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Haiku and ReactOS both made it this year!

Two of my favorite alternative OS projects... :D

Hopefully the Haiku Project will be in a good place to pick up the slack by then.

http://www.haiku-os.org/

Mac OS X optionally includes a case-sensitive file-system, so as with OpenGL, once ported to OS X, it should be trivial to port that area to Linux.

That said, one of the Adobe CS versions crash when installing on a case-sensitive file system (find a link yourself -- I can't be bothered at this time of the morning), and Haiku won't build unless you build on a case-sensitive file system.

Yup...

Besides, Haiku http://haiku-os.org/ is now much better than BeOS ever was - reviving BeOS would be pointless with a more modern open source replacement already in existence.

For its time, Warp 4 was neat.

That said, in this day and age, I'd rather play with haiku than some musty, old IBM OS. IMHO there's more novelty to it.

To each their own, though.

Don't forget MorphOS, which is an Amiga clone.

Also don't forget Haiku, which is a clone of BeOS.

AFAIK ACCESS Co. Ltd. own the BeOS intellectual property.

As referenced in this Haiku news posting.

It would be nice if companies opened up their dead operating systems, but often times they would be infected with licenced code, or involve patents and simply it's easier and less effort to keep it closed.

We may soon need similar lessons here in the UK when we want to access those filtered sites suspected of potentially hosting copyrighted material. Damn, that sounds sad.

Hate to break it to you but most web sites you could ever even think of accessing will be hosting copyrighted material. That's right not just potentially hosting copyrighted material but actually hanging up copyrighted material for anyone to download.

To avoid getting copyrighted material, you'd have to find a country that did not sign the Berne Convention treaty, but even then the material might be under copyright. Alternately, even the countries in the Berne Convention treaty might have material online that has been made Public Domain either because the copyright expire or the rights holder (not the creator) put it into the public domain. Even then you'll have to download (and read) pages of copyrighted information to get at the PD stuff.

Alternately you can just download as much copyrighted material as you want. Try starting from these sites:

• SourceForge
• CreativeCommons
• Linux Kernel Archives
• arXiv
• Ubuntu
• Fedora
• NetBSD
• Oracle
• Sun
• Haiku
• Internet Archive
• and so on

And remember, there's more where that came from.

From the Changelog:

• BeOS support.

Just in time for Haiku. Alternative open source OS's need some love too.

I mean an Intel GMA 4500 MHD (X4500 HD for desktops). Both the tech specs and Linux drivers are freely available. I got it because I needed h264 decoding and prefer open spec. 3D performance is good enough for circa 2005 games.

There is plenty of sandboxing technology out there, but few are willing to use it.
I had some discussions on the Haiku OS forums about using some type of application virtualisation or sandboxing as a way to take care of OS level security. Links to these are Here... and Here.
There is many ways to skin a cat, but its almost impossible to find the "best" way when you are trying to balance security and user experience.

There is plenty of sandboxing technology out there, but few are willing to use it.
I had some discussions on the Haiku OS forums about using some type of application virtualisation or sandboxing as a way to take care of OS level security. Links to these are Here... and Here.
There is many ways to skin a cat, but its almost impossible to find the "best" way when you are trying to balance security and user experience.

Google is releasing a lightweight Linux distro that can only run a web browser, and it's being treated like something amazing.

There, fixed that for you.

I for one hate waiting for the system to boot, when all I want to do is check my e-mail. Granted, Ubuntu 9.10 boots pretty fast, and 10.04 looks like it'll boot even faster, but you can only get so far without actually removing stuff.

Although if Haiku supported WiFi, it'd already be perfect. Boots in <5 seconds on my Eee PC.

Rather than playing with just another un*x clone, try something like Haiku or FreeVMS or my personal favourite Plan 9

There is an operating system that though in its alpha one release, in my opinion I think it is appropriate for old machines. This is Haiku [ http://www.haiku-os.org/ ] and the minimum requirements are a x86 processor with at least 128 Mb of RAM and 400 Mhz+ PII system, 600 Mb+ hard disk space (The release notes are here [ http://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/release-notes ] ). I have used it and found it to be quite decent for ordinary desktop use (surfing, listening to MP3 and other audio formats, watching videos - MPEG, avi & MP4s). It is also POSIX compliant.

There is an operating system that though in its alpha one release, in my opinion I think it is appropriate for old machines. This is Haiku [ http://www.haiku-os.org/ ] and the minimum requirements are a x86 processor with at least 128 Mb of RAM and 400 Mhz+ PII system, 600 Mb+ hard disk space (The release notes are here [ http://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/release-notes ] ). I have used it and found it to be quite decent for ordinary desktop use (surfing, listening to MP3 and other audio formats, watching videos - MPEG, avi & MP4s). It is also POSIX compliant.

Use a BeOS derivative. The Haiku version that was linked to a week or so ago boots in 8 seconds in my VirtualBox.

Be OS was a very good OS so we should see good things from Haiku, too. The niche it filled will be different today for Haiku, but still highly relevant. Netbooks are all the rage now. I expect it will be tried there first.

I absolutely loved BeOS! I mean, I love the MacBook I have now, but BeOS was my first love :-)

I don't own a netbook currently, but I would very likely buy one just to run BeOS/Haiku on it when it's ready. Basically, for me the OS would be the killer app that would entice me to buy the hardware.

From what I understood of Haiku, since they don't have access to BeOS source, it's based on Linux. So how is Haiku not just another Linux distro with a customized window manager that tries to look like BeOS?

From the Haiku FAQ:

Q: "Is Haiku based on Linux?"
A: Haiku is not a Linux distribution, nor does it use the Linux kernel.

Haiku is not a Linux distro nor is it based on Linux.

To microsofters, everything except M$ products is called "linux". That includes OS X, Oracle and, now, Haiku.

Here's what Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée had to say in 2001 about what happened:

There is no technical reason why CompUSA customers shouldn't be able to walk out of the shop with a machine that asks "Which OS do you want to use today?" upon boot. And yet, even today [2001], after several years of relentless news about how Linux is ready for the general desktop and business customer, one does not find dual-boot
...
A few years ago, Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée used the phrase "peaceful co-existence with Windows" to describe his company's intended relationship with Microsoft on the consumer's hard drive. Later, when it became clear that Microsoft had no intention of co-existing with a rival OS vendor peacefully, Gassée recanted, saying, "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it."

We could have had close to 10 years of use out of this really good Be OS in schools, products, and businesses, if not for Microserfs and Microsofters. Apple needs to learn from Be Inc. and clean out the nails Microsofters set in its track while there's still an Apple Computer . The time is over for putting up with promoters of M$, especially those inside other businesses.

Eight years the wiser.
So happy together then?
Don't bend down again.

Be OS was a very good OS so we should see good things from Haiku, too. The niche it filled will be different today for Haiku, but still highly relevant. Netbooks are all the rage now. I expect it will be tried there first.

Bittorrent download?
Ah yes, there it is now then.
Finally, a clue!

http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-iso.zip.torrent
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-vmdk.zip.torrent
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-image.zip.torrent

Bittorrent download?
Ah yes, there it is now then.
Finally, a clue!

http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-iso.zip.torrent
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-vmdk.zip.torrent
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-image.zip.torrent

Bittorrent download?
Ah yes, there it is now then.
Finally, a clue!

http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-iso.zip.torrent
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-vmdk.zip.torrent
http://baron.haiku-os.org/releases/r1alpha1/haiku-r1alpha1-image.zip.torrent

I think you forgot a link. I am not sure if you just wanted the Wikipedia page on BeOS or a link straight to Haiku.

Linux has some tweaks in the kernel settings which are pretty much labeled "use this one option on a server and that option on a desktop". I assume desktop-oriented distros like Fedora and Ubuntu choose the desktop-friendly options. Then again, you may remember the drama over Con Kolivas maintaining a fork with more desktop-friendly options and saying that the other kernel devs just weren't that interested in working on such improvements.

Also, if a modern desktop/laptop computer is swapping out programs, something is wrong. With over 1GB of memory or so, that should not be necessary. You could probably get away with a good amount less memory and still not need a swap file/partition.

The article is absolutely right... these issues are always going to be problem on Linux. Some of these issues are old stand-by's from UNIX, after all. We can address many API and kernel stability and compatibility as well as sound and video issues if we are willing to simply stop using linux on the desktop and keep it as a server system, like its developers and contributors seem to intend.

I believe Haiku OS is doing an excellent job of meeting many of the problems laid out and is well en-route to provide a sane and stable free desktop system. What part of *the rules* says we can't solve desktop issues by throwing out Linux's outdated unix workstation desktop paradigm? Why not just develop a pure free desktop system and give end users the gift of consistency? With stable driver API's and a well designed GUI toolkit, we could find ourselves providing a competitive and far more lightweight (no joke) desktop solution that uses less power (like horsepower not wattage) and yet maintains much source compatibility with all this POSIX software we've amassed.

It's not "reinventing the wheel" it's building the wagon wheel instead of trying to chisel a wheel out of a limestone cube. You've got the POSIX model, you've got the free software ecosystem, what's stopping us from scrapping the infinite headaches that are cludging UNIX and X into the desktop and just making a for-real desktop system? This article was about the Desktop, not the workstation after all. If you don't believe that this system is making progress, just dd (or flashnul) it onto a usb stick and boot it up. You might be surprised.

http://www.haiku-os.org/

With a little bit of developer attention, this could slingshot ahead of Ubuntu in usability in literally a year or so. Just like that- a decade of desktop linux development could be surpassed just like that by simply stretching outside that constrained model. Let's just let linux be the server it wants to be.

http://www.haiku-os.org/

Long live Haiku!

Of course, with the way multicore architecture has come to the forefront, I kind of wish Be OS had survived since it was designed to be multicore from day one. I have a feeling it's pervasively multithreaded nature would kick Apple and Microsoft's ass on modern hardware.

I feel the same way. I loved BeOS back in its heyday. Maybe you should check out Haiku. It is supposed to be an open-source re-implementation of BeOS in such a way that provides source and binary compatibility with the last commercial version of BeOS, and then to proceed from there with new research. It finally has GCC 4, as of January, which means that it's not stuck in the "classic" 2.95 days of GCC anymore. This will help speed along development considerably. I hope to see a great comeback!

You know, as much as I agree with you, I wish it were not so.

More and more things are getting tied to a computer. Back in the early 1990s, a computer was generally used for number crunching and document managing. People (generally) did not use a computer to listen to music, watch a movie, meet people, or to stay in touch with one's friends.

Now people are using computers for all of these functions. It's important that things we need for daily living in the 21st century are not controlled by a single corporation with a known pattern of abusive behavior. Microsoft's latest abusive behavior--suing TomTom for having FAT32 support on their device--shows that the only thing stopping Microsoft from abusing their monopoly are antitrust laws and community activism.

This is why Linux needs to fix the issues that make Linux not a suitable desktop for end users, or why one of the other possible open-source desktop OSes (Haiku, Syllable, etc.) needs to become a suitable end-user desktop.

I use Windows right now instead of Linux because I don't feel Linux is ready for the desktop, but most of my partitions for "extra data" are formatted using the second extended filesystem (Linux's "base" stand file system) and read in Windows using ext2fsd because I don't want my data to be held hostage by Microsoft patents.

So, yes, I really want Linux to succeed.

- Sam

I don't know how BeOS was engineered to achieve this, I only know that no other OS I used during and since then, achieved this sort of responsiveness.

One thing they did was that every window ran in its own thread. Another beautiful thing was the forever extensible BMessage - pack and unpack primitive types (incl. pointers and other BMessages). Who cares about parameter compatibility when you can pass around whatever data you like.

I'm interested to know if Haiku will run under Parallels system virtualization, which itself runs under OSX.

Yes.

I'm curious, too, if it is able to run in a full non-virtual memory, non-swapping configuration for speed and reliability.

Yep, by default (while still in pre-alpha at least) it runs without paging.

Also, Open Source does not neccisarily mean Linux.

Surely there are no other open source operating systems other than Linux!!

it's an operating system, not a fucking haiku.

Could be both!

finish my port of XEmacs to BeOS and Haiku, and update the define of B_MAX_CPU_COUNT from 8 to 256 :)

It's on my list already ;) Well, Ubuntu will have to go there anyway, subnotebooks (netbook is a PSION trademark) have been announced with ARM soon, so they can't escape.
You know what's funny, intel will make money on those anyway, since they also have ARM licences :D

Oh well, must finish my m68k port first...

It's nothing but fair that Microsoft tastes a bit of the very issue they created in the first place. They were the one inducing makers in releasing only drivers for Windows by maintaining their monopoly, right? It's actually funny it comes back to bite them...
Releasing specs instead of wasting time on making Vista/Windows7 drivers will ensure fair support for every OS out there, and maybe even provide jobs for many devs to write those drivers.
I just wrote about this spec issue some days ago...

P.S. their site is plain stupid, allows writing comments seemingly anonymously, then asks to register anyway.

P.P.S. Is it me or /. JavaScript code is getting really slow ? It's painful.

BEos and it's original hardware was the last, best hope for a solid, no B.S. modern computer that was re-designed from scratch for maximum performance with pre-emtpive multitasking.

BeOS isn't quite dead. Or at least, it died but the Haiku Project is an open source reincarnation of it.

Hey, quiet you! Stop complaining and get back to work!

but that iDeneb project is way cheaper as it does not require a dongle.

Others have found a way to hack their BIOS to use the Apple OEM ID and do their own EFI to run Mac OSX to fool OSX to think it is running on a real Apple Macintosh. The nice thing about EEPROMS is that you can flash update them easily, and anyone who knows machine language can hack their own BIOS file into one that can easily pass for an Apple Macintosh BIOS.

As for people like me, we don't even need a dongle to make our Intel PC turn into an Amiga that is even cooler than an Apple Macintosh running OSX, and has a much lower memory footprint so it runs faster than OSX, and has an interface and look and feel like OSX or Vista, but is 100% free, 100% open source, and 100% legal.

For those who want to pirate OSX, get real, get AROS instead and support AROS developers to develop more AROS drivers and software. Why settle for a monopoly from Microsoft or Apple, when you can be free and use a non-monopoly OS that will run on almost any PC, Mac, Amiga, MIPS, PowerPC, etc system on the market?

You want an alternative to Windows? Wait until ReactOS is done. It will run Windows applications. If you want an alternative to Windows that does not run Windows programs get HaikuOS when it is ready as it is a free and open source BeOS operating system. Once OSFree is finished it will be a free OS/2 open source OS, but I heard they will make it run under Linux to run OS/2 applications. Support your favorite free open source operating system instead of pirating OSX. Who cares enough about bloatware to pirate OSX or Vista, they are both bloated and buggy! If you want a free OS, get a free open source OS as I listed above when they are finished and out of beta testing. If you can't wait join in their beta program and give them feedback on how to fix it, or join the developers to help them get done faster.

Boycott Vista and OSX, and get Linux instead and install a Macintosh skin on Linux instead of pirating OSX.

Haiku (http://www.haiku-os.org/) is supposed to boot in about 10 seconds to a full GUI.

I was hoping someone would recommend BeOS! Its successor is an open source OS called Haiku.

From the top of my head:

- (X)Ubuntu with a default XFCE enviroment. Designed for very old computers and people who hate the Gnome/KDE slowpoking.

- Haiku OS. OSS BeOS variant. Lightning fast, designed with the GUI in mind. Sub-10-seconds booting is rumored.

- The Syllable OS. An OSS OS inspired by the proof-of-concept project Athena OS and some concepts implemented in BeOS. This one is actually quite interesting, as they've come quite far for a project that started from scratch without being a simple Unix rippoff. The site has demo videos showing Syllable coldboot into the Desktop under 10 seconds on older hardware and they've got quite a few apps ported to it allready, including a native browser using a pimped-out webkit renderer. Shutdown is sub 5 seconds (also important). They're working on a completely seperate server variant too. I consider this one a truely interesting alternate OS. You should check it out.

- Current Debian with a 2.2 kernel, Fluxbox or Windowmaker VM and a little tweaking should get you a very lightweight OS enviroment aswell.

Take any of the above and flash them onto a modern bios that you plug into your Mobo and your set for super-fast booting.

The whole argument for FOSS 3D video card drivers is just silly in my opinion.

It makes excellent sense if your whole world is not limited to X.org. There are lots of other platforms that can benefit from Open drivers.

Haiku booted under 10-15 seconds

I can vouch for this. Haiku is fast at booting. I think some of the more feature rich versions of Haiku are a little slower. This is likely due to additional drivers.

we'll never know what could have been.

Maybe we will - http://www.haiku-os.org/

Or use Haiku, which boots ridiculously fast. It's a highly odd experience to start a virtual machine running it; it actually takes longer for VMware to start than the OS.

Hmmm...I see a chance for a scam here:

1) Build a web site with a fine-print ToS that prohibits visiting from any OS but <pick your favorite alternative OS, like, I don't know, Haiku perhaps>.
2) Paste links to your site all over the web.
3) Search your web server logs for evidence of connections from other operating systems, in violation of your ToS.
4) ???
5) Profit!!!

Haiku