kokito - Slashdot User

Submission + - Haiku Releases Official Alpha After 8 Years of Dev (haiku-os.org) 2

Submitted by

NiteMair

on Sunday September 13, 2009 @10:09PM

NiteMair writes: "The Haiku project has finally released an official R1 alpha after 8 years of development. This marks a significant milestone for the project, and it also debuts the first official/publicly available LiveCD ISO image that can be easily booted and used to install Haiku on x86 hardware. Haiku is a desktop operating system inspired by BeOS after Be, Inc. closed its doors in 2001. The project has remained true to the BeOS philosophy while integrating modern hardware support and features along the way."

Submission + - BeOS Lives: Haiku Impresses (osnews.com)

Submitted by

kokito

on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @06:16PM

kokito writes: "OSNews managing editor Thom Holwerda reviews Haiku, the open source successor of the Be operating system. According to the review, Haiku faithfully/successfully replicates the BeOS user experience and "personality", boasting very short boot times, the same recognizable but modernized GUI using antialiasing for fonts and all vector graphics as well as vector icons, a file system with support for metadata-based queries (OpenBFS) and support for the BeAPI, considered by some the cleanest programming API ever. The project has also recently released a native GCC 4.3.3 tool chain, clearing the way for bringing up-to-date ports of multi-platform apps such as Firefox and VLC, and making it easier to work on Haiku ports in general.

In spite of its pre-alpha status, Haiku seems to be pretty stable. If you would like to give it a try, nightly builds are available from the Haiku Files website, both as raw HDD and VMWare images. Or if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area, you could also take a peek at a Haiku demo during the upcoming Southern California Linux Expo (Feb. 21 & 22), where Haiku will be exhibiting in booth #4."

Comment Re:really a shame they're so stubborn (Score 1) 167

by kokito on Monday December 22, 2003 @12:38AM (#7783693) Attached to: Interview with OpenBeOS Leader Michael Phipps

BeOS is easy on the user in every aspect: installation, configuration, expansion, user interface, responsiveness, you name it. Admittedly, Linux desktop distributions have made strides in the right direction, but overall, BeOS still offers the best user experience on the desktop (this is my opinion, of course).

To me, and I am sure that many average desktop OS users would agree, being able to install new drivers with ease is part of that user experience. That Linus or kernel hackers do not care about making installation of third party drivers easier may be fine for them, but it does tell how little importance they place on the user experience.

Most users are not hackers, nor do they have the skills (or want) to configure their operating system using cryptic commands from a terminal window or editing obscure text files.

I think that BeOS fans and developers in general believe that the average desktop user deserves better. Many contribute and support the OBOS project because they think that even after more than two years of Be Inc. being defunct, OpenBeOS and the other BeOS incarnations (like Zeta) still have a very good shot at serving desktop users better than other operating systems (including Linux with the 2.6 kernel), as well as evolving into the future.

I guess this is the point that I was trying to make.

Koki

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