32 vs 64 bit OS

21

I’ve read all the replies on this topic that i created and many of you have quite good opinions. i use 64 bit OSes (win7 and linux) and I do program and use as gaming platform and do normal end users things (web, audiovisual viewing and etc…). I can say that from my relatives experiences they do use more softwares on a 64 bit OS than they used on a 32 bit, specially since the amount of RAM went UP. Most of my family members are Doctors… and most of them use tons of heavy pictures files within the MS office and/or OpenOffice. Surely 64 bit versions of those softwares are quicker than its 32 bit versions.

AFAIK, Beos was created as a truly multimedia purpose operating system (meaning gaming, audio engineering, 3D modeling and what not). Those features are quite interesting and had most fun having with 12x movie running at the same time on haiku and not having “lag” when opening some other softwares…

Now here is a question that might be stupid: Why Haiku has BeOS app compatibility? Is it for testing purpose? Can’t we compile those apps with the new gcc 4.x port?

22

[quote=AndrewZ]"and most of them use tons of heavy pictures files within the MS office and/or OpenOffice. Surely 64 bit versions of those softwares are quicker than its 32 bit versions."
Yes and no. Microsoft Office is a very complicated application. When you create an MS document Office creates and caches a large number of data structures to support the document, in order to make the whole thing work faster. And yes you can link and embed all sorts of media files, which use other applications for processing. A 100 page Word 2010 document with lots of screen shots, macros, fonts, videos, embedded objects, can use 1 GB. It will use less RAM if you have less RAM but then it will page the disk.

Currently there exists nothing like MS Office on Haiku. Gobe Productive, KOffice, Open Office are possibilities but don’t run yet.

Does Haiku really need more than 4 GB RAM when these are available? I would guess eventually but not in the near term. I run Windows 7 64bit with Office 2010 and 4 GB is enough RAM for me right now for my usage patterns.

"Why Haiku has BeOS app compatibility? Is it for testing purpose? Can’t we compile those apps with the new gcc 4.x port?"
Do you really want an OS with no applications at all?? You need at least some for testing purposes. Many classic BeOS apps do not have source code available. Also, the core Haiku developers have put their emphasis on the OS, leaving apps for later. So we have mostly classic BeOS apps. We hope this will change as more people discover Haiku and start writing Haiku applications.[/quote]

I hate to say this but maybe a WINE port would be worth the effort. it would come at a peformance penalty but it would solve some of the application issues as far as getting people to use the OS.

But thats a massive undertaking.

23

Which application issues?

I am suspicious about how easy it is to port WINE. Haiku is POSIX compliant but has a completely different kernel that Linux. And what window system is WINE coded to? What does WINE expect?

Another issue using WINE is the same issue as using X, QT, KDE, or OpenOffice. These look the same on all platforms. So Haiku loses its identity. Then there iss nothing to differentiate it from Linux. And the main thing that differentiates Haiku from Linux is the user interface.

I think having 3rd party tools are good for options, but not the whole solution.

24

[quote=AndrewZ]Which application issues?

I am suspicious about how easy it is to port WINE. Haiku is POSIX compliant but has a completely different kernel that Linux. And what window system is WINE coded to? What does WINE expect?

Another issue using WINE is the same issue as using X, QT, KDE, or OpenOffice. These look the same on all platforms. So Haiku loses its identity. Then there iss nothing to differentiate it from Linux. And the main thing that differentiates Haiku from Linux is the user interface.

I think having 3rd party tools are good for options, but not the whole solution.[/quote]

I don’t disagree with your statement about identity. That siad the reason windows has been so sucessful is that they pretty much keep backwards compatability. Newer version are a bit different in this regard but usually a relatviely easy to impement tweaks by application developers get most apps running on WIN anything for the most part.with exceptions of course. The truth is the reason microsoft dominates is becuase of this. A upgrade "aside from vista and win 7 " essentially almost always used to keep apps functioning.win 95 win 98 win 3.1 and win nt and win xp are all fiarly backwards complaint.

that chicken and egg problem. alot of people aren’t so tied to a OS as they are applications. If they can’t run there apps they have no reason to change. Web browsers aside. Those are fiarly generic and so long as the web works. Most do not care. How many users ever really use a non MS supplied browser anyways on windows ??? its not that big despite the growth of firefox.

supporting windows applications “if haiku aism to be more then a novelty and hobby and developers OS” should be one of those big things that gets done. However that would be best implemented. You can’t expect app developers to run to your door unless they have a user base that can generate revenue. So Haiku has to provide them with those solutions or be stuck in the fray. The other isue will be if haiku does gain market presences what will be done about DRM. I could see media production companies targeting Hiaku becuase of the glaring lack of data security in regards to IP and copyrighted music and entertainment works. These folks have alot more money then the entire open source community put together.

BTW I agree moving wine would be massive.

I’d still like to see haiku performance with all of the modern instruction sets in use. I’d bet those performance discrepencys I have tested would pretty much vanish if newer more powerful instructions were used. Its about the only thing x86 has going for it.

Personally I wouldn;t worry abotu differentiating from linux. In fact I wouldn’t try to even associate to linux. Linux is aweful and the negative spin on its use as a desktop OS has sealed its fate. BTW its not the appearance of linux. Its the learning curve to use it and the fact that alot of stuff nevers works right that is the huge turnoff.

I would also close the distrobution guidlines to official haiku inc releases only. If this thing does finally luanch to a big audience you don’t want 47 bajjillion distros all with wierd problems popping up tarnishing the system. Keep it open source but make it so that all distrobutions are Haiku inc only. All it takes is one bad impression to turn off 1 users who will in effect tell 100 friends.

thats my 0.02

25

I personally would be interested in seeing a skeleton outline of requirements needed to port WINE to Haiku. This could be done as an exercise without committing lots of resources.

I would like to point out that Mac OSX is not backward compatible but is also successful :slight_smile:
I would state that there are many, many apps that break with each Windows release. Lots of device drivers and games that use performance libs. This is where VMWare, Virtual PC, QEMU come in.

"I’d still like to see haiku performance with all of the modern instruction sets in use. I’d bet those performance discrepencys I have tested would pretty much vanish if newer more powerful instructions were used. Its about the only thing x86 has going for it."
Can you give examples of modern instructions? Is this MMX/SSE?

My big concern is having the right mix of Haiku native applications for people to use, be productive, and be happy. We need an Office productivity package. We need 3D support. We need acclerated video cards. We need some Haiku eye candy applications. We need Teapot 2.0 :slight_smile:

26 
 I have no idea how big of a job porting WINE would be. One of the biggest obstacles IIRC is that it is designed to run with the Xwindow system. Could cuase some problems there. 

Yes but, MacOsX has a backwards compatability mode that is like a virtual machine IIRC.

Yes MMX,SSE 1,2,3,4,5 AVX the 64b stuff etc etc etc. Some of these instructions offer some very powerful features that enhacne performance greatly. Look up the ICC “intel Code compiler” debacle with AMD cpus code path blocks to see how drastic it can be.

I agree on native apps, the big killer isn’t 3d or gaming “its a small market in reality” multimedia “which is pretty good right now” is the biggest.

As I see it

Flash “improving gnash” and making it work with webpositive along with better java support and html5 wrap up that area.

aside from some UI stuff the current email client works fine with the exception of the setup being kind of difficult.

Most of the native apps adress the native app issues.BTW most of them are excelent aside from some gui clunkyness that should be relatively easy to adress.

Package management is still a sore spot.

Its the non native stuff, quikbooks,MSoffice, other data systems etc that pose the biggest challenge. The question is whats easier and quicker. Dirty wine port that makes these apps useable of writing new apps that are as capable.

I really don’t know the answer to that question.

the only other thing that could be done that would be a tremendous time saver in regards to 3d. Make haiku support windows gaphics drivers. Looking at the state of gallium etc on linux. Windows has the edge in framerate and performance in gaming. the reason is that 995 of the effort of writing a good driver is put into MS product, not linux which is a small user market share.

sorry for the book. sort of 4 topics in one thread.

[quote=AndrewZ]I personally would be interested in seeing a skeleton outline of requirements needed to port WINE to Haiku. This could be done as an exercise without committing lots of resources.

I would like to point out that Mac OSX is not backward compatible but is also successful :slight_smile:
I would state that there are many, many apps that break with each Windows release. Lots of device drivers and games that use performance libs. This is where VMWare, Virtual PC, QEMU come in.

"I’d still like to see haiku performance with all of the modern instruction sets in use. I’d bet those performance discrepencys I have tested would pretty much vanish if newer more powerful instructions were used. Its about the only thing x86 has going for it."
Can you give examples of modern instructions? Is this MMX/SSE?

My big concern is having the right mix of Haiku native applications for people to use, be productive, and be happy. We need an Office productivity package. We need 3D support. We need acclerated video cards. We need some Haiku eye candy applications. We need Teapot 2.0 :-)[/quote]

27

"and most of them use tons of heavy pictures files within the MS office and/or OpenOffice. Surely 64 bit versions of those softwares are quicker than its 32 bit versions."
Yes and no. Microsoft Office is a very complicated application. When you create an MS document Office creates and caches a large number of data structures to support the document, in order to make the whole thing work faster. And yes you can link and embed all sorts of media files, which use other applications for processing. A 100 page Word 2010 document with lots of screen shots, macros, fonts, videos, embedded objects, can use 1 GB. It will use less RAM if you have less RAM but then it will page the disk.

Currently there exists nothing like MS Office on Haiku. Gobe Productive, KOffice, Open Office are possibilities but don’t run yet.

Does Haiku really need more than 4 GB RAM when these are available? I would guess eventually but not in the near term. I run Windows 7 64bit with Office 2010 and 4 GB is enough RAM for me right now for my usage patterns.

"Why Haiku has BeOS app compatibility? Is it for testing purpose? Can’t we compile those apps with the new gcc 4.x port?"
Do you really want an OS with no applications at all?? You need at least some for testing purposes. Many classic BeOS apps do not have source code available. Also, the core Haiku developers have put their emphasis on the OS, leaving apps for later. So we have mostly classic BeOS apps. We hope this will change as more people discover Haiku and start writing Haiku applications.

28

Thanks AndrewZ!