I sometimes need to bump the version of HaikuDepot so that the HaikuDepotServer (HDS) server side can adapt its behaviour to changes in the client. On the server side metrics are runtime-captured (anonymously) about which versions are interacting with the server so I know when legacy behavior is OK to be dropped. I’ve bumped the version a few times in the last 18 months or so.
Hard to be precise, but interestingly it looks like around 65% are on the last official release (r1beta5) (HaikuDepot 0.0.8) from a sample over the last 15-20 days. This is interesting. I’m not trying to hurry up the beta 6 release because it’s better it’s ready, but it does point to the value in getting the stable releases out.
Also interesting; a small number of people are still running versions of HaikuDepot from 2019/2020 era.
We are in currently we are in pre-R1B6 stage. We haven’t branched yet (when +rev comes in). There are a few outstanding bugs we want to fix before Beta6. More release steps should be coming soon.
I’m on R1B5 too, I’ve not had any troubles with it on one of my laptops, but have had some problems with other computers, so Haiku still isn’t ready for most people’s hardware yet.
I’m using Haiku R1B5, and overall it works pretty well. The only problems I’ve encountered are the WiFi turning off and never turning back on and this forces me to reset the computer and issues with app debugging spawning multiple windows, which messes up the graphical interface.
That’s low. It implies that 35% of haiku users are on nightlies. When a third of your userbase fancy themselves to be system devs, a reality check may be needed .
Another complicating factor is that people may well be dual-booting different installations.
It depends what the goal is. If the goal is to give back control of computers to their owners, having 1/3rd of the users being or becoming system developers is a success
I’ve done some dev (1 small port in haikuports and 1 system utility that only I use), but I don’t fancy myself a system developer.
I use the nightly because it works better (in general, and on this laptop in particular), and it’s relatively easy to revert an update that causes a problem.
I won’t run dev builds of any other OS, but Haiku makes it easy and the regular improvements are worth it.
I just learned I am a system developer …
… even though, sadly, I am not. I’m just a regular user, but using nighties was a must for me in the past, because some libraries I needed were not available in r1betas. This is not the case anymore (since r1beta5), but I keep using nighties just to get newer version of said libraries, if any. Nighties are stable enough, most of the time. But I keep a r1beta5 USB installation, for comparisons and for a quick backup if something goes wrong.
Anyway, my point is, don’t assume that ~35% are system developers. I’m sure I’m not the only one who normally uses nighties for different reasons.
That ~1/3rd includes people like me who run the nightly intending to vaguely do… something… dev wise and never do. Last time I had a change worth submitting / accepted, I think Haiku was still using cvs.
You can log into HDS and go to “Menu” –> “Reports” –> “General Metrics Reports”. Unfortunately the system restarted 2026-04-30 22:31 so you may need to wait some for more data to build up; we don’t have a metrics system in the deployment environment so they are only collected in memory.
It is likely soon that HDS will be redundant deployed and at this time this report won’t really work any more; I might try see what I can do about that later in the year.
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), only once in a while check on nightly to test some performances (lately).