It’s silly, but I still mourn for what might have been. Yes, I know BeOS had its flaws (IP stack, etc.) but I have yet to come across an OS that appealed to me more on so many different levels. I think part of the charm was the community that evolved around it. I looked forward to the weekly dev newsletters, especially with JLG’s editorial/commentary in each one. It was fascinating getting a glimpse, no matter how small, of the inner workings of a tech start-up that was doing so much in such a relatively short period. I still can’t believe what that group was able to accomplish — the things that could be wrung out of very modest hardware that ran rings around any other OS at the time. Sigh.
Well… how many years did Haiku spend on their OS already? For that amount of time, it’s not that much done. I suppose SkyOS is making more progress… and SkyOS had to be designed too in that time, and SkyOS is a 1 man project. Then, looking at Haiku, it’s progress is rather poor. Don’t understand me wrong. I like Haiku, and I would like to see it become a good OS. The point is just… will it be done in time. They spend many years on creating a clone of an operating system, that was state of the art in 2001. But we live in 2008 today. Even through it’s a fine operating system, the progress is just too slow to keep up with the rest.
Haiku has been at it since 2001 while… SkyOS has been at it since 1996.
Nearly twice as long? SkyOS even uses a fork of the filesystem from Haiku!
Also keep in mind that SkyOS doesn’t have the binary compatibility “curse” and the need to reinvent a closed-source OS. (for example, you might say that ReactOS is even less refined than Haiku as far as completeness).
I’m not sure I understand what Haiku is failing to keep up with in your opinion.
Edit: Which OS is “state-of-the-art” today? When I look around, all the “modern” OSes that can be compared to were started decades ago.
Indeed, SkyOS has been around a little longer. But back in 1996 is used to be a boot loader. Not an etire OS. But as far as I know, SkyOS 5.0 is a total rewrite of the operating system.
Indeed, SkyOS has no binary compatibility, a SkyOS program is likely to be even binary incompatible between the different builds.
ReactOS is indeed around since 1997, and seems indeed behind Haiku. ReactOS has even the advantage it’s using a lot of WINEs code.
I didn’t like ZETA that much, it looked to bloaty to me. I liked the BeOS because it was simple and efficient. I guess that’s the way Haiku is too. But Haiku R1 aims to be BeOS R5 compatible, wich means it’s a net_server only, and no BONE. Since lots of BeOS software needs the BONE stack nowadays, how usefull will it be?
But Haiku R1 aims to be BeOS R5 compatible, wich means it’s a net_server only, and no BONE. Since lots of BeOS software needs the BONE stack nowadays, how usefull will it be?
The network stack has been rewriten from scratch using bsd inspiration. Some already find it more efficient than bone’s. You can run R5/netserver or bone apps under Haiku indifferently.
Anyway, the R5 compatibility goal, has to be seen as a simple milestone, and a common, non-moving goal, for all devs to follow. It allows to keep the focus very strongly, and avoid endless discussions between devs. Also public api is already documented, so even 3rd parties have a stable API to use. It has other advantages, but the best one is this strong and stable focus imho.
But Haiku R1 aims to be BeOS R5 compatible, wich means it’s a net_server only, and no BONE. Since lots of BeOS software needs the BONE stack nowadays, how usefull will it be?
As pointed out above, the Haiku netstack is certainly more advanced that R5’s net_server implementation. It also shared the higher performance, BONE-like structure of being implemented in the kernel.
Please don’t assume that because Haiku R1 “aims” to be a BeOS R5 replacement that it will have all the same weaknesses of BeOS R5… this is not true.
Haiku already has some better POSIX compliance than BeOS (or Zeta) had, it already has a more recent OpenGL implementation (Mesa 7.x-based), it has updated drivers and modern hardware-support. It already has a rudimentary bluetooth stack and a modern USB stack.. etc.
That said, clearly Haiku still has some work to do before it’s stable and usable – but most of the moving parts are in place now and functioning.
To be clear, I don’t have any problems with SkyOS or RobertSz – in fact I am also a SkyOS beta member. I just don’t believe your comparisons and criticisms are necessarily founded on facts and experience, but rather on notions and opinions
Wow, I actually like this one! Good job.
It made me cry. Good job?
It’s silly, but I still mourn for what might have been. Yes, I know BeOS had its flaws (IP stack, etc.) but I have yet to come across an OS that appealed to me more on so many different levels. I think part of the charm was the community that evolved around it. I looked forward to the weekly dev newsletters, especially with JLG’s editorial/commentary in each one. It was fascinating getting a glimpse, no matter how small, of the inner workings of a tech start-up that was doing so much in such a relatively short period. I still can’t believe what that group was able to accomplish — the things that could be wrung out of very modest hardware that ran rings around any other OS at the time. Sigh.
Edited 2008-02-25 05:19 UTC
And Bernd leaves Zebuntu. BeOS dies once more.
Edited 2008-02-25 08:10 UTC
Bernd leaving Zebuntu certainly wouldn’t have killed BeOS – if anything it has preserved it.
see: Haiku
Well… how many years did Haiku spend on their OS already? For that amount of time, it’s not that much done. I suppose SkyOS is making more progress… and SkyOS had to be designed too in that time, and SkyOS is a 1 man project. Then, looking at Haiku, it’s progress is rather poor. Don’t understand me wrong. I like Haiku, and I would like to see it become a good OS. The point is just… will it be done in time. They spend many years on creating a clone of an operating system, that was state of the art in 2001. But we live in 2008 today. Even through it’s a fine operating system, the progress is just too slow to keep up with the rest.
Haiku has been at it since 2001 while… SkyOS has been at it since 1996.
Nearly twice as long? SkyOS even uses a fork of the filesystem from Haiku!
Also keep in mind that SkyOS doesn’t have the binary compatibility “curse” and the need to reinvent a closed-source OS. (for example, you might say that ReactOS is even less refined than Haiku as far as completeness).
I’m not sure I understand what Haiku is failing to keep up with in your opinion.
Edit: Which OS is “state-of-the-art” today? When I look around, all the “modern” OSes that can be compared to were started decades ago.
Edited 2008-02-25 23:15 UTC
Indeed, SkyOS has been around a little longer. But back in 1996 is used to be a boot loader. Not an etire OS. But as far as I know, SkyOS 5.0 is a total rewrite of the operating system.
Indeed, SkyOS has no binary compatibility, a SkyOS program is likely to be even binary incompatible between the different builds.
ReactOS is indeed around since 1997, and seems indeed behind Haiku. ReactOS has even the advantage it’s using a lot of WINEs code.
I didn’t like ZETA that much, it looked to bloaty to me. I liked the BeOS because it was simple and efficient. I guess that’s the way Haiku is too. But Haiku R1 aims to be BeOS R5 compatible, wich means it’s a net_server only, and no BONE. Since lots of BeOS software needs the BONE stack nowadays, how usefull will it be?
The network stack has been rewriten from scratch using bsd inspiration. Some already find it more efficient than bone’s. You can run R5/netserver or bone apps under Haiku indifferently.
Anyway, the R5 compatibility goal, has to be seen as a simple milestone, and a common, non-moving goal, for all devs to follow. It allows to keep the focus very strongly, and avoid endless discussions between devs. Also public api is already documented, so even 3rd parties have a stable API to use. It has other advantages, but the best one is this strong and stable focus imho.
As pointed out above, the Haiku netstack is certainly more advanced that R5’s net_server implementation. It also shared the higher performance, BONE-like structure of being implemented in the kernel.
Please don’t assume that because Haiku R1 “aims” to be a BeOS R5 replacement that it will have all the same weaknesses of BeOS R5… this is not true.
Haiku already has some better POSIX compliance than BeOS (or Zeta) had, it already has a more recent OpenGL implementation (Mesa 7.x-based), it has updated drivers and modern hardware-support. It already has a rudimentary bluetooth stack and a modern USB stack.. etc.
That said, clearly Haiku still has some work to do before it’s stable and usable – but most of the moving parts are in place now and functioning.
To be clear, I don’t have any problems with SkyOS or RobertSz – in fact I am also a SkyOS beta member. I just don’t believe your comparisons and criticisms are necessarily founded on facts and experience, but rather on notions and opinions
I’d forgotten it was there, but I booted into it, did the 5.01 upgrade, and installed Firefox 2.0.12 (Bon Echo).
It seems to work. Maybe I can coax some life out of the old girl yet. 🙂 🙂
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en…