Submitted by “Back in mid-2001, when the news that Be Inc. had sold its intellectual property to Palm hit the streets, what many had suspected and rumored for quite some time – that BeOS development was headed towards closure – finally became a reality. This news and the sad realization that it ensued hit hard the developers and users of BeOS; but many of them did not give up on the idea of letting the operating system of their dreams die, and instead embarked on the daunting task of recreating BeOS in an open source fashion. This is how OpenBeOS – now known as the Haiku Project — was born.”
I’m so grateful for Haiku. I dual boot, and try to use Haiku anytime I don’t need to do something I can only do in Linux.
I had no experience with BeOS, but I love the simplicity, control, and speed that Haiku inherited from it.
Maybe to celebrate I will submit some more bug reports.
Anyway, thanks Haiku!
Keep up the great work, guys. Haiku is amazing OS.
This is also the first day I used Haiku without booting into Linux at all! What a coincidence. I should say, though, Haiku’s speed and simplicity just amazes me!
…not bad at all for an OS that was declared a “failure” back on its 3rd birthday.
http://www.osnews.com/story/8114
I like beos and haiku and all, but I would imagine that somebody who agrees with or thinks similarly to Eugenia in that article would hardly see another 6 years passing and still no full r5 replacement as being less of a failure, or something that might cause one to say “not bad..”
huh.. modded down, i didn’t say i thought it was a failure, i just dont see how ‘ah HA! told ya!’ applies in regards to the link. I dont think she said people wouldnt continue to work on it and eventually get it done..just that in her opinion, it was a failure because it wasnt done already.
anyway… no big deal, just didnt think i was pointing out anything controversial…
Actually, not good since Haiku 1.0 is still only as an alpha stage release candidate. I’m hoping that it will take them less than the ~3 years and 6 betas it took for eComStation to go from alpha stage to final release.
I’m quoting interesting bits from Eugenia’s original article and revisiting them.
“AtheOS, SkyOS had something usable by a three-years time, and remember, they only employed 1 developer each.”
AtheOS has been forked and has become Syllable and now has a large development team. However, the original kernel has been retained only for the desktop version while the server version is based on the Linux kernel. SkOS has been stagnating for a few years now and may never reach 1.0 status.
“Most people don’t care anymore (and why should they? No one wants to support an OS that sees official OS updates). And if Haiku is “ready” by 2010, no one will care. Too little, too late. What’s the point re-implementing BeOS in a way to even have binary compatibility and targetting the functionality of BeOS 5, when by 2010 Longhorn 2, Mac OS X 12 and a more mature Linux will be available offering out-of-this-world features?
”
Is there a coincidence to the 2010 estimate date for the readiness of Haiku 1.0 or a realistic guess? What was not envisioned then is the rapid development of the mobile devices (and netbooks) and the arrival of Android, iPhone OS, Windows 7 Phone…..and touch graphical user interface…..
“Haiku needs to move on, it needs to re-set its goals, simply because its current goal, has already failed through market irrelevance. Timing was important for that goal, and now it’s just too late trying to “sell” a BeOS 5-alike OS to the world. I would suggest creating an OS that tries to innovate and competes with future/modern OSes, while keeping its BeOS roots and code, but not by copying Be’s mistakes and the irrelevant, right now, overall BeOS experience one could get out of a BeOS 5+.”
Faster earlier development might have lead to currently having Gobe Productive 5 on Haiku…..rather than not even having a port of Productive 3 (which is now more than 5 years old) from its Windows commercial release. It’s difficult to seriously consider an OS from a general user perspective when there is not even the equivalent of an integrated document generator/processor.
On the other hand, Haiku has now tutorials on developing applications, developers/user conferences…..will it now go in hyperbolic development? Sincerely hope so (and best wishes to them).
Just to reply on this point, I think one straightforward way to get this hyperbolic development is by opening the flood gates to Java and other virtual machine-based things. The amount of software in Java is just huge. Problem is, the OpenJDK port was announced in January 2008 and still no release date that I know of. The motto should be “reuse as much as possible”. In that sense, the FreeBSD networking stack is a good move but the OS needs more of that.
Another way, less easy in my opinion, is the developer momentum. I think Haiku has gained it, at least, they’ve earned me and I knew strictly nothing about BeOS and Haiku before this year. The general view seems rather favorable as I have never read anything negative about Haiku anywhere on the web, which is a rare fact.
What do you think?
I have looked at various programming languages available for BeOS/Haiku as I’m not a C/C++ person. The one I would have a preference for (Oberon which was ported to BeOS in the form on an Oberon-to-C translateor) has completely dis-appeared from the Web. So, I may have to become more fluent in C/C++.
There has been a few of Java VM porting projects to BeOS/Haiku over the years. BeKaffe appears to have stalled in 2006. The Sun sanctioned JVM port to BeOS/Haiku (same as the OpenJDK?) appears to have stalled late 2008 when the developer at that time decided to re-prioritize his life.
Perl and Python have been ported to Haiku and this suggests that porting a language is technically feasible.
The Java VM in it-self likely brings a higher level of complexity in the porting exercise in relation to API. The security model inherent to the Java VM may also impede porting to the BeOS/Haiku API which is described as weak in this area.
The “code once and reuse many times” concept allowed by a VM is attractive. However, would this allow access to all the distinctive features of the native API? Probably not.
It looks like experimenting will be the only way to find-out.
It’s still alive. I’ve asked a few weeks ago how I could contribute and someone on the mailing list pointed me to a Wiki page. Just days before that, I read a post (not necessarily on the mailing list), by someone who seemed (to me) to be one of the current leaders, stating that, contrary to what was commonly thought, the port isn’t dead…
I think the point of VMs is to offer a well-defined subset of features (VirtualBox comes to mind). The subset does not have to cover all imaginable features found in the real hardware/OS that’s being accessed. The JVM has the JNI, which is a significant asset in terms of extensibility, isn’t it?
Happy birthday Haiku! Best of luck in the future and many more years of happiness!
I am very excited by the way Haiku is progressing. I like the fact that the entire GUI is consistent and is following guidelines and protocols.
You can tell it is a high quality operating system by the way the GUI behaves. For example when you activate a dialog, the moment of activation is snappy (like Windows and Mac OS X), widgets/button sizes are normal (like Windows/Mac OS X) and aligned properly and equaly.
Everything is done with elegance. Well done guys, you are a prime example of what the Linux desktop should have been. Haiku is a prime and only example of an Open Source professionalism. Keep up the good work.
Some have pointed out that Haiku is still in Alpha release, somehow they fail to mention that Haiku’s present state is better than many other open OSs’s Beta or Gamma releases.
It may not be ready for final release soon, neither will the final release be done with known bugs in the system.
I didn’t think that mentioning the state of things as they are was in any way a negative comment about haiku, so I didn’t think to balance it with a positive statement.
as in, I thought I was commenting about the comment I was replying to, not judging haiku as an os or community.
Edited 2010-08-21 03:28 UTC