is haiku os ready for every day use? will the developers implement wine and ubuntu apps compatibility? can haiku os recover or survive drivers’ failures just like windows?? sorry im not a programmer
Maybe, No, We have KDL which is better than Windows’s BSOD.
so that means we’re no where near beta stage!?and a friend of mine from reactos forum told me that reactos aims to be self-healing and being able to recover from driver’s failure just like windows, im just curious if we could do the same
“will the developers implement wine and ubuntu apps compatibility?”
Unlikely. To do that, one would have to port X11, which is a royal pain in the backside.You are trying to shoehorn a multiuser, server-oriented environment onto a single-user, desktop-oriented OS.
We have Java apps and a few QT4 apps available on the repositories. In fact Qupzilla, the most popular 3rd-party web browser, is a QT4 app. I know people are working on QT5, which will make more ports possible. But don’t hold your breath waiting for LibreOffice for Haiku.
LibreOffice is not an option… but how is the status with Google Drive? Can I use the browser to create documents in Google Drive?
clemare
I use haiku nativ on my hardware many years and now i using it. Not for all but i use it.
Why they should? Haiku is not Linux. Be free to port, or support people who want to port.
I thought I’d answer a few of these, but please note I am not on the Haiku developer team, etc. I work on another project (which I hope no one here dislikes me for), but I like Haiku and Be history very much, and sometimes post here for fun. Otherwise, I usually just read stuff, but I thought your questions were rather interesting and thus am replying to them. 
I would seem to think so in several cases. Sometimes the Nightlies may be unstable, but this is why I would recommend downloading several builds at a time and seeing which one works for you. And as much as I really do like Web+, I would definitely try out the browsers in the Depot as well as they may have better standards support. Overall, to answer your question, it depends on your usage of course, and Haiku is still in pre-beta stage, which means that it is not recommended for a work/production environment yet. However, if you enjoy using it, I don’t see why you couldn’t run and use it. Just be very vigilant of how it is running and careful to make frequent backups of all your stuff until Haiku reaches Beta to be safe.
There is a Computer Compatibility List thread here and other posts that allow you to see what hardware works well so far or what doesn’t. If your hardware works (or doesn’t), to help the Haiku team and others now and in the future, you could either:
- Use the new hardware reporting tool (BeSlySAT) that lelldorin had written (should still be on the first page as of this writing).
- Post to the Computer Compatibility List thread (but then again, BeSlySAT I think has superseded it).
Windows? I sincerely only hope you are joking. The modern NT kernel is robust, but I would not dare put it against Haiku nor would I put it against a Unix system. For the latter, Solaris comes to mind; even Gnu/Linux, representing the whole *nix-like family of operating systems powered by the Linux kernel, surpasses Windows NT. In any case, in case you’re wondering, Haiku is beautifully engineered from top to bottom. That starts with the New OS kernel which actively replaces the old one from BeOS 5, and Haiku is otherwise its own system altogether, (although it does use gnu tools, etc. as well). However, it is still in progress, and like anything else on Earth that is built on a bit-based system, Haiku does crash. But… it isn’t fully completed yet, which is rather important. Despite that, Haiku has the capable Kernel Debugger Land (KDL) which I would take any day over a mere BSOD (now renovated to be worthless in Win 8-10 anyway, save for the lonely error/KB reference code). And ‘recover’ is objective and has different definitions. Are you referring to something on the kernel level, user level, or simply the restore features in Windows 8+? As you mentioned you are not a programmer, I will gracefully stop addressing that now.
The claim that Windows can survive driver failures is rather intriguing at best. The truth is, eschewing the separate 9x series that ended with Millenium (and 1-3.1), Windows NT is getting much better since I’ve ran NT 4, but is not infallible. Starting with XP (NT 5.1), I began to note that USB devices, for example, do un-enroll now when malfunctions regarding them or their ports are successfully caught and detected, and I will give Windows credit for doing what it can to fix itself over the years. And I will admit Windows Server actually works rather well nowadays when configured properly if you can avoid the sieve-by-design situation that leads to a potential barrage of malware (used 2003, ran 2000, 2008 R1&2, 2012 R1&2). But even with all the advances, Windows 10.10586 can still be brought down by a GPU driver failure, or a signed (corrupt) keyboard driver, and I’ve had my one sole Windows machine completely crash due to bad driver (and security) updates (used solely for mobile development; all the rest, minus my Mac, will ALL proudly use Free Software until the day they keel over and quit… not just because the FOSS model is better by design, but because I believe in the cause it stands for). But anyway, minus the bias, in returning to your question, Haiku will crash if a driver goes awry, but I’ve found that outside of the occasional Nightly glitch that can and does happen, this is becoming less frequent on my hardware. I cannot vouch for your hardware, which is again why I would recommend checking its compatibility, but most hardware works in most cases. There are exceptions, of course. As far as Haiku itself is concerned, I have also found the BFS (Be File System, in case you’re new to the Be world) to still be rather stable, and oh yes, you can be assured that it can pick up from a halt as a fully journaling filesystem. During the Alpha 2 days, I used to have to mash the power button when ACPI used to crash on me, and I never lost more than one file – not kidding, although I did have to reinstall after a few days of that. But as far as crashes went then or now, a lot of understanding can come out of using the awesome KDL shell, which allows me to gracefully debug and settle down if I’m lucky enough to be brought into it in the event of trouble. In all cases, I would defend even the pre-beta Haiku against Windows in terms of its internal design any day, complete or not, pre-beta and crashes or not. I hope that answers your question (and claims).
Probably not. Again, please note I’m not on Haiku’s developer team, but I do not see that as being Priority 1. Making sure Haiku runs well and on the latest hardware is much more important, and is most likely what they are focused on. That, of course, is only my guess.
Before thinking of “Ubuntu”, which is only one flavor or distribution out of hundreds, you really need to have a working knowledge of Gnu/Linux (the kernel + the gnu system) that will prevent you from learning it all wrong. And, yes, a good majority of the Gnu/Linux world uses and develops for RHEL/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu second, along with the very extended family of remix rabbits that have spawned ever since. The truth is that like anything else, Linux can be used and (mis)used. In the case of Ubuntu, it began with a genuinely grand vision to make and maintain a Gnu/Linux ‘for human beings’, to provide a usable alternative to Windows in a time where the general public saw Gnu/Linux as ‘the OS for the nerd’, etc. without understanding it, and the overall point is, Ubuntu changed things. Kudos to Shuttleworth for doing that. But, a menacing problem arose when the ease the system was built with swept away the true complexity of what Gnu/Linux was about by J. Random User, and in some cases it was abused. Thus, the wonderful ease of use led to a sticky mess likened a little kid playing with bubble gum… only on a real and live Web. And hipster magazines and the like popped up everywhere behind the throng. For all practical purposes, I (and at least a few others here) do not care for the ‘flavor of the week’ mentality that has arisen… and I would imagine it would likely be for this very reason. The conflicting, stacked on mess makes Linux as a whole look quite bad, from the new greenhorns using something outside of Mac/Windows for the first time to the group of hackers and CIT/S+dev types who can see the state “Linux” is in. Elementary, Mint, and several others are gems out of the steaming pile of a distro heap you can find on Google or DistroWatch… this sad reality of increasing gobbedly-gook is mostly thanks to those who simply take a random ISO they like without understanding it, copy-paste it, and clutter, rather than improve, the Web. I hold no grudge against people re-spinning if it were done right, but 80% of the time, by most standards, it just isn’t.
If you’re ready to really sit down and learn it, go with Ubuntu. Turn OFF the Amazon Lens “spyware” though! Otherwise, I would recommend Slackware (easy to install and configure if you follow the instructions, and perhaps one of the best to learn with). If you are very eager to get into things on a deeper level, Gentoo is a good candidate (if you have the time, although it has a high learning curve for compiling it if you wish, portage, etc.). I might also say to start with Arch, or even Debian (it used to be first on my list, but now with 8.x “Jessie” with systemd, you’ll have to configure openrc or sysvinit, and for new users and/or (U)EFI machines, it’s not ideal). But, if you are really new to Gnu/Linux altogether, nowadays I would say to start with Mint (LMDE; the main edition is based on Ubuntu), dig through it, and learn it.
But anyway, you get a general idea of how most free software developers see what has happened (or at least from this one guy’s perspective) and I don’t claim to know everything. And I really do genuinely hope that when I make a distribution myself that it won’t add to the current copy-paste mess pile or do the very thing I’m afraid of that I wrote up here. Because it’s possible that it could. And I also freely admit that I just might be wrong on what I’ve written so far, but, what I know is this…
Haiku is built as one whole, and as such, proves to be a much better system. Haiku inherits all this from Be, and because of its good design, proves to be the one system that has potential of being desktop-ready in the free software sphere. Then again, Apple proved with Mac OS X that forking BSD and creating an organized stack of components = greatness. So operating system prejudices aside, it really depends on the execution of whatever you’re working on. One good try, such as what SmartOS, Dyson, or even what the small Elementary team is desperately trying to achieve, just might offer something great in the end. But Haiku is far from done, and I believe that if it seriously can achieve Beta sometime soon, nothing will stop it from achieving the success it deserves and has rightfully earned.
And as far as running generally available Linux programs and Wine, this is one of the reasons the Poem project is (re)starting right now. So if you’re more interested in these types of tasks, I would say to look into it if these two reasons are the center of your interest. And anyway, without advertising it too much (I’m the guy building it), Poem is still being built, and once it reaches 1.0, should be a (hopefully) good release.
Through it all, if nothing else, I hope this long post helps answer your questions. Granted, I inserted a lot of personal opinion into that (so it’s probably not the most accurate or unbiased thing you’ll read), but I hope you find what you’re looking for and just maybe try out Haiku for yourself. Haiku is pretty amazing once you get into it. Long live Haiku!
I have to agree with pulkomandy and agriemann that Haiku’s kernel debugger stands alone in the field of kernel debuggers. Have they patented it yet? It’s marvelous.
About Windows driver recovery (LOL) - I don’t think anybody does that very well yet, with large monolithic kernels.
The micro kernel guys have a better shot at it, but my experience with that is mainly based on Minix3. I had a setup with a network card driver problem, which caused the driver to fail every few minutes while under heavy network load. True to its design, Minix3 restarted the driver, and recovered without crashing the whole system. In order that the system work for my purposes though, the driver had to be fixed before I could continue. The network apps didn’t work very well with constant NIC driver crashes and restarts. But - I didn’t lose any other data or application instances, because the OS didn’t crash. So, Minix may be the best thing going there. But - they have a micro kernel, which is a different situation than Windows or Haiku, or for that matter - almost any other OS. But …
Haiku has been pretty stable for me, but I usually use it for lightweight surfing, and a few other things that maybe don’t push the envelope very hard. I guess it depends what you’re using it for.