Or we can remove everything, and tell people “we don’t provide a complete operating system, just a kernel, and you have to figure it out yourself”. And then people will start making distributions with their own choice of software, and it will be the same complicated world that Linux has right now.
If that’s where we’re going, let’s save a lot of time and effort by just all switching to Linux.
At this point, what else is left besides preferences? HaikuDepot?
Even as somebody who wants the project to consider a minimal ISO which allows for manually picking additional packages during installation, that’s just alongside the regular ISO as another option. It should be evidently clear that Haiku’s focus of being a desktop OS is going to mean a bunch of apps developed and shipped alongside the core system.
I am on Linux.
…Haiku doesn’t have to be a Haiku distro also.
I think the main Haiku system should be limited to only the most necessary programs and all the programs required for setting up the system. All other software can be downloaded additionally, even with an alternative choice. Competition is a good thing.
The point is that complex software development such as a Web Browser should not be confused with Haiku as an OS development.
I think that many of us are on the nightly because we do not know when the next beta will be. It understand the betas to have historically been yearly, of sorts. But when installing towards the end of that yearly cycle, the temptation to have the latest release rather than wait for the next beta is high.
I think there is nothing wrong with numbered Betas as things stand, but think Genode does much better than us when it comes to communicating the releases:
Please, be calm.
The answer was quite right.
Beta means feature complete - but not without hidden or known problems and missing services - e.g incomplete Blutooth or network stack, USB stuff or even other kernel parts’ solutions need polishing.
If you have followed monthly development reports, than you could have recognized how much refactorization happened/happens recently by developers. These appears in nightly images.
This way you can have the bleeding edge - “testing” - release, with a higher risk of KDL, not booting or some rare cases even data loss.
Some fixes reverted in or redesigned in this testing , nightly images.
Those many of us do not want to accept - as we use Haiku as a daily driver.
There is no other OS - just Haiku. No Windows, no Linux, No macOS … especially as we have no working machine actually - I mean a working environment.
Some uses Haiku as a working environment … as Beta offers that minimum in actual level they need.
The Beta version Haiku is a release - even if it does not match your concept of release just as you read the word release - as you would been satisfied with or think that way.
We - who uses as a daily driver - accept Beta version “difficulties”, report issues by tickets, and welcome new features, refactorizations as well - as we know : someday we will benefit from them as a new Beta release.
Some of us also develops Haiku itself or applications as well.
Against these such murmurs why Haiku is not exact copy or more similar to a Linux or xBSD or else …
why not feel the urge to speak up to close more interesting existing issues regarding Haiku - to have Beta5 rightfully released
Recently I experienced this problem personally - it cause a successful, but unbootable Haiku installation, as cannot resolve to have startable flag on partition
Without thatsmall leaf the whole stuff is just a storage drive containing the OS copied - but finally unusable to launch Haiku.
I do not have another OS, just other Live Haiku. Even from that I cannot add startable from that DriveSetup - it just does not work against I used the program to set the flag. No error messages ‘finish successfully’ just does not set the flag. Unfortinately thereis no alternative drive managing tool under Haiku - to replace DriveSetup.
So …
It needs to fix/enhance DriveSetup and or Installer or some USB error - as I wanted to install onto a USB thumbdrive.
https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/17331
→ it should be established as then further image download Haiku repositories would be possible to setup - near your location - this way you could download faster and the downloads would be rebalanced.
Last year there were an donation offer from Poland to store the images and even the packages, the storage space on a server was prepared by the member Pawel, but in the summer it finished after first test - at least what we can know from this thread :
https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/donating-server-space/
It may be not completed as packages still cannot validated as signed via pkgman.
For Haiku images - it might be another reason - there’s no communication about it.
So, for me these are much more interesting questions or resolvable things than hypothetical dispute about Haiku releases - and how should be “released” them.
Man,
from this listing more programs are intensively used by other Haiku users !.. 
Please, be calm.
I hope Haiku devs who are called/related have such humor sense like me
and reading this opinion
- wanna-say recommendation (LOL) -
and they are laughing loud fluttering their knees at this time reading this.
Right, I’m done for today.
I like how the Haiku project has followed the same “we’ll ship it when it’s ready” attitude that has made the Debian project successful. People trust the stability and reliability of Debian because of their attitude to how they manage their releases. It speaks volumes on software quality. Those shepherding the Haiku project are doing the right thing. I get it, we all can’t wait until R1 stable hits the shelf, but the best things come to those who wait IMHO. I think a lot of folks thought Haiku (previously OpenBeOS) wouldn’t make it this far. It has been an amazing story to see unfold.
user said “more function, we will forget the risk of unstable”
developer said “more stable will bring more function”.
time said " there is a cross point in the future".
and, the day, R1 will be true.
Debian has gotten quite good at hitting a two year release cycle, like ubuntu lts. i think this is a reasonable cycle for a stable project like debian.
For a project like haiku, that is developing i think a cycle of about a year makes sense. releases, even beta releases are a lot of work, but they also show the project to the public, i would love to have a beta 5 soon.
A Haiku Beta 5 with updated FFmpeg 6 would be a good step!
i see what you did there 
If only…
We could move WebPositive out of Haiku sources, sure. But when I work on it (or any other app, really), a lot of times, I end up having to fix bugs in Haiku.
But who will do it? If it’s the same people, nothing is won. We just have more “paperwork” to do: managing separate releases of these apps, separate bugtrackers, packaging at haikuports, and then telling people “oh you want to edit text? there’s an app for that”. “you want to play an MP3? there’s an app for that”. And installing Haiku moves from a 3 click process to a week of hunting the right app for each thing.
We have enough competition from other operating systems and distributions already. I don’t think we need to add inside competition withing Haiku between different app ecosystems. We can instead have cooperation between developers to fix and improve the existing apps, or even replace them. For example, Genio is making a lot of progress, and we can consider integrating it in the next release as a replacement for Pe.
Of the apps you listed, some aren’t even included in the Haiku image (musiccollection, text_search, TV very recently), some are not maintained by the Haiku team but just repackaged (Pe) and could easily be replaced, and other ones don’t really have any alternatives. And for some of them, removing them is a bad idea because we want to ship a usable system, including a text editor, a web browser, etc. Not just a kernel and an empty desktop.
How is it a replacement for Pe? wouldn’t that be Koder?
Anyway, I think it’s a good thing to separate Haiku as an OS (with a minimal amount of only the most necessary applications) and Haiku distribution (Haiku with additional applications). Why?
…
Among other things, it was a successful BeOS business model (which was not fully realized and was abandoned by Be Company before it even took off): The essence of the model:
Assemble the system you need by adding what you need to the base of the system, for free.
If you want a ready-made OS with specialized programs and additional support, pay.
I dont think The maintenance for the preinstalled Applications, appart from webpositive is very big, i think codycam and tv could be dropped, at least as long as there is no usable webcam support, but this would not make the development easier, so why change it
As others have said here, this would just replicate the Linux distribution model and dilute the more complete Haiku desktop experience. For desktop OSes, they are supposed to come with a bunch of apps to get most people started. Even in the Linux ecosystem, desktop-focused distributions do the same thing.
If you think that maintenance of a theoretical core Haiku distribution can be done by non-progranmers and novice programmers, then what do you think is stopping them from helping with that right now on Haiku?