BeOS Successor Haiku Keeps the Faith

kokito writes "OSNews managing editor Thom Holwerda reviews Haiku, the open source successor of the Be operating system. According to the review, Haiku faithfully/successfully replicates the BeOS user experience and 'personality,' boasting very short boot times, the same recognizable but modernized GUI using antialiasing for fonts and all vector graphics as well as vector icons, a file system with support for metadata-based queries (OpenBFS) and support for the BeAPI, considered by some the cleanest programming API ever. The project has also recently released a native GCC 4.3.3 tool chain, clearing the way for bringing up-to-date ports of multi-platform apps such as Firefox and VLC, and making it easier to work on Haiku ports in general." (More below.) "In spite of its pre-alpha status, Haiku seems to be pretty stable. If you would like to give it a try, nightly builds are available from the Haiku Files website, both as raw HDD and VMWare images. Or if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area, you could also take a peek at a Haiku demo during the upcoming Southern California Linux Expo (Feb. 21 & 22), where Haiku will be exhibiting in booth #4."

Comments

Re:BeOS Haiku

[Sj0]

Because they want to?

Not everyone is out to kill the Romans. Some people just want to keep using their favourite OS. Personally, I'm excited about the day Haiku "gets there" and I can run a small, fast, powerful OS again.

Re:How have the APIs changed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this with systcl:

vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 500
vm.swappiness = 0

And whenever you want to empty the fs caches:
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
swapoff -a
swapon -a
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

After that, it'll be like just booted

Re:Haiku 1.0 == BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late, Haiku already adds features on top of the functionality offered in BeOS R5.

The goal of Haiku R1 is to be able to run BeOS R5 software in a compatible way, not to be equivalent to it in functionality... Haiku improves upon BeOS R5 in MANY ways - especially when it comes to POSIX compliance and updated hardware support.

Quite a common misconception it seems.

Re:Summary

[Kartoffel]

Be already came
with GCC, since R3
for x86.

Even EGCS ran well
but PowerPC was stuck
with lame Metrowerks.

Re:BeOS Haiku

[Kartoffel]

Mod parent up. It's true. JLG and the other Be Inc execs failed pretty at strategic choices for their company.

1. Letting Apple pick NeXT (and Jobs) instead of BeOS.

2. The idiotic focus shift to "internet appliances" (whatever the fuck those were supposed to be) just as the dot com bubble was bursting.

3. Allowing key portions of the IP to be locked up in legal agreements with other much MUCH more powerful companies.

Re:How have the APIs changed?

[powerlord]

The page you link to is over two years, and even the links on it to the nightly build is stale.

I just downloaded the VMWare image, uncompressed it, and "executed" the .vmx file. Fusion (v2.01) immediately loaded the VM, mentioned that it was an older version and asked if I wanted to update it. I chose "no" since I have no idea what hardware support has changed.

VM booted from "cold start" to Desktop in ~12-13 seconds. I'm amazed at how responsive the VM is.

Its a bit spartan from an eye candy perspective, but thats to be expected. What there is though is rather impressive.