Hi. Just wanted to tell you my appreciation of Haiku, I just tried Alpha 4 on VirtualBox. It is very pleasant to use and although it may not be yet as capable as, say Windows, in my opinion it is going the right direction and already surpasses Linux. Unlike Linux it feels solid, like a single piece and works fast. Even under VM it feels better than a native Linux install for me. And although what is there may not be the highest tech of today, again unlike Linux, it feels polished for what it is and feels like it was done with love and care, not to fight the evil proprietary software. Keep up the good work.
Amen to that 
I’m another very happy Haiku user. I want to send a big “Thak You” to every developer involved in the project.
I’m using Haiku in a desktop PC, as a second S.O.; and in a Dell notebook, as the main S.O. In both cases, Haiku runs well, without any serious issues.
I am just starting with Haiku, and it really stands out from anything else I’ve used.
The first thing I noticed is that it is small and light weight. To put it to the real test, I installed it on an old laptop I have that is an absolute dog, P3/850MHz/384Mb (for whatever reason, this hardware doesn’t get along with ANYTHING) and right out of the box it worked well and it was FAST!
I’ve been looking for a good alternative to Windows for a very long time, and I’m starting to think Linux is a dry hole. As much as I like linux, as the OP stated, it doesn’t feel solid. There’s just no such thing as a flawless linux install for general purpose use. They come close if you’re just doing one thing on a computer, but for something to use every day linux just feels so cheap because one day certain things work, but the next day they don’t. That feeling of forever burning in configuration file hell… etc… etc… It’s one big joke and not a good one.
I hope to see Haiku mature in to a much more mainstream operating system because it feels like Windows NT, solid, stable, useful. I’ve never gotten a new OS up and running so fast – USB and Ethernet all worked the first time! I have a lot of hope for this system and I look forward to seeing it develop.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the development and I sincerely hope that you continue working on the operating system of tomorrow and leave behind the cookie-cutter junk that occupies electronics store shelves today.
While I don’t believe Linux is to be underestimated (I use it on my phone and desktop on a daily basis), Haiku does have a place in this world. But, I can’t find it, even though I’d love to. Its a nice farewell to closed-source, standardized software, but I’m skeptical how far it will go past the beta stage. Its been over a decade already, I wonder whether it’ll even make it there at all.
It’s just better, snappier [Open Source] desktop experience than current “Desktop Linux” distributions, especially on lower-end machines. Potentially, with a lot of active devs, even aiming at OS X throne with a non-proprietary twist. The fact, that BeOS and now Haiku is focused on desktop / personal computing and multimedia area makes it a valid choice. Yes, it needs more developers and hardware support (at least on par with Linux). I’d like to see more native applications and Haiku API evolving on it’s own in R2, but for now I can use it on my laptop with some neat and useful Qt applications, available today.
Some companies spent millions trying to make “multimedia desktop OS” out of GNU/Linux, but even looking at the most user-friendly Linux distributions, it still lacks that coherence, when pieces and parts of the system glued together. It’s not a failed attempt, but something just isn’t right. Haiku (and BeOS back in the day) has that warm and cozy “all-in-house” feel. Well, BeOS really was developed in-house from scratch by Be Inc. engineers. That’s why it feels so good, I guess.
Even under VM it feels better than a native Linux install for me.
I don’t know what’s your definition of “better”, but in my book Linux is a proven, stable and fast operating system kernel that scales exceptionally well from embedded devices and smartphones to mainframes. Haiku on the other hand is a hobby operating system including kernel, userland, and GUI in a rather buggy alpha state.
The Haiku kernel is by far not as capable as Linux. It lacks the hardware support of Linux, nor can it compete with its stability or speed. It will never achieve feature parity with Linux–just compare the amount of developers: Linux has multiple orders of magnitude more developers, many of them working for big international companies. I don’t know where you got the idea that Linux is about “fight[ing] the evil proprietary software”.
What Haiku does better than Linux distributions is that it really integrates software and provides a coherent user interface and APIs on top of it, while Linux distros just throw together a bunch of software without any concept visible to users or developers. I think the amount of work done by the Haiku project is awsome.
Still, it would be foolish to believe that Haiku could provide a viable alternative for a stable day to day operating system in the near future. Just think of the amount of hardware drivers missing. The Video 4 Linux project alone provides drivers for literally hundreds of webcams, TV cards, and the like.
IMHO Haiku could have benefited very much from building on what Linux provides instead of writing a kernel more or less from scratch.
Currently desktop environments on Linux often feel laggy because of the X server. I guess this will change with its upcoming demise. But that’s just my 2¢.
how far it will go past the beta stage
Well, years ago (many years) I bought a Be/os R5…
Windows was boring, Linux was “not ready for desktop”, Apple was an expensive niche, Amiga was dying, OS/2 died before becoming alive…
In that scenario, Be/os was a good product.
And still now it is.
Regards
Luciano
Haiku IS nice. Like the BeOS, it is what it is. I don’t really know what it is, but I like it anyway.
The only beef I have with it is that all the regulars at BeShare drifted away. I had some serious fun chatting on BeShare.
Owell…
1.Linux
2. BSD
3. Openindiana
4 Hurd
5 Haiku
6 React OS
yeah do I have to say any more.
If you miss BeShare, join us on IRC: https://www.haiku-os.org/community/irc
The protocol changes, but the community is the same.