Also... yes, you seem to think that Haiku is a variation of Linux/Unix. In fact, it's a variation of BeOS. Back in the early Mac OS days, Apple bought a company/OS technology called NeXT to build OS X from. A group of people in Apple thought they could do better, and left to form Be, Inc. and to build their own, entirely new OS, BeOS, to replace Mac OS with. For the time, NeXT was very advanced, and BeOS was probably lightyears ahead of the rest. Be sold a few dual-core PowerPC machines with BeOS back when everyone else was still fumbling around with crappy versions of windows and Mac OS and (maybe) Pentium Is. Unfortunately they didn't make much of a dent on the PC market for whatever reason (probably the microsoft monopoly and lack of apps) and so eventually started looking at smaller markets --- set top boxes, mobile phones, etc. Soon enough, Be, Inc. died, but had established itself well enough to convince others that BeOS was something good enough that it shouldn't be lost due to marketing issues. After years of work, volunteers have now built Haiku, and it's independent of those companies that failed to develop and market it further.
It depends on how you write your software. If you're trying to port some old, crufty, legacy system that was hard-coded to use a particular GUI or DOS filesystem, then yes. If, on the other hand, you're coding new software, you can use libraries like WxWidgets to make it portable, or better, simply separate your GUI code from your main app logic, and get proper, native GUIs for each system. Even porting old software to Haiku would be arguably very worthwhile though --- even the Linux kernel itself has improved markedly from the refactoring etc. that occurs when software is ported to work on more than one system.
Also, if you're not too interested in commercial coding, and just want to code for pleasure on a project that interests you, or to a smaller community where you might get more recognition for your efforts, then working on Haiku will probably appeal quite a lot -- there's a lot to be said for having a modern API to code against.
No one has really answered you so far, surprisingly. I don't really know BeOS internals, but having toyed around with it as an ex-Amiga user looking for a modern equivalent (like many others), I can give you the general idea.
Basically, it's this: unix sucks.
Lol, it's flippant, but for all the greatness of Unix and Linux, especially compared to Windows, there's a definite truth to this. The problem is that unix is a few simple (and strong) principles from the early 70s, upon which nearly decades of evolution have occured. The fact that this was even possible is a huge testament to the flexibility of those core principles. Nonetheless, most of the evolution since is essentially a big hackish attempt to keep Unix up to date. For instance, go to phoronix and search for graphics stack. You'll find a lot of discussion about Xorg, the Linux kernel, graphics drivers, GPUs, libraries, the linux console, and how none of them are really consistent or integrated, and the problems that result. Moreover, Unix was originally designed for many users sharing a huge, expensive computer. It's not really designed for personal computers at all. Arguably, this distinction isn't so relevant these days.
BeOS, on the other hand though, is an attempt to make a modern, coherent, friendly, desktop operating system for personal computers. It's designed to be quick, to have a logical stack of libraries that cooperate (such as for audio and graphics, again, unlike Linux's audio/graphics stack).
Essentially, the point is just to build a modern system, and dump all the old, legacy cruft that just gets in the way. It's an attempt to draw a line under the past, and say, "OK, that's the old way. From now on, programs should use this stuff instead, so everything looks good and runs well, and integrates nicely."
They're had reasonably usable code out there for ages though. WINE is another project that took forever to get to 1.0, but produced tons of non-vaporware work along the way. Personally, I find this long-haul-to-stable much more professional than the other approach, of say, KDE, releasing.0 stuff which is low quality. In fact, that alone would make me want to check out this release, if I wasn't already interested in Haiku for many other reasons.
The very concept of testing browsers for battery life is deeply flawed, since it's the OS and hardware that govern it. That's where it should be tested, with a variety of different software loads.
In my dreams, Microsoft Word got replaced by a word processor that naturally creates beautiful documents, that lays them out consistently every time you open them (and between versions), and has a simple easy to use interface.
Open Office is not that program.
Of course not. That's a good LaTeX editor.
But what OO.o does do is provide a more liberated document format for businesses and other organisations around the world to interchange documents with, and to implement document management and other business processes around. That's a big enough thing in its own right, albeit nothing but an internationalised return to the status that we had years ago with ASCII.
It's true; I hadn't thought of whether it was a problem on the moon. It just jumped out at me, as an inelegance in the design, which usually suggests that the whole thing could be done better. I mean, seriously... flames from the engine, lapping around the rest of the craft? It might still work, but it's far from pretty.
The flames were from the simulated lunar surface that it lit on fire, not the craft itself.
OK, but the simulated lunar surface looks a lot like concrete. Also, they seem to have some inside their engine, as that's where the flames are coming from;)
They seemed to be attempting to land on the X, but gave up in the end. Having to put the thing out with a fire extinguisher is a bit worrying too. Otherwise, looks good.
However, the article really shouldn't say "claims prize" when they just didn't fail. The comp isn't even over yet!
What Linux needs is a user-friendliness consultant
Come on... any consultant worth his salt is going to take one look, shout a bit about fucking jokes, tell them to fix the blindingly obvious common sense stuff before calling him out again, shout a bit more about respect for professional time, and leave.
You're using the old definition of Stable. Stable v1.1beta is so much better. Please upgrade; we're no longer accepting bug reports against Stable 1.0, which was a developer-only release. You should have known this from the.0 -- we told you ages ago that 1.0 means broken, I mean, developer.
least stable program I've ever used
You really oughtta try some of the more experimental stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Also... yes, you seem to think that Haiku is a variation of Linux/Unix. In fact, it's a variation of BeOS. Back in the early Mac OS days, Apple bought a company/OS technology called NeXT to build OS X from. A group of people in Apple thought they could do better, and left to form Be, Inc. and to build their own, entirely new OS, BeOS, to replace Mac OS with. For the time, NeXT was very advanced, and BeOS was probably lightyears ahead of the rest. Be sold a few dual-core PowerPC machines with BeOS back when everyone else was still fumbling around with crappy versions of windows and Mac OS and (maybe) Pentium Is. Unfortunately they didn't make much of a dent on the PC market for whatever reason (probably the microsoft monopoly and lack of apps) and so eventually started looking at smaller markets --- set top boxes, mobile phones, etc. Soon enough, Be, Inc. died, but had established itself well enough to convince others that BeOS was something good enough that it shouldn't be lost due to marketing issues. After years of work, volunteers have now built Haiku, and it's independent of those companies that failed to develop and market it further.
It depends on how you write your software. If you're trying to port some old, crufty, legacy system that was hard-coded to use a particular GUI or DOS filesystem, then yes. If, on the other hand, you're coding new software, you can use libraries like WxWidgets to make it portable, or better, simply separate your GUI code from your main app logic, and get proper, native GUIs for each system. Even porting old software to Haiku would be arguably very worthwhile though --- even the Linux kernel itself has improved markedly from the refactoring etc. that occurs when software is ported to work on more than one system.
Also, if you're not too interested in commercial coding, and just want to code for pleasure on a project that interests you, or to a smaller community where you might get more recognition for your efforts, then working on Haiku will probably appeal quite a lot -- there's a lot to be said for having a modern API to code against.
No one has really answered you so far, surprisingly. I don't really know BeOS internals, but having toyed around with it as an ex-Amiga user looking for a modern equivalent (like many others), I can give you the general idea.
Basically, it's this: unix sucks.
Lol, it's flippant, but for all the greatness of Unix and Linux, especially compared to Windows, there's a definite truth to this. The problem is that unix is a few simple (and strong) principles from the early 70s, upon which nearly decades of evolution have occured. The fact that this was even possible is a huge testament to the flexibility of those core principles. Nonetheless, most of the evolution since is essentially a big hackish attempt to keep Unix up to date. For instance, go to phoronix and search for graphics stack. You'll find a lot of discussion about Xorg, the Linux kernel, graphics drivers, GPUs, libraries, the linux console, and how none of them are really consistent or integrated, and the problems that result. Moreover, Unix was originally designed for many users sharing a huge, expensive computer. It's not really designed for personal computers at all. Arguably, this distinction isn't so relevant these days.
BeOS, on the other hand though, is an attempt to make a modern, coherent, friendly, desktop operating system for personal computers. It's designed to be quick, to have a logical stack of libraries that cooperate (such as for audio and graphics, again, unlike Linux's audio/graphics stack).
Essentially, the point is just to build a modern system, and dump all the old, legacy cruft that just gets in the way. It's an attempt to draw a line under the past, and say, "OK, that's the old way. From now on, programs should use this stuff instead, so everything looks good and runs well, and integrates nicely."
Maybe, if OS X is on a quad-core and BeOS is on an old-style dual-Pentium.
They're had reasonably usable code out there for ages though. WINE is another project that took forever to get to 1.0, but produced tons of non-vaporware work along the way. Personally, I find this long-haul-to-stable much more professional than the other approach, of say, KDE, releasing .0 stuff which is low quality. In fact, that alone would make me want to check out this release, if I wasn't already interested in Haiku for many other reasons.
I believe Apple licenses Display Postscript and probably other PS stuff from Adobe.
Zelda still does a pretty good job of story line.
Anyone know if this will be implementable in free software? Are there patent/copyright issues?
Yes, and maybe even enough of your behaviour to know if you're being coerced into withdrawing all your money, or if you just want to.
The very concept of testing browsers for battery life is deeply flawed, since it's the OS and hardware that govern it. That's where it should be tested, with a variety of different software loads.
No, but as I said, I was referring to elegance of design. In that context, pretty is a bit different from "pleasing to the eye".
Which may not be a bad thing if IBM has to patch things and send those patches upstream.
Of course not. That's a good LaTeX editor.
But what OO.o does do is provide a more liberated document format for businesses and other organisations around the world to interchange documents with, and to implement document management and other business processes around. That's a big enough thing in its own right, albeit nothing but an internationalised return to the status that we had years ago with ASCII.
Because it is. IIRC, they basically ported OpenOffice to the Eclipse platform.
It's true; I hadn't thought of whether it was a problem on the moon. It just jumped out at me, as an inelegance in the design, which usually suggests that the whole thing could be done better. I mean, seriously... flames from the engine, lapping around the rest of the craft? It might still work, but it's far from pretty.
OK, but the simulated lunar surface looks a lot like concrete. Also, they seem to have some inside their engine, as that's where the flames are coming from ;)
You mean the sun is a fan, not a lightbulb?
They seemed to be attempting to land on the X, but gave up in the end. Having to put the thing out with a fire extinguisher is a bit worrying too. Otherwise, looks good.
However, the article really shouldn't say "claims prize" when they just didn't fail. The comp isn't even over yet!
Worst communication ever. Did you have a point to make?
There, fixed that for you.
I think we understand cloning enough to enjoy cloning the rather unique whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag ;)
I would have changed the years so there are more logical days: day 0, and day 1.
Come on... any consultant worth his salt is going to take one look, shout a bit about fucking jokes, tell them to fix the blindingly obvious common sense stuff before calling him out again, shout a bit more about respect for professional time, and leave.
You're using the old definition of Stable. Stable v1.1beta is so much better. Please upgrade; we're no longer accepting bug reports against Stable 1.0, which was a developer-only release. You should have known this from the .0 -- we told you ages ago that 1.0 means broken, I mean, developer.
You really oughtta try some of the more experimental stuff.
640M ought to be enough for anybody.