OSNews: "First bits of a Haiku compatibility layer for NetBSD"

The Linux kernel doesn’t have to be huge, take a look at Tiny Core Linux, it’s only a few MB…

The drivers drag in all sorts of dependencies so stubbing out most of the functionality just to avoid bulk doesn’t always work as expected.

Re:code density
Having a dense instruction set in the CPU makes a huge impact on cache efficiency. That’s why PPC didn’t hold on to any speed records for very long once x86_64 came from AMD in cooperation with IBM. It also lead Apple to have to drop PPC in favor of x86 series CPUs. If only there was a way to make 68k 64-bit capable, Apple could’ve just switched back to that…

Re:Genode
Microkernels like the L4 series microkernels used by Genode perform well due to their relative simplicity. I’m not sure how the context switching affects the performance of the caches but keeping the main part of the code loaded into the cache makes a huge difference in speed.

Windows: business oriented & getting manufacturers to put it on their computers…

Apple: Graphics Industry, where it got its foothold…

FOSS/Linux/BSD: freedom of choice.

BeOS: Multimedia oriented.

What’s Haiku’s potential niche market?

Personal computing.
Not business, not graphics, not media, not (only) for people who care about freedom.

4 Likes

Fun

I have an Apple setup. I’ve had Windows and Linux rigs. And I keep coming back to Haiku because it is fun. Something that is missing from the computer world these days.

6 Likes

…yes it is like an unfinished book you like to read to the end!

2 Likes

Hi!

(The following lines representing my personal view of things.)

This topic, discovered on the daily routine to read Haiku-related news, has been recognised, red and somehow light-archived in my brain.
But anyhow it came back to my mind too often last days.

Been a BeOS user since 2000, seen all those things like FocusShift™, the forementioned BlueEyedOS (Linux-core, X-Server, LGPL) and cosmoe (AtheOS, Linux-core, GPL/LGPL), OSBOS and birth of Haiku back in those days, Zeta (BeOS 5.1, dano0) and even ZevenOS (Linux which mimics the appearance of BeOS).

I’ve never been critical or hostile in any direction of what the goals of these projects wanted to achieve.
And now the compat-layer for NetBSD.
Good. Why not? It’s the freedom of everyone to do something what in his eyes might be useful and open source projects and the licenses make such things possible.
And if that combination makes drive then maybe will there be also benefits for Haiku too, who knows. So i am not sceptical.

But… and now the big “but”.
Thinking about the topic and the comments here led me to situations last days where i tried to remember "heck, what has it been? What was the fascination back in the days when i discovered BeOS? Why, just why i’ve been falling in love at that time and especially with that operating system?

I thought a lot about that. And i mean A LOT. Again and again tried to sum up what the heck that is what BeOS made THAT loved to me in personal. Being (again) an IT professional in real life, a commandline-ninja sometimes, fiddling with odd and hyper-strange behaviors of that redmond thing, surrounded by questionable systems and devices daily and so on, these thoughts led me to follwing question and conclusions:

a) michel pretty much said it (about Haiku) in his post “… because it is fun.
b) booting Haiku - it always feels like coming home
c) would any other haiku-esque system also kick like haiku does (and BeOS did)?
d) i’ll have to dig deeeeeep in my archives (where tons (if not gigabytes) of screenshots are rotting) to get back the memories from that era, to maybe get a feeling what it was in those days
e) the coming days of Julfest i’ll try to gain time and perhaps will open a topic to what BeOS/Haiku is maybe making so unique (at least to a couple of people)

I know.
It’s emotional for us.
Every time.

Just my 2 cents.

Have a nice day!

:slightly_smiling_face:

6 Likes

I think you are mixing up things a bit.

BlueEyedOs never shared any sources, so it’s not under LGPL.

Cosmoe is/was based on Haiku sourcecode and not on AtheOS (maybe you are mixing it up with Syllable). As a result, Cosmoe had the same license as Haiku (MIT).

2 Likes

I don’t see it noted here yet, but I replied to this post on the NetBSD mailing list at the beginning of the month:

https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2023/12/01/msg030418.html

10 Likes

Cosmoe started as AtheOS on Linux, but the code was slowly changed to be Haiku. I believe at the time the AtheOS and/or syllable source was more complete. I remember it well and I remember being on Bill’s mailing list or something that kept us updated on the progress.

1 Like

Multimedia, like BeOS. Specifically, multimedia production.

WIth the state our media kit is in? We have super high audio latency, audio encoding is completely broken, our audio drivers don’t work on many modern machines, and that’s just scratching the surface of the problems from my casual audio user experience.

If I were to do any multimedia production, certainly I would not place my bets on Haiku in its current state.

6 Likes

Yepp,
me also recognized that recently … at least for parts of multimedia.

I had not capable play a simple Audio CD on Haiku … not even with VLC.
Of course it had been mounted , and it can be browsed for files on it …
it just does not playing it … without attempt to conversion the tracks to wav files !

Mediplayer could not handle it, VLC cannot played as an Audio CD when
→ I drag and drop files
→ I give it in as Audio CD

That’s about multimedia on Haiku.

Also to play DVDs I had to install libdvd* and others to achieve it. Now that works in VLC at least.

It is not unusal, as multimedia nowadays is not so important, as such things moved from offline records to online stuffs, like streaming, podcasts and so on.
This way we cannot wonder the traditional way of multimedia : underplayed.