Completely agree with you here. Especially this part.
If BeOS dared to launch a release at that time, comparatively on a “stable” beta, I wouldn’t be shocked if it were called a “release”. However I am an old beos user and haiku follower, I have that kind of history understanding and therefore I am biased.
Yes, but times have changed and the competition has gotten better. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, use and spread the beta versions, it’s possible to hype them in their own way, by telling people they will be early adopters of the technology of the future 
What sticks me to 32-bit is the only fairly complete python (only 2) module to the be/haiku api available out there (Bethon).
No, Haiku still have serious stability problems and bugs that are not present in BeOS, for example #15585. There are also various bugs exist that leading to KDL, app_server crash or memory leaks.
I didn’t say it is perfect, we just have a different set of bugs from BeOS, but BeOS was certainly not bug-free at all.
Mentioned bug makes calling Haiku a media OS impossible because of very long pauses (10 seconds and more) in file system IO operations. It also neglects careful multithreaded BFS design with independent allocation groups. I believe that this bug is R1 blocker. I have not observed similar bug in other operating systems, including small hobby ones.
The BFS is the very next thing closest to the kernel, is it not? Should this issue have not been addressed at the very beginning, right after the NewOS kernel was finalized? BeOS was defined by the claim of it being “The Multimedia OS”, wasn’t it? That was it’s big draw. It was able to render running videos on all faces of a spinning cube. I remember that now!
But, have we gone too far… missed too many off-ramps… to be able to “fix” this? Or maybe it no longer matters? Maybe “equalling BeOS R5” is no longer the real focus anymore… maybe “good enough” or “close enough” simply will have to BE good enough, when R1 is reached.
This is not ranting. I’m just wondering if we can ever actually achieve what was originally planned/envisioned by Phipps. Every OS (or distro, in Linux’s case) has a “hook” to get attention. An angle that sets it apart from other OS’s. What is Haiku’s “hook”? Has that been established? Or are we simply “getting there as we go along”? Will we ever arrive to an actual, functional “clone” of BeOS R5, however many multiplied times better, but also with those aspects that made BeOS stand out?
Sorry for the intrusion… but when you mentioned that BFS itself was still fundamentally, functionally flawed (as being necessary to execute such fine-grained I/O and such, for a “media OS”)), that really forced me into the conversation.
I know axeld was the main man behind getting BFS up and running on Haiku (as I recall). Would he be the best/most qualified one to address this?
It’s a minor issue X512 is complaining about. It mostly is a problem when cloning git repos… it hardly has anything to do with beeing a multimedia OS.
As with any bug… uhhh, investigate and fix it?
Yes, it is written plainly on the homepage at the top, have you missed it?
Haiku is an open-source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku is fast, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful.
So here are our goals, let’s expand on it a bit:
Nowhere there is anything “media”. The “Media OS” thing was made up at Be when they noticed that they weren’t ready for making a desktop operating system that would take any significant part of the market. So their argument became "you can use BeOS for your media stuff, and switch to Windows or MacOs for other work. We are hopefully not going for that, Haiku is trying to achieve the original version of the BeOS goals: take over the desktop operating system market and be a viable alternative to Windows, Linux and MacOS there, without a need to run another OS aside.
This nails it completely. You’re NOT trying to replicate BeOS R5 exactly. So, if Haiku R1 DOESN’T duplicate BeOS R5 exactly on every point, you were never TRYING to. I never realized this til just now. I’ve been harping on why Haiku R1 has taken 22 years and still counting (not even out of beta), thinking everything BeOS was (and claimed) you wanted Haiku to be… and it took this long to get this far. You’re simply trying to finish a “clone” of (inspired by) BeOS that is as good as IT can be, not a mimic of BeOS on every jot and tittle, including whatever claims Be were making about it. Thank you for that enlightenment.
Of course not, what would be the point? If you want BeOS R5 you can just use BeOS R5.
This goal listed on the website was added there I think with the new website design sometime around 2011? This was after alpha 1 had been released and we re-considered and adjusted our goals, which set us for 10+ more years of work but was needed because the original goal (“just replicate BeOS R5”) was not relevant anymore already back then. No one wanted an OS without Wifi and with half-broken USB support for example.
“Of course not, what would be the point? If you want BeOS R5 you can just use BeOS R5.”
Exactly!
Another way to put this would be to say that Haiku aims to be what BeOS would have become in time.
BeOS R10, perhaps.
No, it is major problem making reliable multimedia tasks impossible such as video streaming.
NewOS do not use BFS file system. NewOS project do not aim to replicate BeOS, it is originally intended to be new independent OS, not clone of some existing OS. But currently NewOS project is inactive for a long time.
video streaming doesn’t use the disk at all, I fail to see how this could be an issue. I can stream media fine on haiku already.
Even playing videos from disk (even multiple ones at the same time) has been working on Haiku for years, even on low-end hardware (we still do our demos on a 700MHz laptop at conferences, and that includes playing various videos).
If I remember correctly it is a big problem on the hardware X512 uses, but not so much in other machines? Not that it shouldn’t be solved, but maybe it isn’t that critical if it isn’t that perceptible on most configurations?
ok, if so how to test and find out?
I am on 32bit 2core 1.6GHz and far from fluent video playing!
What kind of video for all of us to test?
Which codec?
What format?
Best would be to have a validated Test-Video for all!
I’ve never noticed any issues, playing video from disk. However, streaming video in WebPositive has never worked correctly. The audio and video are never in sync. I don’t remember trying streaming on other browsers, so I don’t know if it’s a Haiku issue or a WebPositive issue.