Invisible Linux!

It can be quite fascinating to explore the list of suggested (related) videos on YouTube.

A few days ago, I was looking for a good video about what one can do with TiddlyWiki - the non-linear note taking tool coded as a single HTML-CSS-Javascript page. Lately, I have been exploring applications and tools which are operating system agnostics - namely those usable from a browser and capable of storing their files locally…

Anyways, here was this suggested video about a Q&A with Linus Torvalds as to why Linux was not competitive on the desktop came up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFKxlYNfT_o (3:23 min:sec).

While this was in 2012, very little has fundamentally changed since then. The success of Linux in the smartphone/tablet space is as the kernel underlying Android. There was a potential success of Linux in the desktop space as the kernel underlying ChromeOS.

Linus attributes the failure of Linux to become dominant on the desktop to the very limited number of systems offered on the marketplace with Linux pre-installed and to the fact that most users do not wish to install an operating system on their devices.

What Linus fails to mention is that, for a system manufacturer as well as for an user, one big question about installing Linux is “Which distribution to use?” There are nearly 300 different distributions tracked by DistroWatch and fanatics of one are often pretty nasty in their comments about the other ones…

I have seen a few web-based re-sellers packaging brand name desktops and laptops with a Linux distribution. Maybe one of them could become interested in doing the same for Haiku once it reaches R1?

I hope that in area Haiku never will come, as under linux, that there are thousands of distributions.

Haiku will never share the same fate as those myriad of distros. There’s not enough people to properly take care of a single one main release, let alone number of forks. For better or worse.

Well, over the years we had a few attempts - I am aware of BNX, Cosmoe, and Sayranu (?spelling?) which had some coverage on OSNews. These attempts were somewhat short lived.

The thing though, can the installation of Haiku be seen as a doable task by someone who has been for years in OS X or Windows without ever using a command line?

If you burn an install CD and boot and install from there, it’s all GUI. If you use a USB stick, it depends on your OS what’s available to write the ISO image to it. I don’t know much about todays Windows or OS X…

That was Senryu.
As far as distros goes, I also remember TiltOS and Discover Haiku.

Cosmoe is not really a distribution of Haiku, it does share some code but runs on top of a Linux kernel. Another similar project was BlueEyedOS.

And there is also ZevenOS which was just a Linux distro with a BeOS-like look and some feel.

zeven os imitates zeta. window style and other.
cool idea but not supported anymore. based on ubuntu iirc.

IIRC apgreimann also had one out called Poem. I actually thought it showed promise, but creating and maintaining a distro is a monstrous amount of work for one person. And there was supposed to be a distro built on the ruins of Haikuware, but that never happened.

I had another look at the installation guide ( https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/installation-guide ) and, in terms of complexity, it sits somewhere in between. It needs a bit of updating as it was written well before UEFI came on the scene. Most systems sold in the last three years or so boot via UEFI - and the process to enable Legacy from USB is often quite convoluted.

Is something like what Neverware had done for easy installation of Chromium OS ( https://www.neverware.com/freedownload ) possible for Haiku?

If you have experience, it would be great if you would create an instruction. Either for the Haiku site or for the BeSly knowledge base

Poem OS is actually still alive!
Read this: http://www.poem-os.com/2017/04/launching-r1-soon.html?m=1

2 Likes