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Haiku's Window Manager 37

Posted by Hemos from the cool-beans dept.
Professor Cool Linux writes "From IsComputerOn: Adi, over at DarkWyrm's page, has posted a progress status of Haiku's window manager, and the good news is that it's almost complete. They have, for example, support for normal, floating app/subset/all and model app/subset/all windows, as well as workspace support. All that's left are smaller things like not allowing windows to be moved or resized and focus follow mouse (among a few others) remain to be implemented still. But along with the status report, Adi was kind enough to post a plethora of screenshots, showing many examples of how the window manager is working. Full report and the screenshots."
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Haiku's Window Manager More

Haiku's Window Manager

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  • Not impressive (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sofar ( 317980 )

    mod me troll but I fail to see what's so impressive about this. Anyone care to explain?
    • I was going to ask the same thing.

      Do we need a /. post for every project on sourceforge?

    • Welcome the BE (Score:5, Insightful)

      by oboylet ( 660310 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @09:05AM (#12542315)
      It's not impressive. There's no interesting modern eye candy a la Expose or Kompose, etc. Does Haiku's window manager offer anything other than win 95-era usability? Nope.

      It's irrational Be-worship. It's rampant in some corners of the internet. We're usually spared from it here, but not always.

      This is pure OSNews.com fodder.

      News for nerds maybe ... hardly stuff that matters.

      • Re:Welcome the BE (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Nutcase ( 86887 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @09:52AM (#12542805) Homepage Journal
        Spoken like someone who has never actually used BeOS's interface. Good Show.

        Anyone who HAS used the interface would realize its incredibly internally consistent, it is faster than just about anything out there at the moment, and that many of it's features are just now starting to be replicated by its competitors (i.e. I was using "spotlight" in 1999 on a BeBox.)

        Sure, it doesn't have the drop shadows (yet). But I have yet to see a drop shadow help me work faster. And this UI doesn't need an accelerated video card to work.

        The real value of this post is showing how far the haiku project has come. This is a concrete demonstration of core technologies being replaced in an end-user recognizable manner. This isn't a prefs panel, or a terminal based booting kernel screenshot. It's something BeOS users (and former-users) can see and realize that the haiku project isn't a pipe dream... it is happening, and it is working. One day (in the hopefully near future) there will be a fully open source BeOS. Thats when it gets really interesting.

        • Re:Welcome the BE (Score:3, Interesting)

          by oboylet ( 660310 )
          Spoken like a true fanboy.

          I played with BeOS in 99. Admittedly not extensively. But I did give the free edition a whirl. Sure there was cool stuff there to see, but your assumption that I never actually used it is pretty arrogant, don't you think?

          I was rooting for Be back in the day, too. I thought the BeBox was one amazingly cool little machine. And if the management at Be hadn't been so borish, they might have been bought out by Apple in the end. Too bad they didn't take the deal that was offe

          • Re:Welcome the BE (Score:3, Informative)

            by Nutcase ( 86887 )
            Spoken like a true fanboy.

            Not quite. I was a fan back in the day. Ran BeOS while at university (dual boot as needed) and enjoyed it. Now I run mac, windows, and am working on linux from scratch with a ubuntu base. I haven't run BeOS in years, and don't have a box that boots it.

            I played with BeOS in 99. Admittedly not extensively. But I did give the free edition a whirl. Sure there was cool stuff there to see, but your assumption that I never actually used it is pretty arrogant, don't you think?

            You gav
        • Anyone who HAS used the interface would realize its incredibly internally consistent, it is faster than just about anything out there at the moment,

          It's not hard to be "internally consistent" if an OS has hardly any users and hardly any applications.

          and that many of it's features are just now starting to be replicated by its competitors (i.e. I was using "spotlight" in 1999 on a BeBox.)

          You make it sound as if BeOS actually innovated; it did not. Neither its file system, nor its interface, nor its arc

    • Re:Not impressive (Score:3, Insightful)

      by FidelCatsro ( 861135 )
      Well , its an open implementation of the beOS windows manager for haiku which has steadily been moving forward for the past while.
      I feel the error was in focusing on the window manager alone , though for those with intrest in haiku this is big news.

      It means we are one step closer to having a beOS-alike which is both free and open

      Personaly i am not that big a fan of BeOS but its still intresting to see how the project is progressing. If haiku delivers all of its goals it will make a nice easy alternative d

  • ok, the point being? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by override11 ( 516715 ) <cpeterson@gts.gaineycorp.com> on Monday May 16, 2005 @09:03AM (#12542299) Homepage
    This looks almost exactly like any other window manager... only its not complete. I assume when it IS complete, it will look completely the same as another one? Isnt this what makes Linux so hard to work with some times, is that code has to be 'ported' to different window managers? Why dont these projects just work together and make one really good window manager instead of several 'pretty' good ones?

    • Re:ok, the point being? (Score:3, Informative)

      by PinkX ( 607183 )
      Except that this is not a window manager for Linux/X11. It's a window manager for OpenBeOs which follows closely the BeBook specifications for the behaviour of such a program, which itself is just a part of the BeOS application server ('app_server').

      What makes this so interesting is that it doesn't share any portion of code with the original BeOS WM, instead it's a full reimplementation of it from scratch (as most of the rest of the OpenBeOs project).

    • Isnt this what makes Linux so hard to work with some times, is that code has to be 'ported' to different window managers?

      No. You can run the same apps in WindowMaker, IceWM, Gnome, KDE, and so on. No porting required. This is well known, and the fact that you've been modded up just shows that Slashdot is no longer a nerd site. Why do you come here anyway?

      This windowmanager, however, isn't for X11 and Linux, it's for Haiku, the BeOS clone. So in this case, X11 apps would need porting to BeOS to be used t

    • Re:ok, the point being? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @09:35AM (#12542628) Journal
      Isnt this what makes Linux so hard to work with some times, is that code has to be 'ported' to different window managers?

      To answer your question more politely than the other guy did -- no, with some very minor exceptions, all applications can be run in any window manager. You're thinking of graphics toolkits (like the Qt and Gtk toolikts underlying KDE and GNOME), or maybe the communications mechanisms of desktop applications, but the real "window managers" don't have those issues.

      Anyway, as the angry guy pointed out, the news here is that this is a Be-compliant WM for OpenBeOS. It has nothing to do with Linux.

    • Besides the fact that it is a window manager for BeOS, are you going to agree with me on exactly what makes a "really good window manager"?. Will you be lock step with me in every little nuance and minor feature? Will you absolutly agree with me on everything that should not be included in this ultimate window manager? No? Ok, now you know why there won't ever be "the one window manager". Until you are willing to give up all of your own personal opinions and blindly follow someone else, whom you have never
    • This looks almost exactly like any other window manager... only its not complete. I assume when it IS complete, it will look completely the same as another one? Isnt this what makes Linux so hard to work with some times, is that code has to be 'ported' to different window managers? Why dont these projects just work together and make one really good window manager instead of several 'pretty' good ones?

      This isn't Linux. Haiku's a BeOS reimplementation. Having a working window manager is a major milestone to

  • Bugs... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Apiakun ( 589521 ) <tikora AT gmail DOT com> on Monday May 16, 2005 @09:12AM (#12542376)

    I can't tell if he's trying to be humorous, or not. From his site:

    "only small stuff like not allowing windows to be moved or resized ... remain to be implemented"

    That's small stuff?

    • Re:Bugs... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by michaelarnauts ( 876754 )
      he said "not", so all windows can be resized and moved, but he has to implement is so that some can't.

    • Re:Bugs... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by qbwiz ( 87077 ) *
      I think the problem is that it lets every window move or be resized, whereas some want to disallow it. Those windows are a pretty small minority, though, so it isn't much of a problem. At least, that's the way I interpret it.

  • It would have been nice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @09:23AM (#12542504) Homepage Journal
    It would have been nice if the article had some background information on Haiku - what it was, why they aren't using a window manager that already has the features they just implemented, and so on.

    Even if the story submitter did not include such information, would it have been so hard for the *cough*editor*cough* to have added that information at the end of the post?

    Or was the idea of adding simple information (as opposed to inflammatory commentary) unappealing to the *cough*editors*cough*?
  • What is this? Why should I care? News for nerds, stuff that matters. So, why does it matter? I've never heard of this, so by itself "hey look, we've implimented the most basic window manager possible" isnt all that impressive. Are they doing this on a toaster or something?
    I implimented rollups in my window manager a few months ago, should I post a slashdot story about it?
  • It's like every other windows manager out there... but more sucky out of the box!
    • icewm, gnome or KDE.

      That covers basically all the useful WMs out there.

      Icewm is very light, fast and works well. It's good for memory constrained devices [laptops, media boxes, etc].

      Gnome is larger but more "gui user" friendly. Useful for desktops/laptops.

      KDE is larger still but essentially wraps the entire desktop in a nice shiny GUI [it's filemanager is way better than Nautilus for example].

      All the other WMs out there are rehashes of the same.

      Tom
  • If building upon existing work and developing further is the aim of software development, why does Haiku matter? FVWM is another such futile window manager... and we all know what that 'F' could (and possibly does) stand for.

  • hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GypC ( 7592 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @10:32AM (#12543252) Homepage Journal
    Wow. I haven't been to Slashdot much in the last few months. The idiotic responses to this article and their subsequent positive moderations begs the question: Where did all the nerds go?

    • Are you ready? (Score:3, Funny)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      Same over at K5.

      Reports are filtering in from all over the world of network ops centers being suddenly bereft of key personnel; development workstations left mysteriously unmanned in the middle of pair coding sessions, tech support calls suddenly going silent. Vending machine candy and soda sales have crashed, and coffee futures are set to take a major tumble.

      All of which raises the question:

      Are you ready... for the Rupture?

  • linux.slashdot.org (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tveidt ( 726264 )
    Was there a need to post this on linux.slashdot.org? Just to reduce the general confusion. Can't even blame people for not RTFA, because neither the first nor the 2nd link mention anything about BeOS.
  • haiku looks cool
    seems like potential is there
    FOR ME TO POOP ON

  • Linux? (Score:1)

    by berck ( 60937 )
    How does Haiku's window manager have ANYTHING to do with Linux at all? Hello?

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