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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."
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.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Copyright violation detected. Scrambling all lawyers.
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
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it."
-- Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be, Inc.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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?
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.
Here be signatures
Everyone but Windows and Mac users, yes.
So everyone but 95% of PC users on the planet.
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.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
1. Install the Parcellite clipboard manager.
2. Choose 'synchronize clipboards' in the options.
3. Done.
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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."
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
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.
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.
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
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.