DarkWyrm reports (via his blog) his team has been hammering away at the app_server and making serious headway. Not only does the app_server sport nifty new code to solve clipping issues, but the BMenu classes have a ton of fixes for previous crashing issues, and Stephens Playground app has some cool tricks added.
Significant Haiku app_server Progress
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Haiku tested on real hardware:
Mainboard: Tyan Tiger MP
CPU: Athlon MP 1700+ (2)
MEM: 512 Mb
Video: GeForce3 Ti
ftp://beos.spb.ru/incoming/Haiku_3dEyes_test1.png
I think that by now the haiku team has proved that they are going to make it.
The app_server is a huge task and there’s still a long way to go but with such talented people behind the keyboards I have no doubt that it will turn out well.
I think it will require a lot of tweaking before it can match the R5.1 app_server performance-wise though.
The BeOS app_server is rather oldschool though. I personally think it’s time to move forward to something similar to the OSX model. Has any care been taken to make sure that such a transition would be possible in the future without a complete rewrite?
The OS X model is quite a step backwards in almost all regards. The only thing modern about it is the double-buffering model, and I believe that is planned for Haiku R2.
I think the decision to resist the temptation to integrate any “modern” stuff as seen elsewhere and just make Haiku R1 binary compatible to R5 without any real new features is a good one. The old BeOS apps may not be much, but they will serve as a great debugging / performance comparison tool. DarkWyrms screenshots with BeOS app and the one running inside Haiku app_server put side by side show this perfectly. This will increase testing speed and quality considerably. Good thinking.
@ 3dEyes**:
Looks great!
I hope, you publish much more often some screenshots of Haiku.
If possible, it would also nice, if you crate new screenshots of ReactOS and GNU Classpath, too.
btw: here is a new screenshot of GNU CLasspaths Swing:
http://kennke.org/blog/blosxom.cgi/2005/06/14#swing_progress
i never tried this haiku before. is it a server os or for desktop
It is primary for Desktop.
But I think, there existing some programs to make BeOS/Haiku/Zeta to an server.
Its at least once a month we hear about Haiku making progress. I can’t wait for an R1 release in the future. I did try haiku through bochs or qemu, but it would get as far as the splash screen then hang. Hopefully they can produce some code which will let end users try it at least in emulation mode for beta testing.
Off topic, but am I the only one that thinks of Big Worm from that movie “Friday” when I see the name DarkWyrm?
Any thoughts on when there might be a R1? I look forward to having an OS X/haiku x86 in the future.
These guys are great. Keep up the good work.
Iam very glad to see all this progress.
Iam looking forward to see Deskbar (probably first) then tracker running in all its glory.
Congrat Haiku team!
how many years will it take to re-create somewhing from 199x? i know, i should not complain – the devs are doing this in their spare time. but i simply cannot wait until haiku gets R1 🙂
Simply awesome. I still cannot believe that in a year or so I could be running a beta version of the future of BeOS… a maintained and improved future! This is just SO cool. I can’t wait to make it my primary system. I mean, think of what R2 and R3 could have?! With a port of OO, Java, VPN and maybe a mail app with basic Exchange support, I could do everything I currently do at work, at home!!!!!!
for those who cant wait to try haiku there is a place where you can find raw, vpc and vmware images:
http://www.schmidp.com/public/haiku/images/
just hit [space] when booting and select 32bit color depth at any resolution.
forget about bochs and qemu for now. they cant do 32bit color depth.
thz a lot, read0r 🙂
Darn you read0r!! That’s exactly what I was looking for, unfortunately I don’t have vpc or vmware and I don’t know what raw is. I guess I’ll have to wait til bochs gets better support or they release a version that works with bochs.
Given this guy’s previous rate of development, I think we can expect app_server to be finished sometime in the next two weeks
Then they did it! What else do you need, really?
Reversi is the main reason, imho, for an OS. That and maybe Skype.
And perhaps NetPositive :o) Does still someone remember NerPositive?
Actually, I loved NetPositive. Sadly, it did not work well on all websites.
The closest thing I have used to NetPositive since leaving BeOS is Safari, which Apple is slowing starting to bloat. Hopefully, Apple will make an effort to keep it trim.
I still use net+ as my main browser
I use firefox for the few sites that wont render right or just wont work in net+
net+ rules! ;P
I cant wait for haiku to hit r1. It’ll be nice to be able to upgrade from my current r5 + hacks/beta kits/etc
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10828#387416
Can you at least cite Haiku News as the source of your copy/paste “article”?
It would be nice, just once.
-Chris Simmons,
Haiku News,
http://haikunews.org
The real question for Eugenia is where is her take? Eugenia was fairly pesimistic about the prospects of OpenBeOS in the beginning. At some point I expected her to become excited about the progress that Haiku is making. Eugenia, what do you think? Is this great or is it too little, too late?
The Haiku guys are rolling right along! If anybody can get very fast windowing 2d these guys probably can’t (don’t count out the E17 guys;)
I just want to give my support to the Haiku guys, and say i’m sure i’ll love the day when i boot off a iso:) You guys are doing great work.
So what’s up with the programming model? I hear them threads are a bit tricky (from what Eugenia said;). i’ts a bit more funky programming model
Are there any particular settings needed to get this working in VMWare? I’m using VMWare Workstation 5.0.0 on a WinXP host. I created a new other/other virtual machine, all defaults, and used the 2005_06_15_vmware.zip HD image. I start it up, and it just sits at a black screen with the work HAIKU in the bottom-right corner.
Only thing I ever liked about Net+ were the haiku error messages.
when using vmware haiku uses a VESA driver.
since the image is compiled with a 1024×768@32 resolution you have to select this in the haiku bootmenu (video safe mode).
you get to the haiku bootmenu by pressing the space key after the bios sequence, but before the haiku logo appears.
Hmm, it’s working now. Maybe I just didn’t wait long enough last time.
Thanks.
6 games:
ftp://beos.spb.ru/incoming/Haiku_3dEyes_test2.png
Demo from BeOS R4 & Haiku app:
ftp://beos.spb.ru/incoming/Haiku_3dEyes_test3a.png
I think the decision to resist the temptation to integrate any “modern” stuff as seen elsewhere and just make Haiku R1 binary compatible to R5 without any real new features is a good one.
True; get the foundation working, then work on optimising and adding features.
IIRC, things like multi-user, OpenGL accelerated GUI and so forth are going to be added in R2; IIRC, they’ve already ‘designed’ the system as to allow easy addition of new features, without the need of complete re-writes.
So what’s up with the programming model? I hear them threads are a bit tricky
Nothing special really. The BeOS programming model is very straightforward and quite elegant. As for threading – the usual stuff (concurrency, locking etc.). The only “tricky” thing is that some Kits classes (BLooper descendands) spawn threads implicitly – so yes, there may be surprises. On the other hand, some basic provisions *like locking of BWindow instances) is already built in. It is an easy going API.
For starters check out http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/beosprog/book/
>So what’s up with the programming model? I hear them threads are a bit tricky
It’s mostly tricky when porting. Most UNIX/Windows apps have a nasty tendancy to be single threaded. So apps, like Mozilla/Firefox, are tough to do right when your interface kit is multithreaded.
Single threaded UI’s are horrible IMO, they show a lot of wait-cursors and inactive UI while that thread is buzy. (It’s one of the things that’s really messed up with Eclipse btw).
Luckily BeOS don’t have wait-cursors
Yeah, BeOS is really great that way, it does what you tell, frustration-free. BeOS is still the only OS that has ever impressed me. For me, BeOS has the WOW factor.
Ditto. BeOS is the only OS I have used that has what you call the “WOW factor”. Nothing has done so before and since but, now we have Zeta R1 and Haiku coming along, time to smile when computing again.
Some very nice screenshots of Haiku.
Anon
I’d totally be against making it any more like OSX, in that OSX is a MAJOR resource HOG and runs slow on low end Machines, where as BeOS seems to be VERY low end friendly, so long as you have a decent amount of RAM.
I’m rather fond of the BeOS layout. A few additions could make it better, but we definatly do not need extra eye candy and crap if it costs resources.
I don’t see the problem with eye candy, so long as there’s an option to turn it off. Perhaps the installer could have something like KDE’s setup, where you can set an acceptable level of effects based on how fast your processor is and how much you want to see? At any rate, I think anything like that will likely not make it into R1 and is probably a long way off.
I wasn’t talking about the GUI of OSX. I was talking about things like buffering and OGL acceleration.
Right now I have a powerful graphicscard with a lot of memory that actually doesn’t do much good. So why not make use of it?
Requesting a window refresh from an app when there’s nothing new to draw never made any sense to me. Other than for saving memory.