Hey everyone! I’ve been a lurker of anything Haiku for a couple of years now I think, and recently I finally made the decision to install the latest nightly build on my VM.
I have to admit that I have very little to no experience with either BeOS, or any other alternative OS’s such as Linux. I’m mostly a Windows user who’s looking to jump ship to something like Haiku once support for Windows 7 gets dropped (which will be in 2020 I think).
In the meantime, I’m looking for ways to grow my understanding of the OS. I already installed a few programs through the Haiku Depot application, but from my understanding the OS works with something called “packages”. I’m sure most people here will be completely familiar with this already, but I’d like to know more about these common conventions. As I understand it, packages are kind of like what installers are on Windows (feel free to correct me!). I would like to know how to manually install applications through packages. I would also like to know how to go around using the terminal, and what the common keyboard-shortcuts are for navigation.
Another minor thing I would like to know is how to change the deskbar position. I’ve seen screenshots from people who changed it to the bottom position, but I haven’t figured out how to do this (the “preferences” menu doesn’t show anything relevant to this).
Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys are willing and able to assist me in becoming a more experienced Haiku user. 
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Hello and welcome!
About the Deskbar position: next to the clock, you will see a few vertical dots. Click at that dots and grab the Deskbar to the upper, lower or oposite corner of the screen.
It’s easier to do that explain it 
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Welcome, Athferion!
[quote=“Athferion, post:1, topic:5744”]
As I understand it, packages are kind of like what installers are on Windows (feel free to correct me!).[/quote]
Not exactly. HPKG packages are rather like an archived file hierarchy like a ZIP file. Though there are certain scripting possibilities carried out by the package_daemon that processes these packages.
You can manually install a HPKG by dropping it into /system/packages or /boot/home/config/packages. The package_daemon will grab it and, without unpacking it, mount it so it appears its contents got spread to the right locations.
Therefore you’ll find the main binary e.g. in /system/apps, libraries in /system/lib and documentation in /system/documentation etc.
But the files at these locations are only “virtual”; they still reside read-only in the HPKG. That’s one of the reasons in/unstalling is so fast and clean.
The User Guide has some more info on how to install HPKGs. If you want to get into the technical details, see the Wiki.
[quote]
I would also like to know how to go around using the terminal, and what the common keyboard-shortcuts are for navigation.[/quote]
Again, see the User Guide on Terminal. Don’t hesitate to ask, if you have more specific questions.
un_spacyar already covered that, but if you need a visual, here’s again the User Guide on Deskbar. Hmm… I see a pattern emerging… 
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I can’t believe i missed the user’s guide section, haha. I’m going to take a good look at that when I get back home.
Thanks for the welcome and the insightful replies! I’m looking forward to learning more!
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You can take a look at the besly knowledgebase for informations and tutorials.
http://www.besly.de
Welcome