible by 2006, *at the latest*
You completely lost the point of the article. EVEN SO, it is already too late! No one would care running a BeOS5-capable OS by 2006.
OSX already has the BEST feature of BeOS, the BFS capabilities (and EVEN more FS features than BFS has, thanks to the ex-Be engineers who work at Apple). So, what’s the point? I don’t see one. Where’s the 3D support in the UI and in GL? Where is multi-user and good security? Where are the apps and a *good* X server port, as part of the app_server (and not as a standalone app)? Where is the 32b per channel support for printing and images? Where is the advanced audio capabilities (for your information, Media Kit always sucked, but Be’s marketing was clever to call Be a “media OS” and everyone ate the lie). Where are the PRO TESTING LABS of Haiku? (Be had a whole team with hardware/software debugging)
There is a lot that you don’t seem to know or understand about the BeOS and the difficult market that it’s in. You believe that an OS can be created “just like that”. Sorry, but that ain’t true.
Eugenia and many BeOS users don’t care to the “freedom” (not zero price) sense of free software and, therefore, a free operating system. This is the true reason why linux is now the only viable (not a toy, server-only or specialized OS) a alternative to Windows on PCs (MacOS X is out because it runs only on a different, proprietary and closed hardware, making it an eternal niche OS/computer). Linux cannot be so innovative (it is basically a unix clone) but it is extremely flexible, stable, many applications and information and it will have a guaranted future.
Why a lucid person will believe that another proprietary and closed OS like Zeta will succeed nowadays (in M$ monopoly era) ? I think Eugenia and many BeOS users think like mere consummers who only spend your money buying a car. Operating systems are choosed by today’s applications offer and future perspective.
I (as linux user and free software activist) prefer to wait for a totally free (with source code, no license fees, a liberal license, etc) BeOS clone like Haiku than pay to another Be-like company.
>Perhaps a bit more involvement might be more helpful
> for Haiku rather than smart alec cheap shots through
>your precious OSNews.
You are doing the same mistake as the Linux zealots do. “Journalists” don’t code, they critisize and REVIEW. That’s what I do, I have no plans on helping Haiku or anyone else. But I do have plans to REVIEW any and each one of these wannabe OSes.
> This was not news, it was a low-down-dirty TROLL.
This was never meant to be news. It was meant to be an EDITORIAL. As if this was a troll or not, that’s your opinion. I have plenty of people who down right agree with my opinions.
…with Eugenia.
Idealism is nice and everything, but Haiku has not usable for a Generic End User in the past, and is still not usable for a Generic End User.
I mean, hell, look at <a href=”www.syllable.org”>Syllable: when did that fork start, and it already seems lightyears ahead of Haiku.
Having a bunch of randomly spread out functionality does not equate to something usable; you know, viable, feasiable. You need something concrete; something that works.
All that “under the hood” junk is nice and dandy, but until its tied into everything else and made into an actual operating system, they are simply very interesting modules that provide functionality… and nothing more.
Haiku has taken way too long to come to maturity; time, of course, is not a factor in OSS projects, but the baselines for technology are ever-shifting, and if you ever want something that you can sit down and *use*, you have to keep up with that – case in point*, once I hit Longhorn’s sweet, sweet vector-based UI I’m not coming back down to anything less. Period. I’d rather it be Mac OSX’s sweet, sweet vector graphics, of course, but the hardware costs more than my car!
*Yeah yeah, I know, I’m not Joe Everyman, and there will always be someone wanting to use a hobby OS. But guess what: I’m writing this comment, and you’re not! Nyeh.
what is the point to cloning an OS:
1) to maintain API compatability
2) to reproduce the core system’s technological virtues
3) to immitate the user experience, meaning the GUI
In BeOS’s case, issue #1 is nearly redundant. What applications there are for BeOS are often open source. It’d be far less effort to port the whole lot of them than to rewrite the OS from scratch.
Issue #2 holds far more merit, but this has effectively already been done in the form of the AtheOS kernel. Rewriting another new kernel from scratch is therefore nothing more than a computer science experiment or a mamoth time waster at worst.
Issue #3 Doesn’t need a whole new OS, that can be tacked on to any free software system, such as Syllable.
I know the media kit sucked, I do use BeOS everyday, almost exclusively, and I do dabble in audio production. Which I have to do on Windows.
But the *majority* of computer users out there are dopes. They don’t care about an OpenGL rendered UI, as long as their UI looks somewhat “pretty”. They want to be able to use the computer they bought their kids at Christmas time 00 for a few games, the net, email and opening the documents they get mailed by relatives. As long as the system doesn’t get viruses, thats all the security they care about.
Most schools don’t care what they’re using, as long as it works on their old 1998 era Gateways and can run a typing tutor, and all that associated stuff. Linux can’t run fast enough on that era of kit, Windows can but has expensive licences. Remember that schools in Ireland were on Apple ][‘s and in the UK on BBC Model B’s within the past 7 years or so. They don’t need new features
There will always, always be a market for a fast, stable, simple to use OS. It might not be on the geeks desktops, as the ones with rootless X servers will be. It might not be on the media producers desktops, as the ones with pro audio and 32BPP support will be. It will, hopefully, be on the desktops of Joe User, after they get sick and tired of Windows problems and find Linux too hard to use; and Macintosh hardware too expensive.
>Syllable: when did that fork start, and it already seems lightyears ahead of Haiku.
And still, it is lightyears back when it comes to the development pace of AtheOS itself or SkyOS. Both these OSes were/are making huge steps in too short of a time (even if they only had a single dev each), while Syllable does much smaller steps in comparison, and Haiku seems to be in standstill most of the time, compared to all these other OSes.
As phenomenal as BeOS WAS, it was an engineering “death march.” TEN YEARS to build an OS??? BeOS was the poster child for why C++ should not EVER be used for a large scale OO project. If Be had used any of the more modern OO languages, specifically Eiffel, they would have been able to put BeOS in 1/3 the time with greater stability; Eiffel has full interoperability with C, C++, and Java, so developers could have written code in their favorite language and plugged it into the BeOS API. Before anyone jumps on this, remember substantial portions of MacOS X are written in Objective C.
The only reason i should stop using Be is that any available computer with uptodate performance can be installed under Be !
I used every day HP-UX/Tru64/Linux/Win2K/WinXP and i’m still switch every evening to BeOS ’cause it’s really what desktop os should be ! simple, fast and with all basic tools i need.
MacOSX is maybe the real alternative but Apple use proprietary machine at prices for californians. Even the $2500 is sold with a “3 pounds” graphic cards ! Sorry, i don’t want to give my money to jobs (i bought a ibook 12″ 800/128mb/40/combo : i gave it back after one week as 128Mb is unuseable under OSX ! Ok, i could buy en extra memory but why Apple don’t provide directly 256Mb !!!)
By the way, i keep my BeOS (max + bone + french localized OT/MDR + Firefox + soundplay + vlc + cdrecord/helios + some HAIKU parts) ! And i will install HAIKU when it will the time.
> You are doing the same mistake as the Linux zealots do.
> “Journalists” don’t code, they critisize and REVIEW. That’s
> what I do, I have no plans on helping Haiku or anyone else.
> But I do have plans to REVIEW any and each one of these
> wannabe OSes.
I saw no review there. And the word you want is “critique” – ‘to criticize’ has negative connotations so I assume you meant the first.
Anyway…
That was an “editorial” eh? It was an opinionated diatribe that really made some points that were complete rubbish – like the Aethos/SkyOS comparisons. Notably, SkyOS only just became “usable” – previous iterations were absolute trash when compared to the leading OSes like you seem fond of doing.
A good editorial is objective. That was anything but objective, making it effectively an opinionated troll. Even the comments on supporting Zeta aren’t really contextually accurate. Why would people buy Zeta when they only used the free version of BeOS? People are cheap, especially when our money is not flowing freely. I only pay for stuff that warrants it’s price tag – and Zeta does not come close IMHO or evidently that of many others. Zeta is not like R5, it’s not competitive and it is unstable, insecure, and buggy. At least Be Inc could argue their product was the best at the time they got sucker punched over OEM contracts. Zeta has a long way to go, a long long way to go. And then it’ll only get harder without access to the underlying BeOS source.
Haiku may take years, but it’ll get there thanks to the dedication of it’s developers. And waiting for Haiku is no excuse not to support Zeta when it’s ready. But is Zeta ready? No. I’m sure it’ll get full community support when it is. It’s not like the hardcore BeOS community is cheap, unlike us freebie onlookers.
Is it just me or does it feel like the flamewars about MS vs Linux has completely ruined the view of people on different operating systems?
So what if Haiku doesn’t incorporate all sexy apps like Photoshop and Flash. So what if Haiku doesn’t have all drivers on the market. So what if Haiku doesn’t feel l33t to some *nix lovers?
MANY people consider e-mails, some browsing and using your box as a Jukebox is what covers 90% of your daily usage. Sure, Office Suite is dandy for Office use but for home use some of us simply don’t care.
Assume that I as a user would just what I mentioned above and want the sexiest solution on the market for not too much money. There goes XP and MS solutions out the Window (laugh here). Linux surely not sexy, even though those who get turned on by penguins think it is (laugh here). OSX is simply far to expensive, people need high paid Jobs to eat Apples (laugh here).
To me, who certainly enjoy seeing the progress of Syllable and SkyOS, Haiku is definitely the sweetest thing in the OS market (UI opinion is subjective). May it take 1,2,3,4,5 years, I want you serving my home anyway, no matter all the fancy features everyone else think of. I don’t even care if it is the MS better (Unlike many who don’t use Windows, I don’t hate MS).
Now you might say I’m alone here, but I’m confident I’m not. Even if I am it really doesn’t matter either, the market share hunt that all the commercial operating systems is up to (Win/OSX/Linux) don’t concern me a bit.
I didn’t “join” the skyOS community for nothing. Seeing the future of BeOS darkening by the day, I needed something that resembled it. Not specifically in looks, but in speed, responiveness, UI behaviour. SkyOS is what comes closest to it, in my opinion.
I, however, don’t agree with what many say that Mac OS X comes close to BeOS. I’ve been using my iMac on a daily basis now for over two weeks, but no, it didn’t remind me of BeOS. The only thing that did was the double-click-titlebar-to-minimize option.
Also, I question whether Zeta is really as unstable as people tend to say. But, seeing my computer runs practically every x86 OS without any problems, it might just be me.
Err, first publicly available release of BeOS was ’96. Started in ’91. Thats five years.
Also, take a gander at a Windows copyright notice. 1985-2000 in the case of the machine I’m on now.
OS’s are in a constant state of development. The Linux kernel is fourteen years old, Windows is 19 years old. 9 years from start to “finish” (R5) isn’t terribly bad in comparison
>Err, first publicly available release of BeOS was ’96. Started in ’91. Thats five years.
You obviously didn’t use it. The FIRST REALLY USABLE version of BeOS was R4.5.2. That’s August 1999.
I remember when OpenBeOS said they’d be able to do it in a year.
The thing is that it’s starting not to matter. Mac OS X has done away with a lot of its speed demons and their Quartz display engine is well ahead of everyone else. Longhorn is going to be a big upgrade that should fix a lot of people’s complaints with Windows and will feature a 3rd generation display model as well. Not to mention that OpenBeOS was started before Windows XP came out which was a huge improvement. Linux has seen tons of development over the past three years that has brought it from being a hobby-OS for desktop users to something that can replace Windows. The other big three have come a long way to matching BeOS’ strengths.
It’s just too late. Linux, the furthest behind for most desktop users, is just way too far ahead. It has the networking, the wi-fi, the hardware support, the applications, and the features than an alternative OS needs to be competitive against the big boys and BeOS R5 doesn’t have three years past its death.
I think that Syllable has a chance of moving forward. They keep releasing more stuff and they seem to be active in development. They aren’t trying to wedge their system into the place of another so they don’t have to worry about breaking past things in that way and they aren’t shooting too high thinking that they will be able to take over the world with their product.
Maybe i could agree with Eugenia in some points if she didn’t propose Zeta as solution together with bashing uncertain “BeOS users”.
I think that this is underestimation of intellectual abilities or ethical sense or at least ability to decide what they need. Some do believe that YT is credible enough to bring something new into BeOS and keep it alive, some are are very unsure if this is the case. As, for example, most of drivers which in reality keep BeOS alive are coming from Open Source developers, not from YT. Same for most important apps.
And if YT is doing in reality huge work inside, probably it isn’t visible enough outside. Again that story about PR and publicity.
So here is complex mix of problems and such generalization about users is too harsh.
>A good editorial is objective.
NO. Editorial MEANS “opinion”.
> making it effectively an opinionated troll
I suggest you be careful of your own opinion regarding what’s trolling and what’s not, cause I don’t like to be called a troll, when I am NOT one.
Was it harsh? Yes, it was. But it was also the words of truth that I never hide.
No, I didn’t use it (at the time, have used it since to rescue a PPC system). However, I did use R4 (after using R5), and it felt usable enough. PR2 wouldn’t have been too bad either, in my eyes.
“Usable” and usable are different things. Usable to me means that its relatively fast, can go on the net, can get my emails and can play my MP3 collection. Anything beyond that is a bonus, really.
And R3+Soundplay did that fine. R3 came out early 1998, right?
“Your talk of Aethos and SkyOS is laughable” where did he mention SkyOS? he mentioned ReactOS, atheOS/Syllable. also haiku is an interesting project but is taking too long to bare fruit imo, bare in mind i hav never used BeOS, i really shud mind lol id like to see haiku do something its just that i dont hav time to spend yrs waiting for something lol
Youlle, Eugenia is a woman… you might want to not call her “he”
Regardless, it only took 3 years for AtheOS to get built with ONE GUY, Be had a full team of developers. And BeOS STIL had major stability issues with some of its core parts (media kit, networking, etc.) What’s the excuse?
But it’s parts can live on in other OSes.
I suggest BeFree, Cosmoe, BlueEyedOS, etc, and Haiku work together.
Forget backwards compatibility.
But then again I thought Windows and Linux were slow until I bought an IBM T41 with 512MB RAM
> This is NOT a reason to succeed either! Based on the
> current situation with Haiku, it moves on WAY TOO
> SLOW to be taken seriously.
You do know that serious development takes a lot of time, do you?
It’s a very big project – we have a complete OS to build, not just the parts that you can see in a user interface.
And you already told us two years ago that we’ll need 10 years to do it – why be surprised when we’re not finished now?
(even if I am still sure we won’t need 10 years to get R1 out)
Maybe we’re not communicating our progress so well that it reaches you completely, but we’re progressing nonetheless.
> And WHEN it is ready, it will just be a BeOS 5, pretty much.
Not true. I am so broad to say that it will be the best BeOS you’ve ever used. Even though we’re “recreating R5”, it won’t be an exact clone, it’ll be much more mature and functional.
“Still BeOS” you might think, and yes, that’s our goal.
I used the “Submit Story” feature to send a link to the article on the Haiku site to Eugenia. I now kind of regret doing it, but she’d have found it anyway. Particularly as two of the BeOS news sites (ICO and HNN) have it on their frontpages still.
It appears I misspelt my mail adress when submitting the story, or it got “damaged” along the way
Ah well, I’ve posted enough talkbacks here for people to get it if they want.
>And you already told us two years ago that we’ll need 10 years to do it – why be surprised when we’re not finished now?
Because your project gave FALSE promises to the beos users when it started (berfore you joined). You do agree with me that this will take many years (from what I get from your comment), all I want you to do, is simply tell it so clearly for everyone to hear. I had enough of people telling me that “it will be readyh next year”. I am sick of reading such naive crap from users who don’t know jack of what it takes to create such an OS.
> it’ll be much more mature and functional.
Honestly, I don’t believe that. Your OS has no chance to compete with Longhorn’s features or OSX’s features of the time. It will just be a “better BeOS 5” (and if that). It’s just won;’t be enough.
To Anonymous:
You state:
I remember when OpenBeOS said they’d be able to do it in a year.
That was to say that the system could be made in a year, but it would not be made right. That was also when there were over 50 developers willing to jump into the code.
Haiku (formerly OpenBeOS) CVS now hosts in excess of 3.2 million lines of code. Having the full CVS on my system, which I sync weekly (more or less), I have been able to watch the eveolution on an up-close and personal scale.
The team figured that because they were merely focusing on copying R5 that they would save a great deal of time in planning. And because they were starting with the NewOS kernel, which fairly closely matched how the team wanted the kernel to behave, it was believe that the system would be pretty much done in a year of heavy coding.
Haiku does start, you can run it on your system. However, the next biggest peice of the puzzle which is being written from scratch by an amazing talent (DarkWyrm), is in need of completion. Some of the various teams that are integral to the Haiku development also have decided to follow better ideas over R5 implementations. In fact, in some cases Haiku is doing what Be wanted to do, but did not due to various difficulties with old code in the system that they were trying to weed out. And of course, in some cases (memory management), the problem was so wide-spread that a great deal of the systems accessing memory would have to be revised. Be was in the market to stay alive and, in order to do just that, development cycles needed to stay as short as possible.
Microsoft does not have to worry about this as much because they own the market. If Windows Longhorn is months or a year late, it doesn’t matter to them except for publicity and marketing timing, which of course means that if they start the wheels rolling prematurely on their massive propoganda and marketing engines (which usually starts to work against older versions of Windows, and for the upcoming release… not against ‘competition’). (Also note, I am speaking od Desktop/Client Windows versions).
So what does all this mean ? It means that Be simply could not afford the delays to release of a money-making product. Why? Two reasons: #1, they are not Microsoft with a large enough purchasing install base to sustain life. #2 (Related to #1), the installed purchasing user base Be had, already purchased the latest version of BeOS, but would VERY READILY fork over when asked for the next version. The new user growth rate was the only thing keeping the business alive (that and a few $20 million donations by Intel and others), but it was only making it possible for Be to pay the employees, and enough of the bills to keep the office and the lights on in the office. That may be good, but what about all those code licenses? Money they could not make enough of.
So, how is this all related to the topic at hand, did I run off on one of my famous tangents? Probably at least a little. But it is all pertinent to the topic of discussion. As you will soon see.
Haiku-OS.org is a non-profit organization (finally). They have no need to make money in excess of survival. Currently, I believe that EVERY LAST LINE OF CODE has cost Haiku-OS.org nothing, or very close to nothing. So what can they now focus on that Be got into a position of not being able to? Yup, the product!
Haiku teams are going off on tangents and improving the underlying system, because they have the luxury of time. And they know what copying the Be model entails. In order to be binary compatible, it is fairly easy to say… *ALL* classes, class names, member functions, and ANY public data member must be named, stated, and return identically to that of R5. Sadly, that can also include some bugs. (of course, not if the bug was so bad that no code could survive with it… then that would be safe to fix, provided no change to any of the R5-compatible API is made).
So, it would seem that all these advantages would have made it simple for Haiku-OS.org to meat the one-year mark for a (even alpha) release. But, when there is freedom, there is always leisure. For product quality, freedom can be EXTREMELY bad.. if the freedom is the wrong kind of freedom (can take as long as they want, can do it however they want). OR, it can be just as awesome (can take as long as they want, but it needs to meet these guidelines, be written in this way, compile in this way, confirm, conform, commit, etc…).
The latter freedom is what Haiku-OS.org has setup, practically unknowingly for sure, but that is what has been created. This means that Haiku OS is not just going to be an R5 clone. It will be better than R5. The network kit alone is completely unlike what R5 had. We are talking kernel-space vs user-space difference. That is, integrated and optimized vs un-optimized and sitting in the corner across the room blaring music that no one can understand. Fibre versus copper if you will 🙂
The product will be better than what anyone has planned, and thus it will take longer to come to market. I, for one, am not rushing it.
So I’m finally off.. I’m going to try and patch the Haiku OS kernel into R5 or Dano, and see where problems exist.
–The loon (not a member of Haiku-OS.org)
> Your OS has no chance to compete with Longhorn’s features or OSX’s features of the time.
What features are you talking about?
Users will — even under Longhorn and OS X — still listen to their MP3s, write up their documents, look at their pictures, and be happy if it works.
I think Haiku will succeed, and is indeed already a success. A lot of people are interested and they are making steady, if perhaps slow, progress. Linux moved slowly for the first three years, too. I think Haiku is a very important project because it promises to be a totally graphical open source system w/ a BSD-style (I think, sorry if I’m wrong) license. Configuration on Linux can still be tough for some people. Hell, I’ve spent the past two weeks trying to figure out why my Radeon 9800 Pro doesn’t like my nforce2 under Linux (It mostly works now, but crashes at shutdown). I think in the future Haiku will provide an alternative to Linux, that is cleaner and easier to use.
I don’t want to use a closed source operating system in the future, and I think Haiku is my best bet. For now, I’m more than content with OS X, but I can still be considered as waiting for Haiku because it is morally pleasing to me. It is very likely that I would start contributing to it if I could download an ISO and start coding, I’m mainly waiting for that day, and I think if I wait long enough it will come.
“would start contributing to it if I could download an ISO and start coding, I’m mainly waiting for that day, and I think if I wait long enough it will come.”
You can start it immediately. With, for example, BeOS PE or BeOS MAX or even Zeta (Zeta native API is less compatible with Haiku’s in some sense, but still may be used, being backward compatible to BeOS R5).
This is Haiku-OS project specifics, as it is (will be) both binary and API compatible with BeOS R5, so Haiku team itself uses it as development platform:).
Oh yeah:
PS: Zeta sucks
If a BeOS users says ‘OK’ then they mean something more or less in line with: “Well, it would be OK if it weren’t priced like Windows. And if it didn’t try to just copy the Linux model instead of staying to why we use BeOS in the first place. And if it wasn’t for the cool ability to just download PhosphurOS by that weird dude, for free, I would probably only be keeping an eye on BeOS instead of using it.”
Of course, they could always say if it weren’t for Zeta, but I would be willing to bet my left…umm… leg, that there are more anti-Zeta fanatics than pro-Zeta fanatics. And I’m sure just as many prefer PhOS over Zeta, ratio-wise. It may not be a choice of features, but more a choice of price.
There are a few out there who bought Zeta, hated it, and use PhOS and love it. And there are the opposite, too. It is all about personal taste.
Beta 6 will allow me to readily measure first-time boot of PhOS systems. I did this with Beta 1 as well. Back then (two years now), there was a total of just over 15,000 successfull PhOS installations that managed to at least get on-line, and have an uptime of more than half an hour.
Each system was only counted once. This was achieved by the essential a hardware hash: listdev | md5sum
The result of this was sent to my server, and a perl script kept a log of the results and made sure the system was not counted twice.
Albeit, ANY hardware change would create a different result for listdev | md5sum I believe that for the most part, the number more or less accurately portrays the interested and willing user base of that time.
And yes, after a successfull posting of the listdev | md5sum, the system completely deleted all traces of the program to prevent double-counting.
I will be using the exact same system this time. To prevent discrepencies due to changes in the code (just a script).
Beta 5 downloads were immense. Every server handling the downloads went down due to overload. And I mean every one setup within two weeks of release.
Beta 6 will be released at the end of September, and this time I am looking for dozens and dozens of volunteers for various needs. Many have come forward, showing me there is support. We will soon find out just how much support there really is, and also just how much interest there actually is.
–The loon
Oh, and:
PS2: Eugenia, girl, I really admire you as a person, and I do usually trust your judgement. But why are you favoring yellowTAB all of a sudden?
I’m not saying favor me instead 🙂
Maybe sometime soon I will need to do something crazy, like finish that 20 page article I was writing in hopes of getting it up on OSNews.
We’ll see.
Stay tuned:
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
GET IT!?!
Well, it’s an interesting thing, comparing the reasoning of BeOS users for waiting for Haiku versus committing to Zeta.
1. The best indications I see indicate YellowTab doesn’t have the source to the system, or at least not the complete source.
2. As imperfect as Haiku is (after all, it’s pre-alpha stage, and makes no claims otherwise) the code is 100% available and will live on somewhere as long as there’s a single developer with interest in it.
3. There is enough market demand for an alternative to Windows/OS X (the two commercial powerhouses on their platforms) and Linux/Unix variants that is unified, easy to use, doesn’t require huge hardware resources, and is sufficient to everyday tasks.
4. Some of those other Open Source OS’s have incorporated massive amounts of source code from various sources that are incompatible with the license of Haiku, which might reduce their viability in the future (if there is one) of those other OS’s becoming commercially attractive to commercial software developers, due to the taint of GPL. Haiku has taken a different route than Linux explicitly due to the tainting of GPL on the system itself: they WANT people to use and abuse Haiku without being whipped senselessly by the GPL should they wish to make their own custom versions, while still having fully opened source.
5. Who knows how long it will take YellowTab to release something more than a Release Candidate (multiple revisions of alpha/beta versions of post-R5.03 BeOS) with their manpower (or lack thereof) management and attention to detail (investigate the release candidates for evidence to point to that: I don’t need to say anything here, as the evidence screams for itself) and their ability to modify the kernel itself, and the various kits?
6. Who knows how long Bernd can keep the money coming in sufficient to cover the costs, regardless of how good/bad/marketable Zeta is?
7. There are serious questions regarding the details of the legality of what YellowTab has. What will this do, and will it become a real issue for business, or is it already too late?
8. As Axel has pointed out, it takes real time to do real solid development, as that requires a lot of testing and attention to details. For the first version of Haiku, the regression tests must incorporate (to a fairly large degree) the testing for the quirks of BeOS 5.03 lest it break the existing binaries and source code of existing applications. In effect, that adds a large process of discovery in the development, as it requires actually testing TWO different operating systems. So, while the API is mostly documented/engineered for syntax, the semantics make it an interesting target to replicate. If they didn’t care about semantic compatibility, the task would be much easier, as they could implement something that seems reasonable based on the general concept, and pronounce it done.
So, will Haiku or Zeta or any other BeOS compatible OS (source or binary) be viable, if they are still at all viable? Time wounds all heels, I guess. If so, I may end up being wounded to some degree, as I’m working on an IDE for them… If nothing else, it’s something I can put on my resume, and enjoy developing applications with it, even if the OS it is targeted for has major flaws that make me cringe. Regardless of what BeOS zealots may say about the design beauty or implementation of BeOS, objective evidence demonstrates that Be didn’t get some major issues fixed in terms of reliability/stability, even with all that manpower and time: the need to pay the bills forced their hand in sending it to customers before many gaping holes were sealed. Nonetheless, it isn’t a useless OS, and it isn’t beyond redemption.
And no, I’m not an Free Open Source Software zealot, and I’m not against commercial software making money. However, of the two choices I presented of Zeta versus Haiku, Zeta may be a short-term stopgap measure for those that actually have hardware it will work on, and if YellowTab lasts long enough, they may become a Haiku distribution maker as they transition over to the work done by the Haiku team. The current Zeta source code issue makes it very unlikely (if the indications are true) that they will be able to continue Zeta beyond a certain point without a heavy infusion of Haiku blood, sweat and tears.
> But why are you favoring yellowTAB all of a sudden?
Loon, you are a loon indeed. I suggest you read more carefully what I write. I don’t think that YellowTAB is in a much better position today than haiku, only marginally better (because their OS works). But YTAB doesn’t have a clue on how to market their product, neither have enough money to do so.
> Because your project gave FALSE promises to the
> beos users when it started (berfore you joined).
Before I joined – oh well, that’s already so long ago… 😉
> You do agree with me that this will take many years
> (from what I get from your comment), all I want you
> to do, is simply tell it so clearly for everyone to
> hear.
Sure, such an undertaking is going to take years, even if it would be done commercially. I expect that we’re booting into something that doesn’t look so bad in the not so distant future – but I can’t say how long it will take us to reach R1 from there, too. It could well take another year or even two – we’re still an open source project with unpayed developers.
I think 5 years would be a reasonable time to expect something usable from us (not from now, from our beginning on). But if we’re in fact earlier or later, we’ll see.
> I had enough of people telling me that “it will be
> ready next year”. I am sick of reading such naive
> crap from users who don’t know jack of what it takes
> to create such an OS.
Well, some day, they’ll be right 😉
Maybe we’ll surprise you, maybe we’ll meet your expectations – we cannot know now.
> > it’ll be much more mature and functional.
> Honestly, I don’t believe that. Your OS has no chance
> to compete with Longhorn’s features or OSX’s features
> of the time. It will just be a “better BeOS 5” (and
> if that). It’s just won;’t be enough.
We cannot know this either. What will be Longhorn’s features of the time? Will it have been released already at all?
Also, what feature would you really miss when switching to Haiku?
Even if the interface will look dated to you (I don’t even know if that’ll be the case, as I could imagine that we’ll thinking differently about the exact look as well when the time comes), will it be less functional than your favourite MacOS X or Windows Desktop?
What gloomy features do you expect from Longhorn that are not already known today?
but it’s right on. Just like on OS/2 and Amiga platform, there just isn’t enough dedicated developers to make it move forward at an acceptable pace. Plus, no big name company to give some weight behind it.
There’s one thing I don’t agree with Eugenia. If they could gather more devs by years end and put out the R1 at beginning of year, Haiku could attract a lot of Linux switchers easily. Haiku is better positionned for the desktop than Linux will ever be. Multiuser capabilities and security isn’t a high priority feature needed for the average joe.
BEOS was the last major new propietary operating system to have a chance becoming ubiquitous. Even though Mac OS X is a completely new OS apple built off of the previous Mac reputation, supllying a degree of backwards compatability with older Mac apps, and of course its hardware platform-which has always been a key point to Macintosh success. Aside from this there has been a thriving software and hardware industry around the Macintosh platform.
I am not saying there is no future for new propietary operating systems-there certainly is-albeit only for niche markets < 2%. It has taken Linux almost 20 years to break through the chicken-egg problem with regard to applications and hardware support and start to really catch on-and it will still need another 2-3 years to really begin to replace Microsoft in trully large numbers. Linux has succeed in what no other OS of the last 10 years has-manufactureres are writing drivers for their hardware for Linux and manufacturing equipment designed for Linux.
The fact is none of the new propietary OS`s struggling to make it today even have a chance of breaking out of this chicken-egg dilemna-there are no commercial projects which can fund their way through such a long period of time necessary to get such market support-unless of course some super rich millionare decides to pay companies for hardware support. Simple things like 3D accelrated graphic support-or high quality sound card drivers for Creative Labs Audigy series-the lack of support for modern hardware, which people now expect, is crippling for all new OS projects.
In the late 90´s, when BEOS was beginning to catch on it offered concrete features which were of value to users accustomed to Microsoft and Apple and it did so on commodity hardware. And of course some of this technology, developed back then, is still impressive today-but times have changed along with expectations and what was impressive then is less than inspiring now.
Open source projects which can utilize drivers and apps written for Linux can use the relative success of Linux to help launch newer platforms-but even this is really difficult-particularly if one cannot use the hardware drivers due to different kernels and the inability to reuse propietary drivers(ie. Nvidia etc.) I do see a good oppurtunity for alternative open source projects -much better than for new propietary ones-but the outlook is disheartening to put it mildly.
For example if one chooses to use the X11R6 (or Alsa, or Cups) windowing system one gets drivers for hundreds of graphic cards for free- if one chooses to go their own and write their own windowing system they can spend years and years playing catch up with X which still offers limited support in contrast to Windows. Linux finally has enough leverage that manufacturers must weigh the disavantages of not supporting it-this is the pivotal point-the point at which the questions the manufacturers are asking themselves change.
And it is incredibly hard to attract commercial software writers for platforms which provide substandard hardware driver platforms. It is awful hard to justify a buisness plan to a group of potential investors for writing software apps for a platform which has no driver support for those features which are in actual demand today. I love seeing the progress of SkyOS-it is breath taking how quickly it is developing-but one will probably never see 3D acceleration or good opengl support for it -which is a crying shame. Is Hewlett Packard going to write printer drivers for SkyOS ? Will ATI write drivers for it ?
I am not writing here to pat Linux on the back for its success-it is trully sad how the manufactures and computer distributors have been effectively able to supress any real competition for so many years-Linux is now being noticed because of the names associated with it (IBM, HP, Dell, Epson, Sun etc.). In all likelihood Linux will be overtaken someday by one of the projects which it has enabled-using apps and drivers originally written for Linux.
Unless a new company is formed where someone is willing and able to invest 50+ million dollars to make it happen we will likely never see a trully new propietary OS again which ‘makes it in the big time’-except from the names we already know.
About chicken and eggs problem.
Yeagh, hardware world is getting tough. Even interface specs for hardware pieces are going to be Big Secret. From one side.
But from other side i noticed weak for moment but promising tendency from hardware manufacturers – to put actual driver functionality in (almost) OS-independent lib (sure, hardware-platform dependent) which needs just kind of wrapper to actual binding with certain platfrom.
Sometimes those core parts are open-sourced, like for Broadcom NICs, sometimes are in form of ELF x86 closed source lib, like solution for one of modems.
I do believe same may happen (if not yet) also for those 3d-functionality parts of videocars.
This way is also good for hardware manufacturers itself, as thinking in well-defined abstraction layers improves quality as for h/w designers so for driver wirters inside company.
Time for me to chime in on a subject instead of just lurking around here. And Eugenia, I mostly agree with you.
While I have always felt that the goal of OpenBeOS/Haiku to create a binary compatible release of BeOS R5 was a laudable goal, I have also felt that it was completely unrealistic.
BeOS had a lot of great things going for it. In 1999. It’s 2004 now, with 2005 rapidly approaching, and I doubt that we would see an Alpha of Haiku this year, or even next year. By the time the OS is released it will be as ancient and virtually useless as GEOS or Window 3.1 is today.
Does that mean I think they should stop development? Hell no. I think they should continue developing Haiku – but not as an R5 clone. I understand their goals, and why they want to maintain binary compatibility, but the end result is still useless.
The time of the Haiku developers, in my opinion, would be better spent working on the “next version” of BeOS, perhaps keeping in mind at least some source compatibility, but bring the OS up to modern times with modern features such as multi-user support, better security, et cetera. The Haiku team could improve upon the now-aging APIs, and build a better OS.
You may argue that AtheOS/Syllable or other projects are doing something similar to this, and to some extent it is true. The reality is however, that the Syllable project is a very amatureish attempt at best to create an OS. There seems to be no real direction with that project, and it most likely will languish in a perpetual development hell, with occasionally improved drivers. I’ll reserve comment on the others for now.
What about the apps? Hell, a good portion of the apps on BeBits are open source anyway, and would be little more than ac couple hours of debugging and a compile away from being useful again on an updatesd Haiku. An improved API might also make the porting of apps like OpenOffice just a little bit easier. Something to think about.
And, while I think Eugenia might have gone a tad over the top, the bottom line is that she is right. I hope that the Haiku devs take it for what it’s worth – a wake up call that the longer you delay, the more likely it is that your work becomes irrelevant. Work towards the future. the past is gone, and it’s not coming back – so don’t try and recreate it. Remember the past fondly, learn from the successes and mistakes of the past, develop for the present, and keep your eyes on the future.
I read the editorial again, and I still think it is an insult to all the people, not that they are very many, working on the project. If competing with Longhorn and OSX of 2010 is the only goal of alternative OSes, then you should probably declare every single, small, alternative OS ever mentioned here as a failure in the making.
i always find it amusing when i read that “BeOS doesn’t support enough hardware..”.
If you’ve ever used Solaris x86, especially 7 or 8, then *that’s* an OS that suffers from a lack of drivers.
Don’t get me wrong, i use Solaris every
day at work…on Sparc, and love its stability and scalability.
I think Haiku has an enormous task: BeOS R5 compatibility.
That is where the time has gone. Sure they could have spent the time doing something else like contribuing to Sequel, Syllable or Cosmoe…all BeOS-ish OSes but they chose the harder task.
I do agree with some of Eugenias comments and she is entitled to her opinion. And to criticise the progress is fine, but it is measured against some flippant comments (R1 of OpenBeOS in two years!!) and a lack of updates on the OpenBeOS site (projects page) occasionally as well.
I’ve used PhosphorOS (aka PhOS) and i liked it. Sure its legality is questionable, but so is BeOS Max and Dano.
I’m looking forward to Beta 6 of it.
If you’re waiting for something to happen then you will get impatient and become frsutrated. Instead, do something about it – join up and start coding.
Try the other OSes and be prepared for lost data and systems locking up, but try them anyway. It’s good experience.
Make a difference!!
cheers
peter
Most of them, are, failures in the making, yes. That’s the reality of it.
As for Haiku, I wrote in the editorial EXACTLY what its goal was. And it was very important, from the first moment of Haiku’s existance, to be released fast, in order to achieve to be THE BeOS replacement.
Three years later, it is not even on 30-40% of its completion yet. And YES, TIMING is very important for such a specific goal. Haiku IS NOT “just another alternative OS”, it had SPECIFIC market targets. And it has MISSED these targets, it is now TOO LATE to capture an audience that would care for something like BeOS 5-like. This is the part that YOU don’t understand and this is the exact part that makes Haiku a failure!
And if that is an insult to all people worked on the project, then BE IT. I won’t hide the truth so just I won’t “hurt feelings”. I don’t care about the feelings of these people when I write editorials– it is not my job to do so–, but I care about the REALITY of the matter at hand.
You need to sit down and re-evaluate some of your thoughts about the reasons behind this editorial, and what this editorial really tries to say.
If Haiku project today, was coming out and said: “we will re-set our goals, we will not try to be a BeOS 5 clone, but we will keep most of the BeOS values and code, and we will instead will try to create a semi-new OS that is _truly_ modern and would chase Longhorn/OSX in features and will try to INNOVATE“, then YES, I will support Haiku. But I CAN NOT and I WILL NOT suppor their CURRENT goal, because it is already FAILED.
They’ve made some seriously stupid errors. The first one is trying to retain compatibility with BeOS 5. That would make sense if there were that many great applications for BeOS 5 in the first place, but it never had the 3rd party depth of MacOS or Windows. So why bother?!? Too bigger investment for too little return.
The second one is using a whole new kernel! That means they’ve had to do pretty much everything from scratch. With the kind of resources they have, they should have always realised that this was too much work. If they had thought it through, they would have realised using Linux or FreeBSD as a base would have been the way to go. Heck, they could have even used X too. For proof of this look at the amazing work done on Blue Eyed OS by one man. It might not have been *true* BeOS but with a bit of work, it could have been pretty damn close in far less time than Haiku is going to take.
Dont like the name, it sounds so unprofessional. If it was a codename that would be cool but unfortunately this is what they decided to go with.
If it were renamed to PhippsOS, would that make it professional sounding to you?
Well, its nice to see the average attitude of posters on this topic compared to other topics on this website. I’ve noticed longer and more mature posts here than what you’d find on other topics involving Mac, Linux or Windows – it just shows the maturity level and wisdom of BeOS fans/critics. Having said that, my thoughts follow:
Haiku is still relevant. It may not have the latest whiz bang feature (not in R1), it may not run every single piece of hardware out there (not in R1), it may not get large commercial support (not in R1), etc, it may and will not be all things to all people.
What it will be is a small, clean, elegant open source OS which makes an excellent base for R2, R3, R4 and beyond. And the unity of the Haiku core will make it more viable than the dozens of Linux versions. This is what scares the Linux fans – that all the time and effort they spent on becoming 1334 Linux h4X0r5 will have been in vane since a saner (easier to use) solution will be available for the masses.
The Haiku team have shown engineering maturity. Wait until this knowledge gets applied to R2. And there will be commercial backing for R2.
“Dont like the name, it sounds so unprofessional. If it was a codename that would be cool but unfortunately this is what they decided to go with”
Are “Windows” and “Mac OSX” such professional names? ALL names are dumb. Only when you use it for a while do people become used to it, then it becomes acceptable.
“And if that is an insult to all people worked on the project, then BE IT. I won’t hide the truth so just I won’t “hurt feelings”. I don’t care about the feelings of these people when I write editorials– it is not my job to do so–, but I care about the REALITY of the matter at hand.”
Maybe you SHOULD care about the feelings of other people when you write editorials. Remember, editorials are OPINIONS, not REALITY. And no, they are not the same. It’s not WHAT you believe that’s offensive, but rather, HOW you state it. Many people respect your opinions, but I think you should respect others’ feelings as well. Otherwise, editorials and posts seem like flamebait, even though they have something important to say.
Actually, that is what Haiku is actually doing.
They are maintaining as much binary compatibility as absolutely possible. But at the same time, the system is not being built the same.
The file system is compatible, but already faster and cleaner (and with some fixes) than Be’s file system.. and it has not yet been optimized.
The media kit is going more modern as well. The network kit is shaping up to be worlds better than net_server of R5.
Binary compatibility can be acheived while still keeping up with the times, look at Microsoft. Sure they jumped through a lot of hoops, but I can still run 16-bit software from Windows 3.1 if I were to run Windows XP.
Dano cannot run something like 85% of R5 media applications. However, with about an hour of work I managed to get back about 99% of those apps. I have only encountered one or two that did not work. All I had to do was put a bug that the binaries expected when linked to libmedia.so back into place. One bug. A trivial one in fact.
It took me, MAYBE, 15 minutes to discover the secret to net_server compatibility on BONE… a completely new and unique system. A simple network call translation layer is all that was needed, and a library of the same name that handled the task.
I would personally just tell the Haiku team to make the OS first, then make it binary compatible. Of course, driver binary compatibility is paramount at all costs at this point in time.
If I can, with my, relative-to-Axel, insufficient coding and reversing skills can manage what yT has yet to do, then three or four active, EXCELLENT, developers can make Haiku rock and roll.
Though I am still perplexed by all of the people who gave up on multi user that came before me. It may have taken me two and half months to get it working, coding for at least an hour a day (every day), but I did manage to make it work without losing any binary compatibility (except for my own apps from Beta 4 to Beta 5 – even source compat was lost).
The goal is readily acheivable, but it must be done right. And it is being done right, albeit perhaps a little more meticulously than I had envisioned. But this is not bad.
Also, remember that R1 is just to get a system together to make R2.
yellowTAB and I have one very thing in common: we are betting the house on Haiku. yellowTAB has no source code from Palm legally. Neither do I. However yellowTAB and I both know that Dano half-way falls under the BeOS PE license. Half-way is not good enough to get investors. However a few discussions with those in the know at PalmSource obviously gave us enough comfort to freely modify and distribute Dano… minus a couple things… very important things.
Not going to say what that is of course, that would be good for potetnial competitors. Though just do a comparison of the contents of PhOS and Dano (I say PhOS because it is cleaner than Zeta).
Finally, Eugenia, I would suggest you think of the people you are talking to. Many of us use BeOS because we do not like the bloat of Windows and Linux, and find BeOS the best alternative for our machines. For the most of us, Zeta borderlines this area.
Try a new PhosphurOS, it is clean and feels just like BeOS should feel.. fast, simple, organized, and predictable. I put a lot of work into making sure that even my bugs are predictable.
I have 65,000 lines of code for PhosphurOS. In releases, the product of maybe half of that is included. The remainder of the code belongs to PhOS future migration to Haiku. And a few here and there so I can compile backwards to R5 via the PhosphurOS switching development kit (geek stuff of course). I imagine that yellowTAB’s code is being geared directly for Dano, then later will be migrated to a Haiku base.
Haiku is the future of this niche market. yellowTAB, the BeOSMAX team, others, and myself are all working to create enough products to keep a secretly unified effort alive. We only need to keep the people we have interested. We are doing that and, as a side-effect, garnering more interest.
Don’t believe it? You wrote an editorial about it did you not? Thet shows that there is obviously interest. I wonder fairly often how much interest there is, which is why I am re-including the only peice of SpyWare known in the BeOS world, so that we can count successfull unique hardware-base installs of PhosphurOS.
When I was working at Dell I was surprised that almost a third of the people in my original training class had at least heard of BeOS. Of course these are all geeks, but 1/3 out of a random grouping of people is pretty amazing. I even updated an ex-fellow employee to PhosphurOS from R5 PE at his request. Pretty amazing the interest in *ANYTHING* not Microsoft, and not Linux.
Linux is great for what it is, and its success will only further our success and make our niche larger. BeOS is no longer alive? Heh… wrong. BeOS will live on forever in one form or another. Even if just in the hearts of the many fanatics and normal fans, but it lives on. It certainly still lives on many machines in this world.
Oh well, I will let you go now.
–The loon
>It’s not WHAT you believe that’s offensive, but rather, HOW you state it
That has always being a problem of mine, in the way I write english that is perceived as offensive and rude. I write english by thinking in Greek. And Greek is not the most kind language in the world.
So, I really can not fix this. It is my style. I know people will misunderstand things, even if I try hard to not offend others. So, I don’t try anymore. I have tried in the past, but I can’t change my style. Trust me, I tried.
Eugenia you said if we don’t have the features of Longhorn when it comes out our OS will be treated as a toy…
Well, people like toys 🙂
In fact, the absolute biggest industry is toys in one form or another.
Most people buy computers just to use it as a toy 90% or more of the time. Companies buy them to make money.
Geeks build them to be better toys than the toys the other guys have.
The entire entertainment industry plays on our infatuation with toys. Gadgets are all toys with some purpose.. but still they boil down to toys.
When someone gets their first car, it is a toy to them.
When Windows came out, it was nothing more than a toy.
Man, you know.. makes me want to play my new guitar… I love that toy.. almost as fun as toying with you.
–The loon
The only thing I miss from the obos/Haiku group are the frequent updates on their websites that they used to do in the first months of the project, a long time ago..
Could you guys please, at least, link the updtates from the CVS on the website? The site looks great, and I know you guys are trying to do it look very professional.. But while the first version is not released, the only group of people that will be looking the website are us, geeks..
After the first release, it’ll be a very different story..
Eugenia you said if we don’t have the features of Longhorn when it comes out our OS will be treated as a toy… Well, people like toys 🙂
Sure. Everyone likes toys. But you also need good tools. A segway might be cool, but try taking home a new tv with it. OpenBeOS’s goal was to keep BeOS users on the same path, to provied a continuation of BeOS – which was a tool, not a toy.
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
GNU Hurd (micro-kernel advantages not big enough to compete against the much more mature and full-featured Linux. Yes COMPETE. While an OSS project doesn’t need money it still needs developers and users to truely take off and Hurd doesn’t manage to attract them)
http://freevms.free.fr/indexGB.html
FreeVMS (a lot to-do but no developers. most don’t even care about the technology. The project starter seems to truely love VMS and still hasn’t given up. The “need more people” (!) lines have been there since the start of the project. Obviously he also can’t compete. And alone he will probably never get anywhere. And of course VMS is to Very Much Strange anyway. Barely anyone would want to run that on his desktop.)
FreeDOS (has almost reached 1.0 but the tech they clonned is so outdated today that almost nobody uses it. BTW their kernel developer has just given up on the project…)
Open-source doesn’t guarantee success! IMO there isn’t room for another OSS OS to truely take off. Surely some freaks will run “really alternative” OSes just for fun but that’s it. Some BSD remains on the server but it gets harder every year to justify using it instead of the more feature-full and speedy Linux. IMO in 5 years Linux will be light-years ahead of BSD purely because Linux has 100x the dev power behind it.
I like what you have said here.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=8114&offset=75&rows=83#27…
Although I realise your not a Haiku developer, this is exactly what Haiku needs.
It needs articles written that can be posted here on OSNEWS. That states that they will be backwards compatible yet more advanced. The important part is the HOW? How will they be more advanced, what is planned.
Get that out into the online community.
Or Haiku, or Zeta, but after all the recent GNOME/KDE flamewars, it’s very nice to see a heated, yet mature and well argued discussion.
Thanks to all the posters.
Yeah, that would be a very interesting article 🙂
I think I’ll just have to do that, try to shed some light on the project, and maybe help it grow as a result 🙂
–The loon
What I don’t understand is why people are trying to re-do BeOS from the ground-up “open source” instead of building on other work.
I think the BlueEyedOS approach, using the Linux kernel, is MUCH smarter. The Linux kernel and XF86/XORG already supports the majority of the hardware and it has a much better chance of supporting anything new.
If the idea is to re-create the BeOS experience, I seriously think that could be accomplished without starting from scratch, kernel included.
I’ve been reading Eugenias stuff from back in the Benews days, followed her over here to OSnews and have always had a soft spot for this overcharged Duracell of greek fire. I always liked that she called a spade a spade, even when being enthusiastic, but lately I get the feeling it’s more a case of calling a spade a tool to break heads with.
It seems, to me at least, that through the disappointment of seeing Be inc. falling head over heels, and not in the romantic way, or becomming part of an environment of for-hire software engineers, who understandably might have a less than rosy view of the whole open source phenomena, or perhaps just the natural conservatism of age, or a million other reasons, she now has a hard time seeing the worth in any OS project that isn’t backed by a NASDAQ listed company.
I’m not saying that Haiku will ‘make it’ (unless it can attract a couple of new Axels it perhaps won’t), but I do see the worth of trying to preserve the essence of BeOS, things that can be done in other OSes, but never in the same charming way and the value of the open source approach (count me among those that will never again put my heart into software in a locked vault). Aside from that one never can tell what suddenly catches on; who, for example, would have guessed in the first years of Linux that it one day would steamroll through the computer world in an IBM branded main battle tank?
Alexander G. Rubio
Millions, actually.
Whoever is using BeOS now will transition to Haiku progressively, and more people will join as developers improve the code, and new users will be charmed by the simple, clean, easy to understand interface.
I don’t see any problem with the Haiku team taking teir time, as long as there is steady progress being made.
I used to subscribe to the OpenBeOS devel mailing list. I haven’t in half a year or more.
Ever had a nutcase girlfriend (or mother)? The kind that calls you on the phone every 10 minutes until you answer then proceeds to talk about who knows what for hours on end? The kind where you smack yourself in the head with the phone in hopes you’ll go unconscious? The kind where you can go off and read the paper or take a dump and come back 15 minutes later and you still hear noises coming out of the ear piece?
Or maybe you’ve been in a meeting where someone starts talking, and you wonder if telling him to “shut the fuck up” would result in a standing ovation or being branded an insensitive clod. And after half an hour of wasted time you’re left wondering if they were the basis of Office Space’s “Milton”.
Open BeOS devel felt a lot like that. There were the handful of developers actually writing code. There were a lot of lurkers who were interested but didn’t have the time (me included). There was a lot of offtopic stuff. But what killed it for me were the people that bitched for 2 weeks straight because the “Show Image” replacement had 2 new features that weren’t present in the original BEOS version.
“~ why people are trying to re-do BeOS from the ground-up open source”
BeOS was from what I understand designed ‘from the ground up’…albeit like most modern OS reminiscent of NeXT and OS/2
If Haiku intends to achieve the same as R5 and be opensource maybe they have to follow Be tradition.
There is to me no imperative to be anything like any other OS in design or use.
I went through a week of BeOS fascination (playing around with BeOSMax, PhOS, personal, Professional). I guess its greatest strength was that it was a pretty quick system and the interface was decent. But at the end of the week I came to the conclusion that its pretty much a deadend.
The Haiku embarass themselves by calling the linux kernel a “server os”. The linux kernel, today, has better realtime capabilites than BeOS ever did – hands down.
I’ve argued the following point on osnews.com before and the best answer I received was “They are kernel newbies”. The point is why don’t they just use the linux kernel and X, they get all the drivers and nice ATI, Nvidia opengl for free.
Just recreate the API and forget about binary compatibility. Write a nice gui toolkit on top of X. It will be fast. Worry about the spirit of BeOS, not some ridiculous nostalgia for apps that are completely outdated right now and will look like atari 2600 games when Haiku actually has a version 1.
I might be a little bit more supportive if the B.E.OS model had been adopted instead of what they’re doing now.
Well, Eugenia, though, I may agree with you on some points, you article and your comments here have fully proven to me that you are an undeniable b****! Yes, you can have an opinion, and you are welcome to it, but, over the years, you have gotten worse and worse. Maybe it is due to the fact that you are not allowed to work in this country, and all you have to do all day is sit around and read other people complaining. Maybe all of their complaining has finally gotten to you, to the point that you are now one of them. If that is the case, please, get out of the journalism business, for, you have lost your professionalism. I know you don’t care for me, as, a couple years ago, you pretty much stated so, but, I have been respectfully quiet since then. Heck, I do not even know what our disagreement was about anymore. But, in that time, I have seen your opinion go from even handed to haphazard, almost becoming one of the people you complain about most, the zealots! So, say what you want about me, or anyone else for that matter, as your opinion takes on less and less merit every day, and, at least for me, has now no merit what so ever.
I wish all of the Haiku developers the best of luck, and, if one day, I have as much time as I did when I started helping with BeZilla, I will look them up to help (granted, BeZilla deserved a lot more time than I ever had to offer, and when I started, I had never coded for BeOS, ever).
I have enjoyed, and purchased all legal versions of BeOS since 4.5, and, bought MANY applications for BeOS, to help support 3rd party developers. However, I do not agree with how yellowTab has taken Zeta, and do not wish to support them.
So again, Best Of Luck Haiku, and, maybe/hopefully, we will all work together again in the not too distant future!
This story isn’t news, it’s an editorial.
Be Community has plenty of news, about Zeta, a commercial desktop/workstation effort. And of course, Haiku, which is open sourced though some day very soon, wholly capable of serving as the community distrobution backbone.
I don’t feel this piece should be here. Mphipps lays down the status in his report for this year.
there is tons of news and lots going on in our community, and a lot of great things happening. you can read upon it at iscomputeron, and haikunews, zetanews, begroovy
We don’t have an underabundance of news, so why are the only things put here as “news” are op ed pieces, to oft opinionated to be considered interesting. It doesn’t really show the interesting things going on.
It took 10 years to create BeOS R5, it did not take 10 years to create the BeOS. Also, it’s already been created, so haiku 1 won’t take very long at all. Some things were holding up development, Non profit status was one. yes, it’s true, axeld can use some clones.
But, I’m an optimist. I don’t dwell on bad things.
If I did, and you did, The BeOS most certianly would have died with Be Inc.
And we have proof otherwise…
Your point seems to hinge on that haiku has lost because they will have or currently do not have an audience …. but I know I will be there and I assume from the legnth of this comments thread many more will be also …. There IS an audience … maybe you got tired of watching the opining credits, but I will stay to the end of the movie.
ok now for my points on WHY I lie in wait
1- I do NOT want FEATURES …. I use nlite to take out the majority of FEATURES from XP … will I use Longhorn? … probably. But not because of the FEATURES but more because of the inevitable security updates and continuing compatibility
2- I liked the way beos worked … it seems to me the most logicall and overlooked thing they way beos dealt with drivers …. drag, drop, restart service, USE …. that is how it should be!
3- I want a SLIM, modular, and graphically based OS
4- no installers or package hell (OSX is really good for this also)
thank you and have a pleasent tommorow
BeOS in ways, is better than linux.
you obviously didn’t watch the old demo video.
It’s called intelligent prioritization.
I go one step further.
“Realtime intelligent prioritization in a full GUI OS, and look ma, we have an X server running on top of that too!”
And ours doesn’t bog your system down, like the stuff on other platforms.
The space violation system seems to be the smartest one I’ve ever worked with. That says huge amounts. There are efforts underway to make the BeOS “far more than just a server os, or a media os”.
I am currently running an R5 system with bone, relavant patches to that, svg subsystem, new haiku kits and tools, and it is solid as they come. The only stuff that ever gives me trouble is OLD software, though good stuff, like Keymaster, which needs to be recompiled anyhow. Security is something that’s getting some attention, as well as a smart, and easy way to install mulituser. Most implementations of multi user sucks, we have taken and observed other’s weaknesses on that.
I said there is a lot going on, I am not kidding.
You know, I really loved BeOS, but it doesn’t cut it anymore. Precious few new apps, not too many drivers. Trying to recreate R5 is like someone releasing a new version of the Sega Genesis… six months after the Playstation 3 came out. If you want to run BeOS apps, run them on BeOS 5. It’s a free download from bebits.com. The Haiku team needs to forget about recreating BeOS 5 immediately, and start working on something more advanced that adheres to the design principals of the BeOS. Trying to recreate an OS that has no office package (don’t even mention Gobe), no Java, no C#, database support sucks (although Postgres SQL is my favorite DB), no accelerated 3D hardware is pointless. It’s time for a focus shift from what now constitutes Haiku to what they call Glass Elevator or Haiku 2. Embrace the future, don’t stay stuck in the past.
The only other problem I have is getting native implementations from other platorms, but that’s hit and miss anyhow. We do get some. I worked on getting gema over to the beos. I stopped on smallbasic though.
See- I never learned how to program a computer. But despite that, with a little help from a couple of buddies, we got gema done. it was pretty easy on beos, in comparison to trying on other Os’s to port over a piece of similar technological stuff.
So, kudos. (btw, qnx was the second easiest)
They’re doing it so from the grond floor, they have the source code in their possession. Sure, it’s reimplementing R5, but it’s a fixed R5, to form a steady base that they have control over the future of.
That “we” control. If you have the skills, get involved, you’ll understand soon enough.
I like the general plan of the Haiku project. To first achieve BeOS R5 binary compatibility and look and feel, then build on top of that for next releases. Sounds very sensible and a good compromise.
BTW I am writing this on a BeOS R5 – works great for me and I rarelly boot to other two OS’s (Windows 2000 or Mandrake 9.2) on my home machine nowadays. Of course, I use my computer at home for hobby and recreation, it would be hard to do much of the stuff I do at work on my R5 system, anyways despite not being supported officially, BeOS is still a great OS for personal use – perhaps one of the few *true*, pure-breed desktop OS. I like it much better than linux distros which are often just some refitted server-room creatures. But that’s just me.
First of all, i’d love to see more competition and diversity in the home-end-user market.
I would suggest creating an OS that tries to innovate and competes with future/modern OSes, while keeping its BeOS roots and code, but not by copying Be’s mistakes and the irrelevant, right now, overall BeOS experience one could get out of a BeOS 5+.
This is your end conclusion. Even though you might be right (or not) on your time analysis you leave out several important references and/or arguments on which this conclusion is based. Where are they?
I would suggest creating an OS that tries to innovate and competes with future/modem OSes
I understand why it doesn’t compete with future/modern OSes. What i miss here is why it doesn’t innovate.
while keeping its BeOS roots and code
The former is afaik what they do. You appear to disagree by saying this, so i’m wondering, how aren’t they keeping the BeOS roots if they aim for things as cloning and compatibility? Isn’t this contradicting to what you said earlier about innovating? Isn’t what you want a different balance? Or just more developers? Why aren’t there enough developers? I suggest to define the BeOS roots according to your beliefs (most certainly, not everyone agrees on this).
As for the code, excuse me, but that statement is absolutely laughable. I am not a BeOS user, not particulary interested in it, but i did read the OpenBeOS website throughly a while back and they explicitly stated they don’t have access to the code. In short, what you want simply ain’t legal nor possible.
but not by copying Be’s mistakes and the irrelevant
What is the irrelevant? What were Be’s mistakes? Defining them helps adding weight to the discussion, article and will inform the less enlightened reader since not everyone who reads this has the knowledge regarding this subject. I count myself as one of these people, btw.
right now, overall BeOS experience one could get out of a BeOS 5+
That’s all fine, but you also argumented there is a lack of developers. To innovate, get on par with OSes such as MacOSX and Longhorn, developers are needed. Pure logic. You said there aren’t enough developers which i’m willing to accept. Well, the next question is, logically, then: Why aren’t there enough developers?
Basically, with a conclusion like this, you say you have an alternative roadmap. If you had, that is an extremely interesting addendum for the interested BeOS-reader including the development team. I miss details. Relevance. Even though the time analysis, as i already stated, might have raised valuable points.
How many times are people going to have to repeat what is plainly and clearly explained as the intentions of Haiku ?
If you can write you can read…try to understand it as well.
Haiku is not a competitor to MacOSX or Windows.Nor was BeOS,or NeXT for that matter.
Comparing BeOS to Longhorn or MacOSX is like comparing an Aston Martin to a Humvee hauling a Mack trailer.
I don’t care if the latter are more secure or modern or have more of something.
If you have driven an Aston Martin it is a pure pleasure I intend to be doing for at least 30 years on from now even if other people have spaceships by then.
And I am no BeOS/Haiku zealot.BeOS is one many OS I use.
As I said above…There is to me no imperative to be anything like any other OS in design or use.
There is also no point in Haiku being a BeOS-ish recreation of linux either.
If anyone here cannot understand that,they have not understood BeOS,Haiku or the OS they are using now,and probably are only using some 30% of the features their OS gives them,and will waste money upgrading hardware to use only a part of a new OS to less than it’s potential.
We are perhaps a little alike Eugenia…
..I expect nothing less than the best that human potential can achieve,and get irate at the continual experience of failiure of any OS to achieve it.
And after 24 years of using different OS,I am not looking forward to Longhorn,and am expecting far too much to follow what BeOS gave glimpses of,from Haiku.