Linked by rohan_p on Wed 8th Aug 2012 15:21 UTC
BeOS may be dead, but over a decade after its lamentable demise the open source Haiku project keeps its legacy alive. Haiku is an attempt to build a drop-in, binary compatible replacement for BeOS, as well as extending the defunct OS's functionality and support for modern hardware. At least, that's the short-term goal - eventually, Haiku is intended significantly enhance BeOS while maintaining the same philosophy of simplicity and transparency, and without being weighed down with the legacy code of many other contemporary operating systems. Computerworld Australia recently caught up with Stephan Assmus, who has been a key contributor to the project for seven years for a lengthy chat about BeOS, the current state of Haiku and the project's future plans.
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Member since:2005-07-08
The issue here is not only the look (imho, Haiku indeed looks dated), but their overall architecture: Haiku is more integrated, more standardized and is a overall cleaner design for a desktop OS (not server) than Linux.
Quite true.
Back in BeOS days, it was for me the right successor to Amiga, sadly never took off.
If Apple had taken BeOS instead of NeXStep, while managing to arrive at the same state the company has now, no one would be getting Mac OS X (former BeOS) because of its UNIX roots, funnily enough.
On the other hand we would have a great multimedia OS.
Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:2006-01-24
Haiku is more integrated, more standardized and is a overall cleaner design for a desktop OS (not server) than Linux.
Yes this is the strength of Haiku, as it's totally focused on providing a full desktop experience out-of-the-box, which means it comes with all necessary components tightly integrated.
Linux by contrast is just a kernel to which you add whatever components you need/prefer, as such Linux strenght is flexibility/customization.
For a desktop environment I prefer the Haiku approach (although I also like the maximal flexibility I get from Linux and the tailoring of environments it offers), and as such it is what I really want to run as my day-to-day desktop OS.
Currently the greatest hinderance for Haiku adoption is hardware/software support, and the short-term solution for software in my opinion is to get more ports for Haiku, native applications are of course much preferred but they will only come once people actually use the system, and before they do that there must be software available to make it useable.
Despite dozens of efforts by Linux community to integrate the DE with the core OS, it still fells like a gigantic wrapper on top of a mess, who gives a overall fragility to it.
Well, they pretty much are 'wrappers' by comparison as there can never be the type of integration between the kernel and outside components as that which Haiku enjoys due to Haiku being developed as a whole OS with a specific purpose, from kernel to gui.
On the other hand, the vast majority likely don't notice this in any really practical way and although I love Haiku with all my heart I'd have to say that the vast majority of people out there get's a much better 'experience' out of something like Ubuntu then out of Haiku at it's current and foreseeable future state.
Loved the article, it's always interesting hearing about a project from the viewpoint of one of it's developers. Also Stephan's comments seems very down to earth rather than trying to drum up some hype which lends credibility to his views IMO.
From what I gather the big stumbling point towards a R1 release is the package management, so here's hoping someone steps up to the plate and finishes this so that Haiku can finally take that last huge step.
I think R1 would do wonders for the sense of achievement and overall interest in Haiku, of course package management in itself would do wonders for day-to-day use of Haiku, particularly updates.
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Member since:
2005-12-18
The issue here is not only the look (imho, Haiku indeed looks dated), but their overall architecture: Haiku is more integrated, more standardized and is a overall cleaner design for a desktop OS (not server) than Linux.
Despite dozens of efforts by Linux community to integrate the DE with the core OS, it still fells like a gigantic wrapper on top of a mess, who gives a overall fragility to it.
For a power user who likes total control and has patience to keep track of every single application (and their versions) installed, this is not a issue, they don't need a wrapper. Just a window manager who can put a terminal anywhere in the screen is enough.
But, for a naive but curious and tech-savvy user, who likes to mess with his computer hardware but don't care that much about the OS, he is forced so many times to use a terminal, so he can edit entirely non intuitive configurations, that it gives the feeling that a single mistake can bring the whole world down. (while on Windows, it would mean, more often than less, a box about "where is the driver?".)
Edited 2012-08-08 18:58 UTC