Recently a friend of mine tried Haiku and downloaded the alpha version 4.1,
He said it was fair.
I helped him download a nightly build.
My question is has anyone thought about updating the alpha version from 4.1
to 4.5 just put one the nightly builds that are stable as the alpha
In my opinion not every one who tries Haiku is gonna know how to download or gonna want to be bothered trying to download nightly build
There is a huge big notice on the download page telling people to try a nightly, and a convenient link to click on. I quote:
Alpha 4 is now almost 5 years old!
While we work on the last few blockers before a new release, you may want to try out a nightly/development build instead.
These images contain many new features that the alpha does not, such as a package manager, USB 3.0 support, official builds for x86_64, and many bug fixes and much improved hardware support. Please keep in mind that there may also be regressions and broken features in these builds which have not yet been identified or resolved, although they are generally quite stable (often more so than the alpha.)
If after all that, people still insist on downloading a piece of ancient history, well, that is for their own account.
If after all that, people still insist on downloading a piece of ancient history, well, that is for their own account.
Well, the question was if there’ll be a new Alpha, v4.5… 
The answer is no, no new alpha, but there’s work underway to release a beta.
The main hurdle is to get all the buildbots going, to create all the packages needed for a stable release. Read PulkoMandy’s monthly reports. There’s progress, but we’re not there yet.
How long till beta released
That’s the $10,000 question… 
I’d be a bit disappointed if it didn’t come this year, to be honest. Though to me it’s more a PR thing. Personally, I’m happy using nightly images.
Let’s just wait for the beta guys. Let’s keep focused.
You’re still naive 
No I am not I am saying don’t get side ytracked with getting an alpha out. Wait for the beta.
So far, my experience with the nightly builds shows it being less stable than Haiku Alpha 4.1. I usually experience hard lockups with the nightly build(s) after about 15 or so minutes of use. I would have SoundPlay streaming internet radio while also running Vision. Sometimes it’ll lose its network connection, requiring a reboot to recover. I don’t experience those things with Haiku Alpha 4.1.
In short, I highly recommend a stability comparison test between the aging Haiku Alpha 4.1 and the chosen RC for Haiku Beta 1. No need for regressions in this area.
Have you already stored these problems in the BUGTracker? If not then you should do this absolutely, especially if your hardware with the old alpha 4.1 better ran.
For my part, I can not find such a behavior of Haiku. It runs very well. I’m missing only certain things to use it for the everyday use and exchange of data with friends.
Haiku is a system running stable at alpha release, thats funny i think.
You can not compare the alpha 4.1 with today’s versions, since these can not be more different. With the introduction of the package management has changed so much in the system that this is impossible.
lelldorin,
I really recommend that you run the old Haiku Alpha 4.1 alongside Haiku nightly builds and see for yourself. Make sure you’re multitasking like streaming Internet Radio while being logged into IRC via Vision while hacking away on your newest application in Pe. I use both side by side off and on and it doesn’t take too long before the Haiku nightly install locks up or just loses the network connection requiring a reboot. Now I’m bumming my Haiku installs on VirtualBox with both VMs using the same configuration/setup. I’ve also seen issues with multiple CPUs/cores, but both have been suffering though I think that the Haiku nightly is more stable in that regard but still an issue.
I could open bugs, but they’d probably be frowned upon with an even mention of Haiku Alpha. I really wish the project would seriously consider doing a formal beta testing cycle before releasing Haiku Beta 1 to the general public for consumption and I would certainly contribute to that endeavor as long as the Haiku core developers are serious about debugging and fixing bugs during such a test cycle.
Anyway… looking forward to Haiku Beta 1 when she’s finally ready
DCatt
Not quite!
What we are not interested in is bug reports for things that works in the nightly, but not in the alpha. If your problems are in the opposite direction, then it is quite interesting and should be invesigated.
In the case of network problems, make sure you are not using the default network interface in virtual machines (PC-Net III), that driver is known to be broken on our side. The other alternatives are usually better.
We also noticed that in virtual machines, emulating a single core CPU is usually faster than emulating multiple cores, so you can safely stick to that. It is of course different on real hardware.
We will have a test phase before releaseing beta1 in the wild, but we rely a lot on people testing the nightlies and submitting bug reports. So, please do that. Don’t wait for some official announcement or I don’t know what. Run your tests, report problems as you find them, and if you think that is not enough, organize other people for a more formal testing process. Your help would be very welcome!
PulkoMandy,
I did switch the network adapter type selection in VirtualBox for my Haiku Nightly VM and seems to have made things more stable. I haven’t really pushed that install too hard yet, but preliminary tests show it’s an improvement. It’s interesting that my Haiku Alpha 4.1 VM doesn’t experience the stability issues using the same network adapter type (hence PCnet-FAST III (NAT)).
-DCatt
@dcatt Haiku uses mostly FreeBSD network drivers, see https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/10088 for more information. Also this bug on VirtualBox Bugtracker recommends using E1000 emulation on FreeBSD https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/861
we should definitely implement the Virtio network driver for a better experience on VirtualBox.