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Very good statement Eugenia, it represents my opinion exactly.

And just because something has more features, does not make it better.

There are other factors to consider such as speed, code quality, security, consistancy, etc.

It really is a shame that such a great idea doesn't have any serious backing. Yeah, there is yellowtab, but even they are slow to show any progress. I've tried zeta, and yes most everything works. But unfortunately most third party development is aimed at Windows, MacOSX, and linux. Not really much room left to support another platform.

Which is quite unfortunate. On one hand we have Mac OSX and linux, which were designed initially to be server systems that we have frankensteined to be desktop systems. And we have Windows that was designed to be a jack of all trades (master of none). BeOS was one of the first OSi that I heard of that was marketed for desktop use, besides Mac OS9(and previous) - And it showed. Too bad it died. And yes BeOS in all of its forms is dead.

>And just because something has more features, does not make it better.

Maybe yes, and maybe not. But by 2007, you better have these extra new features that Longhorn/OSX will have by then, or your OS will be treated as a TOY.

>speed

When my room has nothing in it, it is very tidy indeed.

> code quality

I don't have any reasons to believe that the Haiku developers are better or worse than the MS/Apple/Linux engineers.

>security

BeOS was always the _worst_ OS in security.

> consistancy

Unfortunately, consistency is mostly achieved through very well defined teams of working closely together. OSS projects do not normally show consistency, so I am still not convinced on this one.

I agree with ALMOST everything. but i will not write another article here.

But i have to say that PhosphurOS should have been mentioned. The fact that the article is so REALISTIC and ignores PhOS, just make me think that it was a PAID article from yellowTab.

It's sad, and I may be commiting some injustice here. But as i said, it's what seems to *me*.

4 years ago I would have agreed. But after my experience with the demise of Be I learned the lesson that with closed source software you risc spending hundreds of hours only to be left in the dark due to some business decisions.

I don't argue that because of that Haiku is the best choice. (you have good points and there are other things I don't like about Haiku), but I'll think twice before going to Zeta. Not that I don't want to pay, but because I don't want to be left in the same situation if YellowTab folds in a year or so. The doubtful legal status of Zeta doesn't make it better.
Had Zeta been Open Source and legally clean, then I would not think twice about paying YT for a copy.

My computer still only runs BeOS, and I must say I agree with what you stated in this mini-editorial. Even though I spend more time on my iMac lately (hey it's all new to me). I will never ever delete my BeOS. You said once in an interview that BeOS felt as if it had a "soul", and you couldn't have said it better.

And yes, Haiku needs to get their act together or else they will go down in history as "that failed attempt at recreating one of the best OS's ever."

A shame, really.

>The fact that the article is so REALISTIC and ignores >PhOS, just make me think that it was a PAID article from >yellowTab.

PhOS is a joke, a HOBBY of a single developer. At least YellowTAB is a real company (to the best of my knowledge, however there will be people who won't agree with this either). No, YellowTAB hasn't paid anyone to write the article (I don't need money, I have enough), and I don't care less about yTAB anyway. However, at least they *seem* more of a real company trying to make a difference by developing some things of their own rather than creating a distro of a leaked BeOS version. Zeta is probably also based on a leaked version, but at least yellowTAB has done SOME engineering on top. It didn't just package things. They recreated a full USB-2 stack for starters, and that's huge.

BeOS died the way the Amiga did. Who knows, I also wrote off Next then I bought a OSX box.

I dont agree with Eugenia on all her points.
The goal is to recreate BeOS R5, I dont ever think they mentioned a timeframe, or did they? BeOS is so very well designed ( modularity comes to my mind ) where you can replace parts with ease, without harm other parts of the system. Even if it takes 10 years ( ~6y from now ). I will enjoy replacing my modular OS that Iam using with new ( first buggy and then stable new parts ) from the Haiku tree. Crucial parts like Kernel ( I guess I need to upgrade my hardware during thoose 6 years ) will be the hardest task, if its possible. When a Kit is complete, do you think they will say, -"oh, lets go back for 4 years and wait for a complete app_server/kerne!"l, or do you think they will continue to improve, add features new feature to the part they were working on?

To make one thing clear, BeOS isnt perfect, I miss some apps, ( no drivers yet, knock on wood )

Iam so dissapointed on SkyOS ( from a innovation perspective ) where I think they accomplish nothing. The speed they are developing is amazing though, so credits to them.

Congrat Haiku team!
A BeOS users and in 6 years a 100% Haiku user =)

I bought Zeta. Personally I have had issues that so far have prevented me from being able to really use it. Mostly driver issues. I am hopeful that most of these will be worked out. That said, I like Zeta. I only hope that they put to rest all the issues regarding source code and kernel things that everyone knows about. I loved BeOS and for me Zeta is the replacement. Now if only I could use it for my daily work.

i was a BeOS lover, and used it all throughout school, but haven't really touched it in the last year (been trying to get it going in VirtualPC with little luck).

but now that several Be engineers are going to get their ideas released to the public in 9 months or so (this time under the apple name), is BeOS still relevent?

Here are the things i loved about BeOS: the interface (snappy, unobtrusive, and good looking), the file system, the open standards support, and the community.

if Tiger is everything it says it will be, it should have a snappier interface (and not bad looking, but that's debatable), HFS+ w/ spotlight looks like it may be an acceptable replacement for BeFS, Apple's doing great on standard's support, but the community is only so-so (to many people looking to make a quick buck if you ask me).

so maybe its that i haven't booted into BeOS in the last year, but what does it still offer that OS X doesn't already (or Tiger won't in a few months)?

BeOS was the best operating system I've ever used, unfortunately, atm, i don't find it practicle anymore.

>The goal is to recreate BeOS R5, I dont ever think they mentioned a timeframe, or did they?

They have mentioned timeframes many times in the past (check their mailing lists of 1-2 years ago), mentioning the release of the first alpha version that was never materialized.

And besides, it doesn't matter if they didn't mentioned a release time. You see, the goal was to ACCOMODATE the FLEED BeOS 5 users right after the demise of Be. EVEN if you never set a release date, you only have 1-2 years to materialize a fully stable release before you fall back to the OS technology race and lose pace. That's the market reality. After that time has passed, you are screwed for many reasons that I am too bored to mention them again.

Zeta is unstable beyond belief on my machine. Somehow, the updated zlib from one of the SP's (SP2 I think had it) managed to prevent my system booting. To this day I've no idea what in the boot process relies on zlib (other than the very start of the bootloader, which has it built it and was well past, I was at sysinit22 or so).

Their USB2 stack KDL's me. It KDL's a lot of people, it seems. Their USB mass storage drivers don't support my digital camera. They did something to the media kit that burns my ears out with noise on each bootup (EMU10K card).

I can actually use a horrible messy hybrid of R5 Pro, BONE, bits of Haiku, small bits of Dano and drivers from Haiku and others. My system boots reliably, my digital camera works, my ears don't get eaten by the media kit. I can't use Zeta. I'm more than willing to wait for Haiku R1 (and hopefully help it somewhat along the way) for as long as it takes. Zeta isn't even up to the level of being a stopgap for me.

Oh, and PhOS is even worse than Zeta. app_server lockups abound.

>Zeta is unstable beyond belief on my machine.

I agree. Still, it's much more usable than Haiku, which doesn't even have a usable UI yet!

I'm stably using the translation kit, print kit, a number of pref apps, most of the CLI apps, bits of the media kit (considering going over to all soon), and not-quite-so-stably using the screensaver kit. However, anything stable in Zeta is from Dano. And what they'd added, particularly at the low level, is so unstable it makes the system unusable.

Haiku has a future. YellowTAB are selling to an ever dwindling market and paying developers. If Be couldn't make it, YellowTAB can't. Haiku doesn't have to make money, it doesn't have to pay developers. It can make it.

>If Be couldn't make it, YellowTAB can't.

FULLY AGREED.

> Haiku doesn't have to make money, it doesn't have to pay developers. It can make it.

This is NOT a reason to succeed either! Based on the current situation with Haiku, it moves on WAY TOO SLOW to be taken seriously. And WHEN it is ready, it will just be a BeOS 5, pretty much.

Can you imagine trying to "sell" a BeOS 5 to the users of 2010 that are used to crazy Longhorn/OSX stuff? This is just laughable!

Haiku had its chance, it failed. Now, it's too late to do ANYTHING. At least, not with these 5 developers it has overall who know what they are doing! You can't make a difference with the current situation! Be realistic please!

Haiku has a future.


Not if it's too out of date for anyone other than the small handful of remaining BeOS users to be interested in it. It won't have a future without real apps, etc., which is and always has been BeOS's main problem. It has no future if you cannot practically get your work done with it, regardless of whether it's dependent on financial backing or not. Haiku will not have a component architecture, it will not have 3d accelerated graphics, vector UI, or any one of a number of other features every other OS will long since have by the time it's complete. Not unless they scrap their goal of making an R5 clone and start designing something new, and attract a hell of a lot more devs than they have now.

Ok, you've got me riled up, Eugenia (which was likely your goal...:) I've sat by long enough - I'm getting involved!

Theres people still selling GEOS. Its what, fourteen years out of date?

Its also unlikely to be as far as 2010 before its usable. I'd say 2006 is much more realistic for R1.

To this date, I get comments on BeOS's usability, speed, etc. If Haiku can even *partially* recreate this, it will find a market. Maybe not a big one, but big enough to keep development going, and ensure that theres enough of a driver and software base to ensure people will continue to come to it.

Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on.

>> So, they prefer to financially crucify a company that
>> offers them today a solution (not a perfect solution by
>> any means, but a usable BeOS solution nontheless),
>> instead of showing their support for *BeOS*.

I am one of those who decided not to use Zeta. My decision isn't to "financially crucify" a company. A large part of it is that BeOS R5 is still working quite well for me (with a few minor problems due to lack of drivers). Another part of my decision is that they still aren't at 1.0 yet. They have more in place than Haiku, but they also started with the existing system. I have no problem paying for something that meets my needs, but Zeta doesn't offer enough beyond R5 for me, at least not yet.

>I'd say 2006 is much more realistic for R1.

Kian, you are really naive. In 2002, people were saying that 2004 would be the R1 release. In two years, you will be telling us about 2008. Just read the archives here at osnews of what people were saying about haiku's release date! Trust me, Haiku is A LONG WAY OFF.

>Theres people still selling GEOS. Its what, fourteen years out of date?

Yeah, they sell 3 copies per month. Big deal.

>Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on.

Windows XP is already WAY MORE USEFUL than BeOS 5, and it is available since 2002. So, even if Longhorn comes out in 2020, MS can beat BeOS5 straight, with XP.

> but what does it still offer that OS X doesn't already (or Tiger won't in a few months)?

What it offers me that OS X doesn't is the ability to run off cheaper hardware. I am interested in OS X. I want the polish of a commercial OS (which isn't Windows), but I don't want to buy their hardware. It's too expensive.

In 2002 people were saying it would be there in 2004, based off nothing. There was what, a few half finished preferences apps skeletons and a printing kit.

Now, theres a booting-from-HDD kernel, a relatively complete app_server and interface kit, and almost total completion around the rest. DHCP and a media encoder API are missing, as are a few other random pref apps.

Windows XP is no more useful to me than BeOS R5. I use a lot of relatively old hardware; XP is painfully slow on even my fastest BeOS laptop.

Now that Haiku has the non profit status, donations can soon be solicited. Those can be used to (hopefully, if theres enough) pay Axel to work on the kernel at least as if it were a part time job. Once the kernel is somewhat more complete, the app_server will be launchable. There, basically, is an RC1. The total binary and driver compatibility is whats going to take by far the longest time. *That* might not be there until 2008, yes. But launching the OS and being able to run a majority of BeOS applications, and actually *use* them, thats should be possible by 2006, *at the latest*

"Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on."
It will. But not that one which was promised. Bussiness is bussines. Do you remember story with Windows Chicago planned for 1994? Instead we got Win 95 actually in beginning of 1996. Not so bad for the time, but not what was planned/promised.

About haiku. I think there is still desire for Open Source DESKTOP OS. Be it Syllabe/AtheOS, ReactOS or Haiku or whatever else.

What can I say. That was very, very harsh.

Yes, Haiku is not usable. But a lot of work has been done, and continues to be done. The efforts of the existing developers are quite amazing at times. Their problem is the team is not growing at all though, so all they can do is continue to work on their goals.

Your talk of Aethos and SkyOS is laughable. Their goals and approach were completely different. They implemented very few features first and the evolved their OSes from there. This has lead to future problems where parts must be re-evaluated and rewritten.

Haiku was designed to be a BeOS5 implementation. Therefore it has the design of a BeOS5 implementation. That's not a few easy features, or a small tightly-coupled bit of code. It's a large, well-engineered, non-trivial piece of software engineering that will take 10s of, if not 100s of, man years to create. Just look at the resources Be Inc put into R5. Whilst much of that is fortunately inherited by Haiku in terms of R&D, it is not an easy thing to reproduce and you are certainly unfair in your assertions.

The problem with users is they expect too much, often the impossible, because their perspective is a really narrow and (in this case) unfair one. Yes, Eugenia, you are a user. And one who is letting her emotions cloud her judgement in this instance.

Haiku has a future, even if it's just as a niche OS. The efforts of the few core team members ensures that. 2 millions lines of code is not a failure. It's a giant leap towards achieving a goal that is not as far away as you say. The app server, from what I read on the frontpage, is nearly there. The kernel is working even if it's imperfect. Perhaps a bit more involvement might be more helpful for Haiku rather than smart alec cheap shots through your precious OSNews. This was not news, it was a low-down-dirty TROLL.

As goes there being a market for a good opensource desktop OS. The Irish state has rejected Linux as being unusable on the Desktop. They also want to reduce hardware renewal costs, as they'd like to move to an OS that doesn't force a complete upgrade with every major revision. I'm sure hundreds of schools, businesses, etc around the world have similar opinions.

If Haiku can get even a small number of these, its got its market.

Someone! Please come out with a usable update to (what was) BEOS 5.x!
And please... no "ports" to Linux kernels!
It was the best OS (and hope it doesn't go the way of the Amiga).
I am quite willing to pay (I purchased the BEOS 5 Pro and GOBE suites). There is just too much floundering out there (yes, I tried SKY, Syllable, BE MAX Edit. etc).
Anyone have a good, informed opinion of what/which to use?

> But launching the OS and being able to run a majority of BeOS applications,
> and actually *use* them, thats should be possible by 2006, *at the latest*

You completely lost the point of the article. EVEN SO, it is already too late! No one would care running a BeOS5-capable OS by 2006.

OSX already has the BEST feature of BeOS, the BFS capabilities (and EVEN more FS features than BFS has, thanks to the ex-Be engineers who work at Apple). So, what's the point? I don't see one. Where's the 3D support in the UI and in GL? Where is multi-user and good security? Where are the apps and a *good* X server port, as part of the app_server (and not as a standalone app)? Where is the 32b per channel support for printing and images? Where is the advanced audio capabilities (for your information, Media Kit always sucked, but Be's marketing was clever to call Be a "media OS" and everyone ate the lie). Where are the PRO TESTING LABS of Haiku? (Be had a whole team with hardware/software debugging)

There is a lot that you don't seem to know or understand about the BeOS and the difficult market that it's in. You believe that an OS can be created "just like that". Sorry, but that ain't true.

Eugenia and many BeOS users don't care to the "freedom" (not zero price) sense of free software and, therefore, a free operating system. This is the true reason why linux is now the only viable (not a toy, server-only or specialized OS) a alternative to Windows on PCs (MacOS X is out because it runs only on a different, proprietary and closed hardware, making it an eternal niche OS/computer). Linux cannot be so innovative (it is basically a unix clone) but it is extremely flexible, stable, many applications and information and it will have a guaranted future.

Why a lucid person will believe that another proprietary and closed OS like Zeta will succeed nowadays (in M$ monopoly era) ? I think Eugenia and many BeOS users think like mere consummers who only spend your money buying a car. Operating systems are choosed by today's applications offer and future perspective.

I (as linux user and free software activist) prefer to wait for a totally free (with source code, no license fees, a liberal license, etc) BeOS clone like Haiku than pay to another Be-like company.

>Perhaps a bit more involvement might be more helpful
> for Haiku rather than smart alec cheap shots through
>your precious OSNews.

You are doing the same mistake as the Linux zealots do. "Journalists" don't code, they critisize and REVIEW. That's what I do, I have no plans on helping Haiku or anyone else. But I do have plans to REVIEW any and each one of these wannabe OSes.

> This was not news, it was a low-down-dirty TROLL.

This was never meant to be news. It was meant to be an EDITORIAL. As if this was a troll or not, that's your opinion. I have plenty of people who down right agree with my opinions.

...with Eugenia.

Idealism is nice and everything, but Haiku has not usable for a Generic End User in the past, and is still not usable for a Generic End User.

I mean, hell, look at <a href="www.syllable.org">Syllable: when did that fork start, and it already seems lightyears ahead of Haiku.

Having a bunch of randomly spread out functionality does not equate to something usable; you know, viable, feasiable. You need something concrete; something that works.

All that "under the hood" junk is nice and dandy, but until its tied into everything else and made into an actual operating system, they are simply very interesting modules that provide functionality... and nothing more.

Haiku has taken way too long to come to maturity; time, of course, is not a factor in OSS projects, but the baselines for technology are ever-shifting, and if you ever want something that you can sit down and *use*, you have to keep up with that - case in point*, once I hit Longhorn's sweet, sweet vector-based UI I'm not coming back down to anything less. Period. I'd rather it be Mac OSX's sweet, sweet vector graphics, of course, but the hardware costs more than my car!

*Yeah yeah, I know, I'm not Joe Everyman, and there will always be someone wanting to use a hobby OS. But guess what: I'm writing this comment, and you're not! Nyeh.

what is the point to cloning an OS:

1) to maintain API compatability
2) to reproduce the core system's technological virtues
3) to immitate the user experience, meaning the GUI

In BeOS's case, issue #1 is nearly redundant. What applications there are for BeOS are often open source. It'd be far less effort to port the whole lot of them than to rewrite the OS from scratch.
Issue #2 holds far more merit, but this has effectively already been done in the form of the AtheOS kernel. Rewriting another new kernel from scratch is therefore nothing more than a computer science experiment or a mamoth time waster at worst.
Issue #3 Doesn't need a whole new OS, that can be tacked on to any free software system, such as Syllable.

I know the media kit sucked, I do use BeOS everyday, almost exclusively, and I do dabble in audio production. Which I have to do on Windows.

But the *majority* of computer users out there are dopes. They don't care about an OpenGL rendered UI, as long as their UI looks somewhat "pretty". They want to be able to use the computer they bought their kids at Christmas time 00 for a few games, the net, email and opening the documents they get mailed by relatives. As long as the system doesn't get viruses, thats all the security they care about.

Most schools don't care what they're using, as long as it works on their old 1998 era Gateways and can run a typing tutor, and all that associated stuff. Linux can't run fast enough on that era of kit, Windows can but has expensive licences. Remember that schools in Ireland were on Apple ]['s and in the UK on BBC Model B's within the past 7 years or so. They don't need new features

There will always, always be a market for a fast, stable, simple to use OS. It might not be on the geeks desktops, as the ones with rootless X servers will be. It might not be on the media producers desktops, as the ones with pro audio and 32BPP support will be. It will, hopefully, be on the desktops of Joe User, after they get sick and tired of Windows problems and find Linux too hard to use; and Macintosh hardware too expensive.

>Syllable: when did that fork start, and it already seems lightyears ahead of Haiku.

And still, it is lightyears back when it comes to the development pace of AtheOS itself or SkyOS. Both these OSes were/are making huge steps in too short of a time (even if they only had a single dev each), while Syllable does much smaller steps in comparison, and Haiku seems to be in standstill most of the time, compared to all these other OSes.

As phenomenal as BeOS WAS, it was an engineering "death march." TEN YEARS to build an OS??? BeOS was the poster child for why C++ should not EVER be used for a large scale OO project. If Be had used any of the more modern OO languages, specifically Eiffel, they would have been able to put BeOS in 1/3 the time with greater stability; Eiffel has full interoperability with C, C++, and Java, so developers could have written code in their favorite language and plugged it into the BeOS API. Before anyone jumps on this, remember substantial portions of MacOS X are written in Objective C.

The only reason i should stop using Be is that any available computer with uptodate performance can be installed under Be !

I used every day HP-UX/Tru64/Linux/Win2K/WinXP and i'm still switch every evening to BeOS 'cause it's really what desktop os should be ! simple, fast and with all basic tools i need.

MacOSX is maybe the real alternative but Apple use proprietary machine at prices for californians. Even the $2500 is sold with a "3 pounds" graphic cards ! Sorry, i don't want to give my money to jobs (i bought a ibook 12" 800/128mb/40/combo : i gave it back after one week as 128Mb is unuseable under OSX ! Ok, i could buy en extra memory but why Apple don't provide directly 256Mb !!!)

By the way, i keep my BeOS (max + bone + french localized OT/MDR + Firefox + soundplay + vlc + cdrecord/helios + some HAIKU parts) ! And i will install HAIKU when it will the time.

> You are doing the same mistake as the Linux zealots do.
> "Journalists" don't code, they critisize and REVIEW. That's
> what I do, I have no plans on helping Haiku or anyone else.
> But I do have plans to REVIEW any and each one of these
> wannabe OSes.

I saw no review there. And the word you want is "critique" - 'to criticize' has negative connotations so I assume you meant the first.

Anyway...

That was an "editorial" eh? It was an opinionated diatribe that really made some points that were complete rubbish - like the Aethos/SkyOS comparisons. Notably, SkyOS only just became "usable" - previous iterations were absolute trash when compared to the leading OSes like you seem fond of doing.

A good editorial is objective. That was anything but objective, making it effectively an opinionated troll. Even the comments on supporting Zeta aren't really contextually accurate. Why would people buy Zeta when they only used the free version of BeOS? People are cheap, especially when our money is not flowing freely. I only pay for stuff that warrants it's price tag - and Zeta does not come close IMHO or evidently that of many others. Zeta is not like R5, it's not competitive and it is unstable, insecure, and buggy. At least Be Inc could argue their product was the best at the time they got sucker punched over OEM contracts. Zeta has a long way to go, a long long way to go. And then it'll only get harder without access to the underlying BeOS source.

Haiku may take years, but it'll get there thanks to the dedication of it's developers. And waiting for Haiku is no excuse not to support Zeta when it's ready. But is Zeta ready? No. I'm sure it'll get full community support when it is. It's not like the hardcore BeOS community is cheap, unlike us freebie onlookers.

Is it just me or does it feel like the flamewars about MS vs Linux has completely ruined the view of people on different operating systems?

So what if Haiku doesn't incorporate all sexy apps like Photoshop and Flash. So what if Haiku doesn't have all drivers on the market. So what if Haiku doesn't feel l33t to some *nix lovers?

MANY people consider e-mails, some browsing and using your box as a Jukebox is what covers 90% of your daily usage. Sure, Office Suite is dandy for Office use but for home use some of us simply don't care.

Assume that I as a user would just what I mentioned above and want the sexiest solution on the market for not too much money. There goes XP and MS solutions out the Window (laugh here). Linux surely not sexy, even though those who get turned on by penguins think it is (laugh here). OSX is simply far to expensive, people need high paid Jobs to eat Apples (laugh here).

To me, who certainly enjoy seeing the progress of Syllable and SkyOS, Haiku is definitely the sweetest thing in the OS market (UI opinion is subjective). May it take 1,2,3,4,5 years, I want you serving my home anyway, no matter all the fancy features everyone else think of. I don't even care if it is the MS better (Unlike many who don't use Windows, I don't hate MS).

Now you might say I'm alone here, but I'm confident I'm not. Even if I am it really doesn't matter either, the market share hunt that all the commercial operating systems is up to (Win/OSX/Linux) don't concern me a bit.

I didn't "join" the skyOS community for nothing. Seeing the future of BeOS darkening by the day, I needed something that resembled it. Not specifically in looks, but in speed, responiveness, UI behaviour. SkyOS is what comes closest to it, in my opinion.

I, however, don't agree with what many say that Mac OS X comes close to BeOS. I've been using my iMac on a daily basis now for over two weeks, but no, it didn't remind me of BeOS. The only thing that did was the double-click-titlebar-to-minimize option.

Also, I question whether Zeta is really as unstable as people tend to say. But, seeing my computer runs practically every x86 OS without any problems, it might just be me.

Err, first publicly available release of BeOS was '96. Started in '91. Thats five years.

Also, take a gander at a Windows copyright notice. 1985-2000 in the case of the machine I'm on now.

OS's are in a constant state of development. The Linux kernel is fourteen years old, Windows is 19 years old. 9 years from start to "finish" (R5) isn't terribly bad in comparison

>Err, first publicly available release of BeOS was '96. Started in '91. Thats five years.

You obviously didn't use it. The FIRST REALLY USABLE version of BeOS was R4.5.2. That's August 1999.

I remember when OpenBeOS said they'd be able to do it in a year.

The thing is that it's starting not to matter. Mac OS X has done away with a lot of its speed demons and their Quartz display engine is well ahead of everyone else. Longhorn is going to be a big upgrade that should fix a lot of people's complaints with Windows and will feature a 3rd generation display model as well. Not to mention that OpenBeOS was started before Windows XP came out which was a huge improvement. Linux has seen tons of development over the past three years that has brought it from being a hobby-OS for desktop users to something that can replace Windows. The other big three have come a long way to matching BeOS' strengths.

It's just too late. Linux, the furthest behind for most desktop users, is just way too far ahead. It has the networking, the wi-fi, the hardware support, the applications, and the features than an alternative OS needs to be competitive against the big boys and BeOS R5 doesn't have three years past its death.

I think that Syllable has a chance of moving forward. They keep releasing more stuff and they seem to be active in development. They aren't trying to wedge their system into the place of another so they don't have to worry about breaking past things in that way and they aren't shooting too high thinking that they will be able to take over the world with their product.

Maybe i could agree with Eugenia in some points if she didn't propose Zeta as solution together with bashing uncertain "BeOS users".
I think that this is underestimation of intellectual abilities or ethical sense or at least ability to decide what they need. Some do believe that YT is credible enough to bring something new into BeOS and keep it alive, some are are very unsure if this is the case. As, for example, most of drivers which in reality keep BeOS alive are coming from Open Source developers, not from YT. Same for most important apps.
And if YT is doing in reality huge work inside, probably it isn't visible enough outside. Again that story about PR and publicity.


So here is complex mix of problems and such generalization about users is too harsh.

>A good editorial is objective.

NO. Editorial MEANS "opinion".

> making it effectively an opinionated troll

I suggest you be careful of your own opinion regarding what's trolling and what's not, cause I don't like to be called a troll, when I am NOT one.

Was it harsh? Yes, it was. But it was also the words of truth that I never hide.

No, I didn't use it (at the time, have used it since to rescue a PPC system). However, I did use R4 (after using R5), and it felt usable enough. PR2 wouldn't have been too bad either, in my eyes.

"Usable" and usable are different things. Usable to me means that its relatively fast, can go on the net, can get my emails and can play my MP3 collection. Anything beyond that is a bonus, really.

And R3+Soundplay did that fine. R3 came out early 1998, right?

"Your talk of Aethos and SkyOS is laughable" where did he mention SkyOS? he mentioned ReactOS, atheOS/Syllable. also haiku is an interesting project but is taking too long to bare fruit imo, bare in mind i hav never used BeOS, i really shud mind lol id like to see haiku do something its just that i dont hav time to spend yrs waiting for something lol

Youlle, Eugenia is a woman... you might want to not call her "he"

Regardless, it only took 3 years for AtheOS to get built with ONE GUY, Be had a full team of developers. And BeOS STIL had major stability issues with some of its core parts (media kit, networking, etc.) What's the excuse?

But it's parts can live on in other OSes.

I suggest BeFree, Cosmoe, BlueEyedOS, etc, and Haiku work together.

Forget backwards compatibility.

But then again I thought Windows and Linux were slow until I bought an IBM T41 with 512MB RAM

> This is NOT a reason to succeed either! Based on the
> current situation with Haiku, it moves on WAY TOO
> SLOW to be taken seriously.

You do know that serious development takes a lot of time, do you?
It's a very big project - we have a complete OS to build, not just the parts that you can see in a user interface.
And you already told us two years ago that we'll need 10 years to do it - why be surprised when we're not finished now?
(even if I am still sure we won't need 10 years to get R1 out)
Maybe we're not communicating our progress so well that it reaches you completely, but we're progressing nonetheless.

> And WHEN it is ready, it will just be a BeOS 5, pretty much.

Not true. I am so broad to say that it will be the best BeOS you've ever used. Even though we're "recreating R5", it won't be an exact clone, it'll be much more mature and functional.
"Still BeOS" you might think, and yes, that's our goal.

I used the "Submit Story" feature to send a link to the article on the Haiku site to Eugenia. I now kind of regret doing it, but she'd have found it anyway. Particularly as two of the BeOS news sites (ICO and HNN) have it on their frontpages still.

It appears I misspelt my mail adress when submitting the story, or it got "damaged" along the way

Ah well, I've posted enough talkbacks here for people to get it if they want.

>And you already told us two years ago that we'll need 10 years to do it - why be surprised when we're not finished now?

Because your project gave FALSE promises to the beos users when it started (berfore you joined). You do agree with me that this will take many years (from what I get from your comment), all I want you to do, is simply tell it so clearly for everyone to hear. I had enough of people telling me that "it will be readyh next year". I am sick of reading such naive crap from users who don't know jack of what it takes to create such an OS.

> it'll be much more mature and functional.

Honestly, I don't believe that. Your OS has no chance to compete with Longhorn's features or OSX's features of the time. It will just be a "better BeOS 5" (and if that). It's just won;'t be enough.

To Anonymous:

You state:
I remember when OpenBeOS said they'd be able to do it in a year.

That was to say that the system could be made in a year, but it would not be made right. That was also when there were over 50 developers willing to jump into the code.

Haiku (formerly OpenBeOS) CVS now hosts in excess of 3.2 million lines of code. Having the full CVS on my system, which I sync weekly (more or less), I have been able to watch the eveolution on an up-close and personal scale.

The team figured that because they were merely focusing on copying R5 that they would save a great deal of time in planning. And because they were starting with the NewOS kernel, which fairly closely matched how the team wanted the kernel to behave, it was believe that the system would be pretty much done in a year of heavy coding.

Haiku does start, you can run it on your system. However, the next biggest peice of the puzzle which is being written from scratch by an amazing talent (DarkWyrm), is in need of completion. Some of the various teams that are integral to the Haiku development also have decided to follow better ideas over R5 implementations. In fact, in some cases Haiku is doing what Be wanted to do, but did not due to various difficulties with old code in the system that they were trying to weed out. And of course, in some cases (memory management), the problem was so wide-spread that a great deal of the systems accessing memory would have to be revised. Be was in the market to stay alive and, in order to do just that, development cycles needed to stay as short as possible.

Microsoft does not have to worry about this as much because they own the market. If Windows Longhorn is months or a year late, it doesn't matter to them except for publicity and marketing timing, which of course means that if they start the wheels rolling prematurely on their massive propoganda and marketing engines (which usually starts to work against older versions of Windows, and for the upcoming release... not against 'competition'). (Also note, I am speaking od Desktop/Client Windows versions).

So what does all this mean ? It means that Be simply could not afford the delays to release of a money-making product. Why? Two reasons: #1, they are not Microsoft with a large enough purchasing install base to sustain life. #2 (Related to #1), the installed purchasing user base Be had, already purchased the latest version of BeOS, but would VERY READILY fork over when asked for the next version. The new user growth rate was the only thing keeping the business alive (that and a few $20 million donations by Intel and others), but it was only making it possible for Be to pay the employees, and enough of the bills to keep the office and the lights on in the office. That may be good, but what about all those code licenses? Money they could not make enough of.

So, how is this all related to the topic at hand, did I run off on one of my famous tangents? Probably at least a little. But it is all pertinent to the topic of discussion. As you will soon see.

Haiku-OS.org is a non-profit organization (finally). They have no need to make money in excess of survival. Currently, I believe that EVERY LAST LINE OF CODE has cost Haiku-OS.org nothing, or very close to nothing. So what can they now focus on that Be got into a position of not being able to? Yup, the product!

Haiku teams are going off on tangents and improving the underlying system, because they have the luxury of time. And they know what copying the Be model entails. In order to be binary compatible, it is fairly easy to say... *ALL* classes, class names, member functions, and ANY public data member must be named, stated, and return identically to that of R5. Sadly, that can also include some bugs. (of course, not if the bug was so bad that no code could survive with it... then that would be safe to fix, provided no change to any of the R5-compatible API is made).

So, it would seem that all these advantages would have made it simple for Haiku-OS.org to meat the one-year mark for a (even alpha) release. But, when there is freedom, there is always leisure. For product quality, freedom can be EXTREMELY bad.. if the freedom is the wrong kind of freedom (can take as long as they want, can do it however they want). OR, it can be just as awesome (can take as long as they want, but it needs to meet these guidelines, be written in this way, compile in this way, confirm, conform, commit, etc...).

The latter freedom is what Haiku-OS.org has setup, practically unknowingly for sure, but that is what has been created. This means that Haiku OS is not just going to be an R5 clone. It will be better than R5. The network kit alone is completely unlike what R5 had. We are talking kernel-space vs user-space difference. That is, integrated and optimized vs un-optimized and sitting in the corner across the room blaring music that no one can understand. Fibre versus copper if you will :-)

The product will be better than what anyone has planned, and thus it will take longer to come to market. I, for one, am not rushing it.

So I'm finally off.. I'm going to try and patch the Haiku OS kernel into R5 or Dano, and see where problems exist.

--The loon (not a member of Haiku-OS.org)

> Your OS has no chance to compete with Longhorn's features or OSX's features of the time.

What features are you talking about?
Users will -- even under Longhorn and OS X -- still listen to their MP3s, write up their documents, look at their pictures, and be happy if it works.

I think Haiku will succeed, and is indeed already a success. A lot of people are interested and they are making steady, if perhaps slow, progress. Linux moved slowly for the first three years, too. I think Haiku is a very important project because it promises to be a totally graphical open source system w/ a BSD-style (I think, sorry if I'm wrong) license. Configuration on Linux can still be tough for some people. Hell, I've spent the past two weeks trying to figure out why my Radeon 9800 Pro doesn't like my nforce2 under Linux (It mostly works now, but crashes at shutdown). I think in the future Haiku will provide an alternative to Linux, that is cleaner and easier to use.

I don't want to use a closed source operating system in the future, and I think Haiku is my best bet. For now, I'm more than content with OS X, but I can still be considered as waiting for Haiku because it is morally pleasing to me. It is very likely that I would start contributing to it if I could download an ISO and start coding, I'm mainly waiting for that day, and I think if I wait long enough it will come.

"would start contributing to it if I could download an ISO and start coding, I'm mainly waiting for that day, and I think if I wait long enough it will come."
You can start it immediately. With, for example, BeOS PE or BeOS MAX or even Zeta (Zeta native API is less compatible with Haiku's in some sense, but still may be used, being backward compatible to BeOS R5).
This is Haiku-OS project specifics, as it is (will be) both binary and API compatible with BeOS R5, so Haiku team itself uses it as development platform:).

Oh yeah:

PS: Zeta sucks

If a BeOS users says 'OK' then they mean something more or less in line with: "Well, it would be OK if it weren't priced like Windows. And if it didn't try to just copy the Linux model instead of staying to why we use BeOS in the first place. And if it wasn't for the cool ability to just download PhosphurOS by that weird dude, for free, I would probably only be keeping an eye on BeOS instead of using it."

Of course, they could always say if it weren't for Zeta, but I would be willing to bet my left...umm... leg, that there are more anti-Zeta fanatics than pro-Zeta fanatics. And I'm sure just as many prefer PhOS over Zeta, ratio-wise. It may not be a choice of features, but more a choice of price.

There are a few out there who bought Zeta, hated it, and use PhOS and love it. And there are the opposite, too. It is all about personal taste.

Beta 6 will allow me to readily measure first-time boot of PhOS systems. I did this with Beta 1 as well. Back then (two years now), there was a total of just over 15,000 successfull PhOS installations that managed to at least get on-line, and have an uptime of more than half an hour.

Each system was only counted once. This was achieved by the essential a hardware hash: listdev | md5sum

The result of this was sent to my server, and a perl script kept a log of the results and made sure the system was not counted twice.

Albeit, ANY hardware change would create a different result for listdev | md5sum I believe that for the most part, the number more or less accurately portrays the interested and willing user base of that time.

And yes, after a successfull posting of the listdev | md5sum, the system completely deleted all traces of the program to prevent double-counting.

I will be using the exact same system this time. To prevent discrepencies due to changes in the code (just a script).

Beta 5 downloads were immense. Every server handling the downloads went down due to overload. And I mean every one setup within two weeks of release.

Beta 6 will be released at the end of September, and this time I am looking for dozens and dozens of volunteers for various needs. Many have come forward, showing me there is support. We will soon find out just how much support there really is, and also just how much interest there actually is.

--The loon

Oh, and:

PS2: Eugenia, girl, I really admire you as a person, and I do usually trust your judgement. But why are you favoring yellowTAB all of a sudden?

I'm not saying favor me instead :-)

Maybe sometime soon I will need to do something crazy, like finish that 20 page article I was writing in hopes of getting it up on OSNews.

We'll see.

Stay tuned:

http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/

GET IT!?!

Well, it's an interesting thing, comparing the reasoning of BeOS users for waiting for Haiku versus committing to Zeta.

1. The best indications I see indicate YellowTab doesn't have the source to the system, or at least not the complete source.

2. As imperfect as Haiku is (after all, it's pre-alpha stage, and makes no claims otherwise) the code is 100% available and will live on somewhere as long as there's a single developer with interest in it.

3. There is enough market demand for an alternative to Windows/OS X (the two commercial powerhouses on their platforms) and Linux/Unix variants that is unified, easy to use, doesn't require huge hardware resources, and is sufficient to everyday tasks.

4. Some of those other Open Source OS's have incorporated massive amounts of source code from various sources that are incompatible with the license of Haiku, which might reduce their viability in the future (if there is one) of those other OS's becoming commercially attractive to commercial software developers, due to the taint of GPL. Haiku has taken a different route than Linux explicitly due to the tainting of GPL on the system itself: they WANT people to use and abuse Haiku without being whipped senselessly by the GPL should they wish to make their own custom versions, while still having fully opened source.

5. Who knows how long it will take YellowTab to release something more than a Release Candidate (multiple revisions of alpha/beta versions of post-R5.03 BeOS) with their manpower (or lack thereof) management and attention to detail (investigate the release candidates for evidence to point to that: I don't need to say anything here, as the evidence screams for itself) and their ability to modify the kernel itself, and the various kits?

6. Who knows how long Bernd can keep the money coming in sufficient to cover the costs, regardless of how good/bad/marketable Zeta is?

7. There are serious questions regarding the details of the legality of what YellowTab has. What will this do, and will it become a real issue for business, or is it already too late?

8. As Axel has pointed out, it takes real time to do real solid development, as that requires a lot of testing and attention to details. For the first version of Haiku, the regression tests must incorporate (to a fairly large degree) the testing for the quirks of BeOS 5.03 lest it break the existing binaries and source code of existing applications. In effect, that adds a large process of discovery in the development, as it requires actually testing TWO different operating systems. So, while the API is mostly documented/engineered for syntax, the semantics make it an interesting target to replicate. If they didn't care about semantic compatibility, the task would be much easier, as they could implement something that seems reasonable based on the general concept, and pronounce it done.

So, will Haiku or Zeta or any other BeOS compatible OS (source or binary) be viable, if they are still at all viable? Time wounds all heels, I guess. If so, I may end up being wounded to some degree, as I'm working on an IDE for them... If nothing else, it's something I can put on my resume, and enjoy developing applications with it, even if the OS it is targeted for has major flaws that make me cringe. Regardless of what BeOS zealots may say about the design beauty or implementation of BeOS, objective evidence demonstrates that Be didn't get some major issues fixed in terms of reliability/stability, even with all that manpower and time: the need to pay the bills forced their hand in sending it to customers before many gaping holes were sealed. Nonetheless, it isn't a useless OS, and it isn't beyond redemption.

And no, I'm not an Free Open Source Software zealot, and I'm not against commercial software making money. However, of the two choices I presented of Zeta versus Haiku, Zeta may be a short-term stopgap measure for those that actually have hardware it will work on, and if YellowTab lasts long enough, they may become a Haiku distribution maker as they transition over to the work done by the Haiku team. The current Zeta source code issue makes it very unlikely (if the indications are true) that they will be able to continue Zeta beyond a certain point without a heavy infusion of Haiku blood, sweat and tears.

> But why are you favoring yellowTAB all of a sudden?

Loon, you are a loon indeed. I suggest you read more carefully what I write. I don't think that YellowTAB is in a much better position today than haiku, only marginally better (because their OS works). But YTAB doesn't have a clue on how to market their product, neither have enough money to do so.

> Because your project gave FALSE promises to the
> beos users when it started (berfore you joined).

Before I joined - oh well, that's already so long ago... ;-)

> You do agree with me that this will take many years
> (from what I get from your comment), all I want you
> to do, is simply tell it so clearly for everyone to
> hear.

Sure, such an undertaking is going to take years, even if it would be done commercially. I expect that we're booting into something that doesn't look so bad in the not so distant future - but I can't say how long it will take us to reach R1 from there, too. It could well take another year or even two - we're still an open source project with unpayed developers.
I think 5 years would be a reasonable time to expect something usable from us (not from now, from our beginning on). But if we're in fact earlier or later, we'll see.

> I had enough of people telling me that "it will be
> ready next year". I am sick of reading such naive
> crap from users who don't know jack of what it takes
> to create such an OS.

Well, some day, they'll be right ;-)
Maybe we'll surprise you, maybe we'll meet your expectations - we cannot know now.

> > it'll be much more mature and functional.
> Honestly, I don't believe that. Your OS has no chance
> to compete with Longhorn's features or OSX's features
> of the time. It will just be a "better BeOS 5" (and
> if that). It's just won;'t be enough.

We cannot know this either. What will be Longhorn's features of the time? Will it have been released already at all?
Also, what feature would you really miss when switching to Haiku?
Even if the interface will look dated to you (I don't even know if that'll be the case, as I could imagine that we'll thinking differently about the exact look as well when the time comes), will it be less functional than your favourite MacOS X or Windows Desktop?
What gloomy features do you expect from Longhorn that are not already known today?

but it's right on. Just like on OS/2 and Amiga platform, there just isn't enough dedicated developers to make it move forward at an acceptable pace. Plus, no big name company to give some weight behind it.

There's one thing I don't agree with Eugenia. If they could gather more devs by years end and put out the R1 at beginning of year, Haiku could attract a lot of Linux switchers easily. Haiku is better positionned for the desktop than Linux will ever be. Multiuser capabilities and security isn't a high priority feature needed for the average joe.

BEOS was the last major new propietary operating system to have a chance becoming ubiquitous. Even though Mac OS X is a completely new OS apple built off of the previous Mac reputation, supllying a degree of backwards compatability with older Mac apps, and of course its hardware platform-which has always been a key point to Macintosh success. Aside from this there has been a thriving software and hardware industry around the Macintosh platform.

I am not saying there is no future for new propietary operating systems-there certainly is-albeit only for niche markets < 2%. It has taken Linux almost 20 years to break through the chicken-egg problem with regard to applications and hardware support and start to really catch on-and it will still need another 2-3 years to really begin to replace Microsoft in trully large numbers. Linux has succeed in what no other OS of the last 10 years has-manufactureres are writing drivers for their hardware for Linux and manufacturing equipment designed for Linux.

The fact is none of the new propietary OS`s struggling to make it today even have a chance of breaking out of this chicken-egg dilemna-there are no commercial projects which can fund their way through such a long period of time necessary to get such market support-unless of course some super rich millionare decides to pay companies for hardware support. Simple things like 3D accelrated graphic support-or high quality sound card drivers for Creative Labs Audigy series-the lack of support for modern hardware, which people now expect, is crippling for all new OS projects.

In the late 90's, when BEOS was beginning to catch on it offered concrete features which were of value to users accustomed to Microsoft and Apple and it did so on commodity hardware. And of course some of this technology, developed back then, is still impressive today-but times have changed along with expectations and what was impressive then is less than inspiring now.

Open source projects which can utilize drivers and apps written for Linux can use the relative success of Linux to help launch newer platforms-but even this is really difficult-particularly if one cannot use the hardware drivers due to different kernels and the inability to reuse propietary drivers(ie. Nvidia etc.) I do see a good oppurtunity for alternative open source projects -much better than for new propietary ones-but the outlook is disheartening to put it mildly.

For example if one chooses to use the X11R6 (or Alsa, or Cups) windowing system one gets drivers for hundreds of graphic cards for free- if one chooses to go their own and write their own windowing system they can spend years and years playing catch up with X which still offers limited support in contrast to Windows. Linux finally has enough leverage that manufacturers must weigh the disavantages of not supporting it-this is the pivotal point-the point at which the questions the manufacturers are asking themselves change.

And it is incredibly hard to attract commercial software writers for platforms which provide substandard hardware driver platforms. It is awful hard to justify a buisness plan to a group of potential investors for writing software apps for a platform which has no driver support for those features which are in actual demand today. I love seeing the progress of SkyOS-it is breath taking how quickly it is developing-but one will probably never see 3D acceleration or good opengl support for it -which is a crying shame. Is Hewlett Packard going to write printer drivers for SkyOS ? Will ATI write drivers for it ?

I am not writing here to pat Linux on the back for its success-it is trully sad how the manufactures and computer distributors have been effectively able to supress any real competition for so many years-Linux is now being noticed because of the names associated with it (IBM, HP, Dell, Epson, Sun etc.). In all likelihood Linux will be overtaken someday by one of the projects which it has enabled-using apps and drivers originally written for Linux.

Unless a new company is formed where someone is willing and able to invest 50+ million dollars to make it happen we will likely never see a trully new propietary OS again which 'makes it in the big time'-except from the names we already know.

About chicken and eggs problem.
Yeagh, hardware world is getting tough. Even interface specs for hardware pieces are going to be Big Secret. From one side.
But from other side i noticed weak for moment but promising tendency from hardware manufacturers - to put actual driver functionality in (almost) OS-independent lib (sure, hardware-platform dependent) which needs just kind of wrapper to actual binding with certain platfrom.
Sometimes those core parts are open-sourced, like for Broadcom NICs, sometimes are in form of ELF x86 closed source lib, like solution for one of modems.
I do believe same may happen (if not yet) also for those 3d-functionality parts of videocars.
This way is also good for hardware manufacturers itself, as thinking in well-defined abstraction layers improves quality as for h/w designers so for driver wirters inside company.

Time for me to chime in on a subject instead of just lurking around here. And Eugenia, I mostly agree with you.

While I have always felt that the goal of OpenBeOS/Haiku to create a binary compatible release of BeOS R5 was a laudable goal, I have also felt that it was completely unrealistic.

BeOS had a lot of great things going for it. In 1999. It's 2004 now, with 2005 rapidly approaching, and I doubt that we would see an Alpha of Haiku this year, or even next year. By the time the OS is released it will be as ancient and virtually useless as GEOS or Window 3.1 is today.

Does that mean I think they should stop development? Hell no. I think they should continue developing Haiku - but not as an R5 clone. I understand their goals, and why they want to maintain binary compatibility, but the end result is still useless.

The time of the Haiku developers, in my opinion, would be better spent working on the "next version" of BeOS, perhaps keeping in mind at least some source compatibility, but bring the OS up to modern times with modern features such as multi-user support, better security, et cetera. The Haiku team could improve upon the now-aging APIs, and build a better OS.

You may argue that AtheOS/Syllable or other projects are doing something similar to this, and to some extent it is true. The reality is however, that the Syllable project is a very amatureish attempt at best to create an OS. There seems to be no real direction with that project, and it most likely will languish in a perpetual development hell, with occasionally improved drivers. I'll reserve comment on the others for now.

What about the apps? Hell, a good portion of the apps on BeBits are open source anyway, and would be little more than ac couple hours of debugging and a compile away from being useful again on an updatesd Haiku. An improved API might also make the porting of apps like OpenOffice just a little bit easier. Something to think about.

And, while I think Eugenia might have gone a tad over the top, the bottom line is that she is right. I hope that the Haiku devs take it for what it's worth - a wake up call that the longer you delay, the more likely it is that your work becomes irrelevant. Work towards the future. the past is gone, and it's not coming back - so don't try and recreate it. Remember the past fondly, learn from the successes and mistakes of the past, develop for the present, and keep your eyes on the future.

I read the editorial again, and I still think it is an insult to all the people, not that they are very many, working on the project. If competing with Longhorn and OSX of 2010 is the only goal of alternative OSes, then you should probably declare every single, small, alternative OS ever mentioned here as a failure in the making.

i always find it amusing when i read that "BeOS doesn't support enough hardware..".
If you've ever used Solaris x86, especially 7 or 8, then *that's* an OS that suffers from a lack of drivers.

Don't get me wrong, i use Solaris every
day at work...on Sparc, and love its stability and scalability.

I think Haiku has an enormous task: Be