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Haiku Tech Talk at Google a Success

mikesum writes "February 13 was Haiku's big day at Google, and we can say with a good degree of confidence that the Haiku Tech Talk was quite successful. We had a very special guest for this event: former Be Inc. CEO Jean Louis Gassée, who not only joined us at Google for our presentation, but also gave a few words of support and encouragement for our project. It was great to have JLG's presence, as well as that of the several ex-Be engineers who showed up for the talk. We were also glad to see Java for BeOS developer Andrew Bachman join us for this special event. Have a look at the pictures taken during the presentation, as well as the video of the event."

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  1. Look at the features listed by Hackeron · · Score: 1, Troll

    * Focused on desktop, don't want to be a wristwatch
    ** So they believe in the future of desktops and not having a system that's built up of components but having a system designed for the desktop. Apple have their desktop OS running on a phone, Linux has been ported to just about anything under the sun, Microsoft have a stripped down version of their OS for phones and PDA but Haiku think they are better by focusing on desktop only -- mistake!
    * Compatible with Beos R5
    ** As he said in the presentation, why focus so much on being compatible with a 6 year old OS? - Maybe an emulator for the sake of it, but this is a priority?
    * Kernel designed for responsiveness
    ** Low latency means lower performance and that dig at Linux he made in the presentation is inaccurate - firstly, responsiveness depends on options chosen in the kernel, having the option of better performance over lower latency is a GOOD thing.
    * Unified, cohensive interface integrated, simplicity is the key, best defaults, feature complete, 7 million lines of code, Hide inner workings of the OS
    ** blah, blah, blah
    * MIT Licensed
    ** or X11 license, means you take the software, close source and sell it ;)
    * Small footprint, fast boot
    ** 60MB uncompressed is not small, Linux even with X can be as small as 6MB uncompressed if that
    * Less Debug - no need to test with FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Multiple Linux kernels, Windows
    ** Absolute bullshit, he seems to encourage software to be made for their OS only, making it compatible with Linux, FreeBSD or Windows is a sin!
    * Discourages forks and alternatives
    ** Err, discourages choice and how are they going to stop a fork if someone disagrees with their direction and say wants more choice.
    * Human Interface Design
    ** err, hello? - freedesktop.org? - And what software and operating system doesn't focus on HID sooner or later?
    * One common look makes documentation, support and QA easier
    ** 1 common look? communism anyone?
    * C++ is the best for writing OS, best balance, faster dev
    ** I'm not even going to tackle this one
    * Built for large files
    ** Err? code for the filesystem can't handle small files?
    * Database like queries to find stuff
    ** Google desktop, beagle, spotlight, etc, etc, etc
    * File mimetypes, no extensions needed
    ** Great, nautilus does this, just about any file manager can implement this easily if there's demand
    * Kits, API centered around concept
    ** Errrr, gnome, kde, cocoa are all APIs with libraries centered around concept
    * In response to how do we package management, we just drop executables
    ** This guy's on crack, either everything is statically compiled (BAD IDEA) or they must be able to handle their libraries somehow
    * Includes all libraries by default
    ** Err, what happened to the small footprint? - and what about bug fixes? -- You fix a bus in a library and all software that uses it stops working - or you don't fix the library and end up with what windows is today staying backward compatible to bugs found 15 years ago.
    * Serialized instances of Haiku applications
    ** err, dbus? -- And similar has been available for way over a decade: bonobo/cobra, kparts, etc
    * Contacts/Emails stored in standard formats
    ** errr, mbox/maildir/ics(ical), old news
    * New filetype with file Attributes
    ** No details and given example of using these to create a jazz album is stupid, you'd use compatible id3 tags.
    * Add-Ons
    ** No details
    * Applications scriptable
    ** Well, like windows 2000 scripting or like shell scripting? - Depends on what the author implements in the application either way...
    * Virtual Memory Subsystem, File System Interface
    ** Sounds standard/archaic

  2. Argh by John+Nowak · · Score: 0, Troll

    Someone say SOMETHING interesting, please!

    1. Re:Argh by Stormwatch · · Score: 0, Troll

      Someone say SOMETHING interesting, please!

      You want us to say
      but just what do you regard
      as interesting?
  3. Something which I find interesting... by petrus4 · · Score: 0, Troll

    ...is that around here it seems to be the articles about other operating systems which attract the most trolls, incoherent offtopic posts, lame, unfunny attempts at humour, and other such rubbish.

    I've noticed how much flotsam is usually attached to articles about *BSD releases in particular, and now a story about Haiku seems to be attracting a fair amount of drek as well.

    Maybe this is just the paranoid conspiracy theorist in me, but I'm suspecting that my nemeses on Slashdot, the perennial GNU/cultists, feel an urgent need to try and make sure than any operating system in existence other than Linux is discredited/trashed to the point that nobody will dream of using it, thus continuing the work that their unholy Messiah began in slandering the BSD license.

    If one of the faithful are willing to indulge me, would you also be willing to explain how the word "freedom" is in fact *not* a mere euphemism in this case?