It is the first time that I am browsing for hours on the web on Haiku and I’m Hyped
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We will see, but i am very sceptical about this and really dissapointed to see gtk on Haiku.
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Why? What’s wrong with that? I thought the goal of haikuports was to port as many programs as possible. I doubt that having ports prevents you from writing native software. Availability is always better than no availability.
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My experience with working on HaikuWebKit while other people port and abandon litterally a dozen other browsers make me think there is some truth to this: ports demotivates or at least distract people from working on native software.
I don’t know how it will balance out: we probably get a lot more users out of it, but how many of these users are developers? How many of these developers will write native software instead of just bringing in more ported software? It remains to be seen. At the moment things are leaning strongly to “Haiku is just another way to run Linux apps you already know”. Wether this is temporary, and how long it lasts, no one could tell…
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It’s probably a non realistic idea due to manpower needed but, perhaps we could have a structure similar to Haikuports for fully native software for Haiku. The goal would be to help developing such programs and, in the presentation you could show the many advantages of this solution.
This sounds like a spoiled child’s argument; what does porting other software has to do with writing native software? Nowadays there is a common set of cross-platform software that nearly works on every platform, and why should Haiku be left aside? Expressing discontent doesn’t help anything. Instead, if I was a capable platform developer, I’d motivate myself with the drive to bring native software up to top-notch quality and surpass cross-platform ones.
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My goal here was to build a fully integrated operating system where apps fit well together. I joined this project because I think the portable apps and the very fragmented Linux ecosystem cannot get there.
Instead I get a system that just runs the same apps as on Linux, and is just as fragmented and may not reach the level of integration I would like. That was not my goal. If it makes you happy because it is yours, great for you.
One of the things that make Haiku work is discussing things between developers and users to reach a common agreement on what the system should be, what are our goals. This is what I’m doing here because, yes, this ported software does not fit what I think the goal for Haiku is. This has to be resolved in one of many possible ways, for example:
- The goals for Haiku is still as I think to build a well integrated OS and app ecosystem, and we should discuss how to get there,
- The goal of Haiku is now to run existing apps, I should stop wasting my efforts in writing native ones,
- There is strong disagreement in these two visions, and one of them should be stopped, or create a fork,
- These two visions can live together, we can have both native and ported apps, or maybe there is some way to make ported apps integrate just as well as native ones (I don’t believe so, otherwise I would be contributing to some Linux distro),
- I am an “old” guy with crazy ideas no one cares about and I should leave the project and find some other place to put my ideas in.
If I don’t voice my concerns about this, and no one else does, several people may individually think they are in that last case. By voicing my concerns here, I can see if other people agree with me, how many of us are there, and what we do about it.
What do you think I’m doing? Or are you trying to say that I’m not capable?
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Sounds just like HaikuArchives to me? Good, we laready have that 
Indeed very difficult to foresee. On the one hand, although it promotes the retention of new users by porting programs, it usually makes it unnecessary to create new, better, native products.
Unfortunately, today everything goes via the Internet, so being there is very important.
Personally, I find the work on WebPositive extremely important, because showing a good browser shows what a system can do very well.
@PulkoMandy: Don’t be put off by porting other browsers, because my experience is that they have a lot of bugs and don’t really fit into the Haiku world.
Yes and no. One problem with HaikuArchives is the name that reflects the actual state of most piece of software there. Even if this is not reality, from a user point of view, it sounds like a collection of abandoned projects. I was thinking about something more alive with a wiki, a chat, docs, tips etc.
That’s not just a user point of view perception. Most of this software is not actively developed with a few exceptions (currently ArtPaint has one developper working on it, everything else is mostly inactive).
There are also mailing lists and IRC channel (both named haiku-3rdparty) and a wiki at haikuarchives that could be used but is mostly empty: Home · HaikuArchives/haikuarchives.github.io Wiki · GitHub
The problem is not setting up yet another project and more infrastructure: there is simply not enough people interested in writing native apps to keep this community running. We will see if Beta 4 changes this, but I agree with extrowerk on having low hope about it. I would be happy to be proven wrong, however 
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if the Linux ecosystem is any indication, unless there’s a large company spending real money, odds are very low that Linux user’s or devs will contribute anything to native haiku apps.
you can barely get quality code from unpaid contributors. look at the disaster with Freecad and the face naming issues. there’s 1 guy getting a lot of financial support working out of tree, because the core dev team is suffering from not invented here syndrome. freecad is fundamentally broken by face naming topography issues , amongst others. the out of tree work would fix it.
haiku needs money to fund further development. afaict haiku is the highest quality open source OS, despite the bugs. all the ground work is there. so for haiku to bring in interest, needs users and they bring $$. linux apps aren’t the way, but may provide a stepping stone.
I’m working towards building EMC2, but I’ve got a long way to go. My plan there is to dump all of the linux centric code and bring a fully native fork to life. that’s going to take a good long while until i can fund it adequately
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I like writing native programs, I really enjoy it. But I also want to have the usual full-featured programs right now. I don’t want to have a second operating system on my PC to use software not available in Haiku. If I can get this program to work in Haiku, I will do it.
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I don’t think anyone is questioning your work, the ports are very important for career changers because they give you the security of being able to do what you’ve done before on haiku.
But the product strength of haiku can ultimately only be fully exploited with haiku’s own programs and in this area, compared to the ports, there is little activity.
I’m also trying, through my yab programs (by the way, natively 
), to simplify/enable things that I’m missing.
Actually, yab, with its simplicity, is something you would like to have on other systems as well. unfortunately yab is haiku only, so there are only a few who do something with it.
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Perhaps make an award for native project of the year. The only bad thing that could happen is that people would start something to get the reward and go away. But if the winner(s) only get something symbolic, I don’t think there will be so many.
Every OS has or should have a good balance of native and ported apps. MacOS (my main OS) is no exception, for example.
But we definitely need to try to have as many native apps as possible.
There are nearly 300+ apps on HaikuArchives, is there really nothing one may want to contribute to?
There is HaikuWebKit and also the built-in apps To work on.
I really appreciate that now I’m able to browse the web and use my favourite web applications (Lark, iCloud, Notion, RemNote, etc.) with Epiphany, don’t get me wrong.
But I want an OS, Haiku, which looks like Haiku and behaves like Haiku, not another Linux distro.
Again, I think it’s a matter of balance. We need ported apps as well as native ones.
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Ideally there should be a repo for native apps. Actually they are distributed via Haikuports and this let people think nothing is native. The problem is manpower.
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What counts as a native application? Where do we put the native GUI for a ported program? Is haikuwebkit native or not?(It is a port in fact)
In my opinion, such a separation is unnecessary - in haikuports, all native applications have their own categories as it is.
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This will not happen! People looking for youtube videos and browsing for fun only will very likely use their smartphone for that matter.
Me too, because it is to early to take this way!
Haiku is still beta and there is still some time left for polish the native Haiku apps until release and even create new ones.
I don’t like to see gtk apps like Gimp in the HaikuDepot, because it is for Haiku apps only!
To have a working gtk-browser may help us to concentrate more on other Haiku apps now!
For me no browser is working right now after upgrading to Haiku 32bit Beta 4!
Nothing will happen! There won’t be a snowball effect!
Because we have not much to offer for those people using youtube, Zoom, OBS, and webcam to communicate and play their games!
Exact this is what I want! An OS for doing serious work! Efficient!
There should be a repo for non-native Haiku apps!
Not for native apps!
[sarcasm]
If we ban porting programs to Haiku, then all as soon as create a native office suite, native 3d modeling program, etc.
PROFIT!
[/sarcasm]
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