Thanks for that! As I said i was only voicing my opinion, I do greatly admire the free time people dedicate to the programming of haiku and their commitment, I didn’t realise using the word ‘love’ when talking about an OS was so offensive to ‘certain people’ 
And I strongly agree, whether its an end user or a programmer, as long as its using or programming haiku simply supporting it is great and raising its awareness. Thanks again, what can I say, some people are just plain rude
[quote=Setlec]Each contribution is actually something done. I do use Haiku also i donate as much as i can. I do love haiku since it’s a great OS and specially because many ppl (Devs, end users, forum users) do contribute that makes Haiku a better OS.
Mocking someone just because he says that “he loves” something shows that you aren’t really bright. can you guys truly estimate how much you like/love an operating system? i can’t, though i can tell that i love more haiku than linux (production OS on my PC) and i do hate windows more than any other failed OS out there.
All this to say that you can’t just come here or any where else and disrespect someone’s preference just because you can’t comprehend it.
@leavengood: thanks for your sacrifice i truly apreciate but remember to take some time off to spend with your family, please. Cheers[/quote]
Thanks for your comment too, obviously I’m not allowed to use the word love as I dont ‘love’ it like my partner I love it because I’m too thick to use linux, i only use windows cause I have to for the software I use, I remember the days when Beos was ‘fun’, I’m just waiting for Haiku to mature and I’m a happy bunny
@Edglex: Yes, I am not completely against some form of package management, and perhaps there can be a middle ground. I’m just worried that Haiku will take on the way of Linux with this issue, which I think would be a very bad idea. I remember back when one of the developers laid out the plans on how to do package management, and pretty much every single issue that I just mentioned was there just like with Linux. Sure, I’d probably use Haiku anyway, but it’s still scary to see an almost-perfect OS go down that road.
I understand that we probably can’t avoid system-wide installs completely. I do think however that it can be avoided to a high degree. I think that most of the applications that need to be installed on Windows only need it because of convention; it’s the standard design choice on that OS. Let’s say you write an app that needs libsdl and libcdio. Then you can simply include them with the app. We can call the app “abc”. Then you could have a directory structure like this:
abc/ <-- abc’s root folder
abc/abc <-- executable
abc/lib/ <-- abc’s library folder containing dependencies
abc/lib/libcdio.so <-- libcdio library
abs/lib/libsdl.so <-- libsdl library
Very simple and organized, and no mounting magic, installation or anything like that. In most cases the dependencies won’t need that much space for each app and, at least for me, the system partition is usually the smallest partition anyway (I’m actually about to fill up my Windows partition right now). Even if you were to include a library file from Qt for example, the file would only need a few MB’s at most. The only time where I can see the necessity of installing something system-wide is if it needs to mess with the system somehow, like in the case of compilers or drivers. Here are my suggestions about your points:
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A zip file should work fine in most cases. If the app is not self-contained and it messes with the system, then I suggest a custom installer for that particular app.
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I have an idea that might satisfy both sides. You could add a feature to Haiku that simply lets the user register an app at will. If an app is already extracted somewhere and working, you could right-click on either its root folder or the executable file itself, and click “Register this application” in the context menu. If you’re about to extract it, you could tick an option in the archive manager called “Register application after extraction has finished”. When you try to move a folder containing a registered app, the system could give the user a message saying “This folder contains a registered application. After moving this folder, would you like Haiku to modify the registry settings to reflect the change?”. Also, to keep track of all registered apps, there could be a simple “Application manager” program where the user can add, delete or update registered apps, or change what directory a registry entry points to.
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The app could have an update file in its root directory, containing things like version info and where to obtain updates. It could be a simple XML file or similar, nothing fancy. In the case of “abc”, this file would just be called abc.update to reflect the fact that it belongs to abc. If the app is registered, you can use the “Application manager” and select the update option. Being able to update through the context menu in the file manager would be pretty cool too.
4 and 5) Not sure what you mean by this.
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Along with the app’s own version info, there could also be info about what version of Haiku the app is designed for. Either in the abc.update file or in a separate file in the same directory.
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A link pointing to where you can obtain source code could be included in a file similar to what I described.
Now that I read your original post again I realise you weren’t saying don’t have package management, but were just saying be careful about it… the same as me really. So apologies if this came across as otherwise. I’m still not sure how it could be done exactly right, but hopefully they’ll be as careful about it as they have been with the rest of the OS, and make us all happy!
You guys are discussing package management in Haiku, correct? I don’t know how long you’ve been following the Haiku developers’ blog posts… The Haiku package manager has been designed and half implemented.
You can read about the design on zooey’s blog:
http://www.haiku-os.org/blog/zooey
And you can read about the implementation on bonefish’s blog:
http://www.haiku-os.org/blog/bonefish
Spoiler: It’s not “like Linux”, it’ll be easy to use, supports both repositories and single-downloaded packages, and applications can be run from anywhere.
Let’s be honest here, there are PROS & CONS to every OS out there, I’ve yet to see perfection on one OS, why? Because people that make systems aren’t perfect, so how do we expect a perfect OS…
I’m a Tech and a Geek, been running Unix/Linux systems 10 years, Slackware is my choice for systems at present and if anyone is going to sit here and say Slackware gets in the way, then I’m sorry to dispute you, this is utter foolishness.
Ubuntu, Fedroa, Mint are another story, but let’s not please jumble all Linux into one melting pot and call it all the same, it’s not, and geeks here should know better!
I’ll start out on a positive note here on Haiku, saying this thing is fast, that’s one thing I really like, as far as the BeOS look, I hate it, I’m not using computing in the 20th century I’m using it in the 21st and while some of us are die hards for what works, and like to stick to the, if it isn’t broke don’t fix it mentality, I’m certainly at times in this same boat. But there is certainly nothing wrong with progress and if someone can make something better, I think that is a part of what computing is about, improving the technology and making things more user friendly, but for us geeks of course who want it, FLEXBILITY to be able to do what we want and not get in the way.
Since I’m a Linux geek, but not just any Linux Geek a Slacker, I like complete control 100% and of course with Haiku at it’s level of developement I’m not going to expect to see this, but I hope as it reaches final stages we will see this.
Two of my biggest complaints with Haiku, that I hope will allow for options to change these to user likes;
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I don’t like how each time I click a window it opens in it’s own window, I don’t want a dozen windows open surfing through my HOME directory or any for that matter, I just want one window with back and forward buttons to get me to where I want to go. I’m sorry I’m just not into the massive amounts of windows opened on the desktop to move about through the system, I call this clutter…
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Some people it seems like to surf their file system through a menu, I can’t stand this, I thought it was utter madness and clutter to the extreme when I first saw this in KDE 1.x back in 2000, this is a screen shot of what I’m talking about;
Massive rows and rows of directories spewed across a menu that take up your entire desktop screen, I do not call ‘Good Design’.
I guess as they say, each to his own, or whatever floats your boat, LOL, but let me tell you I sank that whale back in 2000 never to look back, it’s disgusting looking if you ask me. So if Hakiu wants to keep this type of look I’m all for it, because I’m sure there are some people that like it, but for others, I hope there will be an option to disable this, so we simply have your typical looking menu, or just access to that is all.
I mean, when you click the blue feather that gives us the basic type of a menu, but when you right click the desktop and you see Haiku in the menu that is the section I’m talking about, and also removing it anywhere else it might appear with this option.
But please don’t tell users if they don’t like it to simply ignore and not look at it, because if you do, in my mind, that’s taking away control and saying stick to what I like not you, this is thing being discussed here, ramming things down people’s throats and telling them to live with it.
Here’s a screen shot of that;
I guess for me, I’m just a super tidy neat freak on my desktop, I only want what I want and see what I want to see, nothing else, that’s why I use Slackware and I only use OpenBox, with everything compiled and customized for my tastes, no one elses!
Haiku can be great, but who is the TARGET audience? That’s the BIG question!
If this is for geeks, well that’s one thing, after all look at all the systems and desktops hardcore geeks are using out there, some of them look like they’re still on acid from the 60s LOL…
Now if it’s for a combination of your average newbie user and geek, as Haiku stands now, I believe you’re going to have a very hard time convincing main stream consumers to use Haiku, when they compare this to what they know, Windows and Apple…
Let’s be REAL HONEST here! Linux for what Linux is, has a hard enough time as it is staying alive, so Haiku better think and consider that real careful if it plans to be around for the next 10 years, that’s no joke, I know it and so should you!
So just remember you’re building an OS you like, but hopefully others will too, and it can’t always be what you think, that is why at least, make what you want, but also give as many options and choices as you can, just like what I’d want and what I’d like!
Keep up the GREAT work, I hope to see greater things in the future!
CHEERS
Regarding point 1, you can change that behaviour in the tracker preferences.
Hi DasFox!
…and regarding point 2: I can’t see how the possibility to use this so-called “drill-down-navigating” should impair people who dispise it in any way. Those people would navigate the file system by double-clicking folders, not right-clicking for the context menu. How is it “taking away control”?
Regards,
Humdinger
Does Slackware still rely on Linux software that uses three or four entirely different UI toolkits and arbitrarily reinvents whatever other UI standards the author feels like?
[quote]I’ll start out on a positive note here on Haiku, saying this thing is fast, that’s one thing I really like, as far as the BeOS look, I hate it, I’m not using computing in the 20th century I’m using it in the 21st and while some of us are die hards for what works, and like to stick to the, if it isn’t broke don’t fix it mentality, I’m certainly at times in this same boat. But there is certainly nothing wrong with progress and if someone can make something better, I think that is a part of what computing is about, improving the technology and making things more user friendly, but for us geeks of course who want it, FLEXBILITY to be able to do what we want and not get in the way.
Since I’m a Linux geek, but not just any Linux Geek a Slacker, I like complete control 100% and of course with Haiku at it’s level of developement I’m not going to expect to see this, but I hope as it reaches final stages we will see this.[/quote]
I’m not really familiar with the BeOS way of doing things myself (though I do kinda like the look, reminds me of my Classic Mac days,) but I don’t come to an OS that’s a reimplementation of BeOS and expect it not to look like BeOS. As for flexibility, to a certain extent I agree, but if every behavior and feature were to be completely optional, Haiku would have the same absolutely-no-standards problem with its UI that Linux has today.
I agree completely, but this is already configurable. Have you even looked through the options?
While I do think adding some configurability to the drill-down menus might be a good idea (I could certainly use a little longer delay before the next level pops open,) you really seem to be coming at this from an attitude of entitlement, as if you have a fundamental right to never be reminded that you’re not using Linux. Making a design decision and sticking with it, on a free operating system that doesn’t even come preinstalled on anything, cannot possibly be construed as “ramming things down people’s throats” in any way.
(If you know you like Slackware and the things you dislike about Haiku all seem to be the ways in which it differs from Slackware, I’m not sure why you don’t just stick with Slackware…)
[quote]Now if it’s for a combination of your average newbie user and geek, as Haiku stands now, I believe you’re going to have a very hard time convincing main stream consumers to use Haiku, when they compare this to what they know, Windows and Apple…
Let’s be REAL HONEST here! Linux for what Linux is, has a hard enough time as it is staying alive, so Haiku better think and consider that real careful if it plans to be around for the next 10 years, that’s no joke, I know it and so should you![/quote]
A big part of the reason Linux has a tough time staying alive, though, is because it’s so arcane under the hood, and because every attempt to make it “friendlier” has been limited to putting a shiny new veneer on top of the arcana and maybe introducing a system to resolve some of that complexity, like Synaptic or what-have-you. You can only hide so much of that complexity before things begin to get either unnecessarily restrictive or just plain balky and broken.
Haiku’s advantage is that it’s actually a simpler system that’s been designed for desktop computing from the ground up, not built into that from the baseline of a '70s mainframe OS. It still shares the problem of getting people aware of it and willing to experiment with adjusting to its own way of doing things, but it is by nature much better suited to the job, and once it’s in a state of more completion, I really do think it could gain some ground (especially as both major players seem to be hell-bent on turning into tablet OSes and everybody who’s not interested in that is going to be looking for an alternative.)
One thing that has been very good about Haiku has been how stable it’s ABI-APIs have been.
Change for the goal of progress is good.
Change for the sake of change is a waste.
Check out: http://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2012/08/31/the-challenges-of-desktop-linux/ to see how some (not all) people think Linux’s unstable APIs have affected.
And if you have time for a long read check out: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/08/31/2324243/the-true-challenges-of-desktop-linux
The problem I have personally with Haiku is that its goals can too easily be recreated by its competitors, particularly Linux. Trying to develop an OS, almost from the ground up from a platform that was rightfully deceased more than a decade ago is not the best way to solve a problem you have with the current OSes. Development, funding, and interest have been ridiculously slow or lacking in (I scrambled that sentence together, sorry), and it really isn’t hard to see why. There is still not a convincing reason why anyone on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows should switch over. There’s no target market, and what there is by perception has already been filled by Linux.
Well, maybe because Linux and *nix in general isn’t really coherent, consistent, intuitive and user-friendly enough. I facepalm almost every day in various cases, when I use my Ubuntu installation. It’s open source, it has more hardware support and software available but that’s it. Once Haiku is a bit more mature and stable, has more ported applications and device drivers it’s going to replace Linux on every machine in my home. Wanna know why? It’s easy, fast, powerful and made for desktop user in mind.
You forgot to mention fully multi-threaded OS, even in alpha is stable as much as Mac Os X, database-like FS, way smaller compared to linux (4 GB on HDD), to windows (anything is smaller than windows, 40 GB), true multi-tasking. And ain’t a mess linux linux based distros, no desktop war (KDE VS GNOME), no switching API just because something new and broken is released (alsa replaced by pulseaudio), gfx driver’s nightmare (X.org+Mesa+kernel), no multimedia API such game API for haiku Or DirectX on winblows. My opinion is, despise using linux daily as main OS, Haiku once is has better drivers and some new apps it will surpasse linux easily.
Pretty much everything Setlec said. I tried for some seven years to switch over to Linux because I liked the open-source ethos and the idea of not having to pay for Windows. I never succeeded, because it’s such an unholy mess of a system, which I guess is to be expected when you progressively hack a '70s mainframe OS into being a modern desktop OS. Modern distros try to hide that complexity, but it’s still there and it has a tendency to get out at the seams and terrify the user even worse if they never suspected it was there to begin with. Add to that the appalling quality of the user interface on very much Linux software, and I’d say Linux is the one without an appealing reason for use, outside the server market.
Haiku offers what I thought I was getting when I tried Linux: a free, lightweight desktop operating system with a simple design and a comprehensive UI standard (that’s not continually off chasing the new trend in desktop looks.) Development may be slow, but it’s already so close to being where I need it to be - once WebPositive has some ad-blocking/JS whitelist features, once CPU throttling works on multi-core systems, and once there’s a decent WPA config client, and with WINE added to the mix, Haiku will be everything I need out of an operating system. Even in present form, it’s more worthwhile than Linux ever was.
Yeah I have to agree, the development is kinda slow but that can be expected without the huge financial backing etc… but I agree the only things missing for me is the webpositive experience and WiFi, but this is nasty BSD fault for not having drivers for my adaptor yet
And they say good things come to those who wait… so will be great! and its nice to see some sort of alpha 4 in the nightlies :DDD
I remember when Haiku first started out, linux fans promised that it would be the year of linux the desktop and Haiku wasn’t necessary. No, it had serious deal breaking problems and they are still with us today. Unfortunately, Haiku is still not in a final version so the critics were correct in that sense.
Windows 8 looks to me like a total disaster, even more than Vista. Apple will take advantage of it but I hope it also means that people who love PC’s will help make Haiku work out.
Personally, I find mac os even more of a pain in the ass than most linux distributions. How can mac os still not figure out how to maximise windows correctly? And make you search through the applications folder to find applications (though I know they’ve tried to fix this recently).
Windows at least is reasonably usable. Though it has about 7 ways to do anything.
I just typed a nice reply but lost it. Kids. Seriously. It’s one of the reasons I don’t use Haiku as an every day OS. I need a Molly guard of sorts. Multi user OSes fit who I am better for most things but I like running Haiku in a VM. If it had VirtualBox guest additions I’d probably feel inclined to try porting some things that I use and mostly work from that.
It’s nice and neat and small. Linux has been my main OS since the 90s and it’s gotten so huge and convoluted that it’s often easier to flatten and reinstall to fix an oops than try to figure out where the root of a problem is lurking.
I like the UI of Haiku as it is. Simple and effective. Now give me those guest additions with working working passthrough drivers and I’d probably use it for software development. I’ll let Linux handle the hard stuff.
Huge OSes bother me. A lot. They don’t need to be. Windows is the worst offender. Mind blowingly massive footprint and it still can’t do much on its own. At least linux has this ecosystem of individual programs all stacked up to provide higher functionality. Except that’s slow and unwieldy. I mean it’s possible to have a working desktop OS of linux in the tens of MB. Haiku isn’t quite that small but it is well integrated and not a scattered mess. Or at least that’s always been my impression of it. I just wanted to say thanks again to the developers for doing the impossible and essentially causing the rebirth of something which was killed by the same thing that has killed so many other good ideas.
Just keep at it, replacing the missing bits. Not hacking in things that aren’t meant to fit for the sake of keeping up with the Joneses.
Haiku has VirtualBox guest additions, however you have to compile yourself as it is yet to be released by Oracle as a binary package.
Edit: Source files can be found here: https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk/src/VBox/Additions/haiku