Haiku ports vs. all-new software

[SamuraiCrow]

Continuing the discussion from Can copyleft force corporation to donate?:

@PulkoMandy

We are very much trying to build an ecosystem of apps here. If the goal was just to run existing apps, and do it in a way that’s sustainable in capitalist terms, we would do it like any other commercial company-backed project does: we would do a Linux distribution. Something like Ubuntu. That would save a lot of tim and money. If your goal i just to run existing apps, why would you pay engineers to write an entire OS from scratch? Maybe you will get them to build a desktop environment, at best. Or maybe you will just apply some custom theming to an existing opensource one. But why would you build a kernel for that?

I do use Manjaro Linux regularly. It is a corporate-backed Arch Linux distribution. It keeps my 10 year old PC purring like a kitten.

To answer your question: performance is why I would build a new POSIX OS from scratch. The Linux kernel is too big to fit into the caches of even a modern CPU. Smaller is better for OS design.

@PulkoMandy

You think you can do it faster? Well, start your own project. Make a fork, or try bolting an extra engine to the existing one, and see what happens.

I was going to make a WebAssembly installer for HaikuPorts and had already started it. I got the bum rush then too. I lack the inclination to start a hard fork but it’s not because I think Haiku doesn’t need it.

[PulkoMandy]

@SamuraiCrow

To answer your question: performance is why I would build a new POSIX OS from scratch. The Linux kernel is too big to fit into the caches of even a modern CPU. Smaller is better for OS design.

Linux can boot on a 64MB machine (I know because I have one on my desk). Haiku can’t. For smaller devices there is NetBSD.

[marcoapc]

@PulkoMandy

Linux can boot on a 64MB machine (I know because I have one on my desk). Haiku can’t. For smaller devices there is NetBSD.

Haiku not in real text mode, would also need to cut resources to run with low memory.

[SamuraiCrow]

Puppy Linux is able to run graphically in 64 MB. However, I was hoping the kernel of Haiku would stay smaller than the Linux kernel. Frilly add-ons can be added ad nauseum with optional packages and it shouldn’t affect the size of the kernel nor the base install size.

re:NetBSD

I tried installing NetBSD on a spare hard drive today, just to see how it stacked up against Linux and Haiku. What a horrific experience that was. I’m still trying to install the package manager.

[nosycat]

@SamuraiCrow

I’m still trying to install the package manager.

You can select pkgin in the installer, but it’s not the default. If you forget, you’re better off reinstalling NetBSD from scratch, to be honest.

[BlueSky]

@nosycat

If you forget, you’re better off reinstalling NetBSD from scratch, to be honest.

Really? I haven´t used NetBSD in a long time so I had to look this up: NetBSD Documentation: Other FAQs and HOWTOs
That´s 2 commands which you even can copy/paste from the docs. If somebody can´t do this they have no business installing an OS (at least not a UNIX-like) in my opinion.

[SamuraiCrow]

It’s a good thing I threw away my commercially purchased SCO UNIX install disks years ago. Thanks for the “heads up”.

[BlueSky]

I´m sorry if my comment came across a bit snarky and I apologize for it. Sometimes I get frustrated that people don´t seem to read documentation even if it is just a few clicks away.

[SamuraiCrow]

Thanks. I will probably start over anyway, though.

[BlueSky]

@SamuraiCrow

I will probably start over anyway, though.

If you just want to try a BSD and have no specific reason why it has to be NetBSD I´d recommend FreeBSD. It´s, in my opinion, slightly more “user friendy” (if there´s anything like that at all, in the BSD world) than the other BSDs.

[donn]

They certainly try to be, anyway. NetBSD doesn’t traditionally care much about desktop users. On the other hand, NetBSD never blew up on me and trashed its disk partition. I guess there are different kinds of user friendly.

[SamuraiCrow]

GhostBSD was a pretty painless install until I ran updates and clobbered the entire installation. It’s a shame too: it could even run the closed-source scripting language called Hollywood on its Linux emulation layer including most of the example scripts. I’ve since found out that GhostBSD is bleeding edge as much as Debian Sid or any other nightly build you can name.