The more I think about the problem. The less exiting life becomes, or at least the outlook for Haiku as anything beyond a hobby OS. I personally think that is pretty sad.
while we can all debate the various merits and pitfalls of the BE OS, one thing remains ardently true. Even had non competitive practices not taken place to pigeon hole the BEOS, the chicken and egg problem would have remained. I am going to say something that will likely come off as unpopular and or even as heretical. for Hiaku “if it wants sucess in the OS space” to become a real platform. It must find a way to support windows applications. Windows is 95% or so of the desktop market. the exact space Haiku has been targeted. Even with the emerging ARM cpu’s comming into the market space, it will be 5-10 years before adoption could be wide enough to compete with x86 and even then it may not matter as arm will invariably hit the exact same limits that x86 appears to be running up against "IPC benefits aside’
So what are ideas and or motives going forward to grow Haiku, or is this to be only a hobby OS for hardcore enthuasists, similar to linux ?
Just wondering where the whole thing is going.I see the Haiku mission statement. what I don’t see is the model to bring in large groups ot users to hit a sustainable numbers of users and developers to have a growing or even competitive eco system.
BTW I am not advocating the linux model. Thats just horriable.
IMO, it’s not about conquering the world, really. We don’t have to. I’d say that quite a few of the developers are working on it for their own sakes – having an operating system that just works without all the extra configuration and tweaking of Linux, the numerous issues with Microsoft, and the golden handcuffs (and golden price) of Mac OS. Sure, I tell everyone I can about it, but I’d be content to be running a “hobbyist” operating system. Maybe it’s just me, but having seen how the masses respond to Windows, some just don’t want to change – they’ve taken the blue pill. With the kind of high-quality work being done on Haiku, I don’t see it being relegated to the same corner as Linux. A good OS that we can use is what it’s all about.
I completely disagree about needing lot of windows app. Over time i learned that the useful app that are not a fad are just small utilities, this is why i prefer to see something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opendoc than big monolithic app unmaintainable and very complicated to port. We have BMessage and good drag and drop + scripting possibilty, that is what i want leveraged. I still think old unix | pipe are more productive than glossy KDE interface wannabe windows clone. Ho, and more replicant, with Rutger Hauer narrating a video on how to use them
if it wants sucess in the OS space" to become a real platform. It >must find a way to support
windows applications.
Not quite.It can follow the linux model and use apps which perform the same tasks, but quicker and better with less bloat and DRM annoyances. OSS has the advantage of being open source. Try and get Microsoft to change an app because theres an obvious flaw.
That said, this thread should probably be moved to the off topic section.
fair enough. I run it myself as my primary OS but I still have to boot windows to do alot of mundane things. Things I’d prefer to do with Haiku. Mostly I agree with you. The old saying is, if you build it they will come, is true BTW, if they can make use of it.
Then what apps will users then make use of ? You have to look at the user space and realize several truths.
people can do what they want with there windows machines. The apps the know and love are on those same windows machines.
2.most of the user space "even confined to desktops’ is home office and small bussiness. I have yet to see openoffice "even with its great technical prowess, be able to beat or even compete with MSoffice of any flavor. Gobe had a run and even it didn’t pull enough people away.
Backwards compatability solves the chicken and egg problem. If you can make software run better on a new OS people are more likely to try it. this user base allows for native app development is developers see people traveling to new OS’s.
BTW I don;t inherently disagree with your technical assements. Haiku has a great many things I personally and technically prefer.
[quote=Snuhwolf]>if it wants sucess in the OS space" to become a real platform. It >must find a way to support
windows applications.
Not quite.It can follow the linux model and use apps which perform the same tasks, but quicker and better with less bloat and DRM annoyances. OSS has the advantage of being open source. Try and get Microsoft to change an app because theres an obvious flaw.
That said, this thread should probably be moved to the off topic section.[/quote]
this thread is in the proper section. Lets keep it on topic though.
Anyways. Hows that linux model working out for linux desktop ? Not so good, whats the total market share ? 2-3%. Linux is pretty much the game on the servr side.
The issue isn’t wether or not I agree with you about annoying microsoft issues. The issue is microsoft owns 90%+ of the user space in the office and desktop world. The exact place “phipps” seemed to be pointing Haiku when he was at the helm. At least thats what I gather based on reading alot of his commentary. He saw Haiku “and BEOS” as eventual competitors to both linux and windows.
So the question is. What would it take to make users cross over, if thats what the goals are ?
I personally would like to know what the goals are myself, there is alot of fuzz in that regard.
Looking at comments on R2 and beyond, it sure looks like people want this thing to grow. Looking at the effort into r1 thus far, it sure looks like people want this thing to grow. My question is most likely best framed as. What it the consensus and outcome of the Haiku project when r1 is achieved ? beyond BEOS compatability ?
Well, Linux is hardly only a hobby OS for hardcore enthusiasts, either you are clueless or simply trolling. It’s definately not huge on the desktop, but there hasn’t really been any focus on the desktop until Ubuntu came along. Haiku on the other hand IS directly aimed at the desktop, and while it’s not a jack-of-all-trades like Linux, i’m sure it’s focus will make it shine in this area.
Obviously differs from user to user, for the ‘masses’ to cross over, a nice unified desktop isn’t going to cut it since they will need applications. The majority of users out there are likely tied to one of more windows application(s) and in order to make them switch Haiku would need an equivalent Haiku version (best of worlds but not very realistic) or a way to run that said application under Haiku (wine most likely). But at Haiku’s current stage there’s no reason to chasing after the masses, it’s still an operating system aimed at pioneers and tinkerers and in my opinion the focus should be on attracting programmers, not mere users.
When it comes to attracting programmers, I think Haiku has a good chance, there’s a great api (which probably could use some work/extending) that has STANDARD interfaces for GUI, multimedia, network etc. Not like on linux for instance where we have a jungle with gtk+, qt, gstreamer, phonon, alsa, OSS, pulseaudio, dmix, gnome, kde, etc etc… Of course Haiku suffers the same risk of having api fragmentation with programmers wanting to do it their preferered way, but with a strong base api like Haiku’s I think this is less likely.
To get back to the original question, I know that someone was working on a port of Wine, but I haven’t heard of anything recently. And I do agree that if Haiku could run some Windows apps, people would feel safer trying it out. Until Haiku has native apps on-par with those available on Windows, this might be a useful feature.
On the question of Microsoft’s practical domination of the market, which I can’t understand, as, at least here in the UK, there are laws that prevent monopoly, one of the main ways of getting Haiku known would be to supply it with new computers. These ‘netbooks’ are often provided with some type of Linux as it’s cheaper ,and slightly faster, however, it is inevitably not very user-friendly. The fact is, most computer users don’t know the differences between operating systems, they just take what’s given to them, or what everyone else has. I’d suggest that, once R1 has been released, one of the guys at the top could try contacting some of the manufacturers to suggest supplying Haiku with nes PCs.
Which Windows applications do you mean specifically? Maybe you meant Windows file formats (like .doc) or Windows inventions like MSN? Only if things like that are really popular and at the same time of good quality, then it would be nice if Haiku could deal with them.
How to bring in large groups of users? Well, just keep on producing quality and carry on. Then people will notice eventually. Those people will at first be developers, and later on the companies and pure end users will follow.
Unless you considered BeOS a hobby OS at its time, you can’t call what’s to become Haiku R1 a hobby OS, IMHO.
Even as-is, Haiku is wonderful, to anyone who fell in love with BeOS.
It is what it is: a great, simple, fast way to check email and browse the web.
If it ever gets to be a “real” OS, so much the better.
Comparing Haiku to Windows, is like comparing pleasure to work.
They are both useful, but completely different.
Well done, developers: I am really enjoying alpha2.
Porting VLC to Haiku might help bridge the gap. Looking at what the average user (TINAU) does: youtube and other amusements, it would seem that having apps that work with those sites flawlessly is a necessary prerequisite.
Oh yes: I just remembered what was always a problem with BeOS and still is with Haiku…
Printers.
Until it can print to the kind of printers people actually have, then this will be a major roadblock.
Difficult, I imagine.
I guess I’m a “hardcore enthusiast”. Would a nettop (Intel Atom D330 based) that can boot Windows 7, Uunmtu Linux, Mac OSX or Haiku off a single 320GB disk qualify me?
I will probably switch to Haiku as my primary OS as soon as it gets support for WPA encrypted and hidden networks with a convenient applet for selecting and configuring networks along with a flash capable browser (preferably Webpositive). The thing is, I don’t do gaming and I use my laptop primarily for accessing the Web so I’ll probably be fine with that.
There’s probably a very large demographic that will be happy as long as they can access social networking sites, blogs, multimedia content and instant messaging. For such people Haiku along with a modestly powered CPU (Intel Atom, ARM or similar) would be perfect. This has been Microsoft’s nightmare ever since they figured out the “browser is the OS” thing and decided to annihilate Netscape about 15 years ago.
[quote=grafZeppelin]Oh yes: I just remembered what was always a problem with BeOS and still is with Haiku…
Printers.
Until it can print to the kind of printers people actually have, then this will be a major roadblock.
Difficult, I imagine.[/quote]
Windows is 95% or so of the desktop market. the exact space Haiku has been targeted.
Well, i believe that the problem is exactly this.
BeOS’ (and now Haiku) strongest point was the multimedia-attitude: with the advent of YouTube (meaning that many users needs - even HD - video editing features, for example) and the Mac drift to Linux, multimedia specialization is something to keep in serious consideration (IMHO).
[quote=forart.it]
BeOS’ (and now Haiku) strongest point was the multimedia-attitude: [/quote]
I don’t know, back when I bought Beos I was amazed by the performance and responsiveness. Certainly this was very well demonstrated by multimedia (like with playing several videos at once) but it wasn’t particularly the multimedia, but rather that it had no apparent slowdown effect on the rest of the os that sold me. While Beos may very well have been much more optimized code wise than it’s competition back in the day, that’s hardly the case these days. I can’t see Haiku beat linux in raw performance now or in the future, however it is (imo) more responsive under load. This is not magic though, Haiku simply sacrifices throughput for responsiveness, but that’s exactly what I want from a desktop OS, for it to always be responsive even if I am rendering while copying two large files and at the same time compressing my home folder.
Well, Linux is hardly only a hobby OS for hardcore enthusiasts, either you are clueless or simply trolling. It’s definately not huge on the desktop, but there hasn’t really been any focus on the desktop until Ubuntu came along. Haiku on the other hand IS directly aimed at the desktop, and while it’s not a jack-of-all-trades like Linux, i’m sure it’s focus will make it shine in this area.
What exactly is ‘the linux model’?[/quote]
Linux owns the server market for the most part. Its a great operating system for high throughput data loads. It is fantastic at this type of work and the customizable kernel allows for some very hardware specific configurations that should allow for excelent performance.
The siad on the desktop side. Its a hobby OS or just above that level of user base.To call it anything else is a misrepresentation. It can also be a big beast to tame and has its share or problems that the dominating MS platform does not have.
[quote=Rox][quote=forart.it]
BeOS’ (and now Haiku) strongest point was the multimedia-attitude: [/quote]
I don’t know, back when I bought Beos I was amazed by the performance and responsiveness. Certainly this was very well demonstrated by multimedia (like with playing several videos at once) but it wasn’t particularly the multimedia, but rather that it had no apparent slowdown effect on the rest of the os that sold me. While Beos may very well have been much more optimized code wise than it’s competition back in the day, that’s hardly the case these days. I can’t see Haiku beat linux in raw performance now or in the future, however it is (imo) more responsive under load. This is not magic though, Haiku simply sacrifices throughput for responsiveness, but that’s exactly what I want from a desktop OS, for it to always be responsive even if I am rendering while copying two large files and at the same time compressing my home folder.[/quote]
I have tested some of the throughput issues compared to other modern operating systems, XP , Vista and win7. Its not enough slower to matter in a great deal of instances with regards to throughput and I think alot of this is more based in application specific code optimization.The penalty is pretty small in most cases 2-3% at the worst with the execption of handbrake and alot of that issue is due to the way handbrake was written in the versions we have avaialble. Alot of the issue with handbrake is that it doesn’t “on the beos version we have avaialable” scale very well because the code path is less then optimized.
I share many of your sentiments BTW. the responsiveness is what I truly like and that is the largest appeal. Not to mention that the OS is completely open source. I am curious to see the performance benefits of SSe and 64bit when they get implemented. That may also be part of the slower performance in throughput.
For most productivity applications Haiku has the perfet balance of responsiveness and throughput. I wouldn’t want my secratary to stop working while she is compressinge a large quickbooks database. I want her to get back to data entry etc types of work.
so in this regard, haiku has alot to offer to small enterprise etc. I think pairing it with a dedicated Hiaku compatable linux server would be fantastic.
