I am not normally a fan of the kind of journalism practiced by Bryan Lunduke - there’s too much hyperbole and not enough balance and calm reflection. It’s all or nothing.
So I have only just got around to reading his “definitive” review of Beta 4.
And I owe Mr Lunduke a big thank you for bringing to my attention the one thing that in Beta 4 has transformed Haiku into a usable OS - the Gnome web browser. Possibly somebody else had mentioned it, but if so, I didn’t take note.
Like everybody else, I had been impressed by Beta 4, and both Web+ and Otter were working much better than before.
But they were still some way from perfect.
Today I read Mr Lunduke’s article, and immediately installed Gnome - and it works! Perfectly. As perfectly as any other browser under Windows or Linux.
So, for me, Haiku is now a proper, functioning, and wonderful, replacement for Windows. (And Linux, once the USB music output is sorted.)
It’s what I have been waiting for since I first stumbled upon Haiku in 2016.
Massive congratulations to all the team.
Thank you Sebrof, now checking a 4 yr old Lunduke show (HAIKU-OS tube chan).
As an outspoken person myself: I agree with loudmouth Lunduke " It’s cool! I like Haiku ".
Also thanks to Distrotube of youtube, who basically brought me here.
Well it’s right there in the release notes: R1/beta4 – Release Notes | Haiku Project
But I guess no one reads the documentation?
Too many men here, they never read them 
I think I was aware that it was there, I just wasn’t aware that it worked so well. None of the other browsers I have tried over the years have been better than Web+ overall.
Incidentally, I hope I haven’t been too hard on Mr Lunduke. I agreed with pretty much everything he said, and to have such an enthusiastic supporter with a significant readership base is great for Haiku.
The Apple site was also very positive.
Does anybody monitor the volume of visits to the Haiku website? It would be good to see how much interest has been generated by Beta 4, and by the efforts of Lunduke and his colleagues.
Google Trends shows a spike around the Beta 4’s release https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=%2Fm%2F02pd5y
Unlabeled graphs axis .-.
Also what is 0 supposed to mean there? I don’t think that graph holds much info
Unlabeled graphs axis .-.
Also what is 0 supposed to mean there? I don’t think that graph holds much info
Thanks for that.
I am surprised at the peaks every couple of weeks or so. I wonder what causes them. I also don’t understand why many days appear to have no searches at all, which also surprises me.
At first glance it seems that the level of search activity on release day, whilst up. is not as high as it might have been. But probably anybody who read about the release would have been given a link, so there would be no need to search.
Didn’t see @Lunduke 's revies (yet), but depending on your browsing needs I can live withouth Gnome Browser on Haiku.
“The Apple site was also very positive.”
can you post that link, please
Our web traffic counter is actually public: https://metrics.haiku-os.org/
Of course it doesn’t track anyone with DNT enabled, though.
Thanks. That shows a bigger peak.
Here you are: