“We are pleased to announce that JMicron Technology Corporation has offered to give our project support in the implementation of SATA technology for Haiku. JMicron has pledged to support the development effort by providing the required technical documentation as well as hardware for testing. Haiku developer Marcus Overhagen will be working closely with JMicron with the eventual goal of achieving full support for JMicron’s SATA products in Haiku in the future.”
The Haiku project is becoming “big”. They got alot of press lately and I think they caught the attention of many people.
Within 6 months, I think they will manage to release a viable alternative desktop. It’s not there yet, but it’s coming fast…
I’ll tell you what, I can’t wait for that first beta release to get installed on my computer. How I’ve longed for the day to run a BeOS-like operating system on native hardware instead of emulation.
I’ve been doing that for years, it’s called BeOSMax (now HaikuMax).
I do not believe that you have any concept of how difficult it is to make a viable desktop system. It took Linux many many years, yet they will do it in much less time?
“I do not believe that you have any concept of…”
…Haiku OS.
I think they started in 2001 and are currently pre-alpha, although things are snowballing of late.
http://haiku-os.org for more info.
Edit: But I would be pleasantly surprised if we saw R1 within the next 12 months.
Edited 2007-04-15 22:20
I do not believe that you have any concept of how difficult it is to make a viable desktop system. It took Linux many many years, yet they will do it in much less time?
I do not believe that you have any concept of how UNIX/Linux or BeOS/Haiku was developed. UNIX (“emulation” of which was Linux’ target) was developed first as a minicomputer/server/workstation operating system for techies. BeOS (“emulation” of which is Haiku’s target) was developed as a desktop operating system from the start.
However, of course BeOS/Haiku lacks many apps that should go into a desktop system. But that is not the fault of an operating system.
How difficult would it be to port POSIX apps to Haiku?
Depends on the dependencies they have. It is not too difficult however. I have managed to port several of them without even being a C++ expert.
>I do not believe that you have any concept of how difficult it is to make a viable desktop system. It took Linux many many years, yet they will do it in much less time?
jdrake, linux did not have a clear focus, Haiku is focuced on being a BeOS R5 clone for R1. Also Linux was not a Desktop replacement system, until 3 or 4 years ago when the first real desktop oriented distroes appeared. Since then it has come a long way. Imagine what an already Desktop oriented OS can do…
Edited 2007-04-16 10:13
I don’t agree that “Linux did not have a clear focus” – once it got to be “a better Minix than Minix” it seems clearly to have been intended that it be THE free (as in FOSS) UNIX – but I do agree with everything else.
Yeah, initially linux was a hobby project for linux to learn about the i386. That’s it.
That said, Linux had a very clear focus from about 8 or 9 months after its birth: “Be the best Unix out there (minix wasn’t). And be free while at it.”
That is not a clear focus. That is like saying, I want to be the best I can be. It is just a wish… not a goal.
By the way, I am very happy Linux didn’t have that kind of focus. Thats why 12 years later you can do anything with it, from an embedded device, to a palmtop, to the desktop and up to a cluster.
Edited 2007-04-17 10:48
Shouldn’t be too difficult, if the BeOS “emulation” is complete: BeOS had POSIX compatibility, presumably intended specifically to encourage quick development of apps.
> Within 6 months, I think they will manage to release
> a viable alternative desktop.
You should be happy if Haiku is able release an alpha version that you can play with in about 6 months.
Well to me a “viable” alternative OS isn’t necessary “beta” or “final”. A good alpha can be considered “viable” if it can run without its core crashing.
Like I said in my first post, Haiku isn’t almost there but it’s coming fast. It just needs better networking and kernel fixes so an application cannot bring the system down. Did you try the latest vmware images?
> Well to me a “viable” alternative OS isn’t
> necessary “beta” or “final”.
You are free to consider using an unfinished and buggy OS — which puts your data at risk — a *viable alternative*, but that’s not the universally accepted meaning of the word “viable.”
Haiku is certainly gaining steam, but it still has a long way to go. There is a lot more than just the net stack and the kernel that need fixing to make it a viable alternative.
I would have to agree on that. I’ve downloaded and tested Haiku regularely the past six months, and it’s awefully buggy.
But when the kernel becomes stable and they get a sane netstack and more drivers, it may fill the needs of us Be heads.
Edited 2007-04-16 07:12
Well to me a “viable” alternative OS isn’t necessary “beta” or “final”. A good alpha can be considered “viable” if it can run without its core crashing.
Alphas do crash. By definition.
Just as you, I’m eagerly awaiting the first installable pre-release, but I sure wouldn’t expect full stability from an alpha. We should not do that.
I understand, the Haiku team has been reluctant to throw Haiku to the masses, exactly because they don’t want and don’t need complaints by Joe Sixpack, that “this Hicoo shareware thingie won’t install”.
An alpha should be expected to have lots of bugs and be unstable as hell. Everything else would mean putting additional pressure on a small and already overloaded dev team.
This is by far the best news i have heard in ages! I always kept thinking; Damn this new core2 mobo, now i’m forced to haiku under qemu
Go jmicron! Go haiku!
Great to hear JMicron jump onboard.
Haiku also has an “ahci” sata driver in the works.
Many newer sata controllers support ahci ( one sata standard = ahci = one driver ).
Currently, Intel, ATI, JMicron, Nvidia, SIS, ULI & VIA utilize ahci in their newer sata controllers.
Older ( Non ahci ) sata controllers will need specific drivers to be made for them to work on Haiku.
Summary, if you have an ahci compliant sata controller then good chance Haiku will work on it ( once the ahci driver is done ).
LOL, thats funny because that’s how I run haiku too, through qemu. I feel your pain man.
A few PDFs, a few signatures, and (optionally!) some samples, and your company’s hardware has full support in a promising alt. os! Not too shabby a deal, I’d say. But you’d be surprised how hard it actually is to get vendors to agree to this.
Amazing feat. Haiku is definitely next on my test machine.
JMicron are great – they also took the initiative to work with Linux distros (us at Mandriva at least, and I’m sure they have the same contact with all the other distros) to ensure we have good support for their controllers. Definitely an exemplary hardware company.
Well, suddenly I find I’m a fan of JMicron!
Then I would say they have achieved the desired effect.
Indeed. Now if only we could get Broadcom to “achieve the desired effect”.
Edited 2007-04-15 20:21 UTC
Considering I am really upset at the fact that my mother board’s IDE controller is by JMicron and that prevents me to install and use just about anything else except Windows, this is a good news. Latest kernels have support for JMicron but how about other operating systems? SkyOS, ReactOS, Syllable to name a few. Don’t get me wrong, I am quite happy JMicron has offered support for Haiku. Good on you JMicron.
Edited 2007-04-15 20:51
Well, if all this code is released in MIT style license that Haiku prefers… this code could probably go into many other OSes like the ones you mentioned.
…that they are the 1st of many!
(I don’t know of any other hardware co. providing support to Haiku. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.)
Let’s see, in the past month alone;
Google (coding)
ACCESS (documentation)
& now JMicron.
Thank you JMicron!
To add, this is really good. It is the only company as far as I am aware to “warmly” offer support for its products. Thanks again JMicron and well done.
Edited 2007-04-15 21:14