In an announcement today on the offical Haiku website, Axel Dörfler provides an update on the status of the Haiku kernel. Most notably it now has the ability to run Bash, boot to a graphical console from a hard drive on real hardware, and view files on other BeFS-formatted partitions.
Haiku Kernel Hits Some Milestones
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Congrats for the milestone, Haiku team! I can’t wiat to takw Haiku for a test drive.
If they can actually accomplish binary compatibility at the kernel and interface level, they’ll have a large amount of drivers and applications readily available for the project, as well as an open source kernel that will break through a lot of the boundaries hindering BeOS.
Realistically this is a great milestone but a drop in the bucket for what is needed to be accomplished at the kernel level.
What sort of things need to be developed so that this kernel can reach beta stage? I would have thought things like fork and exec came with the kernel they adopted.
What sort of things need to be developed so that this kernel can reach beta stage? I would have thought things like fork and exec came with the kernel they adopted.
A lot of the basic stuff was inherited by adopting NewOS, but fork() and exec() wasn’t one of them. I never was a big fan of just replicating POSIX so I had never gotten around to it when coding NewOS. I designed for it with the old VM but they were never implemented.
Congrats to the Haiku kernel team, especially Axel. There’s a lot of stuff left to do, but this is a major milestone.
Thanks for the reply.
@jbett – the BASH binaries Axel is using are presumably the 2.05b binaries built for BeOS R5. The same binaries work on R5 and on Haiku, so its already binary compatible.
Other than that, if you don’t hang around on the IRC channel much, you won’t have heard Axels progress so its great to see it go public.
> Congrats for the milestone, Haiku team! I can’t wiat to takw
> Haiku for a test drive.
Than you have to wait a long long time *gg*
> Than (sic) you have to wait a long long time *gg*
I’m not so sure.
I’ve been impressed by the tenacity of the Haikuers. They’ve really been sticking with it.
… just great. keep pushing guys/gals!
I’ve been impressed by the tenacity of the Haikuers. They’ve really been sticking with it.
Yep. They have a handful of devoted and talented developers. If only they were able to work full time with the project.
At this pace it will take a long time. But at least they don’t seem to be cutting a lot of corners.
They will either need more developers or more time. But it’s not unreasonable to reach R1 beta within a couple of years.
I think that developments like these might spur more developer interest. I mean, it’s always more interesting when you can actually use the OS on hardware instead of in software emulation. Not sure how receptive the Haiku team will be to help, but we’ll see, once they start receiving it.
I can’t write OS stuff. If I could, I’d love to try and help these guys. Wake me up when they need people to write desktop applets, and maybe I’ll be marginally useful 🙂 Wish I could do more!
Great work dev-team!
For those of you who don’t check Haiku’s website, here are two other progress updates.
As of Sept’04 the app_server reached an important milestone and is able to draw via BView calls.
http://www.haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=news_view&id=367
Earlier this month, the Input_Server has reached a beta-working state and can be used as a drop-in replacement on R5.
http://haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=news_view&id=366
These two developments show the strength of Haiku’s parallel development method — being able to code many aspects of the OS at one time.
Also, I hope this shows people how setting a “first release” goal of R5 aids in development of such a large project.
Any steps on Haiku progress, make my days more happy
Thanks indeed Axel & co
Nathan O., another benefit to binary compatability is that you can write software for BeOS R5 today and have it run directly on Haiku tomorrow.
Even though Haiku *may* not be 100% source compatible. It will be mostly compatible, requiring small changes to current code for Haiku.
There are plenty of projects to join and countless other software that could be written. Heck, you could even set up a BeOS R5 partition to test Haiku components and report bugs.
Great work Axel, let’s hope you get it to boot on a usual IDE drive next without ISA.
You made my day!
Keep it up! I’m really hoping that Haiku will be my choice for desktop OS next year!
Good news indeed and kudos to Axel and the rest of Haiku dev’s… and Travis too !
HarjTT
Having said all of the above, what’s your real beef? What bothers you so much about people who want to use software that places no restrictions on what they can do with the software
Hehe, you are the one that said “I don’t give a shit what you or anyone runs, so long as it is Linux”. So it appears you are the one that has a beef with personal choice. If I had a beef with free software than I wouldn’t be running Ubuntu right now as I type this.
I guess the answer to this question is already in the FAQ, but what’s the plan for drivers ? is there going to be binary compatibility or source compatibility, or what ?
Although I don’t understand how it could be possible to achieve binary compatibility provided they started with an already existing kernel…
Congratualtions Haiku and Axel.
I want to donate money, (and a movie to AxelD ) where do I do that if I live in Europe?
Congratulations to the Haiku dev team! Let’s hope that we’ll see more results soon
I’m guessing that if they can run bash on real hardware now (even with a limited list) that running the tool chain correctly isn’t far behind, meaning that development can go that much faster. Besides, with such a small kernel and likely a very short load time, the POST of the PC (especially anything with SCSI there, even if not usable yet by Haiku) will be the longest part.
And of course, along those lines, one of the best things to focus on and get correct are good debugging support for the kernel and user space applications, better than what exists with BeOS 5.03 (don’t use messages for the debugger functionality, though if they can guarantee no messages are ever dropped or delivered out of order, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but wouldn’t it be easier to debug the messaging system with a different form of debugging support???)
Actually, the opensource BeOS/Haiku drivers work better than the original ones
Although I don’t understand how it could be possible to achieve binary compatibility provided they started with an already existing kernel…
Why not? You can run Windows binaries in Linux and even some windows drivers are working. As long as you are running on the same hardware platform…
Good work. Keep it up.
Haiku could really do a lot for open source and former beos users since it promises to represent a less fuss implementation than linux is or is perceived.
Great work, people!!
It’s amazing the progress you guys are doing on the Haiku project.
I think the traditional drivers should work, since the driver models haven’t been changed since BeOS R4.5.
There are plans anyway to implement a new way of accessing the drivers (shown at BeGeistert 011 in Octobre 2003). As far as I know this is just a thought, so I think you should expect R5 styled drivers for the first HAIKU.
Yeah, go HAIKU, go !
I would *LOVE* to see a free, working BEOS again.
Congratulations and thanks for your excellent work!
…is there any backer/sponsor(s) behind the project ?
If no, why ?
“Judas”
…
Is simplicity best
Or simply the easiest
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
So walk on barefoot for me
Suffer some misery
If you want my love
If you want my love
“Home”
…
And I thank you for bringing me here
For showing me home
For singing these tears
Finally I’ve found that I belong
Feels like home
I should have known
From my first breath
…
There are no financial sponsors. Haiku Inc only became a legal company this year, and really hasn’t shown more than “promising” progress (which is not to devalue the incredible work they have done). This is why they have no companies backing them at the moment, because nobody sees a finanical opportunity in them yet.
You can sponsor them, though. They have a nice donation link on their website.