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HaikuOS Hits Kernel Milestone

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the typing-blind-is-what-all-the-hip-kids-do dept.

Professor Cool Linux writes "HaikuOS kernel team has a working implementation of fork(), exec(), and waitpid(), as well as a TTY layer. 'Despite some minor issues (you still don't see what you type), we can now have a fully functional bash running on our kernel. A lot of other shell commands, even those using our own libbe.so are working, as well.'Things are really moving."

18 comments

  1. Kudos to the Team by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Interesting

    BeOS still has some interesting features that other systems lack, and an open-source implementation of it will allow the whole world to improve it and benefit from it.

    Kudos to Michael and the other hard-working people.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    1. Re:Kudos to the Team by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      For example?

    2. Re:Kudos to the Team by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For example?

      A horde of fanboys with an awe-inspiringly religious belief in their beloved operating system's continued superiority to the rest of the IT world, despite its having failed in the marketplace and died a horrible death years ago?

      No, wait, he said "features other systems lack", and that one is shared by AmigaOS.

    3. Re:Kudos to the Team by MarkusQ · · Score: 2, Interesting

      IIRC, some of its nifty features were:
      • Threads as a way of life, rather than as an afterthought.
      • A semantic file system.
      • An interesting object model/UI fusion.
      • The support of famous SF authors.
      I've no idea if these will all be true of the port though.

      -- MarkusQ

    4. Re:Kudos to the Team by Nevyn · · Score: 1
      Threads as a way of life, rather than as an afterthought.

      Yeh, this seems to be the big feature (the others can as easily be implemented in Linux -- and already have). However it presupposes that having everything use lots of threads is a good idea. This is not how scalable daemons are written now, and it's certainly not how reliable ones are. But hey, they're having fun.

      --
      ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
    5. Re:Kudos to the Team by renoX · · Score: 1

      I played with BeOS and the most interesting part was its speed / responsiveness.

      It booted under 20s to a usable GUI (on a PC where both Linux and Windows were booting in more than 1min) and the responsiveness of the GUI was similary much, much better than both Linux and Windows.

      This is probably due partly because of the usage of threads, but IMHO this is more an "implementation detail" than a feature..

  2. Great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Despite some minor issues (you still don't see what you type), we can now have a fully functional bash running on our kernel.


    Looks like it's more functional than DOS already.
    1. Re:Great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bash is grossly inferior to csh, zsh, and ksh. I can't wait till they have a real shell running on it.

  3. Cosmoe by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Also check out Cosmoe, which is a port of the AtheOS API (similar to BeOS's) to Linux. I think it's a really cool idea that is not getting the attention it deserves. It shares some code with HaikuOS, so you can help both by helping one.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  4. Nearing Completion by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Noth that HaikuOS is actually much further along than the kernel, broken keyboard driver, and shell. They are basically approaching a complete system from all directions, and have application server, media kit, etc. already in various degrees of completion. Before you know it will all fall into place and there will be a fully open-source BeOS clone, binary compatible with the original.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    1. Re:Nearing Completion by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 4, Funny

      ``Before you know it will all fall into place and there will be a fully open-source BeOS clone''

      Or maybe Hurd will come first.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  5. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but... by deminisma · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Things are really moving."

    That may be true, but they're still a long, long way away from their destination. They still don't have an alpha-quality kernel or interface kit, 3 years after work began. There's a heck of a lot of work to be done, by a pretty small team. Also, the developers are trying to clone BeOS 5, an OS released in 2000 - so when they finally get something usable and stable, at a guess sometime in 2006, they'll have a copy of an OS that is over six years old. Sure, there will be some differences, but that is the gist of it. Tiger will be out by then, Longhorn will possibly be out in that timeframe, and GNOME and KDE will be more advanced than ever. Meanwhile, Haiku will still be single-user!

    I hate to be such a pessimist, BeOS was a great OS for its time, but it seems circumstance will relegate Haiku to the fringe, used only by hobbyists. It's a shame really that they were so ambitious (maintaining binary compatibility, pretty much doing it all from scratch), and that the efforts to implement the Be API over a Linux kernel stalled.

    1. Re:I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but... by mnmn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      BeOS was a great OS for its time. Its design is still that of a great OS even now. BeOS is lean and geared towards media, with opengl built in. Its threading system, filesystem were pretty advanced. Think OS X.. only simpler and faster.

      Few OSes now are efficient for the desktop, linux and bsd are generalists, and windows is not efficient at all OS X itself comes close, but still not so well designed for being a desktop OS inside out (OS X doesnt have to be. it runs on awesome hardware, and has an awesome kernel+libraries, the most efficient for being a general OS, but not internally designed to be a desktop OS).

      Instead of Haiku, I was hoping for changes to the Linux/BSD kernel to make it more desktop-geared like BeOS was. That, and establishing API and package standards should bring Linux/BSD out of the dark ages and onto grandma's and grandkids' computers.

      --
      "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    2. Re:I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but... by St.+Arbirix · · Score: 3, Funny

      I know what you mean. I read that this "HaikuOS" had finally implemented fork() and I thought someone was rewriting the Linux kernel in haiku, a la deCSS.

      Then I thought it was funny that something related to Japanese was implementing a fork.

      --
      Direct away from face when opening.
  6. Not to be confused with an OS Haiku by Sentry21 · · Score: 4, Funny

    This OS is free
    Like the autumn wind and leaves
    Why another though?

    Like stars in the sky
    Open-source OSes shine
    Too many to count.

    Bold and daring though
    Like the lion in its den
    HaikuOS lives.

    Reflecting the sun
    Haiku's website shines, I hope
    The OS does too.

    With their lofty goals,
    Like the eagle, they will soar
    If success they find.

    As the seasons pass
    I have no time to try out
    Every new OS.

    Promising and new
    As in spring the world will be?
    Maybe, maybe not.

    One complaint I have
    The article does not say
    What HaikuOS is.

    A BeOS clone
    That is what I've determined
    Kudos! Keep it up.

    (Ok, those last two weren't really related to nature, but it's late. Bedtime. For more information on what goes into making better haikus than I have made here, check out the Wikipedia entry on the topic)

    1. Re:Not to be confused with an OS Haiku by JamesP · · Score: 2, Funny

      I thought it was

      Haiku
      OS
      Hits
      Milestone

      --
      how long until /. fixes commenting on Chrome?
  7. Well by northcat · · Score: 2, Funny

    Despite some minor issues (you still don't see what you type)

    Despite some minor issues (your vaccum cleaner wont suck)

  8. This is great! by sardaukar_siet · · Score: 1

    Come on, BeOS' (geek-) appeal will not go away because it's so old. Good stuff is on the way for release 2 of Haiku - we now need a solid base of development (Haiku will replace all Be-owned code with MIT licensed one) and ideas on overcoming BeOS' hurdles like single-user, poor hardware support, etc. Give me an updated and live BeOS clone and I'll take it, really! Every one who has ever coded something for the BeOS will tell you that it's API is God's gift to coders... Release 1 will come out and, with it's MIT like license, vendors WILL take it and expand it. It reminds me of kernel 2.6 - people only started using it after the 2.6.0 release and even after that, Linux stated that 2.6.0 was just another RC release. People react strangely to contents, but per-determinedly to release numbers. Also, we need a few good coders, so if you have some spare time, let us know!