Haiku Archive

"There is a sub-genre of historical fiction one could loosely call 'what-ifs'. The computer industry also has a number of such obvious what if scenarios. What if Bill Gates and Paul Allen hadn't lucked into the IBM contract for DOS, which was the basis for Microsoft's eventual hegemony? What if the UNIX operating system hadn't split into several minor variants, but gone on to become what Linux later became, only a decade or two before? What if BeOS had gone on to succeed on the desktop...?"

Some interesting tidbits from the Haiku world. Firstly, the WebKit port bounty has reached its target, meaning Ryan Leavengood can get to work. Secondly, Vasper has made huge strides in getting CUPS ported to Haiku. And on a funny note, BeOS icons were used in the "24" TV show.

Bryan Varner, one of the core developers of the stalled port of Java 1.4 port to BeOS R5 has an interesting post on his blog. Recently he met up with Ian Murdock of Sun at a local Java Users Group, and as a result he is now looking to restart the port, this time for Haiku.

Francois 'mmu_man' Revol has released a preliminary port of the Open Sound System to Haiku/BeOS. "I have the pleasure to announce I have ported OSSv4.1test to BeOS. It's not finished yet, but it runs and plays some sound. The goal is to use its drivers to get wider audio support for Haiku, the Free software rewrite (under BSD/MIT) of BeOS."

As a BeOS zealot (yes, that is the only zealotry you can accuse me of), I had a big smile on my face when I read Daniel Sandler's latest blog entry. "As I am no doubt the last person to point out, Google Maps has added a street level view to (a few) urban areas. It's the first Google app (besides Picasa) that I'm aware of that requires Flash, but it's also the first Google app to feature the Be Man. I guess it was only a matter of time, given that there are so many Be alums at Google now. I figured I'd send him home after all this time away." Thanks to SheepLover.com IsComputerOn.com for pointing this out. Instant update: He lives!

"After a long and controversial discussion with the project admins we've agreed on guidelines for creating a 3rd-party Haiku-based distribution. In brief, other distributions may not use the word 'Haiku' in their name and we will provide a 'Haiku Compatible' logo for distributions that comply to a short list of rules that ensure binary and source compatibility. Please read the detailed guidelines for further information."

"An increasing number of people get interested in the progress of Haiku USB and they start to ask questions about the completeness and usability of the stack. Also whether and how to use the Haiku USB stack under R5 is an interesting question. Instead of telling the story individually it probably makes more sense to sum everything up in a post for everyone to read."

Even more Haiku news today. Oliver Ruiz Dorantes, who will be monitoring GSoC student Salvatore Benedetto coming summer, has started work on what will become an office suite for Haiku. His blog already shows the first screenshots of the project. He is seeking for help on the project, so if you have the experience, feel free t help him out. Also, a new batch of icons has been added to Haiku.

"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."

Vassilis 'vasper' Perantzakis, of BeOS Max Edition fame, has announced that he will start work on WalterOS, the Haiku-based version of BeOS Max. "All code developed for this OS will be given to Haiku with the same MIT license 1 month after release at the latest. 50% of all income generated for us from any activity related to this OS (selling of CD and possibly memorabilia) will be donated to Haiku. Donations will not be accepted, please donate to Haiku." The name is not final yet, so feel free to add your own proposals.

"With Haiku getting closer and closer to an R1 release I think it is time for little review on the achievements of the development team in the last months. Haiku is being covered on various websites and blogs lately especially after attending SCaLE and the already famous tech talk at Google. But although it might seem that Haiku is only weeks away from the so important first release there is still a lot of work that has to be done, networking being the biggest." More here.

"Haiku co-developers Bruno and his associate Axel talk about the new OS that has been in development for several years. Haiku is an open source operating system currently in development designed from the ground up for desktop computing. Inspired in the BeOS, Haiku aims to provide users of all levels with a personal computing experience that is simple yet powerful, and void of any unnecessary complexities."

Haiku has its first distribution, but it's not coming from the Haiku development team. Pingwinek has just released GNU/Haiku 0.1.0, what is claimed to be (probably?) the first distribution of the Haiku operating system, coming from Poland. According to the Pingwinek home page, GNU/Haiku consists of the base Haiku system plus 40 packages ported from the Pingwinek GNU/Linux distribution, and it includes the GCC 2.95.3 compiler, several simple games, SDL, Midnight Commander, and ncurses. GNU/Haiku can be run from a HDD, in QEMU and VMWare or as a Live CD. Screenshots are available, and the images can be download from this page.

"We are excited to announce that Haiku developer Ingo Weinhold has recently committed UserlandFS to the repository. UserlandFS is designed to provide, for the first time in Haiku (and the BeOS platform), a stable and flexible environment for file system add-on development. Along with UserlandFS, Ingo has also committed several file system modules, including a Reiser FS 3.6 read-only implementation, a RAM FS (which is still work in progress), and NetFS, a Haiku-specific networking file system. NetFS is a native Haiku network file system that provides peer-to-peer networking capabilities for computers running Haiku on a LAN and includes full support for BFS attributes and live queries."