From the “Be Book” : "…since BeOS is the Media OS…"
If Haiku is indeed a reimplementation of the BeOS, then we need to focus on making it the Media OS, rather than worrying about word processors and spreadsheets. Haiku will never be the OS of choice in an office environment, nor should it be. Neither will it supplant UNIX based systems as the choice OS for a webserver. I believe we need to stick to our “roots” and concentrate on finding a niche where it excels (multimedia), and making Haiku the OS of choice for people who work with audio and video files, as well as being a killer gaming platform. Haiku HTPC?
I have been a BeOS user since 1999 and was greatly disappointed when Be went under back in 2001. Until the Alpha 4 release I had lost hope. Now I’m excited again for this platform and would hate to see a repeat of the BeIA fiasco which is what ultimately killed Be.
I think you got it right. It doesn’t need to compete with others, there’s too much of that and that invites unnecessary battles with companies with a lot of money. Instead, Haiku needs to do what BeOS was, a stunning multimedia OS. And by the way, most people think of media as visual but as a musician and someone who listens to audio a lot, for me Audio is the least well represented part of multimedia with current OSs.
I don’t think you can just opt to skip out on a pretty substantial software toolset (a lot more people than just office workers use Office or a workalike,) but I do agree; trying too hard to be the competition is more likely to stifle development and wind up with the Linux “repository full of quick GPL clones of countless Windows programs with significant functionality overlap where one or two well-thought-out native solutions would do better” problem.
And I agree with 33Nick about audio software; I’d kill for a good tracker/VST host that’s less crashy than Buzz, and a good multi-track audio editor. Give me that and improve the wifi support, and there would be basically no reason for me to stick with Windows any longer.
IF Haiku decided to redirect its focus on multimedia as its niche, what applications should be considered essential and included in official releases?
Haiku already is pretty focused on multimedia… that said the html5 support in the browser is missing and hardware 3d acceleration is just starting to take baby steps. Haiku already plays most all media… i suppose editing and con tent creation are jobs for 3rd party developers.
Well, unfortunally Haiku is going to be a “general purpose OS”, not media-oriented (as BeOS was).
Well, Dyne:bolic should inspire…
Hi, what do you mean by “media” or multimedia??
perhaps editing just video and audio( mpeg, JPEG, TIFF, wmv, quicktime , avi , mp3 )
OR does it also include
2D and 3D graphics/audio ?? ( eg. openGL, Direct3D, OpenAL , ALSA , etc… )
By multimedia I mean:
- audio and video recording
- audio and video editing
- streaming audio and video
- television
- radio
- multimedia games and simulations
- photo capture and editing
- animation
There are different data types or file formats:
office-suite (.doc, .xls, libreoffice , etc. ),
multimedia ( MP3, MPEG, flash, .avi, etc…),
2D (JPEG, GIF, TIFF, adobe CS, corel painter ) and
3D (OpenGL , VRML , X3D , simulations, visualizations ) graphics
each have its own different applications and/or performance characteristics
and thus require different system tuning/optimizations for best performance…
I think that Haiku being a media desktop operating system , it
should be focused on multimedia as well as 2D graphics apps.
( I would love to see Haiku to excel on 3D graphics as well. )
What any OS needs are applications and be able to manage different file formats.
The users should be able to work on their video/audio files and
work on documents ( eg. documenting their work, emails attachments, etc.)
without having to switch to another OS because it would interrupt their workflow and creativity…
IMHO, I would rather see Haiku be general purpose enough as to have as
many apps at first ( eg. R1 ). especially development tools for debugging and
testing… also port apps and develop new apps for it.
Then by R2 it would be refocused on media.