Is there even a roadmap about 3D acceleration? More so, is there even a general roadmap for R1 (not Bugzilla, we all know it’s arbitrary)?
These questions pop-up every now and then, my request to the core them is to put up a roadmap on the website, and update on the monthly reports.
Not sure what you mean. What is a non-arbitrary roadmap? Aren’t decision of “this goes in R1” or “this does not go in R1” always somewhat arbitrary?
Not that I know of. It’s up to the developers working on it (I think currently there are none? unless someone has been secretly making progress on it without telling anyone) or the people willing to hire someone to do it to figure out what their plan is, I think? Otherwise we can talk and talk about it, but if no code is being written, it isn’t very helpful.
You can find a lot of discussion in the forum and mailing lists about different approaches and prototypes. All options are still on the table. Throw away all our drivers and import Linux ones with a compatibility layer. Keep our native modesetting drivers and port only the userspace parts from Linux. Maybe Mesa, maybe Vulkan. Maybe just throw away the whole kernel and run our userspace on Linux. Maybe use old Voodoo cards from the 1990s and port Glide, just to say “yes, we do have 3D” and pretend it’s done without putting so much hard work and without providing anything useful. Probably a thousand other ways that I didn’t think about.
The person doing the work largely decides how it gets done. Others can disagree as much as they want, if they don’t write the code the way it should be done, the solution that exists will win.
I don’t think it really corresponds to a fully-usable OS in today’s environment, which R1 today aims for. There is still a lot of work to do and things to accomplish (3D acceleration being one of them). That’s why the roadmap has to evolve, and targets need to be set in order for it to be realistic.
Honest question, who can really say when Haiku is R1 ready? Who will make the call? Like, “okay, now we can provide a decent stable version of this operating system now”.
I hate to bring such topics up, but the general blur on top of the project is making me uncomfortable. I know the project endured all this time, but will it stay in a purgatory (beta) indefinitely?
It’ll be ready when the community thinks it is.
I don’t think it’s possible to be more specific than that. Obviously people have differing standards about what “ready” means, but within the community at large, there do seem to be general consensuses that emerge if you look at it as a whole.
I can tell you for certain that Haiku’s general usability is exponentially above where it was when I first started contributing back in 2012, and the difference even since the last beta release is notable. We need to just get the regressions fixed and get beta5 out, and then keep burning down the bug list for R1…
Ew. No.
Even from 2019 I can tell. Haiku is definitely rock-solid once you get the right hardware. However, there are three big blockers from my point of view.
Data safety; we need a rock solid file system that won’t trash people’s data and their brand new SSD with erroneous writes. Plus, some sort tight-coupled disc encryption that will keep people’s data safe. Add some sort of sandboxing into the mix.
Hardware acceleration, it is no good when people cannot simply make use of their shiny hardware. I would also love a composited interface that gives a smooth and solid UI feel.
Efficient and rock-solid web browsing. Preferably WebKit with tight system integration, or improved Qt compatibility with Falkon as stopgap. But I think as above bullet point is fixed, the WebKit integration will greatly improve to a point which will make using Web+ a pleasure. The application itself needs a lot of work though.
This is my humble two cents about what a ready Haiku would look like. Anything less than this does would still be beta for me.
For me, there are other blockers:
For me, 3D acceleration is much less important than anything above.
Is someone having their data trashed by BFS? I’m actually curious. I have several BFS drives (nothing important not backed up), and haven’t had a problem. That’s not to say someone isn’t having a problem. But encryption sucks. That’s where I’d be most concerned with losing data.
I would argue that the biggest block would be hardware support. Trackpads, network adapters, audio. The operating system itself is so far for me been very useful where hardware allows. WebPositive hasn’t been the best for me, and I only recently discovered Falkon. Falkon seems more stable.
Im not expecting a lot of graphically intense work on Haiku, not that those aren’t bad things, but for most people using Haiku, it’s a non issue.
Just noting here that hardware acceleration isn’t only about 3D apps or games. Apps such as Krita aren’t really useable when using paint strokes. In VESA mode.
Regardind 3D acceleation, there has been work done by X512, who actually got HW acceleration working for Radeon Sea Islands hardware (pre Vega). See this thread:
Ok, this thread is turning into a feature wishlist all over again.
The R1 goal is very clear. A replacement for BeOS R5. There should be no new features. The goal is not “a fully usable OS in today’s environment”. Where did you get that idea from? If we set that as a goal, we will never reach it, because “today’s environment” changes faster than we can handle.
So, it’s all compromises and arbitrary decisions. Not for the R1 goal, but for what people actually work on. Typically, it will be fixing bugs we stumble on, adding features that we need ourselves. These things may or may not be part of the R1 goal. It doesn’t matter.
For me the OS is already usable. I’m running it on my main machine and I do most of my stuff with it. I’m not alone in that case. So, if the goal was “an OS that’s fully usable in today’s environment (for some people on some hardware)”, the R1 release would already been shipped.
Funnily, there has been talk about using HyClone for testing 3D acceleration applications…
Happens to the best (read KDE) recently. 
That was not file system related, it was an arbitrary code execution error. Still something we need to mind as well.
HELL to the no. If we’re going to be discussing alternative kernels, then maybe the Zircon kernel from Google Fuchsia. That’s the only one I would support, because everything else is a kludge (Linux from the 80’s, BSD from the 70’s, etc.)
Ew. No.
Discard all the drivers, compile the Haiku kernel as a Windows NT driver, then forward all hardware-related stuff to Windows NT.
At least that solution still uses the Haiku core.
Finally merging ReactOS and Haiku . : )
Though I love Linux as much as the next guy or gal, please please no! We don’t need yet another Linux distro.
That’s very informative(!) Considering that Travis Geiselbrecht, the author of the NewOS kernel, which was forked to create the Haiku kernel, also wrote the Zircon kernel, can you share whatever wisdom inspires such feelings of revulsion in you(?)
Or is this just the textual equivalent of a fart?