Haiku honoured in Linux Voice magazine

1

Haiku gets a favourable mention in this month’s (November 2015) Linux Voice magazine, placing first in their shoot-off of six “alternative” operating systems:

We're putting Haiku in first place this month as it's the project with the most potential to provide a first-rate alternative to Linux on the desktop. It needs some polish, more drivers, and above all more native applications, but when it's ready it will be a finely-tuned and well engineered platform especially suited to low-spec machines.

Haiku was mentioned (along with a screenshot) in the previous month’s issue as well, together with a quote from Axel about the new launch daemon.

2

Thanks for the advance warning. Linux voice opensources its issues after nine months so I guess we can read the whole thing around next August. But just out of interest, what were the other five OSs?

But I find it amusing that a Linux outfit speaks of alternative OSs. That makes us an alternative to an alternative. Meta-alternative? Alternative squared?

3
That makes us an alternative to an alternative.

Yep. As a reference point, the BSD family was specifically excluded from the competition as they weren’t alternative enough.

If I remember correctly the competing OSses were

  • AROS, a reimplementation of AmigaOS (and a spiritual sister of sorts, I suppose)
  • KalibriOS, written entirely in assembly language
  • Minix, the inspiration for Linux
  • Plan 9, the official successor to UNIX
  • RISC OS, the original operating system for ARM-based machines
4

I am finding this publication model quite interesting and, as far as I know, rather unique.

Those desiring to have the latest news need to be subscribers to the magazine while those desiring to have old news for references can get them for free and just need to be patient (and remember).

There is some analogy to the “freemium” model for software distribution.

5

It is rather exciting that Haiku can be considered an alternative operating system as relevant/significant as Minix…

One thing, KolibriOS is a fork of MenuetOS from its 32-bit source base.

The context of the fork appeared not to be amicable from what one can observe in various posts since it occurred.

On incidental consequence of the fork appears to have been the closing of the 64 bit MenuetOS source base. Also, KolibriOS has evolved on a divergent path resulting in a number of incompatibilities with MenuetOS (http://board.kolibrios.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2723).

I am hoping that such situation does not arise for Haiku.

6

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