I suspect that when they say “other OS” they mean the likes of Windows NT descendants, Mac OSX descendants and Linux. Which are already fairly secure by design.
Haiku security, from what I gather, is perhaps more in a league with 1990s “multimedia computer” of the dial-up internet era OS such as Windows 9x and Classic Mac OS. So there would be a vast gulf between Haiku and modern commercial systems.
I read once that Microsoft and Apple essentially rebuilt their systems on top of 1970s era “minicomputer” systems to meet the safety requirements of full-time internet access. So Microsoft had Windows NT which was inspired by OpenVMS and Apple OSX which went for UNIX underpinnings.
In Haiku we talk of “glass elevator” which I take as a tacit admission that, to become truly mainstream, Haiku would need to be similarly recast to meet the standards of an always-online modern OS. Genode strikes me as a great foundation to build on. Haiku is in a position to leapfrog two generations at once and become equal to Google’s Fuchsia whose underlying “guts” were conceived this century.
While the security can certainly be improved, it is not that bad. The kernel already imhlements all the neded unix security.
Also, you have to define what “security” means and what you want to protect from. For preventing your internet browser to take control of the whole computer, you may not need that much.
It looks like 2023 will be the make-or-break year of the Genode mobile & desktop. There’s no doubt that they’ll get something workable up, but whether it is easy to use and productive will be the big questions. For example, they don’t have much in the way of apps.
“Genode Road Map: In 2023, we will make the mobile version of Sculpt OS fit for end users, unleash advanced hardware features of Intel platforms, switch to C++20 by default, and run the feature-complete PC version of Sculpt OS on Genode’s custom-tailored microkernel.”
I am afraid those of you involved will always have to bang the drum over how well engineered Haiku really is - it is sometimes difficult for many of us to get our heads around the quality of what you have achieved here when the OS as a whole remains criminally overlooked by the mainstream. On that I will stop “flying my own kite” on this thread. Using the “likes” as a barometer, there seems to be no real desire to persevere with such speculation at this time.
There is a lot of good stuff on their website including the press release announcing the roadmap, the roadmap itself, and a future challenges page. As an armchair follower of this OS I am delighted to have all this documentation to digest!
It will certainly be neat if we can have Sculpt for Mobile in our hands by the time the year is out!
Perhaps Haiku need its own plan for the year? As for the “challenges” page, I see there is one for a previous Google Summer of Code here. Might a rolling version of the same inked from our development page be desirable?
There are apparently tools to ease the porting of Haiku apps to Genode. Of course, in the case of the pine phone, consideration will need to be given how to make them suitable for the touchscreen interface of mobile devices and that is probably the thornier issue.
