Can you believe they've come this far by now? Once known as OpenBeOS, Haiku today announced the release of the fourth alpha for Haiku R1. It seems like only yesterday when BeOS died and OpenBeOS rose form its ashes, generating a new hope among the legions of avid BeOS fans. Now, almost twelve years later, we've hit the fourth alpha.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-04-11
Beauty is more than skin deep. The UI is rather plain looking by today's standards. But, the UI is not the most compelling feature for using Haiku. To quote from Haiku's site,
"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.
Many of the OS's capabilities are due to the 64bit journaling filesystem, which is capable of automatically indexing data and cataloging metadata.
Member since:2005-10-17
You can read the rest at http://www.haiku-os.org/blog/koki/2007-05-08/settings_beos_style.
I wrote that, back in my Haiku days. :-) My geek days are over, but I still have a sweet spot for BeOS and Haiku. Congrats to all the Haiku folks for their latest release!
Member since:2005-07-08
Member since:2008-08-01
Member since:2006-05-30
It wasn't really. Amiga was just another OS. Most of the key developers at Be, especially to begin with, were Mac based or ex-Apple. Benoit Schillings, Steve Sakoman, Erich Ringewald and Bob Herold were at any rate. I'll quote myself here: http://www.osnews.com/thread?514205
Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:2006-12-05
Why not try it yourself and find out? It's not like it will cost you any more than a few minutes of your time and bandwidth to download a file, a blank CD-R (or CD-RW, or USB flash drive...), and the electricity needed to power your computer when running the OS...
If you don't like it, just reboot, chuck the CD into the trash and forget all about it.
Member since:2005-07-13
The full C++ API was also a dream. Well thought out and complete in a time where the Windows API was a cobbled together piece of sh*t.
Multi-threading, filesystem events etc were all there and working. There was also the mandatory call IsComputerOn so your program could know if the computer was running. Paired with IsComputerOnFire you could handle significant failure conditions right within your code. 
Member since:2006-05-30
The C++ was actually a blessing and a curse. It tied Be to a very specific compiler for a very long time. It was hard to expand the API without a lot of planning or creation of second versions of the classes (they seem to have been doing this for the BeIA project as there's a second namespace with different classes in the Dev kit I've used.) Adding methods to existing classes was costly as they reserved only a number of "slots". Using them up would cause a lot of issues.
The API being multi-threaded was cool, but it forced a lot of uncomfortable synchronisation on to the developer. There was no middle ground - you either adapted or your app sucked. It had the potential to make really simple operations very complex.
Member since:2005-06-29
djohnston pretty much has it covered, but personally I don't like the UI all that much. I tend to span the deskbar and turn on single window browsing in Tracker whenever I do a new installation.
What drew me to BeOS in the first place (besides being an alternative to Windows 98 and GNU/Linux) was the amazing multimedia software that ran on it, as well as the simplicity and power of the file system. I could achieve a very productive and comfortable workflow that simply wasn't possible on any other OS at that time.
Since then I've found OS X to be close to my ideal both for audio work and for my general workflow, and recently KDE on GNU/Linux is manageable for the latter. But I have a feeling that a mature Haiku will be what I've really been looking for.
Member since:2006-07-14
Oh, back in the late 90's Windows just terminally sucked. Mac OS Sucked. Linux on the desktop wasn't pretty ( visually or functionally). But BeOS... was beautiful and it worked. I only used it on x86, but it fully supported my hardware with zero configuration-- including my tv tuner ( which barely worked in windows without crashing it every 10 minutes). It was awesome. Plus it gave you a haiku in the web browser when an error occurred, that was so cool. Never got around to exploring the api much, just a few hello world programs, plus a port of my senior research program that modeled various high energy particle reactions.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
I enjoyed working with the database-like file system. Scripting and creating some dynamic website code in Python was fun too... I just loved how it all worked, looked, FELT...
When Haiku can do everything R5 (with the beta networking update) could do I will definitely consider moving back to it even ditching my games on Windows (or at least making Windows secondary).
The only API work I did was to add syntax plugins for an editor... so that doesn't really count.
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Member since:
2007-06-02
You guys have this crush on BeOS, why? Why is the UI so better than others?