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
fundimentally change the way an OS should be designed. Every OS that is currently available for machines with 64 bit address spaces are just warmed over unix clones. Except, of course, for the Single Address Space Operating Systems (see http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/sasos/project.html) currently under development. If you want to work on something that will be relevant in the next 10 years, go work on those projects. If you want to hark back to the old days of BeOS, go work on Haiku. It really is your choice because in the end, we’re all doing this for fun.
If this is such a dead OS, why have there been so many posts? When was the last time you saw so many responses so quickly about cosmoe, skyos, atheos or any of the others. Something to think about.
I understand what they’re doing, but I don’t understand why. Maintaining binary compatibility is a huge mistake and it’s slowing things down. If Haiku had massive resources, I could see them doing something like Apple where you could launch Classic from within OS X to run older applications. That would be cool, but Haiku is still years away from being able to run applications that are built on technology (R5) that hasn’t aged well, let alone advancing on R5. How long will it be before Haiku implements new features that make it a realistic alternative to Windows? Never, with the dead albatross of R5 binary compatibility hanging around it’s neck. If people like Eugenia, Jean-Baptiste Queru, and Scott Hacker (author of the BeOS Bible, people who were so heavily invested in BeOS, have given up on BeOS and have moved on to OS X, Windows XP, and Linux, I really can’t think of a reason to keep using BeOS. It doesn’t meet my computing needs anymore. At this point, BeOS is great for nostolgia, but not so great at providing a superior computing environment.
Linux is becoming what the BeOS had the chance to be for desktop users. The BeOS was by far the most enjoyable alternative OS to use on the x86 platform. Its got the best filesystem (BFS), the quickest boot times, and it was pretty damn stable too. Its sad though that the mindshare just wasn’t there. There was no clever marketing strategy. Nobody wanted to write drivers for it, save for a few dedicated hackers. Jean Louis Gasse couldn’t even give it away for free (Thank you, Microsoft!). Sure there was BeOS PE, but it wasn’t the right inroad for the massive attention that was required to make a dent in the market. On the other hand, theres nothing innovative or awe-inspiring about Linux, in fact its 5-10 years behind in many aspects compared to Windows or Mac OS. But what makes it so attractive? Two things: price and customizability. Companies can have a fully customized Linux solution and have it deployed across the entire corporate infrastructure for mere pennies. How does a closed-source upstart such as BeOS compete with free?
Very well said Jack, thanks. Many people in this forum are simply romantics (or clueless), and certainly not realists like you.
I think what Tenzin says is definitly true. If you want the top of the latest things, like a big Pentium 5 64bits running at 23 Gbits with 4 Go RDRAM on a 64bits OS with every candy things that you can ever imagine, just to use LongWord (lol) and surfing on the web, you have totally miss the thing.
Sorry Eugenia, but i have never heard the Haiku team saying that Haiku would be better than OS X or longhorn, so why do you compare those ? My mouse do not have 5 buttons and my laptop cannot burn DVDs, do not have wi-fi, USB 2 … but it’s enough for my everyday work use !
Longhorn new features ? You mean the crapy clock on the right ? the TCPA or palladium norms ? WinFS ? the new UI of Explorer (that takes 1/3 of the screen for nothing) ? What do you see or find in longhorn that are ssoooo awesome ? I think if windows would be the os that rules, you would not have an apple computer
Little features that personnals loves ? Like filesharing and webcams with MSN Messenger ? eh eh .. i don’t think OS X can do it, even with the latest messenger for mac.
I have try the latest Syllable and well … i just think i have lost a cd-r. Linux itself was not that good and famous 5 years ago … so just let haiku the time to grow, and if you think it’s a lost of time and a dead adventure, just leave it and don’t care about it but please, stop making such articles ! It’s just bad for all the community (R5, haiku and Zeta also!)
I found a couple of pretty good quotes from a Scott Hacker interview in Beyond Magazine. The topic of being a latter day BeOS user came up.
“Be had more than 100 employees and $25 million in the bank at one point. Full-time engineers and a bunch of committed commercial developers (Adamation, BeatWare, Gobe…). With all of that, BeOS barely stood a snowball’s chance in hell. Without any of that, without any hope of developing momentum — EVER — it’s all so much less than zero. It’s very hard for me to understand why there are still people hanging out in the ghost town.”
“Look, sometimes we do things in this life for irrational reasons, for love. If you love BeOS and don’t care about the apps or the practicality, then by all means use it, be happy, it’s “all part of life’s rich pageant.” Just don’t start to think BeOS is going to have some kind of renaissance, or take over the world, or provide a means for developers or users to make money. Love is the only remaining reason to use the system. And maybe that’s reason enough.”
> Sorry Eugenia, but i have never heard the Haiku team saying that Haiku would be better than OS X or longhorn, so why do you compare those
Because Haiku’s goal is to be the new BeOS, to fill up the gap. But BeOS goal WAS to compete straight with the other big OSes, so if Haiku doesn’t do that, Haiku is NOT a new BeOS, cause it doesn’t fill up the same needs that Be would fill up if Be was still in business. Is this really so different to figure out? You are surprising me with this sentence of yours!
Haiku could be the new BeOS, the Haiku Team is not the new Be Inc
Don’t forget that please.
– Haiku has the same goal of BeOS: bring back the spirit of BeOS and been able to assume its future (we are not talking here about marketing future !!!)
– Haiku team don’t want haiku to be the biggest OS and to pick up the market of m$ or Apple.
Here is the difference you seems to miss …. again, it’s a personnal view
You really think that using Word and surfing the web whilst listening to mp3s is all we’re gunna use our computers for in 10 years time? Think about 10 years ago, we didn’t even have a web to surf let alone mp3s.
Haiku’s goal is not to be the new BeOS, it is to first re-implement r5 and go from there.
The goal is most certainly not to compete with Windows and Apple head-on. It is possible that Haiku-based distributions will chose to do so but it’s not a goal of the Haiku project itself.
“Is this really so different to figure out?”
Guess I’m just another clueless romantic who uses r5 because it gets my job (System/Network Admin) done better than any other OS.
It is Eugenia’s right to be able to say whatever she wants in her editorial. She cannot be concerned with the effect her editorials will have on the morale of the various BeOS devotees. It’s her job to get up on a soap box and offer her honest opinion when she writes an editorial, not to offer some pleasant, saccharine falsehood. And by the way, a 64 bit processor is pretty neat if the software you’re using is compiled for 64 bit, rather than 32 bit. Linux compiled for AMD64 is very snappy on my friends new box.
The only thing that really desturbs me Eugenia is that, hopefully only for the sake of the argument, you swallow all the commercial bla bla from the microsoft camp.
You have a lifelong interest in OS’s and have followed the evolution very closely. Surely you will agree that Longhorn will not be the next nirvana and will not contain all the features that are now promised. It will be the next itteration: bigger, slower, harder to maintain. The SP’s will become a bigger issue than ever. Performance has been a problem for some time and looking at the direction Longhorn is taking it will be much worse.
I have the same doubts as you about the future of BeOS but not for one second do I believe the next Windows itteration is going to make me happier with my system (or the next since a new computer is a necessity with every upgrade of Windows).
Creator of Haiku are working just at their spent time, but if they are not able to accept donations, they hinder their fans to support their work by sending some money to Haiku project. Developers can replace obtained money to free time. This is one way to accelerate a development.
Why should I, or anyone else, base their OS choice on what Hacker thinks? I prefer to base it on rational reasons like if it gets the job done and not on the opinions of random person X whom I dont even know.
Btw, I make money every day using BeOS and so does many other people.
Interestingly enough, in addition to painstakingly cloning BeOS, the Haiku project is also recreating most of Be’s mistakes by hand:
They seem to have acquired the “overpromise and under-deliver” syndrome that afflicted Be Inc. for so many years. Unrealistic hints of alpha releases by Christmas or Easter when little to no code has been checked in is a setting for failure. This wasn’t good for business at Be and it isn’t good for morale (which Haiku desperately needs).
Writing everything from scratch is a time and labor intensive process. And unnecessary. Travis is still dicking around with the lowest levels of the NewOS kernel (which still doesn’t do much of anything) while the most important module projects like the app_server have floundered.
If they really wanted to get this project off the ground they’d fork AtheOS or Syllable and modify it to use the BeOS API while utilizing some of the code they have already written. This would have the following advantages:
* A relatively mature codebase that shares many of the same characteristics and design philosophies of BeOS. This is also as close as anybody is going to get to a working BeOS-like system in the next 5-10 years.
* Applications By recompiling and a little sweat equity, Haiku would inerit most of BeOS’ application library. Open-source projects are readily available and with enough momentum folks like Gobe (Gobe Productive) could be encouraged to port or release their code.
* Time AtheOS and Syllable work RIGHT NOW. It is easier to polish existing code than to build it from scratch. And it is open and free! The grunt work has already been done and is is PROVEN to work.
* This is NOT starting over By using the Be API some of the Haiku code can be reused as well as the knowledge and insight the Haiku developers have gained over then past 3 years. Many parts of BeOS were re-written several times before anything usable was built, because it is hard work and even full-time paid professionals like Be’s engineers had to learn through experience and failure. Also, the foundation has been set up, copyright issues have been examined, the project finally has a name ;-), etc.
* MOMENTUM and MORALE This is possibly the most important point. If Haiku could develop a beta-quality BeOS clone within the next year to 18 months the project could reach a point of “critical mass” where users and especially developers would be attracted to the project and development would take off at an exponential rate.
* Narrow focus Right now the manpower at Haiku is spread too thin. There is simply too much work to be done. By focusing their efforts on a smaller realistic set of goals (such as implementing the Be API, recreating the Be apps, etc.) those goals can be achieved much sooner and we can all lookforward to Haiku 2.0 that much sooner.
I don’t think that they’ve failed as such but they almost certainly haven’t done as well as they hoped at the start, and I do think they will be passed by.
And i’d also go as far to say that the haiku team is wasting their talent.. if their so concerned about making a super fast and stable OS they should read the linux from scratch manual and plan a huge modification to the linux kernel which would address their need for speed
but really.. blueeyedOS was the only BeOS project that made any sense
Take a look at this screenshot and just try and tell me your heart didn’t just skip a beat:
http://msa.section.me.uk/syllable/beish-testing.gif
Of course, I realize there is more to an OS than how it looks, but I honestly believe the approach I detailed earlier could be made to work.
OK, ok, I’ll shut up now… 😉
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 wasn’t going to reply to this thread but now you’ve got me; care to back that up? As far as I can see Syllable is one of the few OS’s with at least a basic roadmap and a list of features to be completed before we release version 1.0. How is that directionless?
If you think the only enhancements we’re making are occasional driver updates then you’ve not been paying very much attention. The next release of Syllable will have an entire new desktop and registrar. Hardly a minor addition to the codebase or a tweak in functionality.
But what they shouldn’t do is listen to most of you lot. Porting Syllable or some other OS, or basing Haiku on Linux ala Blue Eyed OS is not their goal.
I myself am willing to wait and see and make my own judgement. It’s crazy to be shooting down a product that won’t be ready for quite some time, and then proceeding to say “…they should perform this action to get ahead.”
Simply, if you decide not to use Haiku R1 whenever it’s released, fine, no skin off of mine or anyone elses nose. But please don’t say that slow development will be the downfall of the project , because in the end, there will be interested users and there will be people who will switch. Not everyone has plans to buy a Longhorn monster machine, anyhow.
Chris
First off, to anyone who says: “Use the Linux kernel and X”: Please, rethink that statement. The Linux kernel and especially X could NEVER EVER perform as well as BeOS does. The responsiveness and speed of the Be is something no other OS will achieve in at least ten to fifteen years, simply because they are too big, too bloated and too over-featured. And let’s be real guys, X is simply too unresponsive and too slow compared to BeOS.
Secondly, it’s a shame to see the quarrels here. The BeOS community is already getting smaller and smaller, with less people using it as their everyday OS every day, and yet we allow ourselves to fight over nitpicky stuff. We should get our act together, forget old grudges and just learn from and improve eachother, instead of whining about every damn pixel.
It would be shame if our community got as fragmented as the Linux community.
Sadly, Vanders, there’s a lot of uninformed crap amongst these comments. Ignore it. People who look at more than the OSNews headlines (ie actually read up on Syllable or Haiku etc) are aware of the reality of the development state on these projects.
Keep up el gudo werko.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. There is nothing by design that makes X slow, including the client server model. The current X.Org/Xfree86 implementation just isn’t that great, although there are improvements in store, with bottlenecks being removed all the time, on the X and the widget sides. Have you ever tried IRIX? I’m guessing not, because if you had you wouldn’t be telling us that “X is slow”.
In regard to the kernel, think again, again. The kernel is getting faster all the time. 2.6 is BLAZING for desktop use. Agreed it doesn’t currently have the multimedia performance of BeOS, but that doesn’t mean it never will, because unlike BeOS, the Linux has been actively developed in the last three years.
I’m sick of this obsession with BeOS. It had it’s strengths, but it had some serious weaknesses as well. ANYONE still using it in 2004 is a dinosaur, and well, you know what happened to the dinosaurs.
Have you ever tried IRIX? I’m guessing not, because if you had you wouldn’t be telling us that “X is slow”.
I didn’t say X is slow, I said X is slow compared to BeOS.
Read before commenting, please.
“I didn’t say X is slow, I said X is slow compared to BeOS.”
Which is wrong. X is a protocol. Implementations may be slow, but that doesn’t mean X is, because it’s design doesn’t neccesarily mean it is.
nothing wrong in writing that haiku has no future, but the way you do it is very bad style. the haiku programmers don’t get paid for haiku coding, it’s still the most successful beos cloning project.
did you have a bad day, are you frustrated that beos dies slowly?
you killing the reputation of osnews. this was the worst article from you i’ve ever read.
it’s still the most successful beos cloning project.
It’s the only BeOS cloning project, actually. Others (Zeta, PhOS, etc) just reimplement “old” stuff.
Personally i’m tired of this obsession with Linux. Every goddamn time there’s a article about a non-Linux OS there’s five billion posts saying “This OS is dead, you should use linux”, “they should have based it on Linux”, “Linux is faster with kernel what-the-fuck-ever” etc etc. Linux isnt the answer to every problem and not everyone has the desire to use it all the time. I dont care if X is fast or slow, I dont care if it’s a design or implementation problem, none of this matters to me. The computing world doesnt revolve around Linux.
Why this need to tell others what they should use and how much better the OS you are using is?
Why the need to tell other people what they should develop and how they should do it?
I’m sure Freud would have something interesting to say on the matter…
Because Haiku’s goal is to be the new BeOS, to fill up the gap. But BeOS goal WAS to compete straight with the other big OSes, so if Haiku doesn’t do that, Haiku is NOT a new BeOS, cause it doesn’t fill up the same needs that Be would fill up if Be was still in business.
This is stupid reasoning, and actually a fallacy.
If X wants to be exactly like Y, then in the end X == Y. By DEFINITION. Obviously this ain’t and won’t be true.
For one, Haiku doesn’t got anything near the financial power Be had. For two, Haiku is open-source MIT (aka X11) licensed whereas BeOS was proprietary freeware software. Haiku, as it currently stands, won’t get that same financial backup and won’t become a proprietary BeOS since those aren’t part of the goals. Third, the code won’t be exactly the same as BeOS R5 or whatever either since the BeOS R5 code is copyrighted and owned by Palm. Hence, it might look the same but internally it ain’t. At best, it is (partly) similar and that’s indeed (partly) the goal of Haiku given they aim for compatibility, they’ll have to provide similar APIs.
What we can conclude from the simple logic here above is that Haiku simply won’t be BeOS. Now, i have never read on their website that they have the same market share or commercial goal as BeOS had, or aimed for. If you have, please provide me the relevant quoted with a link to them. Thanks.
The problem lies also in the missing definition of “what BeOS was” and assuming your non-stated definition of that is similar as to what the Haiku authors intend to do. My definition, as i already pointed out, is as simple as X = Y where X is BeOS and Y is Haiku.
If you want people to innovative, then you shouldn’t talk about things such as market share and adoption. That’s not the point of innovation, research, and inventions. Look at Enlightenment for example. They do their thing, and they’ve always done that whereas they don’t give a rat about Linux adoption or their own market share on the Linux desktop. They just did and continue to do what they think is right. Something pop-artists lack.
I, for one, rather see projects like Haiku doing something they feel is right and seeing what the market decides (eventually a business grabbing the source and using it as a basis for commercial offerings — don’t forgot, that’s a reasonable possibility!) than to aim for market share. A lack of respect to the developers is the opposite; demanding they should drive some path you prefer while you don’t provide valuable feedback, or another way of a contribution. If i recall correctly, the developers do value feedback but only carefully crafted constructive feedback and not things such as “Haiku should support IPv6 Why? Because i say so.”. You’ll have to actually argument and provide references instead.
Having said that, from a psychological point of view, it just seems some (ex-)BeOS users, fans simply can’t accept BeOS flopped. That it didn’t worked out. And all they want is some magic event happening where Haiku somehow picks up the line where BeOS stopped improving the software from that line. As if Haiku developers have the source to BeOS. Obviously, they don’t. So wake up, that ain’t gonna happen. Haiku is not, and will never be Be or BeOS. So please, stop dreaming, and accept this project is walking a different path with some goals similar as BeOS, allowing compatibility and accept this is gonna take time. Wanna contribute? I’m quite sure you’re welcome. Because they don’t have this dogmatic view of becoming exactly like BeOS, it opens the freedom for radical innovations and who knows what the end result will be, but it won’t be a production-ready OS anytime soon. So don’t expect it’ll Be.
Like Linux for instance. What future is there? IT’ll constantly be a couple of years behind windows until they innovate rather than clone. Sure a tiny group of people use Linux for desktop but it’s a pathetically small amount.
Besides, if I wanna something consistent, then there is about BeOS –> Haiku which is available. Linux can NEVER be consistent due to it’s anarchaic development model. Not to mention because plenty of the devs are complete dweebs…
You obviously don’t get all this.
First of all, BeOS wasn’t “proprietary freeware”. Only their last release had a freeware package, but calling all of BeOS proprietary freeware already shows a lack of understanding.
Secondly, Haiku states they want to recreate BeOS R5. Fine. This simply means they have the [i]exact same goals,/i> as Be had. Last year, people recreated the Wright Flyer. They did this in the same way Haiku is currently recreating BeOS: starting from scratch. Their goals were the same: to fly. Haiku’s goal is the same as Be’s goal: create an OS that is a viable alternative to existing Desktop OS’s, and they promised us an RC several times, yet they didn’t deliver. I’m not here to bash them in any way (no matter what, they’re still doing a great job) but fact is they didn’t live up to the expectations they created themselves. Microsoft gets bashed for this. Yet we should all forget it when someone else does the same?
And saying “but Haiku is OSS” is no argument. Whatever y’all are, a promise is a promise, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether they get payed ot not.
I know most of the people involved in Haiku hate GPL,
but what about a design system, with all libraries LGPL,
included drivers, but with GPLed core kits (app-server etc)?
There are plenty of developers out there that like GPL, see
Linux vs. BSD, see GNOME and KDE licenses.
Not all people like to work with a BSD/MIT license.
And for commercial applications and/or drivers maker, there is LPGL.
I can’ t see why commercial companies|developers, couln’t join this project.
I know GPL is difficoultous to accept by people who want to sell their software,
but *with* LPGL, even closed softwares can exist.
All libraries LPGL, ability of adding commercial drivers… imho that’ all!
And Haiku will fly.
Regards,
sorry fot my english.
A shame you don´t know what you are talking about
90% of BE´s `incredible speed´ was boot time alone.
Personally I don´t see the benefit of playing 12 films simultaneously, with no frame dropping, in realtime-but Linux using opengl does this just fine on my machine
Aside from the fact that BE doesn´t even support the codecs most films are encoded in nowadays unless of course they are using the ones from Linux 
. I guess the incredible speed of BE´s multimedia performance is why BE is that standard in high-resolution rendering farms….
And BE´s graphics was great if you happen to have a card supported by it-unlike the majority of video crads sold in the past 5 years….
And as far as the kernel goes-kernels can be amazingly fast when they are not doing much of anything
As a single user desktop-only operating system Be was(is?) quite impressive-but a few minor things have occurred in the past years like the internet and networking-things which have rendered the value of single-users desktop-only OS´s rather questionable….Sure if you don´t need or want the vast majority of functionality which an ever increasing number of users expect today BE is great. I guess it was a fluke that both Microsoft and Apple recognized the value of offering more than a single-user desktop-only OS. But with the right setup I can render over the network just as fast or even faster under Linux than BE can render locally on one machine.
For the record if the BE community was anywhere near as united as the Linux community was BE would be a whole lot further along than it is
The really good points about BE were not it´s kernel and its graphics system- it was the file system stuff and intuitive easy to use UI and those are not directly dependent upon the kernel and or graphics subsystem.
Whoops, y’all can see I didn’t press shift there. Damn Mac keyboard
.
I didn’t say X is slow, I said X is slow compared to BeOS.
Based on what scientific research?
What knowledge do you actually have regarding X? What exactly have you benchmarked? What X implementatione was used in your analysis? Which platform? OS? Version? Hardware? Which software settings related to performance were used? Where can we read your analysis?
Above are details you don’t mention which shows on how relevant your research really is. If you researched the subject, or were to state an unbiased research, you’d know the above matters when comparing performance hence you’d state it.
I’m looking forward to your scientific analysis, but i’m not holding by breath. Cause, i’m sorry, but some home user like you just doesn’t have the same credibility as a software engineer who does know how to craft a scientific research. For the very same reason, i would trust an IP lawyer more in regards to license X than a software engineer because he or she studied the subject of matter in depth whereas the software engineer studied a different subject in depth, software engineering.
And BE´s graphics was great if you happen to have a card supported by it-unlike the majority of video crads sold in the past 5 years….
All nVidia and Ati cards are supported and working under any BeOS incarnation. Thanks to Haiku, mostly, yes
Scientific research means nothing. “It could do this” means shite. It’s what it does NOW that matters.
Fact is, BeOS is ten times as responsive as ANY X incarnation I’ve ever tried, and saying: “Yes, but X could do a whole lot better” doesn’t change a single thing.
If that were true, than where are all the speed improvements? I’ve been using Linux w/ X for years now, still I see no noticable improvements when it comes to UI responsiveness and speed. X developer sure had a whole lot of time to improve on this, seeing it’s a rather old system.
“X developer sure had a whole lot of time to improve on this, seeing it’s a rather old system.”
For the last time X IS A PROTOCOL! A SPECIFICATION! Not a piece of software. And I’m willing to bet the only X implementation you’ve used is XFree86/X.Org.
You say “Fact is, BeOS is ten times as responsive as ANY X incarnation I’ve ever tried, and saying: “Yes, but X could do a whole lot better” doesn’t change a single thing.” If that is fact, show us some benchmarks, something anything. Because that sounds an awful lot like BS to me.
Research before posting.
And while you’re at it, download the B.E.O.S. test ISO, and keep in mind this was far from complete work.
First of all, BeOS wasn’t “proprietary freeware”. Only their last release had a freeware package, but calling all of BeOS proprietary freeware already shows a lack of understanding.
Point taken.
Secondly, Haiku states they want to recreate BeOS R5. Fine. This simply means they have the exact same goals,
Holy kenobi, ignorance strikes. I explained they cannot have the very same goals because several conditions are different.
You cannot become the same as your father, but you can be like your father.
they have the exact same goals,/i> as Be had. Last year, people recreated the Wright Flyer. They did this in the same way Haiku is currently recreating BeOS: starting from scratch. Their goals were the same: to fly. Haiku’s goal is the same as Be’s goal: create an OS that is a viable alternative to existing Desktop OS’s, and they promised us an RC several times
Alike, not the same. 1.149274 is near 1, but one cannot declare X as 1.149274 while declaring X as 1 at the same time (except when its an integer, yeah).
When people begin to release their dogmatic view of what it will become or what the developers want it to be we will finally see less strong-worded opinions such as the one posted in this article. It is a lot more friendlier to the developers, and it leaves up a lot space for pragmaticism and innovation. Better yet, if you want X to be Y, then there is no room for pragmaticism and innovation.
and they promised us an RC several times, yet they didn’t deliver.
Why didn’t they? Did you felt they somehow were obligated to deliver?
Microsoft gets bashed for this. Yet we should all forget it when someone else does the same?
As you say yourself, Microsoft gets paid* for it. From my point of view, that matters. If i pay someone or see others paying, i expect quality. If i don’t pay, i don’t expect quality i just see what happens or when i do expect something based on a promise, i don’t demand or frown upon them when they don’t.
* Not only payment is the point. Any kind of constructive feedback matters.
And saying “but Haiku is OSS” is no argument.
The OSS-ness (MIT) of Haiku is actually an important aspect of the project as pointed out earlier because it allows proprietary “exploitation” and because it shows a clear difference versus BeOS’ path.
It is also one of the very reasons Haiku has a different development model hence it just isn’t doing exactly like BeOS did.
I don’t give a rat’s ass whether they get payed ot not.
Which is the root of the conflict. Take, take, take. Whine, rant, principles of a promise is a promise but don’t give back. They have a lack of developers, isn’t that obvious to you already?
Ahh you mean thanks to the open source drivers(mostly from X11R6 and mostly developed for Linux) which the Haiku developers used to figure out how to create new drivers for Haiku-ok. Great I am glad to here Haiku supports it-BE didn´t and I assume you mean the Haiku drivers work also under older BEOS versions ?. And while you are at it tell me when you will have opengl 3D acceleration working….
Just to let you know: I am not happy about the situation regarding driver support of hardware. I think it is criminal that OS´s developers either have to pay the manufacturers to write the drivers, be dependent upon the binary-only drivers provided by the manufacturers for those OS´s which they deem to be significant, or reverse engineer and hack together workarounds based on lacking and fragmentary documentation. I point to Linux because it is the only alternative OS which has actually succeeded in getting support from the manufacturers. Not because I believe BE or Haiku are inferior in design or quality of coding.
I am all for people writing their own kernels and their own graphics subsystems-but the point is unless you are going to produce an entire platform, in which you control the hardware upon which the software is to be run(ie. Apple) you are in the nearly impossible situation of having to provide drivers without help from the manufacturers for the tens of thousands of commodity hardware devices.
I am not saying one should not try, or that one should give up and resign. And I really do wish those trying to succeed the best in luck. But to choose not to use things from the Linux world which are supported by the manufacturers and represent the largest selection of free drivers in the world is simply foolish. Linux is only second to Microsoft windows when it comes to hardware support. Linux does effectively support the commodity pc hardware. Not because it is intrinsically so great but because it has overcome the chicken-egg problematic which all new OS´s face.
If the manufacturers would provide open documentation for their hardware there would be no OS monopoly and and each and every alternative OS would benefit immeasurablly providing for a far better, richer and more powerful palette of OS´s than is avaialble today. My realism is mostly anger directed at the manufacturers who refuse to provide open documentation of their interfaces to third party developers. Not because I think Linux is the ub3rl33t OS of all time(although it probably is
) and BE or Haiku or Zeta or s/.*OS// is inferior.
This is by far the worst article I ever read on OSNews.
Yep, you may have an argument and I don’t even fully disagree with everything you said. But this is the most biased, self-pleased and harsh article you’ve written so far and you’ve written many biased articles before – especially in the area of (open)BeOS and Zeta.
And since this article represents the opinion of OSNews.com – unlike others which do explictly not – I don’t see a very bright future for this site.
Also modding down the comments that critisize you won’t give you and respect back either.
Scientific research means nothing.
HAHAHAHA. OMFG. The qoute of the year. This should become OSnews its headline. OSNews.com – Where scientific research means nothing.
Scientific research, using the scientific method (see http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html) means everything when you want to reside to unbiased conditions where hard, reproducable numbers matter instead of vague meassures such as “feelings”.
Fact is, BeOS is ten times as responsive as ANY X incarnation I’ve ever tried, and saying:
Where is your analysis backing up this “ten times as responsive”? I tell you where it is: it doesn’t exist. Your “benchmarks” mean nothing to any person who wishes to see hard facts. Hard facts you haven’t provided, testing conditions you haven’t provided.
“Yes, but X could do a whole lot better” doesn’t change a single thing.
Not what i’ve argued.
If that were true, than where are all the speed improvements? I’ve been using Linux w/ X for years now, still I see no noticable improvements when it comes to UI responsiveness and speed. X developer sure had a whole lot of time to improve on this, seeing it’s a rather old system.
Finally, here are some details. The kernel is Linux. Version of distribution is unspecified, kernel version is unspecified, architecture is unspecified, X implementation is unspecified, version of X implementation is unspecified. Dependancies, hardware details, software running on the system, hardware usage, settings affecting performance — all lacking. Any benchmarks are still lacking.
Have you actually tried another X implementation than whatever you’ve tried? On another platform than whatever you’re using? Ever tried IRIX? AIX? Solaris? Done benchmarks on either of these?
You make this claim X is a bottleneck, but you provide no technical arguments except something which is based on what appears to be “feelings” which are as wild as the claim “ten times”. There are no numbers to back it up either. You don’t ever refer to other people arguing the same as you do, but who do try to get some credit in their process of doing so.
Just what the hell are you thinking. Do you think anyone takes your X rant serious? Do you think any sane reader would say “Thom is right” based on what you said; without you proving anything? Do you think “Scientific research means nothing” raises your credibility?
Just what the hell are you thinking. Do you think anyone takes your X rant serious? Do you think any sane reader would say “Thom is right” based on what you said; without you proving anything? Do you think “Scientific research means nothing” raises your credibility?
Scientific research means nothing when it comes to speed and UI responsiveness. Picking that sentence out of context is a rather low way of attacking me.
And no, I don’t give a damn whether people think I’m right or not (other than you seem to do). I don’t want to force my opinion down someone else’s throat. I base my experiences and statements on something that has a whole lot more value to me than any benchmark ever made. It’s what I feel that matters to me, I don’t care what a benchamrk says. Theory is nice, it’s practice that matters.
Have you actually tried another X implementation than whatever you’ve tried? On another platform than whatever you’re using? Ever tried IRIX? AIX? Solaris? Done benchmarks on either of these?
Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris 9. And again, benchmarks only provides numbers, they don’t provide feelings. You cannot capture a UI in numbers.
But back to the point (being I said X (in any incarnation) is too slow for recreating the BeOS experience): Still no one gave me a sane argument as to why use X to recreate the Be, other than hardware support.
Scientific research means nothing when it comes to speed and UI responsiveness.
In order to make a general claim about X performance, based on what seems to be the X protocol, you’ll have to back it up with reproducable circumstances, provide the researched numbers if you wish to receive any credit on which conclusions like “the X protocol is 10 times as slow as BeOS”. You don’t provide this; hence no cookie. Simple as kissing.
Picking that sentence out of context is a rather low way of attacking me.
I’m not attacking you, i’m stating why your opinion on X performance doesn’t hold water. My comments on that still stand because speed and UI responsiveness is one aspect of -you guessed it- performance. Which is ofcourse the type of performance i was referring to.
And no, I don’t give a damn whether people think I’m right or not (other than you seem to do).
If you don’t care what other people think about your opinion, why bother stating your opinion?
I base my experiences and statements on something that has a whole lot more value to me than any benchmark ever made. It’s what I feel that matters to me, I don’t care what a benchamrk says.
How arrogant. What you say here is the scientific method is worth less compared to what you feel, experience. You are aware that experiences and feelings are heavily biased as opposed to the scientific method? Which is precisely the reason the method exists in the first place. You are aware computer science is finds its roots in the scientific method and thanks to smart masses applying that, you are able to fetch your mail and use the WWW among other practical usages of a computer?
Theory is nice, it’s practice that matters.
Practice is based on theory. Anything you do on your computer is based on theory. If you’d wish to add something, for example criticism to developers who are developing an implementation of X, then how do you think your feelings or experiences are somehow valuable to them? You have to back up your findings with undisputable facts to create a rational environment, to nullify any (intentional or not) bias.
Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris 9. And again, benchmarks only provides numbers, they don’t provide feelings.
Those feelings are a benchmark; its just not an unbiased one.
But back to the point (being I said X (in any incarnation) is too slow for recreating the BeOS experience):
…which you’re not able to back-up.
Still no one gave me a sane argument as to why use X to recreate the Be, other than hardware support.
* Compatibility with other OSes; standard.
* Network transparancy.
* Reusage of existing and future code.
* Proven stability, proven concept.
* Performance, perhaps.
It’s not that hard. Basically, any document which argues for X usage can be used as arguments as to why X is used in favor of other competitors (which are likely to be less widely deployed). But you gotta know something about X, you know…
If they want to become a bigger player, backward compatibility and network compatibility is important. Take a look at DirectFB; it does have X support. Take a look at MacOSX; it does have X support. Windows lacks it, among other compatibility aspects related to *NIX, which frequently means admins have to install additional software such as an X server or SFU which provides NFS, among others.
Not to be rude, but I see a lot of
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
Fear of how long it will take, fear that it will be to little, to late. Uncertainty if it will work or have a future and
doubt in the path taken really is correct.
Well that’s okay but don’t call me a romantic or anything else just because I believe in Haiku. See you on the flipside.
Why use X for the BeOS gui ?
The BeOS GUI is based on it’s own client/server structure,and could be configured to be used as a network graphics server and window manager,*if* needed.
If the network GUI server functions are not needed,X is an unnecessarily large component for a single system GUI.
If you want X run unix.
It is a free world if the Haiku people want to develop Haiku the way they have been developing, well let them.
If you do not wish to use Haiku, well don’t!
If you do no wish to buy Zeta, don’t
If you do not wish to use a Mac, or Windows or Linux, well don’t
but please don’t assume that since YOU like YOUR system slim that everyone else should have their system slim. please do not assume that because YOU love BeOS (or any other OS) that YOUR way is the BEST way to save a “dead” OS. Difference in opinion makes for good conversation and makes for good creativity to be produced.
Just because you will it, it does not make it true, This is for all you Mac, Windows, Linux, Be, NeXT, Syllable, AtheOS, Haiku, Zeta (etc) fans/zealots/over-excited people out there.
Peace!
Yes
If your OS does your job,ok.
As mini-me says,
Peace
“Yes
If your OS does your job,ok.
As mini-me says,
Peace”
then all those switching to Linux from Windows articles don’t make any sence now!
“Like Linux for instance. What future is there? IT’ll constantly be a couple of years behind windows until they innovate rather than clone. Sure a tiny group of people use Linux for desktop but it’s a pathetically small amount.
they have a roadmap! just shamelessly copy every nice feature from XP & OSX rename it & develope it under GPL!
OK, OsNews had very negative attitude to OpenBeOS project from start. If i recall all that correctly.
And I doubt it helped to attract developers to project and speed-up its progress.
So, in such light it is little bit of incorrect at least to bash the project for lack of developers and slow evolution at this site.
he cut it out man everyone has his own opinion & they have every right to say it!
the lady is doing a nice job by running such a nice website here you should give her credit rather than saying bad things.
Why use X for the BeOS gui ?
I’ve tried to find an answer to this question on haiku-os.org but haven’t been able to find it. One of which i find a purely logic one, is compatibility. Basically, compatibility is able to go multiple ways.
2 examples
* Providing backward compatibility for BeOS applications.
* Providing future compatibility for X.
* Providing backward compatibility for X.
* Providing future compatibility for BeOS applications.
Other combinations, new implementations, more implementations, and other compatibility with current standards is ofcourse also possible.
Backward compatibility for X is a true benefit in heterogenous environments as well as being able to run an arsenal of X applications (think about all the FOSS X apps available on OSX, IRIX, Solaris and other Unices). Given Haiku will be POSIX compliant hence those FOSS apps are easily ported. Backward compatibility with BeOS allows one to run old BeOS applications on Haiku hence no BeOS (the OS itself) is necessary.
IMO, both compatibility is prefered for above stated reasons, and whatever it prefers as standard and/or to write their own applications with is less important. Perhaps they’ll use something new in addition to X and BeOS compatibility? I don’t know.
PS: X runs on non-Unix systems as well.
“develope it under GPL!”
No, MIT license (aka X11 license).
I dunno about others but I was under the impression that Zeta didn’t have the BeOS source and as such, YT would have a limited lifespan. People don’t throw money at a company without at least a small amount of hope that it’ll be around for a while.
BeOS has X already as an option,as does windows,Qnx,etc.But you know this.
That is no reason why it should be the default GUI and built into the OS.
Everything you discussed can be done with BeOS as is.Or not.
<em>Given Haiku will be POSIX compliant hence those FOSS apps are easily ported.</em>
X isnt part of POSIX and many POSIX apps works on beos already since it’s somewhat (enough) POSIX compliant.
There already is a native X server for BeOS and it is better to improve that than to use X as a basis for Haiku.
Talk about negative energy :S
I’ve run X on a 486 / 25 MHz and it was fine. Pretty similar to Windows 3.1. Similarly, I know of people who’ve run it on 386s and the like. And this is XFree86 — not the fastest X server — but it’s still good on very old hardware.
You’re confusing X with toolkits, wigets and libraries. Yeah, X with GNOME/KDE is slow, but that’s not because of X!
Bah, I really wish I could meet up with all the X-bashers and bring along my old 486 notebook. Watching it run X at a decent pace would pretty much silence them all.
Because Haiku’s goal is to be the new BeOS, to fill up the gap. But BeOS goal WAS to compete straight with the other big OSes,
so if Haiku doesn’t do that, Haiku is NOT a new BeOS, cause it doesn’t fill up the same needs that Be would fill up if Be was still in
business. Is this really so different to figure out? You are surprising me with this sentence of yours
—-
Be’s goal was to compete with Windows?? How bizarre, I believe I distinctively remember Be always reacting negatively to comments stating that BeOS was to compete with Windows. I mean, they weren’t a bunch of morons on a suicide mission.
BeOS was called the Media OS on purpose… because it was designed to fit into a market niche: real-time media, creation and manipulation.
Every fsckin OS out there has taken cues from what Be did, added it to their own products, and eventually managed to get enough of the multi-media gap down to nothing. That is the gap generic computers had compared to dedicated machines for media manipulation. BeOS was attempting to not compete with anyone, except possibly Apple.
I remember videos of JLG when he was asked about this subject (competing with Windows), the results of those questions may interest you. Look up the interviews.
–The loon (out for the day)
The commentary puts forth some views. I don’t agree with most of them.
the bottom line is this. Will haiku serve some need in the market which is not otherwise served and will it be able to reach its audience?
That may be the case. it may not. There are several scenarios under which haiku could succeed so i would not discount it so readily. Linux, Apple, and Windows don’t cover everything you know.
I bought R4 on a whim as I was becoming disilluoned with Windows at the time, I liked the idea though it didn;t support my graphics card and only gave me a B&W display.
I bought R5 as well, which was leaps and bounds better. Not only was this the OS for me, if I was an Android or something I’d have been programmed in R5 BeOS code. Very clean, very fast, visually appealing, easy to use. I ended up running R5 as my only OS until lack of programs I needed both for work and home use became painfully evident. This was around the late 90s.
On the work-front and BeOS lacked a browser that could handle https sites (Opera you had to pay for and bezilla would crash and burn). I also remember the spreadsheet app (not sure of the name) having compatibility issues with not handling Excel files right.
On the home front BeOS was lacking things as well. most notably instant messengers, at the time there was only BeAIM a version of Aim that you had to import buddy list files for (it didn’t support the Aim servers automatically keeping that config) and Gim-Icq the most basic of ICQ messenger imaginable. Friends of mine would want to chat on yahoo messenger with webcam neither of which were available from bebits. And with the builds of bezilla at the time constantly freezing just simple web browsing was a chore (let alone thinking about things now like browsing to sites with flash and/or java content).
I ended up splitting my partition into 3 slices, one for Windows XP, one for Linux, and one for BeOs (which still to this day has the best boot loader of all time). mostly I’d ignore the XP partition and fiddle with linux distro after linux distro until i found one i could live with (name withheld to prevent flamewars). occasionally I’d boot back into BeOS try using it and find it still sadly behind the times. In the mean time I’ve become a rather experienced linux user.
I too remember when the OS formerly known as OpenBeos came about and their first prediction was to have a release ready by Christmas, then the timetable was moved to a year, then to a more or less (Duke nukem Forever-ish) ready when it’s ready. I think if the initial time frame had been met things would have been better. like many had said ther’s be something actually useable, and beOs developers who’ve long since abandoned bebit projects may not have had a viable alternative come out in a suitable timeframe.
What I’m getting at is that I agree with the idels of haiku to NOT use the Linux kernel, to NOT use X, to keep what was good about beoS being clean, fast, and elegant. The quandry that comes about it once you have a working replicant of R5 you have a community supported open source version of one of the best OSes ever IMHo that will run almost nothing useful. I must admit there were some be Apps i really liked such as the cd burning GUI (been so long I forget the name, and bebit’s is in such disarray with screenshots bringing up linked pages 404 errors and whatnot). Anyway i remember this Cd burning program would actually burn Cds for me without fail in beOs when each time without fail the burns would fail in windows.
mainating compatability for R5 apps doesn’t seem of much use, most of them are outdated. What would seem to make more sense is to avoid the linux kernel and X like the plague, keep the modular design of BeOS intact, but work on porting linux applications to some sort of apt-like repository 9there I went and let the cat out of the bag). That seems to be the most logical and sane approach to making BeOs useable porting linux apps that already have a strong following and that are kep up to date frequently. The alternative is to “reinvent the wheel so to speak” that once the OS coders for haiku finish with their first release, to turn their attention to then programming apps to make haiku something users can work (and play) with on a day to day basis. Cloning R5 is a baby step, the real goal should be making something useful
I cannot belive this post is being past as news on OSnews. I have been a long time OSnews reader and also a past BeOS user and I stay very true to it.
This editorial was very poorly woreded and writen. It makes claims and accusations like one would here walking down a hall of a typical american junior high. Comments like And if Haiku is “ready” by 2010 are just disposable rubbish and is very unprofessional.
Although it is an editorial, Kian’s claims are not backed up any hard facts. No historical reference to projects that have failed (besides Be itself).
I am not a expert at writting or journalism, but I can see what is nothing more than a poorly rant that should belong in the comments on /. After reading this editorial I must say I am left with a bad taste in my mouth and disapointment in OSnews in my heart.
Hayabusa
“What would seem to make more sense is to avoid the linux kernel and X like the plague, keep the modular design of BeOS intact, but work on porting linux applications to some sort of apt-like repository”
That is exactly one of the things OpenBeOS/Haiku is doing.But there is more to software than porting from linux
The professional dedicated audio and video systems running on BeOS are running applications written for BeOS that are not available for other platforms.
An example is the audio at Sydney Opera House,Australia,and some systems at Disneyland USA.
They are deceitfull, mallicious, and horrible stewards of the community they claim to admonish.
They have stolen code from BeOS-centric development organizations (code which they had no right to steal, as it wasn’t opensource, and is under strict 3rd party license), they have stiff-armed individual developers, they have lied again and again about the status of their ‘product’.
Further, their “OS” refuses to boot on a laptop I have that runs R5 just fine.
What a load of crap.
Face it Eugenia, their product sucks. But worse than that:
Their business practices are even more shady than the history of their alleged product.
Anyone remember BeOS NG?
How long did it take YT to get something out the door? I’d say Haiku is doing a pretty damn good job. YT didn’t even have to code the OS, and it took -them- ~3 years.
Brandon
Please note the editorial is written by Eugenia Loli Queru.
It is submitted by Kian Duffy.
Eugenia’s and Kian’s views are very different.
Troll? I don’t know. Rant? Surely. I think that Eugenia, just like so many of us, despaires from time to time about the state of affairs.
Personally I experience every day that Win XP just isn’t good enough (“Please wait while Windows multitasks your applications”). But what is the alternative. Linux? To me it means more problems (new system, programs that need to be replaced by some other solution, less support from direct enviroment) and few advantages (it does not feel significant faster, nor is it particularly easier or more intuitive).
Don’t shoot me for this. This is how I experience it.
The difference with Win is just too small to make the switch worthwhile.
Sometime ago I had good hopes, though, because I knew of a small elegant simple OS that worked so smooth and fast I fell in love with it from the start.
Now I am just like Eugenia frustrated and sad with seeing this alternative becomming less viable by the day.
One thing that really bothers me Eugenia (I said it before): LONGHORN IS NOT GOING TO BE THE ANSWER.
In you editorial you describe longhorn as the next big thing that will have everything a person could whichfor.
You know (or should know by now) how the Microsoft roll out machine works: the next version will be FANTASTIC. It ‘ll do everything and will be faster and bla bla bla.
I would have thought that you would be immune to this marketing technique where the current version is marred by all kind of problems but the next version is supposed to be Perfect. Paradise postphoned.
My current needs, which no doubt are less “trendy” than your current needs, are met with BeOS Pro 5.0.3 plus bebits updates.
Haiku represents my future migration path and I am very pleased with the quality of their progress and people . . . and the fact that they are following the sort of Open Source most in line with my needs is a crucial point for me.
I cannot afford to risk my business reputation by dealing with companies of shady legal standing, or who promise big and deliver lousy quality. Personally I wouldn’t touch YellowTab with a 10 foot pole and this will never change for me.
I do not need to generate “news” . . . if I had to generate “news” on a regular basis probably I would hate Haiku just like you. So, my take is completely different than yours.
Another thing I really like about Haiku is they pretty much stay out of this sort of classless mud-slinging.
Best Regards,
JP
I didn’t write, or have anything to do with that article, other than submitting the link to the Haiku homepage with the “Submit News” function. I’d like to point out, that as an almost fulltime BeOS user, I would never harbour views like those in the editorial.
Man guys, you are really coming down hard on what you call “hobby OSes”.
To me, a “hobby OS” is an OS that cannot do all the functions that you need to do. Internet, Word-processing, mail, jukebox. Even MenuetOS can do those things.
BeOS isn’t old and dead….M$ is telling you that and you’ve all bought into it. The last “outdated, ancient, old, archaic” version of BeOS to be released, was only 1 year before your beloved WinXP.
Do you guys realize how old XP relly is? SkyOs is being developped, Linux can successfully run on 64-bit computers, OSX is constantly being updated…
Xp isn’t the best OS out there, is one of the worst, and what about all the viruses, and the fragmenting filesystem? No other OS has those extra little features.
Stop sitting around debating which OS is better, or putting “hobby OSes” down, if they’re going to slow for you, join the devel team.
I think this editorial ignores a few key issues.
The be, inc. experience should have showed us that the hurdle to enter the OS market is not one of technology. it is one of established community and most importantly the application and driver hurdle. Haiku can overcome these because it is open source.
It is extremely difficult for a commercial company to overcome that hurdle in this day and age. Apple and MS obviously have overcome this.
Haiku and Linux are not commercial or for profit firms and that is why they can overcome this via time and efforts of dedicated if small community of afficionados. There is no banker or shareholder asking for return on investment within 3 years breathing down the next of haiku. That the haiku developer base is small today says nothing about its size tomorrow. Don’t forget that the linux developer community was once just mr torvaldis.
Haiku need only satisfy what the average user or a niche of users need when it is available. i respectfully disagree with the column in the implicit assessment that users really care about the features that are being thrown in operating systems these days. I don’t think they care.
As someone who mixes and records multi-track audio on his computer i can say that i am still interested in an alternative to MS on a PC that will let me use every last hz of power on my machine. Audio and probably video sample sizes will continue to increase. Pro audio already supports 24 bit/192khz. In other words there are plenty of niches to address.
You also have to consider the competitive field. Apple will likely continue to offer an attractive product at a price most people won’t pay. Windows will continue to be the target of every hack in the world. MS’s politics will turn more people off and the inevitable pricing and bloat of their software will make users look for alternatives.
Linux will continue to be attacked by MS, legally and every other wise, creating fud fud fud which will scare people off. Linux may or may not improve in its perception of usability, which is more important than its actual usability.
Lastly, this piece vastly underestimates the rising popularity of open source. Interest in open source is indeed increasing. Linux will benefit most from this trend but open source mania will spill over to the benefit of bsd and potentially haiku as well.
one other point.
There is an assumption in the piece that Haiku will only have the features of R5 ten years after the project was started.
Why exactly should be believe that development on haiku will freeze in time? Linux evolves so why won’t Haiku? Haiku will in fact be evolving from a more modern starting than linux had so why can’t it remain current? I think it can.
>>You’re confusing X with toolkits, wigets and libraries. ?>>Yeah, X with GNOME/KDE is slow, but that’s not because >>of X!
Do most users used x without GNOME/KDE? no. X is likes Ford Model T with all kinds of upgrade bot-on. It is time to drop X alltogether. If you want network access, use VNC.
>>Bah, I really wish I could meet up with all the X->>bashers and bring along my old 486 notebook. Watching it >>run X at a decent pace would pretty much silence them >>all.
My 8MHZ Atari ST(68000) can run circle around X on your 486 and it only have 1MB memory for the whole system. NeoDesk on AtariST is way better than genome/kde UI wise.
After reading all these posts (whew!)… I go back to the main reason why I *loved* BEOS, is was fun and a pleasure to use! (ala Amiga was). I cannot say the same of any current “mainstream” OS.
Can Haiku deliver? If I will just rely on whatever means… even if it means running a patched up BEOS5.03.
PS: yes I dumped my Amiga2000 after only 12 years! Can you say the same of any other platform?
Sorry for mistaking you for the writer of the article.
OpenBeos/Haiku hasn’t made any serious progress for years. It was a nice idea that was never close to being realized. It’s hard to believe that with essential parts of the OS barely past the planning stage after 3 years that’s it’s going to go anywhere.
At the rate its going, it won’t be done in 10 years. It won’t be done at all.
> My 8MHZ Atari ST(68000) can run circle around X on your 486
> and it only have 1MB memory for the whole system. NeoDesk on
>AtariST is way better than genome/kde UI wise.
I’ve been an Amiga user for a long time, so I know what it means working with an OS that has some personality, and that in its time was way ahead of what could be done on PCs. But I have had enough of this kind of silly comparison between different things such as nowadays X-based desktops and 15 years old ones. Yes, the menu in Amiga’s Workbench looked way faster, and the windows could be dragged and resized with no apparent latency at all. I’m sure that the atari ST could perform more or less the same.
But are we comparing _those_ desktop environments with the like of Gnome or KDE or OS X? Nowadays we have network trasparency, fully antialiased text, perfectly typeset (ligatures and all, very important for some eastern languages) and lately we’re getting compositing (shadows, transparencies, alpha blending and any kind of eye-candy and manipulation) and vector-based graphic with hardware acceleration for a number of different hardware setups.
Repeat with me: it’s not a fair, nor a significative comparison.
Sure, X is currently implemented in a very not optimized way, but still I wouldnt go back for the very life of me.
Sometimes comparisons just don’t make much sense. I was a user of BeOS for just a few weeks, and it totally made sense four years ago, when it compared favourably with the horrible win 9x serie. Nowadays, the thing that I’m more worried about in a reimplementation of the R5 is that any modern OS should be solidly multi-user, at least to guarantee a good security splitting the admin and the user processes.
“Do most users used x without GNOME/KDE? no. X is likes Ford Model T with all kinds of upgrade bot-on. It is time to drop X alltogether. If you want network access, use VNC.”
Huh? That doesn’t even make sense. It’s like saying “a bug in Mozilla is the kernel’s fault because most people run Mozilla on the kernel”. Additionally, VNC is no substitute for X in many situations; I’d go into more detail but you really should look this up for yourself.
“My 8MHZ Atari ST(68000) can run circle around X on your 486 and it only have 1MB memory for the whole system. NeoDesk on AtariST is way better than genome/kde UI wise.”
Er, and? The Atari ST GUI (GEM) can’t do half the things X can. What’s your point? Besides, I never said X was faster than everything ever — just that it’s nowhere near as slow as some uninformed people make out.
Most of the OS is well past the “planning stage”. The kernel and shell are booting sucessfully on x86 and somewhat sucessfully on PowerPC. The app_server isn’t terribly far off working. The rest is finished, basically. Media endoder API is missing from the media kit, and a lot of drivers need to be reimplemented. Thats it.
I’m wondering if one of the problems for Haiku’s lack of developers is the choice of license: MIT. Now, I don’t want to start a flame war (and I’m not saying one is better than the other), but wouldn’t it have been more productive to go with the GPL?
The fact is, the majority of open source developers prefer the GPL. Just look at some of the major projects and the amount of GPLed apps on Freshmeat; there’s no doubt that the GPL is the most popular license. So by using MIT, the Haiku project isn’t going to attract as many coders — most OSS hackers want to contribute to something that’s always going to be free, and not have their worked bundled up in closed forks.
Furthermore, this choice of license could pose problems later on. Fragmentation diseased the UNIX industry in the late 80s and early 90s (and still does to some extent), so imagine if Haiku takes off. There’ll be loads of different flavours and varieties, with closed-source additions, tweaks and incompatibilities. Yeah, there’s a lot of Linux distros, but they retain compatibility and ATEOTD they’re all very similar under the hood.
Anyway, just my thoughts. Good luck to the Haiku developers and don’t let the negative comments distract you — it’s a long road ahead but you could come up with something very special indeed.
While I don’t know which personal issues made Kian Duffy submit such a harsh article, I’m badly surprised that osnews.com is posting it.
I was reading osnews mostly because I want to know whats
going on in the operating system business. However, this
article, “Posted by Eugenia Loli-Queru on 2004-08-24 21:07:14 UTC, submitted by Kian Duffy” is very biased and mean, and shouldn’t have been published like this unedited form.
Stefan Mayer, for the millionth time: Kian Duffy is not the writer of this opinional piece!!
Read the WHOLE article and you’ll notice a line at the end of it.
I DIDN’T WRITE IT!!
Eugenia wrote that entire speil. I submitted a link to the story on the Haiku page. That is all I did.
Ok, here is some point i want to speak about:
The kernel:
The choice of NewOS made sense and still do. Why use linux, not only it’s updating too fast to be a reference kernel of choice to fork an OS, it’s not even architecturally compatable with the philosopy of BeOS itself (the main reason i think NewOS was choose in the first place).
The binary compatability:
I would personally don’t care for it, that said it is also a neat thing like interoperability for testing. The number of thesting tool needed that are not so needed now make getting bin comp almost for free, so why not.
Speed of development:
As weird as it may sound to many, maximum speed in a software project is not the best that can happen. Lot of error can happen if stuff move to fast that are then build upon. The current speed is just right (i guess only the app server took too much time, but reason are behind that, i hope darkwirm feel better now).
Size of the team:
Only need to look at skyOS AtheOS and some others and compare this to M$ or apple to see that workforce on a software project don’t scale linearly the output production. the Size of the team is just ok as it is now (even if MPhipps think it could be bigger ). What is really needed is more knowlegable memember of BeOS itself. Also 3d folk will need to enter the boat at some time. The only flaw in haiku plan so far is that they failed to produce a VonNewman effect (a machine that create a critical amount of machine before starting on the real meat of the task).
So, Haiku need to include a Haiku University. Sure you can join by looking at the source and all, but this is good when coding a little poker game or a snake clone. For big project, graphical modelisation, public developer log and all need to be there, all with associated text on “why the sky is blue” kind of related thing.
Windows, linux and apple will have catched up by then:
That is a common misconception among programmer that never do any hardware. in case you did not notice we (X86) still have the same architecture since the end of the 70’s. What so great will happen that it will need serious guru to implement back in Haiku. USB is nothing more than a sequel to serial port. Sometime it go even backward cd burner are a “functionally” inferior to floppy disk.
And Mphipps said it many time with great wisdom, it’s even more easy to support hardware now than before as they are more chipset based. never before so much laptop did run BeOS.
Then on the software catchup to do, i don’t even fear for it. Many haiku R2 mailing list tentance bend toward a componentarised system instead of monolitic app, something that can only come from a small user base OS.
Most of software thing can be done in user land or kernel add-on. And like many said, those are not always wanted advancement. 3D accelerated display? that is nice but i would prefer a general purpose way of doing it, as 3d is never that complicated in term of polygon number, a second processor can do it easily, and actually have a use when the PC is in screen saver mode and encode video, instead of staying there eating watts.
Relevance of BeOS:
this is not just for beos, but all small OS in gereral that evade the bloat. Using them you can literally use FREE PC and use them just fine. As most that don’t get Mac is because they say they are 400$ more A BeOS station PIII 450Mhz like mine (OC at 600) work just fine for all real time use i need (outside of games) and it’s quite easy to find those for FREE by now. That mean that next time i upgrade it will probably be a 1G cpu, again got for free etc… (sometime i love M$ bloat to allow me to upgrade that way!).
Shifting baselines.
This is entirely an opinion piece.
When the new OSX upgrade is released (or Longhorn hits the shelves, whatever comes first), people will become accustomed to the rich metadata scheme. They will enjoy giving useful names to their photos – “(Category, “My summer trip to hawaii,” Comments, “This was when me and Sheila…”) – and they will begin to invest themselves in this feature. In the grand scheme of things, it seems like a small shift – but so did Post It notes, of which I’ve already got three of them stuck to the wall near my doorway, though I wish that the tail-ends didn’t fly up in the air so much.
“Wow, the stuff on the screen redraws really fast!” Hardware accelerated window rendering.
“Its cool, how I change my resolution and things get sharper, now, instead of smaller.” Vector-based desktops.
“Its like, I’m typing in my word processor, and everytime I finish a word, this little thing in my docklet blinks and shows me the definition for the word I just typed!” DCOP/DBUS and the magic of bubbling events and interprocess communication in a nonghetto way.
“I just put the batteries in my wireless mouse and it just started working without warning!!!” The wonderful whimsical world of Bluetooth technology.
“See, I just sit down at a table in Star Bucks and I and turn on my laptop and I’m online without any cables!” WiFi (mentioned only because I love you, baby!)
Baselines shift. Me? I’ve got a wireless network now, even though I had no intention of doing so in the past. I setup a wireless network for my mother (she likes to redecorate alot, and the computer was tied to the router, which was in the closet for some reason…), and decided a few hours later that the freedom was too good to let go. So, the next Monday I bought myself a wireless router. I have a laptop, and its fun to move around.
So, now I’m not going to go back to anything that does not support Wifi, 802.11x, whatever. Period.
Someone with a large screen monitor or plasma display may experiment with an operating system that still uses raster graphics, but when he first boots up and everything is so freaking tiny, well, you know he’s going back to what works. He may be willing to explore for that feeling of excitement and adventure, but when he really wants to go back into “normal” mode, he’s going to boot-up his previous operating system and the comforts of home that come with it.
The issue with a slow-moving project is, although, yes, they can take their time and do pretty much “whatever” they want, technology is going to keep moving. Constantly. People’s expectations for any given piece of software going to change with this; thus, it is a shifting baseline, and it only goes up from here. Sure, in a few years you’ll replicate something that’s already 7, 8 years old. And that’s great – for software that was created for 7 or 8 years ago. But, unless you have a machine from that era, its not really *useful* to you, is it? Yeah, you’ve made something you can be proud of. Lots of people do. It was a learning experience, and that’s great, but when you aim higher than just pleasing yourself…
Don’t kid yourself, programmers build software for two reasons: themselves, or someone else. If you’re doing it for yourself, you can take as long as you like, come hell or high water. If you’re building an operating system for someone else, you have to take these sorts of shifting baselines into account if you really, *honestly* want people to use your software. Using the “Open Source carrot” as a cheap ploy is just not going to cut it anymore, because we’ve already been innduated to it by Linux and FreeBSD and IBM and your momma’s mother’s great grand mother. Remember back when saying “FAWK YOU!” had impact? You need more than that now. You need The Goods. Same with software. Windows 3.1 isn’t good enough for most of us anymore, you know?
Ask yourself this: how many Haiku developers are using Haiku as their primary operating system? If they aren’t, why not? If they aren’t, is it because it isn’t good enough for them? If they aren’t, and it is because the operating system is not in a usable condition, should they really be advocating it until it is in a usable condition? If a developer cannot be expected to use it, why should an end-user?
—-
And for those of you dissin’ Eugenia: frankly, you can cry and whine and scream all you want… but its her site, and in the end, anyone posting comments here is just another one of her bitches.
Eugenia wrote:
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.
That’s exactly how it feels to me: a TOY, because everyday a want to play with my BeOS PC, fast and not overloaded with features I don’t need.
If I want to browse the net, write an email, write a letter, listen to some music, I fire up BeOS and begin to play.
I spend more time in BeOS than in Windows, and you know why? Because, as for a lot of us, a PC/MAC is a hobby. I don’t need a PC/MAC for my work/life. I need it just because it a hobby.
and in 10 years I probably have my AMD 128 bit with Windows Longhorn 2014, but I sure keep my 2 BeOS machines alive, just for FUN
What’s simple is true …
‘BE the difference that makes a difference’ – JEWEL
So we get these people that say “Eugenia makes some good points, but the editorial shouldn’t have been written”. So I guess people are pissed that Eugenia is explaining the reality of the situation instead of keeping quiet and pretending that haiku (with its current plans) will have the relative parity of BeOS in 1999 in comparison to the other OSs of that time.
It’s just not going to happen. Binary compatiblity is a stupid idea and Haiku will always have a driver problem.
In a way, Haiku reminds me of the Apple situation before they went with the Mach/BSD solution. Apple floundered around for years with failed after failed sucessor to the OS9 architecture. Then they wised up and decided to use something that was already out there, but make a new gui and userland stuff. BeOS users don’t care whats under the hood, they just want something that works, has lots of drivers, and will have the spirit of Haiku.
Ok. This topic has come up enough times that someone needs to spell out the solution right now. I loved BeOS R5, so I’m putting down my crack pipe and laying it out for you:
To make this project succeed, do the following three things:
1. For goodness’ sake, change the license to GPL/LGPL. The smartest most prolific devs out there who might possibly be interested in working on OBOS want a promise that their code — and any code derived from their code — will always remain free. That promise is spelled either GPL or LGPL. Stop listening to people who say freedom is not important — it is, and it’s *especially* important to the folks who might contribute most to your project.
2. Drop this binary compatibility business. Yes, yes; I’ve heard over and over how it’s not as difficult as it looks. The smart hackers who might contribute to your project don’t want to clone BeOS R5 down to the bugs and all. If they wanted monotonous work like that, they’d stay late at work and put in extra hours for free.
3. Please choose a name with some personality. A name that you can easily google for. A name that sounds cool to the smart devs you want working on your project. Someone in an earlier post suggested PhippsOS. Well, a cool twist to that might be Flipsauce. That’s a cool and googlable name with personality. Choose one like that, and those smart hackers who think “Haiku” is overdone and corny may give you a 2nd look.
Ok. I’m done. That’s the last I want to hassle the OBOS guys. Maybe they don’t really *want* the project to succeed. Dunno. But there’s the solution, in the above message. That’s your recipe if you want to get all the BlueEyedOS and Cosmoe and whoever else to realize that Flipsauce is the one unifying project they’ve all been looking for.
— end of transmission —
BeOS users don’t care whats under the hood, they just
want something that works, has lots of drivers, and will have the spirit of Haiku.
um.. you can’t speak for BeOS users. BeOS users aren’t windows/mac users and generally DO care whats under the hood. I know I do.
One of the interesting things about the way Haiku is being developed is that it’s being designed from the top down. Yes, on a pure Haiku system, you can’t yet boot to a GUI. However, almost everything past that point is done. I run a BeOS system right now. More than half of it is Haiku components. Every driver my system uses comes from Haiku. Most of the core system components as well: media, printing, etc.
This means that once Haiku can boot to a working GUI (and this is much closer than you think), it will be a GUI with full hardware support in which I can watch DVDs with 5.1 sound, use things like instant messaging and Java, and browse the web with well-known browsers. I will be able to word-process and print. Essentially, at that moment, Haiku will spring from the ground as a full-featured, useful OS.
It’s simply astounding what emotions you will get from people about a simple bit of software. These are ones and zeros, folks, not even a finished set of ones and zeros, and for some reason there’s nearly 20 pages of name calling and bickering about this product that hasn’t even been released.
What you need to realize is that 99.9999% of the entire world has never even heard about BeOS, much less Haiku. The Haiku devs are a small group interested in creating an OS that pleases them not the world. If Haiku manages to fit somebody’s niche … GREAT … otherwise there will be around 10 happy devs doing what they like to do best and not bothering anybody.
That said, I am anxiously awaiting the day that I can burn R1 to a disc and boot into what R5 should have been. In the meantime I will use what I feel to be the best OS for my needs (OSX) and will watch as Linux developers create the best OS for their needs. Choice is great, folks, and one of few ways to encourage development and innovation; don’t knock it.
Beware of Geeks baring Diffs
Haiku needs to move on, it needs to re-set its goals, simply because its current goal, has already failed through market irrelevance.
What does market relevance have to do with a project that developers are working on because they want to?
I never realized that a spokesperson for the project said their goal was to take over the Operating System market, or even make a linux-sized dent in it.
Adam
Should have used a BSD core, with all its built in drivers, rather than newos.
What does market relevance have to do with a project that developers are working on because they want to?
Or from another point of view, they work on it because they can. Comparing such with MacOSX or Windows is off, for one because the 2 companies behind those 2 OSes make software for the general public for profit. They don’t develop it for themselves. In contrast, Haiku developers develop software (mostly) for themselves. You know, the itch. Add to that, a good looking website, public relations via news, open mailing list, and carefully crafted documents and i’d say they’re trying to inform people who are (potentially) interested, too.
By comparing Haiku with an OS such as MacOSX, Windows, the author makes a mistake (see above). It also shows expectations are simply too high. Here’s a piece of advice: lower your expectations, free your mind of the BeOS dogma, and just see what happens. If you expect nothing at all, then you can only be impressed by what’s happening. If the purpose of this article is precisely this, then i actually agree with that purpose, but not with the way it is done.
Also, i’m not blaming anyone who has such expectations neither am i blaming the Haiku developers. They could have been wrong too, but its just a hobby. You know, fun. Not some kind of revolution. Read for example Linus his book “Just for fun” or Enlightenment authors who explain why they are developing E. For fun Because they can. Because they want to. Open source in general is not for your fun (as end user), at least, that’s not the main purpose of most FOSS developers and even companies do it also (a lot of ’em “mostly”, i’d argue) for profit.
If you lower your expectations, open your mind, release the BeOS dogma, drop the “i want my end product yesterday” mantra, and perhaps start joining in (you don’t have to be a programmer!) then the chances are much higher you’ll start seeing the fun of it and perhaps even start participating in the fun process. But, you’ll have to adopt to reality instead of the 1999 BeOS dream world as it was or tried to become. We’re living in 2004 now.
That’s my piece of advise to the people who are expecting too much. I’ve already read some people get this which is already a beneficial to related discussions and hopefully increasing the quality of these already. Thank you, and thank you for your time.
I am one of the people who is helping to create Haiku. This is how I see things:
The goal of Haiku is to provide an alternative to Windows. No one really likes Windows and it would be great if people could choose something else. But what are the choices? MacOS requires expensive Apple hardware. Linux and the BSD’s are way out of league for most normal end users (as opposed to computer-savvy folks like yourself). Hobby operating systems like SkyOS don’t have the necessary clout — neither does BeOS, but the people who are creating Haiku believe that a successor to BeOS might just be able to pull this off.
So why recreate an operating system that was last updated in the year 2000? Why not write the OS of our dreams right now? Why not simply take all the good ideas of BeOS and drop all the bad ones and build something new instead? Why bother making a binary-compatible clone of BeOS R5?
Two reasons:
1) You need a solid foundation to build on. We think that BeOS provides a pretty cool foundation (better than, say, Linux) but unfortunately the source code to BeOS isn’t available. If it were, we wouldn’t have to clone BeOS R5 to make Haiku R1.
2) Project management. To me, this is the most important and least-understood reason for cloning BeOS.
Open source projects that fail are often started by enthousiastic developers with nothing more than a vague idea. They gather other interested developers, do a lot of talking but not a lot of developing, and a few months later the project is dead. Too many opinions, too few decisions.
Successful open source projects have people that can set goals and make decisions, and then act on them. Having a clear, well-defined goal is crucial for a project with multiple developers, especially when they are all volunteers spread over the globe.
Cloning BeOS R5 is our clear, well-defined goal. We know what we have to build, and that is why we have a pretty good chance of succeeding. (This approach worked well for Linux, which set out to clone of UNIX, after all.)
Had we chosen to work on our dream operating system immediately (what we now call Haiku R2), we’d still be arguing about how to do things: everybody has a different opinion on what makes a good operating system. Instead, we decided to clone BeOS R5 as a starting point and now — instead of endless bitching and flamewars — we have 3 million lines of source code to show for it.
Of course, you can argue that we’ve merely postponed the problem. Once Haiku R1 is complete, we’ll have to start thinking about R2. And we’ll still have to make those decisions. But at least we’ll have our foundation — you can’t build anything on top of nothing.
Huh, why is it so important that Haiku switch to GPL.
Why should they use a MORE restrictive license?
It always pops up in these discussions and I always see:
1. Do something
2. Switch to GPL
3. Profit
Is GPL the new Snake oil? No. It ain’t no miracle cure for everything!
NOTE: I do not have a problem with GPL itself. Just how some suggests it should be used.
2) Project management. To me, this is the most important and least-understood reason for cloning BeOS.
Can you elaborate on this? Some details would help me (and most likely other readers) understand this better. Currently, it is too vague for me.
A well crafted reply if i might say so and thanks for your hard work btw. I also believe in (more) choice in the desktop segment.
First, allow me to say, “I will always have a place in mind and heart for BeOS and all the software engineers that worked on its code”. Allow me to go further, “My hat is off in respect to those few remaining coders that will not give up” since they keep a beautiful dream alive.
But until Haiku matures into a full-fledged operating system on its own right, I must live in the world of ‘redmond boobs’ and ‘cool penguins’. This is where I make my money. It would have been great if BeOS had been a server platform.
Troy
Great, you guys say you have this done, that done, this thing almost done.
So when do you plan to show it off? Honestly, if the kernel were even capabable at this point of running the appserver you would be showcasing it.
Bottom line, you guys ain’t got shiat, except for some R5 replacement parts. If you want the community to put their faith behind this project, then show it off! But you can’t, can you? Until you do, it’s all just mirrors and smoke blown up the arse of the dwindling BeOS community.