Ah great! I still have a BeOs 4.5 CD-ROM around,

Can you believe they've come this far by now?

"Those of us who have used BeOS/ZETA in the past know the goodness of how extended attributes are for certain file types. The approach of having emails messages and contact information in individual files with attributes makes your data very portable and accessible even at the file manager (Tracker) level. You can, for example, switch your email client, and still have access to all your emails and contacts, as the data remains always the same."

You can read the rest at http://www.haiku-os.org/blog/koki/2007-05-08/settings_beos_style.

I'm amazed what can do with literally just a few watts of cpu power these days

(1) A 12-year cycle to produce only an alpha release does not give me confidence in the project.

The sarcastic bastard in you should send them couple bucks in donations or stfu.

12 years since OpenBeOS project was started. Serious code committing started a bit later, though.

I downloaded Haiku last year and found nothing in it that would cause me to switch to it. No special features or extras that make a compelling case to transition to it.

I've been playing with Haiku alpha 4 for almost a day straight and it seems to me that the only remaining raging problems are hardware support (sometimes unstable wireless connection and lacking audio/video chips) and lack of finalized Package Manager to eliminate the mess with installing software and updates via Web.

I use some cool apps like WebKit browsers, TransmissionBt, Clementine, CoolReader and much more thanks to the Qt 4 port. You can now even get ThinkFree Office suite and other java-based apps running, because Haiku now has Java.

Lack of software isn't as much of a problem today in Haiku world, it's the hardware support that needs a lot of love, which means new developers and testers.

There's of course MorphOS and SkyOS to

...Haiku on the other side, has all changes to grow out of the "hobby os" image...

...haiku has a chance to catch up and to over run most linux-based OSs in the next few years.

I could also burn in hell for mentioning my Zeta collection (Neo - 1.2, though I got them as a developer for free or minimal update of 10 euros.)

~1999 AMD Duron

does anybody know what happened to bernd korz?

my senior research program that modeled various high energy particle reactions.

Be had a hard time getting developers to work with the OS back then, and I can't imagine how hard it would be to convince them today. I really can't see a future for Haiku in terms of application support. Which makes it quite pointless for me where I am now (doesn't make it pointless for everyone though).

Luckily, for quite a few people their PC is now mostly a WWW terminal, plus the basics of ~office suite, media player, IM, BT. Haiku should cover such needs relatively easily, eventually.

But I doubt it has much chance at mobile. First, it's a very desktop-focused OS. Second, that battle is probably already won, or nearly so (it's an open question if there's really a place for a third mobile ecosystem - and if yes, that will be probably MS...)

It's desktop oriented in the sense that its very small dev team targets ~desktops almost exclusively (and it always targeted them, also as BeOS - its web appliances didn't go far, and were almost desktops anyway).

And in the sense that it's otherwise relatively unremarkable - what it would offer for mobile, that would make a tangible difference?

it's already a clean and lean little OS that is well suited for the task. Much more so than Linux in my opinion.

But other than that the question would really be "how can we make this different?". I think that there's plenty of room for innovation in that market if you are up to it.

First they have to make gcc 4.7 available in the system as default compiler.

Qt5 is more C++11 friendly.

I don't know ...a variant of Linux is ready - it's actually shipping, and clearly good enough to be massively popular. I'd say that's being far better suited for the task than any hypothetical Haiku offshot. :p

If even Microsoft being the "3rd ecosystem" is not certain, there's much less hope for any smaller players...

always seemed like a little waste of talent and interest

I have never used it myself, but what I see in films on youtube reminds me a bit of riscos... especially when you have menus opening within menus within menus...

I think in terms of interface riscos HAD one of the best interfaces for its time...

I think when/if heiko becomes beta it will be showing its age before it's really been born.

Maybe all these niche os developers hould get together and actualy build together an OS that stands a chance of being used by more than a handfull of people. Instead of starting something that will ultimately be left uncompleted

Why? I don't get why people keep saying this. Because it doesn't have alpha blended compositing and GL rendered windows? Seriously?

RISCOS was ugly...

If you really don't understand the motivation and you don't understand the reasoning, I suggest you pack up, cut your losses, delete you OS News account and go home. Geekism is not for you ;-)

I do find that haiko's interface horrible, especially the short title bars

Why should I delete my account because I disagree with you and can't see the point in haiko - what a stupid thing to say! Who said I was geek? I come here for the news beacuse I like the site, not because i'm a nerd. I have no smart phone, just have one computer (15" laptop) and don'T use consoles or tablets. But that doesn't stop me coming here.

Well iot reminds me of riscos... riscos is/was not horrible, but I do find that haiko's interface horrible, especially the short title bars.

I used mac at uni the whole webdesign departemnt had them. I dislike the way it functions, even the new macos lion is not something I like.

Risc os looked great.

I never had problems with it. I found the file type system great, never knew theat macos had teh same.

What was great was the app folders, the ram disc and system monitor.

"Why? I don't get why people keep saying this. Because it doesn't have alpha blended compositing and GL rendered windows? Seriously?

"RISCOS was ugly...

"If you really don't understand the motivation and you don't understand the reasoning, I suggest you pack up, cut your losses, delete you OS News account and go home. Geekism is not for you ;-)

Also not understanding my reasoning is your problem

I think it's that there's no simple way to deal with xz'd tarballs on Windows.

Too bad Haiku doesn't more prominently mention the XZ-compressed tarballs that are available. They're only about half the size of the Zip files, which themselves are compressed pretty well considering the images are about the size of a CD. That's some impressive compression. It would save them bandwidth and any potential users time downloading it.

the default one (that you can set with setgcc gcc4) is 4.6.3 right now, if i remember correctly. Upgrading to 4.7 is not a big deal. The haiku devs dont like to upgrade the compile short time before the release, but I'm quite sure, it wont take much time, and gcc will be updated in the nightlies to 4.7.x

RISCOS was ugly because the graphics look dated, the window dressing is poorly rendered and looks cluttered, the mouse pointer is ugly, the later versions that allowed more chrome on the windows just make it look worse.

"new" release and shit as usual...
I tried to install (usb install) on different systems (Thinkpad X24, Thinkpad X61, 2x Dell Inspiron, some P4/P3/CoreDuo) It only booted on a P4 and a P3 (Asus both of them IIRC) desktops.. seems the USB installation is still buggy

Here's the RISCOS 2 !Desktop. It looks like someone drew it in Microsoft Paint!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Risc_OS_311_Desktop.p...

My point was that you need a pretty powerful device to get a decent Android experience.
I don't know how much linux is to blame for that from a technical standpoint, perhaps not as much. It could just as well be cultural thing. The end result is the same none the less.

I depends a lot on if it gets a powerful hardware manufacturer to stand behind it. That was the only thing that made Android a success. What would it be without Samsung?

No-one has the same kind of grip that MS had on the desktop. At least not yet. The situation is very different from that standpoint.
The fact that pretty much no one has a relationship to BeOS is just an advantage in my opinion really.
If I was to choose a foundation for a mobile OS today I think Haiku would be among my first choices. In fact, that was my first thought when I saw the iPhone for the first time. "Hey, Haiku would be perfect for that thing"

the chance of ever gaining a user share other than old BeOS nostalgics on the desktop is non existent. If someone would want it to become used by people it would have to be on mobile devices, televisions and such.

Sharing a PC between different siblings/family members, especially if there's a wide age gap between users, you need multiple user accounts. Settings, documents and browsing histories should ideally be separate and password protected. That's what my little cousins use at their house.