A Decade of Haiku OS

CharlyFoxtrot writes "Haiku OS, the open source reimplementation of BeOS, celebrated its tenth birthday this week. 'Ten years ago today, the first post appeared on the mailing list of our project — then still called "OpenBeOS" — officially marking the start of our endeavor. Back then, with the imminent demise of Be Inc., there was an excitement and creative motivation in the air, that lead many to think a first release was only a matter of a few years. As it turns out, this estimation was a bit too optimistic ...' The project is currently on the third alpha of its Haiku Release 1."

Comments

Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

2012 - the year of the Haiku desktop!

Re:Maybe next year...

[someone1234]

It's too early, but by 2013, HP will ship the same amount of (Windows XP,Vista,7,8) as Haiku desktop PCs. Other manufacturers will soon follow suit.

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

App development is too easy with Haiku. If only people would make apps that people would realy want, like some cool games and a much better digital office bundle it would kill Windows just as fast as people would switched from the PS2 to the Xbox360.

The reason no OS on the planet has ever beaten Windows (including that iCrap), is because it offered nothing better than Windows that people realy, realy wanted to run. Yes it was technologically better as in a car with the best engine on the world, but without airco, without good brakes, slippy tires and a leaking roof.

It's not that hard to beat Windows, but you must offer apps that people want so badly that they'll dump Windows apps for it.

Signed,
Linux user.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

why is amount of incorrect?

Re:Maybe next year...

[modmans2ndcoming]

as in...ZERO since HP is getting out of the business.

Re:Maybe next year...

[jedrek]

It's not that hard to beat Windows, but you must offer apps that people want so badly that they'll dump Windows apps for it.

Sure, you just need a better, more stable, easier-to-use OS with more exclusive, powerful, easy to use apps that runs on 500 million different computer setups.

Easy.

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

Easy to use is not the point. If you create a car that steers for you but you still lack that airco then you're still not going to sell anything.

Think of the following possible situation:
A couple of enthousiastic and talented people make a game today, with the awesomeness factor in which the original Doom was once released onto the internet. You can bet your ass that I'll be installing Haiku as dual boot, just to play that game. I'll be dual booting.
Then Haiku gets a super awesome HTMLv5 browser. Might as well browse the web then when I've already booted Haiku. I might as well use Google Docs instead of rebooting to Word...
While I'm serving the web and doing some work, I might as well fire up that media player.

What freaking reason would I have to reboot to Windows? Video editing? Like more than 5% of all people do that... Photoshop? Like more than 5% of all people do that.

While I'm at it I might as well download that file as PDF because anyone can read that. I'll send it with Gmail. Might as well set up that email program now.

Instant messaging? VoIP? Hello, it's 2011 and everybody has WatsApp on their phone...

Re:Maybe next year...

[aliquis]

It's not that hard to beat Windows, but you must offer apps that people want so badly that they'll dump Windows apps for it.

Signed,
Linux user.

So why do you use Linux?

Re:Maybe next year...

[Vegemeister]

Because PCs are discrete. 'Amount' is used for continuous quantities.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Suferick]

'The same amount of' would apply in the case of a substance that you could measure by weight or volume; when it is items, 'the same number of' is the appropriate term. Sort of the same as 'less' and 'fewer'. If it's singular, it would be 'amount of' and 'less'; if plural, it would be 'number of' and 'fewer'.

Re:Maybe next year...

[JonJ]

What freaking reason would I have to reboot to Windows? Video editing? Like more than 5% of all people do that... Photoshop? Like more than 5% of all people do that.

Like more than 5% connects to a company exchange server, or use any other random software only available on Windows/OS X. You see, those 5% you're talking about aren't always the _same_ 5%. Every little percentage adds up, and that's why GNU/Linux hasn't taken off, all the small % adds up to a lot, and it just isn't a replacement for them.

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

Outlook 2010 has a web interface for your email and agenda. Argument flies out of the windows, still...

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

you can't have one money, therefore you have an amount of money.
you can have one pc, therefore you have a number of pc's.

Re:Maybe next year...

[ZankerH]

We live in a quantized universe, everything is "discrete", continuity is a mathematical concept that doesn't exist in reality if you look deep enough.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless Haiku can power the 560ti that I bought, and accelerate it with similar performance to Windows, then I'm not going to install it. Haiku won't "succeed" until the computer industry invests billions of dollars into it... which is the same reason that Android "succeeded."

Re:Maybe next year...

[ChrisMP1]

Ass? He was just answering a question.

Re:Maybe next year...

[hairyfeet]

You want to know how to get Linux some share? As a retailer I'll be happy to let you know, it is really easy...1.-GET RID OF THE DAMNED TERMINAL! It ain't 1979 anymore and disco is fricking dead, let go of the fucking blinking cursor, alright? Consumers ain't gonna put up with that shit, it has to go DIAF.

2.-FIX YOUR DAMNED DRIVER MODEL! It is 2011 and the constant driver borkage is getting old, okay? It is bad when a long term Linux user tells me "Well Linux just does that, what you need to do is" and then here comes the terminal bullshit. I don't care if you do it with an ABI, or offer Linus to Cthulu, but the reason NO shop will touch your OS is in no small part to the 6 month driver borkage!

You get rid of these two little things? Well I can tell you as a retailer a LARGE amount of the folks out there frankly don't need Windows. They surf, they watch YouTube, they check their Webmail, they play FB games. NONE of that requires Windows, but because Linux is such a fiddly little bitch, filled to the brim with basement dwellers that think terminals give them special gonad powers, that Linux don't gain shit.

Make it ALL GUI, NO CLI, make it so drivers don't break with every damned update, oh and get rid of that "software tied to which kernel you're running" while you're at it, and plenty of shops like mine would be more than happy to sell and support your OS. of course the day that happens I'll be riding a purple pony with She Ra because of all the lousy hacker wannabes that think having a term makes them something more than what they are, just another lamer. Hell why don't you get rid of your storage and use punch cards while you're at it? Modern tech piffle! Real men load their OS from cardboard!

As for TFA? Its a hobby OS, made by guys that KNOW its a Hobby OS, they have fun doing it, I'm totally happy for them and wish them another happy 20 years. As someone who ran OS/2 when everyone else was running Win 3.x I can understand the appeal of "what if" things would have been different, I really can. I saw everyone shit themselves with wonder at Win95 and went "What? That isn't as good as what I've been running for nearly 2 years!"

But sadly just like VHS VS Beta sometimes the best one loses, especially if the other guy is "good enough" and cheap. Amiga was good but too expensive and Commodore didn't know how to sell it so it went tits up. OS/2 was cool but IBM wanted to control the hardware and wanted crazy money for shitty behind the curve chips so it too went tits up. But as long as they have fun with it? Cool beans, everybody needs a way to burn off stress. Some folks play guitar, some build models, The Haiku guys try to build a modern Amiga. Hats off to 'em and I wish them all the luck in the world.

Re:Maybe next year...

[WrongSizeGlass]

ass.

Some asses are discrete and others seem to be continuous.

Re:Maybe next year...

[WrongSizeGlass]

of course the day that happens I'll be riding a purple pony with She Ra

Ponies! I call shotgun!

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

OWA 2007 had an unusable web interface for non-IE browsers. OWA 2010 supports popular browsers only*. For varying definitions of "supports." It may work and it may not. It also lacks tons of little "oops, that was essential" features.

* which doesn't include Opera, Lynx, Konqueror, or "Haiku browser".

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

"Haiku Browser" is Firefox. Still no argument...

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

You appear to have missed the fact that Microsoft is going CLI only again. They have introduced powershell and the recent exchange releases require the use of the CLI for certain things. The CLI is here to stay. If you still don't believe it, read the good old essay In The Beginning Was The Command Line.

Re:Maybe next year...

[justforgetme]

Well, then there is the point of: Do you really want some OS to beat windows?

I personally like the fact that the FOSS OSes are a bit of a niche on the desktop. I don't care that much that I need to pull up terminals to do some stuff, actually on some occasions it is quite relaxing to go the minimal and info oriented route to troubleshoot something instead of getting encumbered with gui hell.

In addition to this using a solution that is not in the mainstream generally means that you will get a much more knowledgeable community which helps productivity and learning. just go to yahoo answers (picked this because it very well represents the skills/abilities of people on the Internet today) and ask a question about a medium complexity computing task, in both the win7 category and the linux one. Then wait a day or two and compare the answers you will get. Not really the same quallity? That's the expected outcome. The win7 thread will have about 2^20 answers of which but a handful will be of any value. on the linux thread you might get just the one answer but it will help you complete your task.

On another note, I am running a complete FOSS web development studio and we are beating the hell out of our local competition that relies on proprietary software. As an added bonus screening/interviewing job applicants is much easier with a pure foss setup, people who don't want to hop into a new computing environment and get out of their comfort zone (or haven't already) are usually sub par material in the IT world.

So as a conclusion I would like to suggest that the FOSS variants should not become mainstream maybe a slight increase in market share might help but in desktop world 1-2% sounds perfect imo. (go Windows!!!)

any ignorance in the above text is mine. MINE!!!! you can't have it. go get your own.

Re:Maybe next year...

[justforgetme]

He found the secret secret place where they keep the apps, that people want so badly that they'll dump Windows for, which when publicized will lead to a huge increase in linux users and finally begin the "year of the liinux desktop" ;-)

tinfoil hat?

Re:Maybe next year...

[justforgetme]

She Ra

shotgun!!!

Re:Maybe next year...

[djlowe]

Hi, hairyfeet -

2.-FIX YOUR DAMNED DRIVER MODEL! It is 2011 and the constant driver borkage is getting old, okay? It is bad when a long term Linux user tells me "Well Linux just does that, what you need to do is" and then here comes the terminal bullshit. I don't care if you do it with an ABI, or offer Linus to Cthulu, but the reason NO shop will touch your OS is in no small part to the 6 month driver borkage!

While I agree with the sentiment in general, it's not necessarily a reason to not use Linux in the home user/SMB user market. There's a simple solution for these people: Use a long-term Linux distribution such as Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS).

Link: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

Let's face it: Most home users/SMB users don't change their hardware very often, so once a computer is set up, it is essentially a static configuration, save for the occasional memory or hard drive upgrade, upgrades to monitors or replacing keyboards and mice. This being the case, an LTS version of Linux is ideal, I would think?

Finally, I fondly remember OS/2 - I ran it at home from Warp v2 to Warp v4, and it was a great OS! I ran it dual-boot during that time (OS/2 and DOS/Windows 3.x and DESQView, later DESQView/386 and QEMM-386), buying hardware based on OS/2 driver support. When Window 95 was released I saw the writing on the wall, but continued to dual-boot. I finally gave up on it completely a few months after Windows 98SE was released: OS/2's hardware support was lagging ever-farther behind, and when Creative Labs stopped releasing OS/2 drivers I'd pretty much had enough. I bought a copy of Scitech Display Doctor for OS/2, and that helped somewhat, but my next computer had no OS/2 partitions. I still have my last copy of OS/2 Warp v4, and occasionally look at it on my shelf and think "I should try get it running under VirtualBox"...

Regards,

dj

Re:Maybe next year...

[awyeah]

I'm not the biggest fan of Outlook (or OWA), but we use it at work, and OWA is actually pretty decent in web browser support. It works in IE of course, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (and maybe other browsers that I haven't tried). According to this site, as of June 2011, that's 97% of the browser market share.

Re:Maybe next year...

[UltraZelda64]

You want to know how to get Linux some share? As a retailer I'll be happy to let you know, it is really easy...1.-GET RID OF THE DAMNED TERMINAL! It ain't 1979 anymore and disco is fricking dead, let go of the fucking blinking cursor, alright? Consumers ain't gonna put up with that shit, it has to go DIAF.

What blinking cursor? You mean that one that is right at home in pretty much every text editor used today? Or the one in all Web browsers' location/address/search bars? Or the ones in those various other text entry boxes in just about any other program?

The above quote was pretty damn dumb, but the rest of your post is just plain retarded. You better tell Apple and Microsoft to ditch their respective command line terminals. Modern Linux distros that focus on new users (and there are a lot of them) rely on the command line about as much as Windows and Mac OS do for the most part. The only time I use the terminal is when I *want* to use the terminal; ie., to do things quicker and more efficiently that I would otherwise be able to with *any* GUI. And in those times... I'm happy to have a terminal that works so well compared to the crap Command Prompt included with Windows.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most home users/SMB users don't change their hardware very often

Printers, webcams, mice and keyboards with extra buttons. Peripherals haven't gone completely dead yet. Still, the real problem is supporting basic configurations like sound and video cards. Microsoft goes to tremendous expense to provide driver development programs, but what most vendors are really asking for is a stable ABI. Linux's DRI is already pretty close as video goes, but it's entirely inadequate.

And it's not just the kernel. Look at how Flash broke when glibc changed some behavior of memcpy(2). You can scream and yell about undefined behavior and coding to spec and so on, but ultimately it broke, and vendors were in no hurry to support their users to patch it (with a simple LD_PRELOAD wrapper around sensitive executables).

The -longterm branch of kernels is promising, but support for a free OS is still quite often what you pay for.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

The jury is still out on whether spacetime is discrete or continuous. Until they reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity, we don't know.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of the command line? Are you fucking retarded? (checks UID- oh, makes sense now)
Why would you get rid of what could be the most powerful feature of *nix-like OSes? OS X has a terminal, and while most people never use it, the rewards for those that do are amazing. Why would we ditch one of the best features of the *nixes for the sake of being like windows? It shouldn't be necessary to use it on a day to day basis, but outright removing it? Of course, you are the largest known MS shill on /., so asking us to copy windows by neutering our CLI is to be expected. The drivers offer up a valid point, but by covering all of that in idiocy, you've doomed your argument to failure.

Re:Maybe next year...

[hairyfeet]

Oh horseshit. This is yet another classic example of "moving the goal posts" where if you point out a car is a gas pig they go "Well well, your airplane sucks teh gas too!" WTF? NEWS FLASH. Powershell is for SERVERS AND WORKSTATIONS ONLY. Sure you CAN install it on the Home SKUs but you know what? you're as likely to find Powershell on a home system as you are netbeans IDE, that is NOT AT ALL.

Look you can't beat the math, kay? Linux is at 1%, where was it 5 years ago? Where will it be 5 years from now? 1%. Why is that? Because YOU DON'T LISTEN TO THE USERS and instead expect the whole damned world to do things YOUR way. Well ya know what? Ain't gonna happen, everyone else abandoned the term in 95 and there ain't no going back, no matter how badly basement dwellers have a hard on for the days when nerds sat around programming Pong games on PDP 11 systems.

As a retailer with over 25 years in the biz, let me spell it out, kay? ALL GUI, NO CLI, NO DRIVER BORKAGE. Do that and then we'll talk. hell every little shop will have Linux machines on their shelves simply because it lets us shave $100 off a new build. Don't do that, and instead expect people to jump through the terminal hoops and 6 month driver breakage bullshit? Enjoy your one percent because you ain't going nowhere.

I have tried just about every major distro and it is ALL the same. 6 month driver borkage, too much term bullshit, it is about as user unfriendly as one could possibly get. Oh and for the one guy who ALWAYS screams LTS!? Got news for ya Sparky LTS has less time left than WinXP at this point and frankly LTS is a code for "really old software" as nobody backports more than a handful of apps for the old crap.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome isn't supported under OS X or Linux and Safari isn't supported under Windows.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Twinbee]

I still can't think of a good reason why the terminal should be necessary or even useful. Things should either be automated so the CLI isn't necessary and a singler folder filesystem would supplant any disk navigation CLI queries.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Twinbee]

Can you give me the best example of where the terminal would be more useful than any alternative?

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wooosh.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which computer retailer are you?

Because you are just fucking stupid. Seriously, fucking stupid.

Did you know that Windows comes with a command line?

Did you know that Mac comes with a command line?

Fucking stupid sack of shit.

Re:Maybe next year...

[aix tom]

My Reason I want it on my computer: The second I know how to do it in the terminal, I know how to automate it.

The Reason I would want it on my mothers computer: Instead of going through miles and miles of "click this, read that, click there, check that, click this, read me back what the message says" back and forth while troubleshooting I can just send a mail with "copy/paste this in the terminal, and send me back the result".

Also the GUI and the Terminal are two different tools. Like a hammer and a saw. Each has its specific advantages and disadvantages.
You of course there seem to be people who *really* hate saws, and will never touch them, and go throw hissy fits when they see one.
They only use the hammer all the time, even to cut boards.

Re:Maybe next year...

[aix tom]

Oh, and a "Windows" CLI example:

What's easier, getting a customer to click through dozen of sub-windows in the network configuration while troubleshooting, or print and fax you a single screen-shot of "ipconfig /a" from the CLI ?

Re:Maybe next year...

[Maow]

Can you give me the best example of where the terminal would be more useful than any alternative?

Easily: installing new software.

For example, "q) How do I install a web server?"

"a) sudo apt-get install apache" (tabbed-auto-completion helps here!)

It works for almost any questions about the OS: with Windows, the answers are "Click Start, click this, click that, click X tab, click something, select something, clickety-clickety-click, click OK, reboot."

In *nix, it's always something like: "copy the following 3 lines and paste them in a terminal running as root. Change XYZ to what your needs are. Done."

Truly, many things are faster in the terminal window - as long as your fingers are on the keyboard anyway.

Hope that helps.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Twinbee]

a: This helps my case even more. The whole thing software installation should be automated, and in the future it certainly will be. Hence making the terminal/shell/cli/console/command line prompt (or whatever it's called next Tuesday) redundant.

As for your second point, that comes more under the realm of documentation/preferences. Instead of a terminal to display this information, we should be using a real-time filtered info window, where any text typed (into a single line's textbox, no more) filters out information on the fly into the main display area.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Twinbee]

That comes more under the realm of documentation/preferences. Instead of a terminal to display this information, we should be using a real-time filtered info window, where any text typed (into a single line's textbox, no more) filters out information on the fly into the main display area. The terminal is far from ideal for this kind of thing.

Re:Maybe next year...

[UltraZelda64]

It would vary by person, but one thing I wouldn't trade the command line in for a GUI program is audio encoding.

Say I have wave or FLAC files, and I want to make a quick Ogg Vorbis encoding at, say, quality level 5.5. I go to the directory containing the CD/files (which could, by the way, be as simple as finding it in the file manager and "open in terminal" if I really wanted).

mkdir Band-CDTitle; oggenc -q 5.5 *.flac; mv *.ogg Band-CDTitle

Also, wget -- I almost exclusively use wget to download files. The only exceptions are when I can't, because of the way the file is put up. Nothing beats its stability and minuscule resource usage for downloading large files, as well as its options and timestamp preservation. And best of all, I don't have to worry about the browser crashing since it's not downloading, or its GUI crashing since it doesn't have a GUI. In fact, X.Org could crash and it wouldn't phase it, especially if it was running in another virtual tty.

I am someone who came from Windows and still primarily use the GUI, but there are just some things I love having the terminal available for. As I said though, it would very per person; I'm sure a lot of people don't give a damn about these two things.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

The win7 thread will have about 2^20 answers of which but a handful will be of any value. on the linux thread you might get just the one answer but it will help you complete your task.

No, in the Linux thread you'll get some asshole calling you an idiot and telling you to go back to Windows because you dared to ask a question.

Re:Maybe next year...

[shutdown -p now]

Maybe because he has found reasonable replacements for all the apps that he wanted?

Re:Maybe next year...

[Maow]

a: This helps my case even more. The whole thing software installation should be automated, and in the future it certainly will be. Hence making the terminal/shell/cli/console/command line prompt (or whatever it's called next Tuesday) redundant.

I think you rather missed the point.

If you want automated installation, Linux or BSD are the way to go, both use GUIs or CLIs (your choice) for the same thing.

But the user must be involved to some point, like choosing whether to install MySQL server or client, etc.

As for your second point, that comes more under the realm of documentation/preferences. Instead of a terminal to display this information, we should be using a real-time filtered info window, where any text typed (into a single line's textbox, no more) filters out information on the fly into the main display area.

I don't think you've thought that through its implementation very well, but I suggest you might actually learn to like apt-get as a package management tool.

Remember, in Linux / BSD, all software is updated through package manager, no separate updates for Firefox, Thunderbird, Apache, etc.

Certainly a GUI is best for some things, but if you think doing away with CLIs is a step forward, you're simply wrong. Sorry, no offense.

Choose the best tool for each job, etc.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

grownups read books with words. kids look at picture books. A computer with no CLI is like a picture book - maybe suitable for morons, but you're not really computing with it.

Re:Maybe next year...

[monkyyy]

1. pluseaudio control panel, simple per-app volume balance, not to useful for most cases but just wait till u want to listen to music while watching a movie, u have two ears so listening to two things w/o a degrade of clarity is possible
2. its much much faster
3. automatically handles muli-booting w/o any trouble
4. can avoid most of the trouble of installing windows by just choosing a good disto for u
5. disto's
5.5 sub-disto's (like the gnome2____ that will pop up soon for most popular distos once they switch to 3)
5.6 break off distos YAY MINT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6. free
7. gnome do, yes its a copy of something from mac but it allows plugins
8. different window managers
8.5 see distos
9. drastic changes are based on the user base and not some pr idiots whims

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Haiku Browser" is WebPositive (it's WebKit based). Jokes on you.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Twinbee]

Your audio example could easily be a custom-made preset inside a GUI. You'd get the same thing done with one or two clicks. If you wanted different values each time, then the tab in the gui would replace the space bar in the terminal, as it would move on to the next field/textbox.

If software is written right, it will be as stable as any terminal.

I hate kludgy slow software as much as anyone (hence why I'm so interested in Haiku, and wrote an article about latency which made Slashdot's news a short while back), and I have a fair amount of experience with the command line......... but I remain unconvinced.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha fuck off, unless your using the distro pre-configured and never plan on installing or changing anything you will need to copy paste some longass command to get shit working. You never have to fuck around with finding where the fuck an application just installed to, finding dependencies and having multiple copies of config files.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Twinbee]

Having read your original post again more properly this time, you're right, it almost feels like a different post, at least the first half or so (that's an odd feeling!). Let me try again:

Yes, Windows can easily make what should be a one step process into a million steps. But that's with a bad design. I'm saying what could be, rather than what is (I too hate having to trundle through window after window in the way you spoke of).

To give a better idea of how the GUI can work for speed instead of against; picture a "Master Prefs" program window with every single preference of the OS inside. These millions of entries would be searchable instantly (0.1s), with real-time filtering, and metadata (including semantic variations of a word) attached to each option so you could find or edit the desired option in seconds. It would be quicker than typing and would save having to remember the massive array of options.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Twinbee]

Er just to clarify the last sentence of my post; obviously one would need to type in keywords, but I meant it would be quicker than typing what would be the equivalent of the CLI version. Heck, I'm tired..... time for bed.

Re:Maybe next year...

[dryeo]

I have a daemon here, awget which monitors the clipboard (can also be a folder for drag'n'drop) and launches wget. So find file I want to download, hilite and copy, click yes on popup, and wget the file.
Of course this is old technology so probably wouldn't work in anything designed in the 21st century. (OS/2 here)
It's also trivial to encode a file as you mention from the GUI though you still have to enter the parameters into a popup.

Re:Maybe next year...

[dryeo]

Now a days OS/2 uses a port of Alsa for sound cards, works fine. Serenity Systems has the source code for Scitech now so hopefully the weak link, graphics support, will be fixed though I'm sure you'll still have to be careful of your hardware purchases. One nice thing is that IBM considers multi-core chips to be one CPU so your Warp V4 system is licensed for SMP as long as there is one physical chip.
To run OS/2 in Virtual box you need at least V4.5 (V4 + all the free fixes) and unluckily even though Vbox was designed to run OS/2 it has drifted away so you need to pick the right version for it to work. As I'm still running OS/2 on real hardware I haven't kept track.

Re:Maybe next year...

[justforgetme]

Why would somebody post that as AC?

Anyway, that's a possibility. That's why I prefaced it with 'might' :-)

Re:Maybe next year...

[Timmmm]

Yeah this works if you already know what to type. Otherwise the steps become:

1. Search Google for "how to install apache on ubuntu" which leads to a site saying "Invoke Apt-Get in the following way: sudo apt-get install apache".
2. Google "How to invoke commands on linux". That doesn't actually lead to any results like "Click Applications->Accessories->Terminal". You may think it's obvious, but a newbie would *not* know this.
3. Type the command.
4. Get really confused when typing in the password prompt doesn't produce any *'s. Why the hell is it still even set up like this? I actually don't know the original reason, but I'm guessing it hasn't applied for many years, or is insanely paranoid.
5. There's no 'apache' package.
6. Somehow find out that you have to use 'apache2'. I don't even know how a newbie would do this.

Vs (ok you have to imagine that it works as *indended*. The Ubuntu Software Centre is still a bit crap.)

1. Applications->Ubuntu Software Centre. Fairly easy to find.
2. Search for apache.
3. Imagine search actually works sanely and it put apache2 at the top and doesn't call it a "Metapackage".
4. Click it. Click install.
5. Imagine the password prompt tells you *which* password to use (wtf guys?)
6. Click ok.
7. Done.

Way way easier. Oh, and predictable responses that miss the point: 1. Why would a newbie be installing apache. 2. This only works on ubuntu. 3. You can't install everything using the ubuntu software centre.

Oh, and I did a search, and as far as I could find the only reason for not showing *'s for passwords is that someone could count the number of characters! What. The. Fuck.

Re:Maybe next year...

[hairyfeet]

I have to say THANK YOU TWINBEE for FINALLY getting it! oh and you want to see the future? here it is...Ninite and it is EXACTLY how you described. You simply check a single box by what you want, and hit go. That's it, no next next next, do fiddling, just sane defaults.

But sadly as you have seen in this tread as they become more and more desperate to come up with any reason why a CLI would be better (and failing horribly) it comes down to the fact that Linux nerds think CLI makes them leet and gives them gonad powers, like by having a blinking cursor they become a hacker ninja instead of just being someone dealing with a bad design.

But I have to agree if they user is doing more than 3 clicks to get to anything? Then you're doing it wrong. But just because there are some bad design choices in Windows (which I'd argue they are getting better about) doesn't mean one should fall back to 1970s design choices. it is stupid, pointless, and about as unintuitive and user unfriendly as one could possibly be.

Re:Maybe next year...

[RockDoctor]

continuity is a mathematical concept that doesn't exist in reality if you look deep enough.

Mathematical concepts don't exist in reality? A lot of people could ADD to that discussion, but there is a high probability of DIVIDING the audience into mutually mis-communicating groups, which would MULTIPLY the number of times I'd need to explain things, and in turn SUBTRACT from my time in the pub.

Pretty much all of which are undesirable outcomes, in my book. And in the pub's books too.

I don't know what you think of as "continuity" in the sense of a mathematical concept, and I don't have a precise definition of it since I don't claim to be a mathematician (competent at arithmetic is as far as I'd go ; and if that means a million-line spreadsheet rather than a ten line program, so be it), but I do have a pretty good handle on what is a continuous function, what is a discontinuous function, why it's important to differentiate (hah!) between the two , and how to get around the problem if you have to integrate a discontinuous function.

The driller on the brake or the derrickman in the pits may not recognise their pit management of a well kill as involving functions of any sort (apart from squeaking the brake, or opening a valve), but they do. And that is a very real-world piece of reality.

Re:Maybe next year...

[aliquis]

1) Good future, I have no idea if it's possible within Windows. Kinda all applications which put out sound has a volume controller in my experience. I rarely want to listen to music and try to listen to a video at the same time but if I did I'm sure my music player and media player or YouTube flash application would let me control the volume of all of them.
2) Whatever.
3) Doubt many Windows users have a problem with multi-booting ... And if you need to multi-boot I don't see the problem with any OS combinations or what makes Linux so special.
4) What?
5) What?
5.5) What?
5.6) What?
6) True. Don't say much about OMG ALL THE LEENUCKS APPS WHICH IS SO LIKE TOTALLY AWESOME AND BEAT WINDOWS FOREVARH!
Though of course there's some good applications for the free desktops. I like the whole KDE environment. Or well, rather did like it. Many applications got too many panels and buttons and eventually I may want to have more of the integration on the web instead of on the desktop. As in doing my mail, IM, calendar, whatever stuff collected and available everywhere from the browser.
7) What?
8) I just need the greatest one. And I may have to agree with Fedora that the desktop is getting less important.
8.5) What?
9) AFAIK drastic changes in most free apps come from the developers, not from the users, in many cases the developers and the users don't care for the same thing and the developers wins. If you want something else make it yourself or shut up and stop complaining. Chances are the "PR idiots" is rather more likely to bring out what the users want instead of what the developers think is cool or care about.

I don't know if you answered to me (maybe Slashdot messed up?) but if you did your answer doesn't make much sense and it's very basic claims which has been true for Linux and the free desktops for decades but it really don't tell why the applications would be so superior to Windows. Which most people wouldn't agree upon.

For instance Windows is likely to have much more choices and eventually some better ones for creating music, or video. Obviously better games. Maybe better things for like creating a news paper / magazine. Better applications for working with graphics.

Re:Maybe next year...

[monkyyy]

1) u misunderstand, this is muting the left channel for youtube, and the right for a movie, windows does not do this or even let u try
2) either prove me wrong or explain why most severs use linux to save money, i mutiboot linux+ windows, and linux is much faster
3) windows does handle muti-booting like crap, but yes so long as ur not trying windows + say... react os, its doesnt matter
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution the more u know

7)its an app..... one of the ones that open source did very well w/
8) huh? " I like the whole KDE environment. Or well, rather did like it" didn't u just urself just say how important having a choice is, i use compiz+ gnome on my gaming computer because its the best for have options if u have to computer power for it, for my mothers i got her plain gnome because i dont know kde and she just needed something basic, and before i got a gaming computer i used ratpoison just because it was fast
9)the dev are trying to keep users, or at lest make something they want( otherwise ppl just make a break off disto, YAY MINT) while pr idiots dont know what their talking about and are trying to sell to ppl not using it " TO TEH EPIX CLOUD, it will do everything"

10) i was answering "So why do you use Linux?"

Re:Maybe next year...

[aliquis]

1) Ok. Nothing I would want to do anyway.
2) Good for you.
3) There are plenty of boot managers. Can't see why whatever you use for Linux (grub?) would be superior or so special vs anything else.
4) Say what? I never said I have no idea what a Linux distribution was. Who knows. Maybe I used one a decade before you did?
7) Can't see what it was a reply to, I blame Slashdot for not putting a "parent" link here, or quoting the parent post.
8) I don't think I've said anything about choices. Maybe I did. I didn't said everyone had to use KDE. I liked the integration of it, that's all. Now Google or whatever can give me similar integration online so I don't need it as much in my desktop. Depends on whatever you trust Google or Opera or whatever with your data though.
10) Ok. Then I didn't answered the wrong post atleast :)

Personally I got no special reason to use Linux specifically. Most of the unix like OSes would do as long as they can run the software I preferred to use.

For me applications > OS.

Re:Maybe next year...

[badkarmadayaccount]

That's funny, I have Fedora 15 running on my 3 y.o. laptop with zero CLI setup. Free drivers only.

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

Nice to know that they changed it from this: http://www.mozilla.org/ports/beos/

And since it works on Chrome (webkit), it should also work on Webpositive.

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

It's about to use the Gallium3D driver architecture, for which there is a nVidia driver (which kinda sucks if you intent to play anything more demanding than Quake3 on it) and AMD actually has active driver development on it, which is about 25-125% performance of the blob (depending on various tests, but Doom3 runs fine, so I guess it's not a desaster).

BTW Android just had a Gallium3D tree merged...

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

Because of the productivity factor in certain use cases like programming, administration, video and music entertainment, web browsing infotainment and the pure geekyness of it.

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

For all things 'work' considdered; absolutely. For silly things like gaming I still dual boot, but not out of love...

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

You want to know how to get Linux some share? As a retailer I'll be happy to let you know, it is really easy...1.-GET RID OF THE DAMNED TERMINAL!

Like the cmd on Windows 7, where you have to fix your sleepmode by typing:
powercfg /h on
?

It ain't 1979 anymore and disco is fricking dead, let go of the fucking blinking cursor, alright?

Like Windows that still uses a fscking hourglass? (now fancy round one)

2.-FIX YOUR DAMNED DRIVER MODEL! It is 2011 and the constant driver borkage is getting old, okay?

You mean those fancy pants modular modules, which Vista later copied and worked so well without BSOD'ing? Ah those... Or do you mean Gallium3D GPU driver model that rivals all competition?

As for TFA? Its a hobby OS, made by guys that KNOW its a Hobby OS

That must be why so many important institutes and companies rely on it for running the fscking economy, right?

Re:Maybe next year...

[V!NCENT]

When communicating with people, you communicate with words. You can talk to them or type. You don't record a fscking home video everytime you interact.

Now what makes a computer more usefull then to tell it what to fscking do, instead of pointing at shit with a cursor?

I can go to a terminal, tell it what to do, how to do it and on what to do it, in that order.

Re:Maybe next year...

[Twinbee]

Typing is good yes. A console uses typing, but so does a text editor, IRC, and a million other things. The idea of a console is so ingrained into many (not all) Linux folk that they would even use it as a basis for a calculator, when something like Soulver on the Mac is a far superior way of working with numbers (notepad like editing with real-time answers as you type).

Re:Maybe next year...

[UltraZelda64]

Sure it could be done using a GUI, and it is in many programs. But when I enter the command, I know *exactly* what I'm telling it, and I know exactly what the software is going to do. And although I could, I wouldn't trade that in for a GUI.

As I said, these are just my preferences; trust me, I've used and compared a ton of GUI frontends over the years and I know it's possible. But I would still NOT go back any one of them after trying the command line. The simplicity, low memory use, and speed are just another advantage, but those aren't the only reasons.

Happy Birthday!

[mustard5]

/me sings Happy Birthday....

Re:Happy Birthday!

[sakdoctor]

Copyright violation detected. Scrambling all lawyers.

Re:Happy Birthday!

[psnyder]

Currently alpha.
It hasn't been released yet.
Can we call it born?

Another headline
might be more appropriate.
Perhaps we can say:

"The Haiku OS,
has been in prenatal care,
40 trimesters."

Re:Happy Birthday!

[modmans2ndcoming]

that isn't a Haiku. it is a poem that consists of three verses that are set up in the 5-7-5 format.

Re:Happy Birthday!

[Anonymous Coward]

And a seasonal word.

Re:Happy Birthday!

[Anonymous Coward]

He did mention it was alpha

Early for the first, late for the second

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad new economy timing.

Here's to another 10 more...

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming the OS makes it that far.

Now that they're done trying to clone BeOS (for which they did a fine job), they're starting to go and do their own thing. Much to the despair of everyone else- these new tangents of development are very un-BeOS like and lack the elegance their role model exhibits. The package manager/filesystem they're trying to implement is a perfect example of this.

I sincerely hope that they figure that stuff out- lest Haiku turn into an unmaintainable, overcomplicated piece of junk. It has such great potential, if only they stick to their roots and continue pushing a fast, simple, and more importantly- clean operating system.

-AC

Re:Here's to another 10 more...

[justforgetme]

I had the opportunity to play with haiku on a weekend trip to a friend (I never had bothered to try it but he had) about a month ago.
I have to say that the OS has some very very strong points. I loved the window pinning in window management and the easy ramdisk functionality.

As a product I am afraid it isn't complete enough to be used in production env but I really had to wonder how come no one in the FOSS OS communities ever tried to copy some of its frankly brilliant functionality.

I don't know if the IT world needs one more open source OS, imo bsd and all the linux distros can cover all the needs anyone could ever have from an integrated circuit. I respect haiku's divergence and the (new) ideas it brings to the OS table but I think that the devs time would have been time better spent trying to integrate ramdisk functionality into the linux kernel (or just evolve the already existing one) and the remainder of said time could have ben used to hit gnome devs on their heads with a hardcopy telephone catalog.

And no, I'm not a gnome hater. I predominantly use gnome on my workstations but you simply can't ignore that fact that sticking windows together should be a standard feature of any window management system.

ohh and as always: "any misinformation/error/ignorance/arrogance in this text is mine. MINE!!!! you can't have it"

Re:Here's to another 10 more...

[BenoitRen]

When I tried the alpha I wondered why their web browser's maximised mode made the title bar disappear. It shouldn't be the same as full-screen. It's inconsistent and makes the Be menu inaccessible.

Birthday Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost finished now
many bugs, long way to go
Haiku Release 1

RIP BeOS

[DNS-and-BIND]

"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it."
-- Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be, Inc.

Re:RIP BeOS

[hawk]

C'mon, now; this is important. Apple's OS just doesn'ttake full advantage of my 68040; now I'll be abletousemysystem asitshpuld ha been in the first place.

Those guys buying the PowerPC macs are just fools . .

Re:RIP BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

"One day, everything Microsoft has sold you will be obosolete." - Jean-Louis Gasse

Tablet Version Please?

[SlothDead]

So it arrives just in time for the post PC era?

Don't get me wrong, I tried Alpha 2 a while ago and I think that if they finish it and if it got support from the developer community it would be the best desktop OS ever: The UI is excellent and it is very developer friendly.

What I don't like about it is that it is basically just BeOS: A normal PC OS. And are you really sure that PCs will be the Computer of choice for anyone besides office workers and Slashdot readers?

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[assertation]

And are you really sure that PCs will be the Computer of choice for anyone besides office workers and Slashdot readers?

When I get home from work, I surf on my PC and watch videos. What else would I choose for that, off work, that would be as nice as having a full sized keyboard and screen?

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[gl4ss]

you'd choose a touch tablet in the bed start wondering why you're having back and wrist problems..

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[tepples]

As long as "surf" doesn't involve a lot of typing, a tablet with an HDMI cable to a television might be able to substitute.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Orion Blastar]

It would require an ARM port to run on ARM tablet systems. Most tablets these days are ARM based. Microsoft wants Windows 8 to run on ARM tablets. If HaikuOS can run on ARM systems it will have a lower overhead than Windows 8 and thus run faster with less memory.

It has been a decade and still is in alpha release, if some major computer company was investing in it like they did the Mozilla Foundation we'd have a golden 1.0 release by now.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

There has been some ARM porting work done but as you say they are working with limited resources. I think if a company were to want to develop a new tablet OS from scratch, they could do worse than basing it on Haiku which is released under the very permissive MIT license. Hell, if Apple could cut OSX down to tablet size it could surely be done with the much leaner Haiku.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[drinkypoo]

The thing is that there's really no compelling reason to use Haiku because there's no applications to speak of except some ports. Therefore it makes more sense to use Linux (GPL), Linux with your own userland (kinda GPL) or some BSD (copyright only) depending on their particular needs. Tablets are only getting more powerful, which reduces the benefit of a lightweight OS.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[drinkypoo]

That's a nifty idea. I wonder if it would be possible to somehow power the tablet from the HDMI cable, perhaps with some kind of injector, using any unused lines... Heck, you could handshake it, which would keep the injector expensive, sounds like a win for the manufacturer... and right up Apple's alley, if they weren't in love with inventing new connectors.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[tepples]

Hell, if Apple could cut OSX down to tablet size

Then it would be called iOS.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Yeah sorry, I messed up my tenses. What I meant was: "If Apple can do it with OSX, then surely it could be done with Haiku."

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

There were no applications for Android when they started of either, nor for (the now maybe defunct?) WebOS. Besides realistically, none of the existing FOSS apps are going to be ported straight over to modern type tablets (ie. no stylus, etc) because they aren't built from the ground up around a touch based metaphor. I also think there will be some enduring benefits for lightweight OS's yet on tablets, like better battery life for one. The hardware will no doubt get faster but tablets are very constrained by their physical form factor, they are only going to get thinner so power use will continue to be a factor.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why are you guys making an OS that only you would want to use?"

Because they want it?

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[pankkake]

And are you really sure that PCs will be the Computer of choice for anyone besides office workers and Slashdot readers?

No one cares about tablets, except hipsters and journalists.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[tyme]

No one cares about tablets, except 15 million hipsters and journalists.

FTFY

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Joe.Davola]

Well said. I agree. +10 Internet points to you.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it arrives just in time for the post PC era?

There is no such thing as the 'post PC era'. You might as well talk about the post-wheel era.

You remind me of my boss. He showed up to a meeting carrying both his iPad and his laptop. I hadn't played with iPad yet, so I asked him how he liked it, and got the most hilarious answer: "oh, it's great. You know, it's a really lightweight device, so much lighter than a laptop."

Which, of course, doesn't matter if you still need to carry your laptop around with you.

I'm not dissing on tablets. They're nice devices that perform their function well. There are many apps that I'm sure are extremely well suited to the format. I seriously don't get why people insist on trying to make them into PC replacements, though. The spoon is fantastic, but it doesn't replace my hammer. I don't go around saying that we're arriving in a post-hammer world.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Twinbee]

What you can't already connect tablets up to bigger displays?

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it arrives just in time for the post PC era?

The Post-PC era is thirty years in the future, if ever. We'll achieve post-petroleum before we get post-PC. The PC fills needs that nothing mobile does, and those needs are not going away.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as "surf" doesn't involve a lot of typing, a tablet with an HDMI cable to a television might be able to substitute.

Sounds expensive, compared to an IR remote control.

not saying that handhelds don't make awesome remote controls; they really do. (And that's about all they're good for, whenever you have more capable equipment around.) But that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[crispytwo]

why a cable? and why hdmi?

I do some of this now with flingo.org for video - and the reading crap on my laptop..

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[tepples]

Because it works with less expensive HDTVs that lack Flingo support, such as the TV that one may already own.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

A woman?

I admit that a keyboard only has 101-105ish buttons that have to be pressed in the right way to get the computer to work, whereas a woman has NaN buttons that if pressed in the wrong way will lead to pain ... but otherwise ...

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots like you are the reason Firefox, Gnome, KDE, Windows and the rest are becoming unusable pieces of junk.

Real work doesn't get done on tablets and handhelds.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Threni]

I don't get this denial of the staggering outnumbering of suitably powerful smartphones and tablets by desktop pcs and laptops. Perhaps in 5,10,15 years, but at the moment the ratio is approaching a billion (regular PCs) to a few tens of millions (tablets).

That's not to say that the choice of OS is remotely important, given that much computer usage is browser/email based. I'm not sure which problem in Linux, for example (the heart of every tablet/smartphone, essentially) is solved by BeOS (or any other OS). Multitasking, file system, hardware/driver support. Done. Next?

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

ARM Port actually in the works. Though it needs more developers, desperately.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

As compared to over 1 billion who use PCs. Surely the PC is doomed.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[RocketRabbit]

You could be the CEO of a major failing corporation with insight such as that.

Kudos!

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[assertation]

I don't have any back, wrist or eye problems. I work at a computer all day and spend a few hours on a PC at home. Good diet and the gym I guess.

I can't see a tablet on my couch being as useful/fun when I get home as a very nice PC on my large desk and my comfy big chair.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[BenoitRen]

The problem with Linux and BSD is that they're both Unix systems, with all the baggage that comes with it. Not everyone likes that. I, for one, prefer a system designed as a whole instead of a diverse collection of applications.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[drinkypoo]

You don't need to take on all the baggage if you don't want to. You might reasonably claim to be tied to X at this point, which probably implies a moderately POSIX environment in there someplace. After that you are free to go off in another direction. Openstep is one example, but you could easily be more radical. I for one would very much like to see someone use the Linux kernel to build a substantially different operating system, one in which the POSIX environment is de-emphasized. Traditionally, attempts to do this have failed; when I was meddling with BeOS it was clear that there were not enough man-hours to accomplish what was going on in Linuxland, and ports of POSIX software were more than abundant, by far dwarfing native offerings. I even had a BeBox... Which by my understanding was basically stuffed with a Motorola reference design. But it was a generation too early; if it came out five years ago I'd probably still be using it today (because the processor it would therefore have in it would be worth something) but I kept it only about a year.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[BenoitRen]

I'd argue that they were worth something because there were two PowerPC processors in there. There's a lot that you can still do with older computers. In fact I'm typing this on a computer from 1998. It might not be powerful enough for what you need, but I disagree that they aren't worth anything.

Re:Tablet Version Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least one exists :). A chess game, which is native and which will be soon better than any chess game you find on linux.

It's just Haiku btw

[mmu_man]

We know it's an OS :P

Re:It's just Haiku btw

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I felt compelled to throw it in there. People are always complaining that there's no explanation in the summary of project names and such and I don't know how much of the current Slashdot readership actually remembers the BeOS, it has been a long time.

Re:It's just Haiku btw

[marcello_dl]

Sweaty fingers, in the summer afternoon
look up "haiku", which a webpage mentions:
confusion ensues.

Re:It's just Haiku btw

[hawk]

To put that time into perspective:

I have three grandchildren without having children as old as BeOS . . .

Maybe they can port this thing to the new Amiga . .

Skinning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging from the information on the website, it seems that skinning isn't supported. Like ReactOS, it looks very 90s; you can change colours but that's it. The ReactOS project has skinning on it's to-do list, but not done anything about it... will Haiku support custom skins at some point?

Re:Skinning?

[Gordonjcp]

Why would it? Does anyone actually use "custom skins"?

Re:Skinning?

[drinkypoo]

Everyone but Windows and Mac users, yes. And I have the Zune theme on my Windows XP machine...

Re:Skinning?

[dbIII]

Cool! Does it shut down for a day on leap years too :)
Today is a good day to Zune. February 29th, not so good.

Re:Skinning?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say "everyone but Windows and Mac users", you do realize that you're only talking about less than 1% of the entire PC market (including laptops and netbooks)?

Re:Skinning?

[Gordonjcp]

I don't, I've never used Windows so I'm not really aware of what Windows users do.

I've used various different Linux desktops, but never felt the need to change the "skin".

Re:Skinning?

[jedrek]

Everyone but Windows and Mac users, yes.

So everyone but 95% of PC users on the planet.

Re:Skinning?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

There is some support for skinning, as one of the devs explains here. But the whole project is very much focussed on getting the R1 done, which is as close to the original BeOS, which is an 90's OS even though it was ahead of its time in many ways, as they can get. There are discussions on where to after that in the glass elevator project though.

Re:Skinning?

[drinkypoo]

I've used various different Linux desktops, but never felt the need to change the "skin".

If you've used various different Linux desktops, odds are that you've already used different themes on the same major version of desktop without even doing anything, because each major distribution tends to have its own theme or at least theme selection.

Re:Skinning?

[drinkypoo]

When you say "everyone but Windows and Mac users", you do realize that you're only talking about less than 1% of the entire PC market (including laptops and netbooks)?

Computers are more than laptops and netbooks and tablets and servers. There are also cellphones and pretty much any color phone has themes. Heck, even some mono ones do. Truth is that skinnable interfaces are the norm. Windows has a skinnable interface but only enthusiasts typically mess with it. Microsoft has released (AFAIK) precisely two themes for Windows XP, Zune and San Fermin. But skinnable applications are also the norm; what Windows user hasn't used Windows Media Player? Selecting another skin is a fairly accessible and prominent option.

Re:Skinning?

[Gordonjcp]

Maybe, maybe not. It's not something I actually set out to do, though, and I can't really understand why you'd want to.

Re:Skinning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone but Windows and Mac users, yes.

Everyone but Windows users, Mac users, and the vast majority of KDE and Gnome users, who all also tend to stick with the default theme.

Skinning is a tiny minority interest within a userbase that is already a tiny minority. Sorry.

Re:Skinning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain all of the user made Windows visual styles and WindowBlinds then.

Re:Skinning?

[renoX]

> There are discussions on where to after that in the glass elevator project though.

Given the mailing list archive stopped in 2009, a more correct phrasing would be: "there were discussions".

Given the (lack of) speed of development of the cloning of the original BeOS, it's not very surprising that the discussions about the future have stalled..
A reminder that the NIH syndrome has (mostly) killed another nice project *sigh*.

vs Hurd

[KiloByte]

Well, if your OS is less relevant than Hurd these days -- and less capable -- you might have a problem.

Re:vs Hurd

[hawk]

I'm torn here: is relevant than Hurd more or less embarrassing than still in alpha after Duke Nukem has shipped?

Re:vs Hurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Haiku runs...

Re:vs Hurd

[KiloByte]

So does Hurd, and there's orders of magnitude more software you can run on it.

java and flash?

[Anonymous Coward]

No java, no flash, no deal

Re:java and flash?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like that other failure... iOS?

Re:java and flash?

[tepples]

What keeps OpenJDK and Gnash from getting ported? Do they have some deep dependency on Linux?

Re:java and flash?

[maxwell demon]

iOS is a complete failure on the desktop.

Re:java and flash?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

It is being ported, but :

"There are still some hangups to getting the first bootstrap build
going. It would be really helpful if someone could figure out the
issues between haiku and gcc such that gcc could be built with the
java support, so we could use it for bootstrapping."

There's a Gnash port too, though personally I think they'd be better off focussing on a good HTML5 capable browser, Flash is a dead man walking.

Re:java and flash?

[icebraining]

Considering there are OpenJDK ports for the *BSDs, I don't think so.

Re:java and flash?

[tepples]

Flash is a dead man walking.

And it'll keep walking as long as Strong Bad Emails are still made in Flash. Or are you putting your faith in Smokescreen to emulate existing SWF animations on top of HTML5?

Re:java and flash?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I haven't been to Homestar Runner in years, are they still releasing new stuff. All those comics could just as easily be streamed in h264, they are already released as DVD's so they must have them in some video format or other. The migration to HTML5 is already under way I think. I mean who in his right mind would release a new site with a flash interface these days ? These things happen very fast, one day you're on top the next you're on the rubbish heap of history next to Real Player.

Re:java and flash?

[laffer1]

The only BSD that's impressive about this is OpenBSD. NetBSD and FreeBSD had licenses from Sun for binary "real" java releases that they could later use to bootstrap OpenJDK. The work porting Java initially was awesome, but it was much easier for FreeBSD and NetBSD to move forward with OpenJDK than it was for OpenBSD or DragonFly.

Thanks to the Linuxolator, we could run old linux JDKs and use them to bootstrap the older binary builds and then go from there. Java requires Java to build (or a subset of it). OpenBSD came up with a clever bootstrapping approach.

Also, the FreeBSD ports of JDKs were based on the Solaris code, not the Linux code.

Re:java and flash?

[laffer1]

This is why the big 3 continue to have a foothold in the desktop space. Here's a hint, if everyone started using a new platform, Adobe would port it or flash would die. Either way, I'm happy.

And if you don't

[SmallFurryCreature]

And if you don't know the difference between a kernel and an OS on Slashdot and post as if they are the same, you DO have a problem.

Prepare for ridicule.

Re:And if you don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's GNU/Hurd

Re:And if you don't

[KiloByte]

For a long time, Hurd was merely a part of the GNU system, that just happened to be not functional "yet". You had GNU/Linux vs plain "GNU". It's only decades of Linux' dominance and Debian's concept of the kernel being interchangeable (linux vs kfreebsd vs hurd) that caused us to think about Hurd as something on its own.

Re:And if you don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody cares except RMS, and nobody cares about RMS.

Re:And if you don't

[hawk]

Yes, we all sat around thinking of the GNU operating system, and singing its praises.

Never mind that there wasn't a single system in the universe that ran this system after decades; we knew it would be great when it came.

So we made sure not to give any credit to any of the systems that used it's pieces. After all, they were just kernels, or just full Unix operating systems, and other insignificant things; it was all about GNU.

hawk

We really do need more.

[tempest69]

When BeOS came out it was impressive (I started on Intel v3.0 (first intel supported version)). I burned some cash getting compatible hardware. The BeOS was amazingly responsive, and was able to do things that windows still doesn't get right. The system was very clean.

I use linux all the time, I'm not a windows fan, but linux ain't right. Cut and paste don't quite work right, sometimes the middle mouse works, sometimes ctrl insrt, sometimes ctrl-v, and sometimes you cant do it without some intermediate window. Yes, I get that this is a Gnome/KDE issue, but the system as a whole isn't working right. The system isn't intuitive.

How many times have you seen some odd error come up, that you wished you could cut and paste into google. But you just can't, It wont let you highlite an error box text. It's sad.

Linux could be so much better, but it needs to be a whole system, not just a bunch of parts that sorta work together.

Re:We really do need more.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to disagree on the copy-paste functionality. In my opinion it is the best ever.
You actually can copy two individual pieces of text at the same time, one with ctrl-c and one by highlighting the text (select it with the mouse).
Your you then have ctrl-v for the first one and middle mouse / shift+insrt for the second.

For me this is dream compared to the ctrl-[c,v]-only in windows.

-AC

Re:We really do need more.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely nothing "intuitive" about any OS.
Nothing. Never has been. Never will be.
Something might feel to you like it should be intuitive to other people, but that is only because you have had years of conditioning to the abstractions that make up human-machine interfaces.
There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It's all learned.

The word you are looking for in your post is "consistent".
Different concept, similar end result. (Your frustration about things not behaving like you expect them to.)

Re:We really do need more.

[icebraining]

1. Install the Parcellite clipboard manager.
2. Choose 'synchronize clipboards' in the options.
3. Done.

Re:We really do need more.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

For a fascinating look at this. Check out this blogpost where they take a 60 year old cafeteria employee who has never used a computer and put him in front of a browser:

"I give him the same task: find a local restaurant. He stares at the screen for awhile with his hand off the mouse, looking confused. I ask what he’s looking for. “I don’t know, anything that looks like it will help!” he says. Finally, he reads the Apple context menu at the top of the screen, and his gaze falls on the word Help.

“Help, that’s what I need!” says Joe. He clicks on Help, but looks disappointed at what he sees in the menu.
“None of these can help me,” he says."

Re:We really do need more.

[Shompol]

The X-Window standard was select text --> middle mouse button to paste. This is much more intuitive and much faster than MS Windows two key combo to copy and another two keys to paste. In fact, most mortals I came in contact with have very vague idea how to operate two key combinations (ahem... press and hold down Ctrl, then press and release C. Yes, I frequently have to explain this)

The Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are supported to improve the learning curve for fresh Windows refugees. This should not be stamped as a setback: once a significant proportion of desktop users converts, the Ctrl-combinations will be deprecated -- try to use the mouse, you will understand why.

Re:We really do need more.

[BenoitRen]

The idea of accidentally losing my clipboard when I accidentally select text does not appeal to me. I may not want to copy text when I select some to drag&drop either.

It's not consistent with other behaviour. You don't copy a file by selecting it, do you?

Re:We really do need more.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely nothing "intuitive" about any OS. Nothing. Never has been. Never will be.

Something might feel to you like it should be intuitive to other people, but that is only because you have had years of conditioning to the abstractions that make up human-machine interfaces.

I think you're mixing up "intuitive" with "instinctual." Intuitive doesn't mean you don't have to learn it; it means it's analogous to things you have already learned.

The Mac OS was considered intuitive not because you didn't need training, but because it implemented a "desktop" metaphor, and most people were already familiar with desktops.

Re:We really do need more.

[UltraZelda64]

The X-Window standard was select text --> middle mouse button to paste. This is much more intuitive and much faster than MS Windows two key combo to copy and another two keys to paste.

I won't use the buzzword "intuitive" (it has no real meaning to me) but I will say that yeah, select-and-middle click is usually a nice way to copy/paste, compared to the whole repetitious right-click, select menu item, move mouse to other window/section of document, click, and repeat the whole menu thing.

BUT... it can be irritating or even disastrous if you don't leave the window with the selected text open! If you close it, poof--there it goes. If I want to make sure my selection won't be lost by me accidentally closing the window without thinking, I'll use Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste. This seems to reduce the chances of a screw-up. But usually, I just select and middle-click, and make sure the window stays open.

Re:We really do need more.

[Anonymous Coward]

The X-Window standard was select text --> middle mouse button to paste. This is much more intuitive and much faster than MS Windows two key combo to copy and another two keys to paste.

It's unfortunate that it's also limited in its ability and can't replace CTRL+c and CTRL+v. Here's something that happens often to me:

1. Highlight text from a website or instant message with mouse.
2. Switch (if necessary) to Firefox.
3. Hit CTRL+k to jump to the search box.
4. Realize I had an old query still in there (normal behavior), and CTRL+k has done a Select All on the text inside the search box.
5. Realize I can't middle click now, because Firefox selected new text in step 4.
6. Switch back to the website or instant message to reselect and hit CTRL+C instead.
7. Repeat steps 2-3.
8. Hit CTRL+v.

Re:We really do need more.

[justforgetme]

OMG you can highlight->paste in linux????? I remember doing this on some prehistoric machines at scool in the early 90s! Never thought it had survived the windowsification of everything.

Ok, I have to say that now it is a bit weird since the middle button is a wheel. It just doesn't feel right.

Re:We really do need more.

[SpooForBrains]

Re the cut and paste thing. It's a bit complicated, like many aspects of Linux, but it's certainly not random. There are two separate and independent copy/paste mechanisms at work. See this extract from http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html.

===
Copy and Paste:

        Contrary to what you may have come to believe, copying and pasting text under X11 works pretty much exactly the same way it does under MacOS and Windows. Really. It works like this:

                Select the text to copy;
                Pull down the ``Edit'' menu and select ``Copy.''
                This causes the text to become the Clipboard Selection.
                In another window, pull down the ``Edit'' menu and select ``Paste.''
                This causes the current value of the Clipboard selection to be inserted.

But what about the middle mouse button?

        It happens that X11 programs have a second way of copying and pasting text that is orthogonal to the Edit/Copy way described above. This causes confusion, because some people mix the two up. Here's how the other way works:

                Select the text to copy.
                This causes the text to become the Primary Selection.
                In another window, click the middle mouse button.
                This causes the current value of the Primary selection to be inserted.
===

Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V and Ctrl-Insert/Shift-Insert are functionally identical, just different keybindings for the same thing. And they map to Edit>Copy and Edit>Paste.

Re:We really do need more.

[angel'o'sphere]

I assume you belong to the guys who don't know what ctrl-F is or what ctrl-S does or for what ctrl-W is nor ctrl-Z either?

Come on, sure some people dont get what the trick si about pressing simultaniously ctrl + another one, but they do it with shift every day so it is easy to explain.

Just X Windows defined the middle button for paste it does not make it right or the non plus ultra. BTW: there are no two copy keys ... one is a cut key!!

Re:We really do need more.

[Shompol]

I assume you belong to the guys who don't know what ctrl-F is or what ctrl-S does or for what ctrl-W is nor ctrl-Z either?

Sounds like a challenge!

• ^F -- advance cursor by one character in Emacs (an extremely useful shortcut), Find in Firefox
• ^S -- Find in Emacs, Save in Notepad
• ^W -- cut selection in Emacs
• ^Z -- suspend process, in DOS terminal it signals end of input, much like ^D in UNIX.

Re:We really do need more.

[angel'o'sphere]

Don't remember to whom I answered was that you? At least on my first answer I assumed he was claiming that windows/mac users did not know what ^C/^X and ^V are for ;D

On Windows and a Mac all the keys usually do the same: ^Z undo, ^F find, ^S save, ^W close window. On Mac its the "Mac key" instead of ^ ofc.

Re:We really do need more.

[polymeris]

but they do it with shift every day so it is easy to explain.

I am surprised at how many people use the caps lock key intstead.

Just X Windows defined the middle button for paste it does not make it right or the non plus ultra.

Just accept both... I, too, prefer the key combos, but sometimes the mouse middle button (or drag-and-drop) has its uses.

Re:My PC's never been so clean!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Untrue. There are MANY Haiku Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Any Intel BeOS app will run on Haiku. There are tons of those, such as my own Spellswell.

Haiku is binary-compatible with BeOS 5 Pro for Intel.

Re:Untrue. There are MANY Haiku Apps

[drinkypoo]

There's not "tons" of those, there's a handful of those. I am given to understand a number of them are pretty cool but the number is still not very big.

Re:Untrue. There are MANY Haiku Apps

[Orion Blastar]

Tada! BeBits!

Enjoy the BeBits archive, get a knife and fork so you can eat your words dinkypoo.

Congrats Haiku Project

[laffer1]

It's great that you made the 10 year anniversary. I'm rather impressed by the quality of the system at this point. It's a lot of work that most people will never understand. (Yeah i run an even less relevant OS project)

Working on Linux isn't the same thing. There are many people that work on Linux. Keeping a smaller project running is a lot more challenging. They had the magic to attract help, but at the Linux levels. I think they'll have something quite usable in some time. I've dug through some of their code and it's quite good in many places.

Video is ten times bigger than vector animation

[tepples]

All those comics could just as easily be streamed in h264

At the cost of ten times the bandwidth.

Re:Video is ten times bigger than vector animation

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Yes but I'd rather spend the bandwidth, which is relatively cheap, than rely on an interpreter of often dubious quality. I mean the current version of Flash on the mac is ok but earlier versions really, really stunk. And I remember that back when Homestar Runner was newly popular Flash was pretty craptacular on Linux too, and forget putting on some even less popular platform like FreeBSD. No, been there done that can't wait for it to finally expire.

Time and priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

A decade ago a BeOS/AmigaOS clone by the name of AtheOS was served up with a native web browser on a platter by a mere single programmer. Instead of using this codebase and uniting with the people interested in it, the BeOS userbase had a not invented here feeling towards it and started from scratch with the aim of binary and "brand feel" compatibility with a dead OS that had little software of note.

The problem with OpenBeOS was that if its goal was to create a great desktop OS for the ordinary person, it carried out the wrong objectives in the wrong method. If the goal was to enjoy programming an OS from scratch and relive BeOS, then they went about that effectively.

But with talk of a maturing Haiku going beyond BeOS in an increasingly Linux-like direction it looks like neither goal will be applicable any more. Haiku may in time be a better desktop OS than Linux and I may even use it myself, but I cannot see this being the free software OS project that finally displaces Windows on the ordinary Joe's desktop.

Ultimately, they're creating a "Hacker's Mac".

A few days after HP all-but killed WebOS

[Salvo]

How appropriate.

BeOS was designed as a replacement for MacOS, unfortunately, Steve one-uped Jean-Louise with NeXT and stole that crown with a superior product. I still prefer
BeOS over NeXT though

The last efforts of Be Inc. was to bundle the lightweight BeOS into Internet Appliances, a concept not dissimilar to Tablet-based computers. They even had a Tactile UI called BeIA, (which although completely unrelated to) could be considered a precursor to modern tablets.

PalmSource bought Be Inc.'s IP and planned to integrate components of BeOS into the new version of PalmOS "Cobalt". Meanwhile Palm's Hardware division decided that Windows Mobile 5 was a better option for their hardware. Palm and PalmSource merged shortly after that before fading into obscurity

Following the announcement of iPhoneOS, the desiccated remains of Palm realised that they were going to be killed outright and decided to emulate Apple, and bought on Jon Rubenstein. Poorly spec'ed Hardware, as well as misguided attempts to leech off the success of iTunes allowed Apple to steamroll WebOS, which was designed to compete with a Web-App only iPhoneOS. The release of the iPhone SDK bought iPhoneOS way ahead of WebOS.

I'd like to think that WebOS still had some of the legacy of BeOS. Probably none of the code, a little bit of the IP and a whole lot of Spirit.

BeOS, I do remember you.
WebOS, I will remember you.

Re:A few days after HP all-but killed WebOS

[ardeez]

Well, maybe with HP's recent decision to move away from WebOS they might
open source BeOS and let other people play with the code.

BeOS was a fantastically quick to boot and pleasant OS to work with, it would be a shame if it was left to bit-rot forever.

Re:A few days after HP all-but killed WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

BeOS was designed as a replacement for AmigaOS, really. A-OS->B-OS, hahaha.

Design-wise, it has a lot in common with AmigaOS (only cleaner, without compatibility constraints), and back in the early BeBox days Be aggressively pursued the Amiga market and particularly Amiga developers as Commodore floundered. Among other things, it's why the cygwin-like layer for AmigaOS and BeOS is the same project, GeekGadgets and bebits was obviously modelled on the Aminet

The Apple thing was a much later thing. As the USA is like a black hole of non-Amiga-ness, it's understandable the Amiga link might be missed in this area as so many others (fed up of americans mistaking inferior PC ports of Amiga heyday software for the canonical version, gah...).

Download it and play with it

[spaceyhackerlady]

Every now and then I'll download and play with one of the "alternative" OSs. The box I'm typing this on (a Mac running Lion) has VMware installs of Haiku, Syllable (what AtheOS evolved in to), Minix, and several flavours of Linux. What next? MVS under Hercules, perhaps?

Technically, Minix is the most interesting. Haiku is the prettiest.

...laura

Re:Download it and play with it

[KritonK]

What next?

How about AROS?

Not to be a troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what is the goal of this project? It is to continue the BeOS which most people never heard of anyway? Is this strictly hobbyists having some fun, or are there wider goals for Haiku?

Re:Not to be a troll...

[Osgeld]

I would say its mostly hobbyists having fun, the development of this thing moves at a snails pace, and the only goal I have ever seen is to replicate Be

I went to try it last week

[Osgeld]

Just looking around other OS's like I sometimes do, hey lets check out Haiku, look at whats available and make sure my hardware works with it

ah cool nvidia support, ah FAIL agp drivers for geforce 7 series or less otherwise use the vga driver

moving along ...

guys you gotta make some attempt to at least try and keep up with hardware if your making an OS

so anyway I tossed it on my 2.4ghz celeron craptop since its more fitting, still had to use some generic driver on a pretty old ATI card, and the OS was obnoxiously slow (well the computer is already slow so only -1 pt) and frankly there was nothing to run.

it was fun for a day, but realistically pretty spartan, and not that functional, maybe I will check back in a decade to see if they have advanced at all.

Re:I went to try it last week

[zymano]

Drivers are a pain in the ass for every software.

The government and public should sue companies that don't release open source drivers.

Re:I went to try it last week

[BenoitRen]

Nothing to run? Well, there is the web browser, WebPositive, which is coming along nicely. The OS ran decently on my Pentium II 233 Mhz, which is several orders of magnitude slower than your Celeron 2.4 Ghz.

Re:I went to try it last week

[Osgeld]

well sorry but it probably had drivers for your hardware, everything I run it on is too new and uses generic drivers thus SLOW AS FUCK

and im sorry, a web browser? holy fucking crap man ... no wait, whats your point even DOS has a decent web browser. After a decade of development there really should be more than some random web browser that is coming along nicely.

And yes I know there more apps than that, but all "seem to be coming along nicely", but nothing I would even mention.

Re:I went to try it last week

[BenoitRen]

There is a driver for my S3 video card, but it wasn't included on the LiveCD for some reason (in the past I have used dd to copy a nightly image to a BeFS partition). So I too only had generic video drivers.

Sure, it's only a web browser, but for many people, that's the most important application on their computer. WebPositive is very functional already, being based on WebKit.

BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Haiku is the future in my opinion its time to make it portable, belive me haiku/beos is a inspiration for many OS. By DECIO VANDERLEI NOGUEIRA

If you're stuck on 5 GB/mo

[tepples]

I'd rather spend the bandwidth, which is relatively cheap

People who can't get fiber Internet, cable Internet, or DSL where they live might disagree with you. They use a wireless (satellite or 3G) broadband service that caps users at 5 GB of transfer per month. So might web hosts that exceed their allotted bandwidth from too many people choosing the H.264 option rather than the SWF option.

than rely on an interpreter of often dubious quality.

Which is why, for example, Firefox sandboxes the dubious-quality interpreters.

back when Homestar Runner was newly popular

...dial-up was also popular.

Re:My PC's never been so clean!

[Anonymous Coward]

ahhh, thank you, satisfied, got what I came for

this is why I read at -1

Re:My PC's never been so clean!

[Anonymous Coward]

Server not found

Firefox can't find the server at www.mycleanprick.com.

Re: Nothing to run ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find some software here : http://haikuware.com/