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Free version of BeOS rewritten from scratch using the API levels for compatibility. One step closer to public release.
Its better than BeOS, has nvme support, xhci, efi boot, slab allocator, better Posix support, has Qt, webkit, FreeBSD based networking, layout engine, wifi, packages etc.
Yeah... it's been almost thirty years after all.
Not just API compatibility. To maintain ABI compatibility as well, at this point they are working with a fork of a really old gcc version that still implements this particular C++ ABI[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Compa...

That's only on the 32 bit version, and even there they also use GCC 8.
Is that a "recent" development? I remembered that from a few years back when I played around with Haiku in a VM, tried to port some programs and poked around in the kernel source out of curiosity.

It would explain, why I couldn't find that "how to build the toolchain" page anymore through some quick browsing and posted the Wikipedia reference instead. I guess somebody(TM) should update the Wikipedia page then.

Is it promising as a basic daily system? Some modern web browser, email client, some common console tools or things like Python to run them? Or maybe there is a ports-like system developed unofficially?

I used to test every iso of Haiku I found, but it felt very much a development project then actual system for simple daily use. I wonder what's the status now.

I'd say iffy on the first. The native browser is based on a modern port of WebKit, but it's buggy and not feature-complete. Things like Youtube work in-browser, but not well (buggy player, sometimes choppy playback, etc.). Wasm doesn't work. It's otherwise pretty functional. There's no Firefox/Chromium. There are alternatives to the native browser, but they're not significantly better.

It has the second, and third (Python 3 is ported). It's POSIX-compliant, so there's tons of Linux/Unix CLI stuff available.

There is a package manager with a lot of software, both native and ported. Many of the staples are available (LibreOffice, VLC, etc.), but there's also a lot missing, some with alternatives (there's no GIMP, but there is Krita, for example).

Overall, I think it's usable as a basic system, but you could definitely run into some issues with software availability and web browsing if you want to do more powerful stuff.

> there's no GIMP, but there is Krita, for example

I wish they'd rather port Inkscape.

I'd check for native software first instead of Gimp, as Haiku had a lot of background on media production. My 2 cent tip.
Haiku's icons are vector based right? Is there a native Haiku vector art software?
There's a native icon editor.
Haiku has pretty good native audio, video and image editors.
>there's no GIMP, but there is Krita

Sounds like a win/win to me!

The browser is said to use WebKit 612.1.21. This sounds relevant, although I'm not really sure how new 612.1.21 actually is. LibreOffice also is available already. As are Python 3.7 and VLC. Many people run Haiku on real hardware rather than in a VM (although I would speculate the HCL is rather humble).

This sounds pretty usable to me already.

Lazarus also is available which means the emerging Sublime-replacement CudaText editor can be ported as well as the Double Commander.

Is there any proprietary software from the era for the platform that is worth running today?
Honestly I still miss Gobe Productive. Fantastic productivity suite. Not very full-featured, but everything just came together in a smooth way I haven't seen replicated since.
From the era? Probably not. I like GoBe Productive and actually used PoorMan for some internal stuff, but neither would be sufficient for most uses today.

However, TuneTracker and its associated suite of tools for radio station automation ran on BeOS and then on Haiku. It's been a few years since the website was updated, so I do not know if it's still active, but it was worth running in a very specific setting.

I think at this point I'm on the fourth consecutive laptop that this just won't ever boot on. This time, however, it just says "Haiku" on a splash screen and then stops completely. No errors, no debug message window, nothing.

(At this point usually someone here insists that I file a bug. Which I won't do because a) I have no useful information to put into a bug report and b) I think after eleven years of this nonsense it's probably in there about 200 times already anyway.)

Oh, look. Can't even press the space bar to get an unintelligible error anymore.

I've pretty much given up on these new OSes. I tried to run OS/2 and Plan 9 (whatever that relatively recent open sourced version of it was) and I just feel like... maybe I haven't developed the appropriate context to be able to even know what to do with it. Sure, Kali I know I can use my AWUS036ahw network card on, Ubuntu I know I at least have some sensible defaults, Alpine for containers (goddamnit why don't you have vim by default, so annoying to quickly debug stuff), but overall it's just not useful to know these little pieces of computing history. I suppose there are computing archaeologists that benefit from it, but I just get left with a sense of dread that everything I know and have mastered more or less is going to be left for dead and I just get a sense of exhaustion.

I'd say my initial experience of playing around with distros/burning to CDs, etc were instrumental to my learning about what different terminology meant, but overall right now, it's just such a time sink with no real benefit. Same reason why I don't just stop what I'm doing to learn Zig or Objective-S or whatever. There are so many tools to do the same damn thing and while it may be useful for self-learning or potentially a very specific problem set, it's just not worth the mental investment to accomplish any real goals.

It sucks to think about things in this context but it's a real constraint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU

I'm having a little philosophical discussion with myself here about whether something that can't run on an actual computer (as opposed to a VM) is in any meaningful sense an "operating system" at all.

Meanwhile I can definitely boot RiscOS on a Pi containing built-in apps with a 1987 copyright message in them. I mean I can't then really do anything with it, but it's still got Haiku beat.

It's fine to dislike Haiku because it doesn't run on your hardware, but it's pretty ridiculous to assert it isn't an OS because it "can't run on an actual computer". Haiku runs on tons of hardware, including most of the machines I've tried it on, and it probably runs on far more devices than Risc OS ever has/will.

Edit: there's literally a massive thread (https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/computers-compatible-with-hai...) on the Haiku forums that documents just a small fraction of the hardware Haiku works on.

It's never once started on anything I own. For over a decade. The most voted-on item in its bug tracker has 9 votes on it.

RiscOS (which was a wilfully-obtuse comparison on my part, but since you're digging in [edit: in fact, creating an account on HN for no reason except to promote it on this thread], I'll run with it for your benefit) has without question already actually run on a number of devices -- though granted, not types of devices -- at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than this thing ever will, at the rate it's going.

Like I said, it sucks that it doesn't start on anything you own, which doesn't take away from the fact that there's literally a massive list of hardware it does actually run on.

And you're right, I created an account to comment on this thread. If you think disagreeing with you on this means I'm "promoting" Haiku as some sort of shill (my two points were literally that it's an OS and it boots on hardware, how controversial) then you're entitled to your opinion I guess.

Why, when it basically apparently doesn't run on laptops, and when it fails to start it provides no hint whatsoever about what to do next, is there no information about what to do next anywhere on the Haiku web site? Why, if your position is that there's a list of hardware (a very well-hidden one, I might add) on which I should be running this, is that list not front-and-centre so I don't waste my time trying to boot it on anything else?

Why, to put it more briefly, does Haiku insist on being treated as a serious operating system when it simultaneously clearly runs on less stuff than most other OSes and yet requires us to pretend that it's in the same class as those other OSes?

(This doesn't happen with ReactOS. But then they don't have the social disability of resolutely insisting that we all pay attention to them as a Very Important Thing.)

[edit: I forgot the big one: after over eleven years would it kill them to at least once spit out a fucking error message? Or is the total lack of information with which a person could file a useful bug report in fact the intent?]

Why are you so upset? I would be if I absolutely required running something and it didn't work. Probably something I paid a lot of money for. But I wouldn't expect that from a hobbyist OS.
It's not my 'position' that there's a list of hardware; there literally is one (edit: and it's not exhaustive).

I really don't see how Haiku "requires" you to take it seriously. It's clearly marked as beta. Even though I disagree with those who might call it daily driver-ready, I don't understand the source of this hostility. If you don't want to "waste your time" with it, then don't. It's beta software developed by volunteers, none of whom are forcing you to download their OS.

Also, if these instructions (https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/welcome/en/bugreports.html#ker...) don't help you with your bug report, then I dunno what to tell you, I guess the gods have decided you shouldn't use Haiku.

> when it basically apparently doesn't run on laptops

i had an old laptop that runs just fine (albeit with a tiny bit of fiddling). you're free not to believe me though, it's your opinion after all.

> requires us to pretend that it's in the same class as those other OSes?

lmfao, did they ever?

shut up and get your shit together.

you should give introspection a try.
ReactOS support it's utter crap compared to Haiku. I could run Haiku in my Celeron pretty fast up to the point on being able to open 4K videos on Intel Mobile 4 series with some qt5 video player. As crazy as it sounds.
Get used to this reaction. Unfortunately, as much as open source software communities want their products to be taken seriously, they will invariably react this way to negative feedback. "works for me", "pick better hardware", etc.
There are various first-level responses "reacting" to OP's "negative feedback" with (what I think are) very reasonable suggestions (try this thing, try that thing, ask on forums, etc.)

This is a sub-thread to the original complaint (which was quite reasonable), where OP is taking on an oddly hostile and aggressive tone, and powerfully punching at various strawmen. I'm not sure what you think an adequate reaction would be.

OP may be exaggerating a bit with their claim that Haiku isn't an OS, but what is important is their frustration. Haiku is billing itself as an OS that runs on PCs and parent is frustrated because it has never run on any PC they have tried it on. That's the thing to take away here. Either they should make it more explicit[0] what it does and doesn't run on, or work harder to support more hardware. Pointing out that it is clearly labeled as beta software and linking to the compatibility list are reasonable responses, but there's literally a comment telling them to 'shut up and get your shit together'. That kind of defensiveness is not useful to anyone.

[0] since there appears to be a list of known good hardware, maybe it should be prominent?

So op venting about shit is "maybe exaggerating a bit" and "important frustration" but other people venting is just "defensiveness"? Yeah sure people have to be nice to any one lmao. Ars Technica literally made a long article about how Haiku worked on a cheap-ass laptop, still no, keep on venting about social disability bullshit, and you're here complaining about other people being angry about op being this rude. Truly the moral standard everyone should follow huh.
> So op venting about shit is "maybe exaggerating a bit" and "important frustration" but other people venting is just "defensiveness"?

From the perspective that Haiku is a product, would you rather have people associate your product with people who took your frustrated feedback to heart or people who told you to shut up because you missed a burreid forum posting about hardware compatibility? If you're an enthusiast of said product, you're doing no one any favors by being hostile.

> Ars Technica literally made a long article about how Haiku worked on a cheap-ass laptop

Which does nothing for someone who couldn't get it to run on any of the hardware they tried it on.

> and you're here complaining about other people being angry about op being this rude

I'm just saying, it's sadly very common, does nothing to help anybody, and leaves people with a negative opinion of their community.

> If you're an enthusiast of said product, you're doing no one any favors by being hostile.

Ah i see you must be too blind to see others have tried not being hostile, failed and get called out as having "social disability".

> Which does nothing for someone who couldn't get it to run on any of the hardware they tried it on.

Sure:

1. People have to help you here no matter what even if you're being very rude. 2. Certainly "it does not work on my machines" to "it does not work on anything" is a very reasonable stretch!

> I'm just saying, it's sadly very common, does nothing to help anybody, and leaves people with a negative opinion of their community.

if someone could just not leave other people with a negative opinion of him/her/themselves lol

> > keep on venting about social disability bullshit

> I don't even know what this means, but have a suspicion that if I did I would have a low opinion of you as a person for saying it.

seriously? lmfao, that phrase goes for you too, shut up and get your shit together.

as for the "does not help anybody" bit, yeah clearly venting like you do helps a heck lot to everybody.

A lot of people have been frustrated about the thing does not work for them (yes including me myself) but why does OP get the hate he/she/they get? If you can't figure that out yourself, you should probably do something else instead of keep posting here.

> People have to help you here no matter what even if you're being very rude.

Not at all. It is entirely possible to simply ignore them. We even have a system of downvoting and flagging for people being overly hostile.

> if someone could just not leave other people with a negative opinion of him/her/themselves lol

That's their problem to deal with on their own. When you represent the Haiku community badly, that's everyone in the Haiku community's problem.

> seriously? lmfao, that phrase goes for you too, shut up and get your shit together.

I deleted that part when I read back to find what you were referencing because I realized it didn't at all mean what I suspected it meant. Although my opinion of you as a person is lowering for other reasons.

> When you represent the Haiku community badly, that's everyone in the Haiku community's problem.

it's truly, truly a sad mental state to consider anyone has to be representing some certain community. really hope someday you can pull yourself out of that.

> Although my opinion of you as a person is lowering for other reasons.

lower it as much as you want my friend, seriously wouldn't mind if some random stupid asshole insists considering me a stupid asshole.

I think it's unfair to look past the tone and language of OP's subsequent comments (not an OS in a meaningful way, "can't run on an actual computer", "social disability", "It's just dogshit, and it's getting worse", etc.) and just summarise the core of their complaints as "frustration"... after having decried open source communities for counter-productive reactions.

I feel like when you apply this standard of "overlook the tone, understand the message" asymmetrically to only one "side" of the argument, it highlights your biases.

As an aside, if you look at the proportion of comments (and maybe even the fuzzy timestamps while they're still discernible), the original commenter's hostile comments outnumber their "just frustrated" ones, while a large majority of responses to them are civil and constructive. The 'shut up and get your shit together' was in response some weirdly aggressive attack on the Haiku mantainers/contributors, after OP had also called the OS dogshit.

Anyway, this is all mostly off-topic and I have no affiliation with Haiku at all, but I just didn't want an unwarranted attack on obviously motivated and passionate developers' labour of love go undefended.

> I feel like when you apply this standard of "overlook the tone, understand the message" asymmetrically to only one "side" of the argument, it highlights your biases.

It's pretty simple. If people have an unfavorable opinion of handelaar, that's handelaar's problem. But if people have a negative opinion of the Haiku community based on how Haiku enthusiasts have treated handelaar, that's Haiku's problem. If you're a supporter of Haiku you're not doing anyone any favors by behaving that way.

> Anyway, this is all mostly off-topic and I have no affiliation with Haiku at all, but I just didn't want an unwarranted attack on obviously motivated and passionate developers' labour of love go undefended.

Eh, I look at it differently. If you're making a product you intend for public consumption, this sort of thing is just something you have to accept. Just because it is a labor of love for somebody doesn't make it good nor excuse it from criticism.

Granted, we'd all be better off if handelaar had expressed themselves more reasonably.

> But if people have a negative opinion of the Haiku community based on how Haiku enthusiasts have treated handelaar, that's Haiku's problem.

Absolutely a fair point.

I think the issue is that most spare computers people have at hand are old laptops, which tend to have really finicky hardware when compared to what desktops usually have.
I'm running it on a x230 and it works great. I actually don't remember it not working on any of my old pcs.
Windows doesn't run on my fluid based CPU. It's not an OS. 0/10.
I only need one hydraulic gate: NAND (or NOR). I can build everything else...
> Alpine for containers (goddamnit why don't you have vim by default

The whole point of Alpine is to NOT have vim (or anything else) by default.

I think keeping people like you out is part of the reason " that recently open sourced version" of Plan9 is covered in Nazi propaganda.
False. They even had a "nazi punks fuck off logo" in a release.
What on Earth is this comment supposed to mean?
It's the unfortunate reality of trying to write an OS these days: we are drowning in hardware. There is just way too huge a variety of hardware out there and basically no standards for interfacing with it requiring a ludicrous number of drivers to support anywhere close to everything.

At this point, my advice to anyone wanting to create a brand new OS would be to limit their scope to something like the Raspberry Pi line so they have a very limited set of hardware they have to support[0]. Of course, Haiku started long before the Raspberry Pi existed so that wasn't really an option for them.

[0] Unless you count USB peripherals of course. Ugh.

I'd go even further:

We pick some basic set of specs, a processor, and run the whole thing on FPGAs so we control all the circuits and can always make an ASIC if we want. Full control, full power. Like what if MiSTer was considered a valid target for productivity software?

Like we agree to go back to nothing and build the whole thing. Graphics drivers a problem? Design a new graphics system, all open.

Would it be current? No. But it would be really open, and easy to develop for.

Is this feasible?
Yes, definitely.

It's taking a page from retrocomputing and going "What if instead we built productivity software and made it a valid base for modern computing, what would we need?"

I don't really know how many people would be interested in this approach though.

Hold shift after BIOS/EFI handoff, and you’ll get lots of boot / diagnostic options. I natively boot on 3 systems without any issues.
Yes, that's definitely a thing I'm going to keep trying when there's several dozen options and every option set that doesn't work either also leaves you looking forever at a dead splash screen or crashes with a white screen full of "no debug on this file" which you can't reboot out of without a hard ACPI reset.

It's just dogshit, and it's getting worse.

> It's just dogshit

This thing is being developed by passionate developers on their spare time for maybe two decades. They don’t sell you anything, they don’t force you to install their OS. They just wrote it for fun. The least they deserve is not having to read insults like yours.

Maybe you should preserve your sanity and wait for a release that's not clearly marked as "Beta".
Try changing the resolution in boot menu.

My laptop supports 1366x768 but for some reason got blank screen. Lower resolution seems to work fine.

You probably know that supporting a wide array of hardware requires many hands (and that hardware).
I had that problem in Virtual Box I had to enable a serial port for it to output error messages.
If you open a thread on Haiku forums, I’m sure you will find a lot of help to help you boot Haiku on your hardware, even get developer input.
My desktop PC; also fails to boot in the same way.

Just to add: I really respect the work different people on the Haiku project put in for so many years; even the controversial package manager turned out to be really brilliant.

I have been following the project since it started; I ran BeOS on my PowerMac and then on my PCs for a while, before it became impractical.

The thing with voluntary projects is people naturally work on what they find randomly interesting - this may not be the fastest path to create a working system for a reasonable number of end users.

> a) I have no useful information to put into a bug report

A list of the chipsets involved, or just brands and models of the laptops would also help.

While perhaps not totally helpful, after 25 years of playing with "alternative" operation systems, I would never recommend using a laptop for the purpose.

A spare desktop PC have always been of more value to me, when playing around with lesser used operating systems. Hardware and drivers just work better. A wired ethernet connection is also recommended.

If you don't have the space for a PC, I'll recommend getting an older Intel NUC.

You have had an incredible streak of bad luck there. That is to be expected with alternative operating systems though: very few have vendors contributing drivers (e.g. Windows, Linux) and very few have enough developers to support the incredibly wide range of hardware available (e.g. Linux). At best, most alternative operating systems can be classified as hobby projects. Nothing more and nothing less. In order to use them, you need to be willing to contribute time (e.g. help with development) or money (e.g. buy supported hardware). If you're not willing to do so, that's fine. It simply means these operating systems are not for you.

As for my experiences, I have always had Haiku boot but have never been satisfied with hardware support (e.g. limited to certain VESA modes for video, unsupported network card). I accept that's part for the course given what Haiku is and can still appreciate the work that has been put into it.

I was very impressed with the last version I tried earlier this year. It was fun to use.

I uninstalled it because I needed to get back to a system I knew better for a while. For one minor detail, QMMP had some freezing bug, but man I loved that haiku skin. I guess it's time to try it again and see how it goes with the various use cases.

> improvements to Wi-Fi networking to match FreeBSD 13

Just curious, why this match in particular? Was it a goal of some kind or is this mainly a reference freebie due to the reuse of some component?

The FreeBSD 13 reference is probably because Haiku uses FreeBSD drivers for most of its network drivers via a compatibility layer.
I decided to try out Haiku last week. I was positively surprised how fast the whole process was. Installer loaded, system was installed and rebooted in about 20-30 seconds (not accounting for human I/O latency). And this was in a VM with SATA disk backing.

Makes you yearn for simpler times.

> Installer loaded, system was installed and rebooted in about 20-30 seconds

This was my experience with QNX 6 two decades ago. Installing and booting into its beautiful Photon desktop environment took less time than it took to just boot Windows 2000.

> And this was in a VM with SATA disk backing.

Believing virtualization always makes things slower is a mistake. Windows XP always booted and worked a lot faster in a VirtualBox under Linux than it did directly on the same machine.

Oh, QNX [0]! That was such a great OS, and quite advanced for the times (microkernel, realtime, userland was POSIX complaint etc).

I remember I tried QNX Neutrino sometime in the first half of the 2000's, and it literally booted from a 1.44MB floppy into a UI (Photon), and had a working browser and everything needed to setup an internet connection (back then, this included dialup related stuff).

Of all OSes that could have been, this is the one I am most upset about not succeeding. I know it still exists in some forms, but it's pretty much fringe.

Refs:

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX

What is worth additional mentioning is PhAB (Photon Application Builder). It was a visual (like in Visual Basic) RAD C++ GUI app builder which came bundled with the OS and accompanied by a great tutorial. It was so great, I bloody wish its clone was available for Linux (and Haiku perhaps).

I also miss Photon's visual style. Subjectively, it was the best I've ever seen (and Haiku feels somewhat close to this taste actually). If somebody would offer a bundle of Linux (XFCE, GNOME, KDE) and Windows (10) themes resembling QNX 6 Photon I would buy them for some real money.

There was a KDE3/QT3 theme for Photon, and I am sure for QT4 and QT5.
I'd say QNX isn't quite "niche". It continues to be very successful in automotive, with most modern cars sold probably running at least a few instances on different computers throughout the in-vehicle network. Also other industries.

It has safety certifications that are so far difficult to achieve with anything else able to support the required use cases.

I think niche is fair, especially since they are almost entirely driven out of the non-safety use cases, and even in them many look for alternatives (although they are hard to find). It's a shame really, QNX has some really nice parts, but it's kind of being kept on almost-life-support and isn't getting the support it needs to flourish. QNX seems to have decided that they'll ride down the almost-captive audiences they have for a few decades and collect the money until then.
Safety use cases have always been its main target audience, the others were the niches from QNX point of view.
I don't really understand why not use it on desktop though (besides the fact there are not much relevant desktop apps available). According to my feel QNX 6 was by far the best OS I ever ran on my desktop. Fast as hell, ubreakably reliable, visually beautiful and featuring an awesome Visual RAD C++ app builder out of the box. Ok, there are not much apps and games - that's a wicked circle.

But what seems really weird to me is why do nuclear power plants and critical oil infrastructure (as hacked recently) use Windows when there is QNX.

> Believing virtualization always makes things slower is a mistake.

Well, virtualization does make everything slower.

It's just that the boot process ends up quite fast as the virtual machine usually has a much less (and simpler) hardware to initialize at boot, has a simpler BIOS/UEFI, and shorter if any power-on self test. A physical machine can be made to those specs - Intel has done <2s boot from power is applied till a graphical application is visible and fully interactive for automotive back in 2019.

> Windows XP always booted and worked a lot faster in a VirtualBox under Linux than it did directly on the same machine.

Then it could probably boot even faster under QEMU/KVM.

BeOS (Haiku's emulant) and QNX were close cousins and competitors at that time, both staking out territory in the high-performance RTOS space. IIRC QNX offered hard realtime guarantees that BeOS did not, but was more limited in what it supported. I gather it was more successful in scaling down to embedded devices, too; BeIA pulled a number of tricks to get its image sizes down, but was still targeting pretty fully-featured multimedia-capable devices.
What I really want to see ported to Haiku is Electron. I don't like Electron itself and feel like its non-native look&feel would pollute Haiku aesthetics, nevertheless Electron would open the doors to Visual Studio Code and Obsidian which are worth a lot.
Perhaps I would like to build a dedicated Haiku box.

What is the optimal hardware configuration to run Haiku on bare metal? I don't mean as cheap as possible, I mean as compatible as possible and also rather performant.

The release notes mention nVidia GeForce 6200 - GeForce Go 6400 graphics cards - are these the best for Haiku?

I run it on a x230 and am happy with the results.
How is sleep/hibernate/resume and powersaving/battery use in general?
There are power saving features like turning off individual CPU cores, but sleep/hibernate/resume is not implemented yet. Any help is welcome.
Intel integrated video tends to have the best success in my experience.
Nvidia support? Something like the old nv driver for X under Unix?
I have a Haiku installation here and it is having trouble upgrading to Beta 3. Anyone having trouble as well?

What I'm seeing are some package resolution errors. Things like haikuwebkit higher version wanting beta 3 (which is not yet installed), and giving me options to keep my old version or ignore it.

There is something about the text rendering in the screenshots that makes the GUI look 20 years old. What is it exactly? Anti-aliasing?
It looks like it's using a bitmap font, which always look odd compared to what we're using nowadays.
It's not using a bitmap font.