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Haiku's Window Manager
Professor Cool Linux writes "From IsComputerOn: Adi, over at DarkWyrm's page, has posted a progress status of Haiku's window manager, and the good news is that it's almost complete. They have, for example, support for normal, floating app/subset/all and model app/subset/all windows, as well as workspace support. All that's left are smaller things like not allowing windows to be moved or resized and focus follow mouse (among a few others) remain to be implemented still. But along with the status report, Adi was kind enough to post a plethora of screenshots, showing many examples of how the window manager is working. Full report and the screenshots."
What is this? Why should I care? News for nerds, stuff that matters. So, why does it matter? I've never heard of this, so by itself "hey look, we've implimented the most basic window manager possible" isnt all that impressive. Are they doing this on a toaster or something?
I implimented rollups in my window manager a few months ago, should I post a slashdot story about it?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Except that this is not a window manager for Linux/X11. It's a window manager for OpenBeOs which follows closely the BeBook specifications for the behaviour of such a program, which itself is just a part of the BeOS application server ('app_server').
What makes this so interesting is that it doesn't share any portion of code with the original BeOS WM, instead it's a full reimplementation of it from scratch (as most of the rest of the OpenBeOs project).
Articulos para gente geek: Poleras, linux, libros y mas
To answer your question more politely than the other guy did -- no, with some very minor exceptions, all applications can be run in any window manager. You're thinking of graphics toolkits (like the Qt and Gtk toolikts underlying KDE and GNOME), or maybe the communications mechanisms of desktop applications, but the real "window managers" don't have those issues.
Anyway, as the angry guy pointed out, the news here is that this is a Be-compliant WM for OpenBeOS. It has nothing to do with Linux.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Spoken like a true fanboy.
... there will be a fully open source BeOS. That's when it gets really interesting."
Not quite. I was a fan back in the day. Ran BeOS while at university (dual boot as needed) and enjoyed it. Now I run mac, windows, and am working on linux from scratch with a ubuntu base. I haven't run BeOS in years, and don't have a box that boots it.
I played with BeOS in 99. Admittedly not extensively. But I did give the free edition a whirl. Sure there was cool stuff there to see, but your assumption that I never actually used it is pretty arrogant, don't you think?
You gave the free edition a whirl, and think this qualifies you to judge it's interface? Like all good interfaces, it isn't the eye candy that makes it. It's the subtle details you find as you live in it day in and day out. It's the cascading move/copy menus in the context of every file. It's the way the mouse interfaces with the widgets. Things you don't get from giving the "free" version a whirl. It's the same reason the OS X interface looks and feels better than a themed windows or linux interface that looks the same - the details and movement.
I was rooting for Be back in the day, too. I thought the BeBox was one amazingly cool little machine. And if the management at Be hadn't been so borish, they might have been bought out by Apple in the end. Too bad they didn't take the deal that was offered them at the time.
This discussion isn't about the company. It's about the value of the BeOS window manager, in it's open source form. More specifically, about whether it's newsworthy.
The whole point is, both in my dissing Haiku and in the Be fanboy's dream world, we're always talking in hypotheticals. What if things turned out differently, etc. Or, to quote you "One day
The value of this post is that it ISNT a hypothetical. This is working code. It's not some dreamworld. Thats why it's newsworthy.
"The real value of this post is showing how far the haiku project has come" What you left out was "...in recreating a 5 year old OS in a world where desktop technology has come a long long way in the meantime."
I don't think desktop technology has come that far. Again, spotlight and windows searching are the big buzzwords these days. BeOS already has it, and does it better. Sure, the display aspects (opengl shadows, etc) are better.
Again, where are the Expose/Kompose features? You sneer at drop shadows, but they're more than just eye candy. They help the user determine which windows are on top of which others.
Drop shadows provide visual indication. So does the fact that window borders are yellow on the active window, and the entire unactive window is grayed out. There aren't drop shadows in XP by default, and the vast majority of the world manages to figure out what window is what just fine. Sure, drop shadows have a slight benefit to an already established method. But their main benefit is eye candy. Of course, on the mac where there often arent window borders to utilize, i suppose they have more of an effect.
Things like this really do great on my nerves. People really should wake up and smell reality. Even if Zeta/Haiku turns into a usable OS, where's the support? Software? Will my obscure PCI cards work? I'd only ever play with Haiku on a spare box made of odds and ends anyway. Precisely the sort of things that won't be supported. Sadly, isn't it?
Well, there are accellerated 3d nvidia drivers written, a ton of sound drivers in place, etc. Bebits.com can get you to most of them. I'm sure there will be holes, and they will be filled. Linux/BSD/Whatever have the same driver issues. They solved them. The code is out there. So will Haiku.
Sure, you can point to this or that piece of software that's available, but what's missing is choice. It's not enough for me that Mozilla might exist for a platform, I want Opera, and a KHTML-based browser. Call me picky or ev