The way for a Beta version

1

Since I’ve seen some progress in the project, I’ve been wondering, how long would it be to have a beta version of the system with at least this features:

  • CD boot and Installation
  • Decent Hardware Support
  • Basic Apps (word processing, internet browsing, email, media play, etc.)
  • Enough API and programming facilities.
  • Documentation

It is possible to wait for it in 2007?

2

I’m guessing that’s pretty dependent on the USB and network stacks being developed, which could be quite a wait. I know that’s probably not the answer you were wanting to hear, but on the bright side the rest of Haiku is much further along, even to the point where if it wasn’t for the lack of USB and networking, you could use it for your day-to-day tasks. I haven’t run into many problems in the latest images at all and the ones that I do seem to be fixed pretty quickly.

As for the points you made:

  1. There’s nothing stopping Haiku booting from CD, AFAIK. You could even create your own CDs right now if you wanted, I think. I’m not too sure about the installer, it’s now included in the images and can be run, but I can’t say anything beyond that since I haven’t used it for an actual install.
  2. Decent hardware support. Yeah, this was a big problem with BeOS, wasn’t it? Drivers for most common hardware seems to already exist though, so if you haven’t got anything too esoteric, you might be alright.
  3. Will Abiword for word processing, Firefox for web browsing, BeMail for email, and either VLC or Haiku’s own soon-to-be buildable MediaPlayer do? :slight_smile: They’re all freely available and either run on Haiku already or will in the very near future.
  4. I think most of Be’s APIs are already reimplemented, but if you want to develop for Haiku, you can just develop on BeOS anyway.
  5. Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on there. I’m guessing for programmers most of the BeOS documentation is still relevant, but even so Haiku’s going to need its own documentation sooner or later.

As for a beta release in 2007, it seems likely. 2006 would be nice, but seeing as we’re almost halfway through the year, I doubt it’s realistic.

3

How about inofficial CD releases ?

I.e. built maybe every 3 or 4 months. I dont mind bugs at all, but I have some spare PCs
that want to try other ideas (like Haiku), and I am a happy Tester with these PCs. :slight_smile:

4
shevegen wrote:
How about inofficial CD releases ?

I.e. built maybe every 3 or 4 months. I dont mind bugs at all, but I have some spare PCs
that want to try other ideas (like Haiku), and I am a happy Tester with these PCs. :slight_smile:

Honestly, I haven’t even tried booting Haiku from CD - I wasn’t sure this was possible yet - but as I haven’t tried, I wouldn’t know.