I did your script on installed Haiku with some additional software system.
Booted OK, BeOS like software works OK, ported software (LibreOffice…) do not work (reinstall maybe help?). In systems lib folder found some broken links.
And now how to I can install software from packages? I do not installed those scripts before cloning Haku installation!
…RAM usage dropped in half.
It’s not about lawsuits, but basic trademark protection. Usually reminding people that they accidentally used our logo without permission, and that’s all (often haiku poem contests or stuff like that, where people will search “haiku” in Google image and find our nice logo and put it on their flyers).
The thing is, the day there is a real problem with the trademark, someone doing something really bad that deserves a lawsuit, if you did nothing until then to protect the trademark, and there are dozen of people using it freely already, then you can’t complain anymore.
We work hard to build the reputation of Haiku as a free software operating system, with a single configuration and no surprises. This is where “Linux” (actually GNU/Linux) fails: you may have a Linux system, there is no guarantee my “designed for Linux” software will install and run fine on it. This is why you will rather see support for Ubuntu or Redhat or… in that ecosystem. Likewise, the name Haiku must point to something quite specific, so when people tell their software runs on Haiku, it really does. There is no way to achieve that if your Haiku maybe comes with packages, maybe not (as is the case here), maybe is based on a Linux kernel (Cosmoe, V\OS), or maybe is a fork of the ancient Alpha 4 (forgot the name of this one, sorry). Note that a distro like “discover Haiku” from TuneTracker systems got the agreement to use the Haiku name without problems.
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You can unpack script (or any softtware) from hpkg use command in Terminal:
package extract package.hpkg
About broken links. Hmm… I think need to fix them manually. I have not yet come across this, but probably it depends on the package and how it is assembled.
Broken links were pointing to files in ‘package’ directory.
To develop further this idea, there is need to modify package demon (or something), that installs from packages software in to ‘package’ directory, instead it must extract them to file system.
RAM usage with package virtual file system doubles because it uses RAM and also running app using RAM.
Also, I think, if you have on machine less than 1GB RAM it is very useful to ditch out package virtual file system.
*Если непонятно выражаюсь на бусурманском языке, то дайте знать. Повторять буду по русски.
For now is no need in separate distribution. I think, what is needed is some tool (“HUPE”) to modify standard Haiku into system without virtual package file system, which will be able update and install software from standard Haiku repositories.
Even, I hope, in the future this feature can be a part of standard Haiku.
This will not happen. All devs who commented here are very clear about it. Packages are great the way they work. We are aware of the RAM use problem, we will investigate and fix that. But we will not cut back on the features.
There has been days and days of discussion to reach the current solution. If you want to counter it, you have to come up with something that handles:
- Installing package (that’s the easy part)
- Upgrading packages
- Uninstalling packages without leaving traces everywhere
- Rolling back to a previous state of your install when you break things
- Allows to work without a package repo, you can double click a package to install it
- Allows to work with a package repo, you can use a command line tool to install quckly whatever you need by downloading from a safe and trusted source
If you can do all this without a packagefs and no RAM use, maybe we will consider it, but if the solution does not cover these basic use cases, we don’t want it in Haiku.
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It is done in Gobo Linux “the filesystem is the database”:
https://www.gobolinux.org/
It is doable in Haiku.
Then do it. Don’t count on me to waste my time on it.
Your time to waste.
Sorry to interrupt but where is the difference between this and the current package system using pak files?
I mean even Quake1 back then used a basic form of packaging (*.pak{num} containing individual packages) and ran on low RAM systems.
Isn’t all this a bit “luxury problems” today?
These are different file formats. We are talking about pkg BeOS for installing programs.
I am talking about that that using ‘package virtual file system’ you double RAM and CPU usage by the system to run software. It is unnecessary.
And there also problem with really big packages in the RAM (in the ‘package virtual file system’), for example some package of 4GB: one package will eat all or a good enough portion of your PC RAM even if it not runs.
That would be a bad VFS. In a good VFS you do not load all files into RAM. You only load relevant book-keeping information in RAM (tiny, just a table actually). When the file is actually read you load it into RAM as the OS would do too without a VFS in between.
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CPU usage? Maybe because the current packages are compressed, but we have two ways to improve this:
- Disable compression (already possible, just some settings to change on haikuporter)
- Switch to a better algorithm (we support Zstd now, but didn’t start making use of it yet)
RAM is definitely a bug in the implementation, because the package bookkeeping shouldn’t cost that much. We are aware of it and we will look into it.
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Anyway, I like to see optional package install feature with unpacked (uncompressed) packages in main file system (as in BeOS was), compressed packages can stay in package directory as a backup.
Also, this means: option for Haiku to work with disabled virtual file system in Haiku’s package system.
It would be useful for machines with less RAM or fast ssd’s (or other current/future fast storage devices) or for developers and power users.
Haiku is a open source system with copyrighted name and Logos.
If one creates a distribution, and Hupe is nothing more like this, it needs a separate name that is not similar to haiku main system.
In this case people could come to this forum and asking for Support about Hupe problems. But here they does not get the help they need in system things, because it is not the way of haiku.
Hupe is an interesting idea and if people around to use and Support it why not. But it is not haiku anymore.
Take care about All haiku related stuff like welcome text and User guide, you need a own one.
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