This report covers hrev59431 through hrev59569.
The biggest news this month is probably all the work that’s been done on support for ARM64, largely thanks to contributors smrobtzz and SED4906!
Awesome job to everyone involved!
Nice work all!
Great work, thanks to the whole team and the new contributors! 
Thanks for the great work, looking forward to beta 6, to arm and risc-v and all the other good stuff
First, congratulations to the team on solid progress, and I note that much of the work on ARM was undertaken by just two people, meaning that most people were presumably working on core 64-bit Haiku. Which is as it should be.
As Pulkomandy has often pointed out, volunteer developers cannot be told what they will work on, so that leaves only Waddlesplash to focus on what are presumably less popular or easy but still vital issues.
No doubt somebody somewhere has enumerated the key points that Waddlesplash has been asked to focus on. However, I don’t recall seeing a document where this is spelt out.
We will all have our own ideas about which issues are most crucial to achieve Haiku’s primary objective - which is presumably that for most people in the world Haiku will become a valid alternative to Windows and its competitors.
So I wonder if it would be possible either to point me to the document that spells out Waddlesplash’s key tasks, or else to construct one.
And then, the monthly activity report could and should always include comment on these specific areas.
None of this constitutes a critiscism of Waddlesplash or the team. It’s really just a call for greater focus and transparency.
And for what it’s worth, my list of key objectives would be:
Dual/multi-screen capablity
A fully working native web-browser (Webpositive)
A fully working Windows emulator. Are there any workable alternatives to WINE?
Nothing is helped if waddlesplash is working on areas he is not suited for, just because they are deemed important by me or others. I think he is doing a great job. Since i (and probably many others) can not evaluate how complicated it is to implement some specific feature in my mind this would not add much transparency. The Report does include the things waddlesplash worked on.
There are reports about the ongoing development of webpositive in the reports, too.
Since new needed functionality, bugs etc arise all the time, i think a fixed document would be more hinderance than usefull, permanent discussiuns about what poor waddlesplash should concentrate on would probably burn him out.
Just my 2 cents on this
PS
I would love dual/multiple screen support, i listed it as one of my favourite feature multiple times, likewise a better webpositive.
There is no alternative to wine (which probably took many times the developer resources of haiku) other than win itself running on virtualisation (is there any bhyve progress on haiku?)
That’s a very good point.
As I said, my comments were in no way intended as criticism. Nonetheless, all successful projects owe their success to being properly focussed (in addition to other things, of course).
This seems an odd thing to have as “key objective” for an alternative OS.
Wish for an updated/improved WINE port? sure, we all have wishes… but this certainly falls outside of what should be expected from core Haiku 
.
Dual/multi monitor would be sweet though! 
(still, I rather have the equivalent to Linux’s acpi_cpufreq driver, so we don’t waste so much power on older devices, first).
It’s not odd at all.
Many people depend for their livelihoods on using specialist software that is only available for Windows (or sometimes Mac).
Thirty years ago no graphic designer or person in related fields would look at a PC. All the good graphics software was only available on the Mac.
All that has changed now of course, but Mac held sway inn this area for a long time.
In my case I have an accounting program that is only available for Windows, and a number of utility programs that I would prefer not to do without.
If WINE worked properly these problems would go away.
But until WINE works properly Haiku will not be a credible alternative to Windows for a great many people.
Not sure if you understand my point… Do you ask Linus Torvald (or the the Linux foundation) to write a Windows emulator instead (or along side) of the Linux kernel?
You should either ask WINE folks to better support Haiku (good luck there!), or otherwise try some way to help improve the HaikuPorts’ recipe for WINE.
Haiku’s objective is in no way, shape or form, to be a platform for running Windows applications. If at some point it can be such a thing… Great! Would be a nice thing to have, for sure.
Most home office productivity software for Windows is now cloud-based web browser accessible. A person can also run a Windows VM and not need WINE - or get more into commercially provided “SoftPC” products.
Also, did we forget about macOS/Amiga/Steam/etc applications?!?.
These are just distractions from true core OS development. Project scope creeping
All for the greater good of the project and distribution - but works against the project overall like a splinter cell
Watch most of the Haiku/BeOS videos. Most users want to install and boot the OS to see the Haiku desktop. For most users, that is the hardest part.
Native browser? Many users don’t remember Netscape versus MSIE days. Pros and cons - learned lessons from that time… like going to Mars…
..
A gentle note that WebPositive should not be a blocker for Beta 6. Although it’s the bundled browser, no one should use it. As a web developer, WebPositive can’t do most of the things that I need it to do. It doesn’t doesn’t support the Web Audio API, doesn’t handle gradients in SVG, and doesn’t support the foreignObject element in SVG.
On 32-bit Haiku, there’s GNOME Web, which does support Web Audio, SVG gradients, and embedding foreignObjects in SVG. On 64-bit, you also have Iceweasel, which has full support as well.
Realistically, unless WebPositive is going to be a full Haiku port of Chrome or Firefox, it’s just there so that you have a browser until you can install a better one. Don’t delay a new Haiku release over that!
WebPositive is based on Apple WebKit,the same core that GNOME Web is built on.
Everything that works in GNOME Web but not in WebPositive is either due to WebPositive still relying on the older WebKitLegacy API (switching to WebKit 2 is work in progress and making good improvements) or due to missing/incomplete bindings between WebKit and the Haiku API.
This means all of this can (and hopefully will) be fixed in the future,without having to completely switch out the rendering engine to Gecko (Firefox).
It’s nice that we have GNOME Web and some Firefox-based browsers now to get stuff done that currently wouldn’t be possible in WebPositive,but you clearly notice that they arent native software (graphical glitches,different design,less integration with the OS) and I think that working on a native browser is worth the bigger work.
Also,Haiku Beta6 will not be blocked until WebPositive can do everything that Firefox does,but only until regressions are fixed (stuff that worked in Beta5 but somehow got broken).
Those are wonderful aspirations and I’m sure that WebPositive will be a great browser in a few years. I know that it wasn’t stated that Beta 6 would be blocked until WebPositive has parity with Firefox. I’m saying that WebPositive shouldn’t be a blocker at all because it’s not currently a critical component of the OS. If you’re going to have to install GNOME Web or Iceweasel anyway, then a buggy WebPositive is something that can be fixed later.
Thanks for entertaining me –
seems it was very long time before you were reading the Haiku FAQ page .. HERE YOU ARE :
Haiku is a fast, efficient, easy to use and lean open source operating system inspired by the BeOS that specifically targets personal computing. It is also the name of the project that develops and promotes Haiku the operating system.
and also
Haiku is named after the classical three-line Japanese poetry form. Haiku poetry is known for its quiet power, elegance, and simplicity - among the core qualities of BeOS which we aim to recreate in Haiku. BeOS included some haiku in its user interface, in the form of network error messages displayed by its web browser. A list of most of the haikus is available at http://8325.org/haiku.
Sites you are seeking
From your path they are fleeing
Their winter has come.
OpenBeOS was eventually renamed to Haiku to avoid trademark conflicts. The name “Haiku” got the most votes in a public poll in late 2002. Competing candidates were: Auros, Begin, Dysis, Firebox, Firefly, Forge, Indigo, Infinity, Jaffa, Mantis, Menlo, Nemo, Nova, Terra.
and so on …
Nowhere in the answers I see a primary goal to have a Haiku open source operating system that would be finally a Windows alternative …
just saw
–> BeOS
–> personal computing
–> easy to use
–> elegance
–> simplicity, etc.
So this Windows/WINE stuff can come from another source or WISH -
As you rightly stated Web+ is the default web browser included with the OS. That means for sure it should be a blocker for a beta release if it has serious bugs. Regardless if you think people should use it or not.
Ahoy devs and new contributors !
Thank you for your work in this busy month ! 
or 
Generally I’m really satisfied with improvements/fixes done in this period - I hope you enjoyed these completions as well - 
Kind regards,
Gotta pick your battles when it comes to an open source OS. “One of the bundled programs still has some bugs.” “Does everyone use it?” “No, almost everyone installs something else.” “Then the next release depends on it!”
Ahoy @waddlesplash
Is that possible to update
waddlesplash implemented support for automatic cleanup of old package states in the Package Kit, and made pkgman offer to do this after all installs, updates, or uninstalls.
to have the default answer no to this offer ?
I launched install-wifi-firmwares.sh in Haiku instance on a Dell Precision M6400 machine with a Haiku Nightly instance where I did not want to delete any installations.
There the Haiku I updated the latest just before I launched the script in Terminal, and the track mouse and touchpad acted strangely as I could click only with tapping …
and I do not know if this question asks for yes in the new script or automatically executes the default settings or somehow I answered yes with the faulty input devices when I tried to switch back to Terminal … but the script executed and the offered deletion was executed there.
However besides this event above .. I would also like to have selected the no answer by default !
Now the /boot partition only for the OS and apps, and have a plenty to store previous statuses. If someone really wants to delete/purge .. they should actively select that scenario.
Thanks for consideration -