What I like, and don't like, about Haiku (and its community)

1

Hey Guys,

I’ve been into ‘alternative operating systems’ for about as long as I can remember. I was using BeOS (x86) back when the company still existed and had to spend hours downloading it over a slow Modem. I’ve been reading over the current state of Haiku on and off for a while, mainly through posts on the forums and mailing lists that pop up on Google.

Here’s sort of the feeling I’m getting about the current community, which is sort of driving me away from wanting to get involved. Just to be fair – I’m going to mention all of the reasons I like Haiku and originally wanted to get involved.


Pros:

  1. Haiku is still a small enough project that a little bit of work goes a long way
  2. The Kernel is written in C++ and all of the code I've read through so-far is nicely commented
  3. Open Source! (This should have been #1 :))
  4. The company/organization behind Haiku appears to be very well organized -- at least very good at looking organized. You guys have a great way of presenting information. And your site looks great!
  5. I loved BeOS (back in the day) and I'm very excited to see the work resumed.
  6. Many members of the 'community' are very excited about Haiku which is always a great thing.

Cons:

  1. Some people are very anti-Linux. I don't understand the reasoning behind this. I doubt many (if any?) Linux users would ever have a negative feeling about Haiku. Each operating system serves their own purpose. Before you think I'm crazy for saying this, search through the Forums and read a bunch of posts that mention Linux.
  2. MIT is a great license. However, so is GPL. They each serve their own purpose. I'm never going to force someone else to choose a license. I have my personal ethics and so do other people. Unfortunately, I think if I wrote anything for Haiku and distributed it under a GPL license, people in this community wouldn't be very happy (or appreciative). This, again, is just the feeling I picked up by reading various forum posts.
  3. Here's my biggest gripe. However, I'll admit -- we've all been guilty of this before. It's just extra prevalent in the community posts I've been reading here. Granted, it was exactly the same way in the Linux community just a few years back: A lot of people have a lot of ideas. Some are great. Some are far-fetched. Some demonstrate a total lack of knowledge. Many people take their ideas and start designing fancy pictures or go into details on how they would see something working. Unfortunately, the development "team" (is it a team, or is it community members? I'm still vague on this one) has a ton of work before them and an obvious lack of manpower/resources. If everybody who wanted something done in Haiku just did it themselves, there would be a lot more done and a lot less people complaining/asking about getting something done. Some of the posts are just insane -- like people demanding drivers for Nvidia cards and then not understanding that (without reverse engineering) it's practically impossible and refuse to simply vote with your money to show companies what is important for you. I can't tell if people here are serious about using Haiku or if they (like I am now) simply drop in, play around for a bit, make crazy demands without offering anything in return, and then get bored and leave.

So this leaves me to ask the question: What are the demographics of the Haiku community? I’m not asking about region, age, etc… I want to know, with all of these users (which there is a fair amount), what do you use Haiku for, how/why did you come to Haiku, and what do you want to give back? Feel free to answer this question or take it rhetorically.

By the way, I want to give props to the developers and community leaders. You are doing an awesome job on this project. I really want to throw a little bit of development time in when I’m not busy with work – but other than for my own benefit and those who will be appreciative, I’m still debating with myself if it’s worth it.

2

I can’t speak for others here, but for me Linux is just a matter of vast disillusionment. I’ve been trying to get into Linux over and over again since 2001, when open-source was (to public perception) a new and exciting thing, because it seemed totally in line with my principles and back then I was an idealistic young firebrand (read: opinionated teenage snot) ready to ditch the Microsoft Tyranny forever. I spent ten years dabbling with it off and on, but I was never able to make it stick. It didn’t finally crystallize for me until my last attempt, this past November, that I could never get myself to stick with it because so very much Linux software is just plain unpleasant to use. GIMP, for example, is an absolute travesty of UI design, and while it’s fortunately one of the outliers, a lot of other stuff still comes across as a subpar knockoff of components from other OSes that they could’ve done better by just cloning outright.

And I know that, strictly speaking, GIMP is the fault of the GIMP team, and not Linux as a whole - same for GNOME and their ridiculous version 3, and so on and so forth. But the Linux community has fostered a user/developer culture that praises backend excellence many orders of magnitude more than it does usability, which it really doesn’t care about or encourage in the least, and sometimes actively scorns it (confusing elegant design for dumbed-down design, because they apparently can’t tell the difference.) It’s broken at the cultural level, and it’s not going to get better until either they get new blood in, or someone grabs every one of them by the lapels and yells “this is why you didn’t win the desktop war when you were up against WINDOWS ME of all things!”

I wanted it to work out, I really did. And maybe it’s sour grapes, but I really am a little bitter over all the time I wasted trying to get into something that, if I had only known, was never going to work out to begin with because Linux people would rather geek out over the nth new version of a command-line tool that’s been working satisfactorily for ten years than spend any time working towards making the Linux GUI experience not a massive, incoherent mess.

So yeah. I’m investigating Haiku for the same reason I was investigating Linux: because I know that eventually I’m not going to be able to run XP on new (or even semi-new) hardware, and Windows is going in directions I have no intention of following. I need an alternative, and I’d like one that’s light, flexible, and well-designed on all levels. Haiku seems like it has a ways to go yet, but it looks like it’s got the right goals; I’m hopeful that by the time I can’t get a reasonably new-ish machine I can run XP on (or perhaps even by the time my current machine wears out,) it’ll be far enough along that I can make it my daily OS.

3

Some people are very anti-Linux.
Could you explain why people should love Linux? A lot of people dislike it, because they had bad experience with it. And it was not their problem, it was Linux developers problem.

Linux users would ever have a negative feeling about Haiku
Linux people is especial sort of people. Most of them are moved to Linux, only because they wanted to be not like others. Personally I am totally agree with this quote linux-faq.org

4

[quote=Rohan]>Some people are very anti-Linux.
Could you explain why people should love Linux? A lot of people dislike it, because they had bad experience with it. And it was not their problem, it was Linux developers problem.

Linux users would ever have a negative feeling about Haiku
Linux people is especial sort of people. Most of them are moved to Linux, only because they wanted to be not like others. Personally I am totally agree with this quote linux-faq.org

Stall the ball there, i moved to Linux because i found it to be far superior to Windows. Not because i wanted to be different (Im also a fairly devout Haiku supporter) . Companies dont move to linux because they want to be different, they do so because of the control and power that it provides in both the big data and server space along side embedded solutions etc. This is exactly the sort of ignorance the OP was talking about. Haiku is mentioned on LXer.com from time to time. The LXer community are pig nosed, petty and spiteful and yet whenever i see Haiku related posts they say nothing but good things. Are you a Linux users you self by any chance?

5

It is a strange thing for me, why people, who want to argue for Linux are searching fora of other OS, e.g. Haiku. Aren’t there enough genuine Linux fora? Do they have no home? Or have they been expelled?

6

Hackers, tinkerers and tech enthusiasts are interested in seeing the BeOS legacy live on. Sue us.

7

Hi kurtis,

I’m Ryan Leavengood, one of the Haiku developers and also part of Haiku, Inc. Thanks for your compliments for the job we are doing, though I’m sure we all agree we could certainly try to develop Haiku just a tad bit faster.

To address your concerns about the community here in the site forums, let me start off by saying the forums here are just one part of the community, and in fact, I’d say they are the most casual. Meaning while they are interested in Haiku, they might not be as active as people who post bugs on our bug tracker, or people who participate in the various mailing lists (there are quite a few.) Therefore forum users are the most likely to post an idea or complain about something, and wait for a Haiku developer to implement or fix it. Or to complain about Linux, or whatever. But I’ve also seen some very good ideas here, and some really nice graphical mock-ups or what have you. But like any other forum, it can be hit or miss. Just don’t confuse the community in this forum with the whole Haiku community.

As for Linux, I’ve used it as a primary OS for many years, and there are many things I like about it. But there are also many things I dislike, which is what keeps me interested in Haiku. I don’t completely agree with commodorejohn’s post, but I definitely see his point. I would think the people who are totally happy with Linux wouldn’t be here, so some complaining about it is to be expected.

If you are interested in contributing to Haiku in some way, please, please, please do so. We really need the help, and like you said, even small contributions are valuable in such a small community. Don’t let a few bad forum posts turn you away.

8

I sadly have to agree with you on the Linux animosity, I’ve never understood it and I find it totally counter-productive in getting users interested in Haiku as it’s far more likely to find people interested in playing with alternate OS’es amongst those who has already shown a willingness to do so (Linux, BSD, etc-users) and also likely be far more forgiving with Haiku’s shortcomings than those running Windows or OSX.

I understand that some people may not like using Linux even though I do, I don’t like using Windows and lots of people do, but that doesn’t mean I HATE it as seems to be the case with some people here. I can only chalk that up to some people thinking that Linux is eating Haiku’s lunch or something but that’s just pathetic.

As for GPL, I’m sure there are some licence crusaders here in the forums and obviously any core Haiku code can’t use GPL as that in effect would mean relicencing the entire project.

However in general I’ve seen no hostility towards GPL from the Haiku devs (certainly not the core devs), in fact Haiku ships with GCC and Bash as it’s respective default compiler and shell which are both GPL licenced, I also know of atleast two official apps shipped with Haiku which are GPL licenced (Media Player and Cortex), furthermore the native browser WebPositive uses Webkit which is largely LGPL licenced so I don’t think you choosing GPL for a Haiku project is of any consequence.

Also IIRC the initial reasoning for choosing a MIT licence when Haiku (or rather OpenBeos as it was called then) was created came about due to practicality rather than some licence philosophy as the OpenBeos devs were hoping that some company might be interested in picking up the source code as they thought that was it’s best shot at becoming relevant again and didn’t want to prevent that from happening by not allowing the prospective company to develop it as a proprietary project. That never happened though.

I hope you will consider developing for Haiku and ignore the small but vocal ‘anti-linux’ crowd, and as for licences my opinion has always been this: whatever licence the code’s author chooses is the right one (unless it involves harm to kittens!).

Good to have you here, hope you stay!

9

Hi
I have tried Linux several times and in the beginning I tried to ask question in various Linux forums but all I got was TRFM or solve it yourself answer. This was when BeOS was R4 (I believe) Things have changes probably but the BeOS forum where more helpful.

1 and 2. One factor is probably that from Linux you usually get “its waste of time use Linux” same crowd dislike the MIT/BSD and have the approach that anything than GPL is not good.

If you make OS part that should be in the OS I think MIT are the way more appreciated. The GPL code in Haiku where merge in, Mediaplayer have 2-3 classes that are GPL the rest are MIT.

If you make option packages then you can choose GPL :slight_smile:

To me Linux are as bad as Windows but Windows I know how to work with :slight_smile:

I still believe that Haiku have the most potential so that’s way I’m here :slight_smile:

Any way welcome :slight_smile:

10

Rohan,

Could you explain why people should love Linux? A lot of people
dislike it, because they had bad experience with it. And it was not
their problem, it was Linux developers problem.

I apologize if I came off negatively. I don’t expect everyone to love Linux. I was just concerned with some of the anti-Linux sentiment I picked up reading through the forums. To me, GNU/Linux has both a functional and ideological purpose. The freedom it represents is very important to me and I would only hope that those same freedoms, regardless of licensing, would be prevalent – or at least secure – in this community.

Linux people is especial sort of people. Most of them are moved to
Linux, only because they wanted to be not like others. Personally I > am totally agree with this quote
linux-faq.org

I have to agree with foretheloveofhaiku, here. I didn’t begin using Linux because it made me different. When I first used Linux, it was a pain in the butt – hardware was very unsupported and as others have mentioned, it was very unpolished and incomplete.

I will agree with that quote you linked to an extent – I have a lot of family who uses Windows and constantly get viruses. They don’t pay me to fix their computers so I try to push Linux on them so I don’t have to keep going back :slight_smile: A handful of years ago though, that wouldn’t have been possible. Only now with distributions like Ubuntu making it easy and seamless for new users to feel comfortable and still do everything they need to do while sustaining a certain level of security and stability would I ever push Linux on my own family.

On this same note, whenever Haiku and its application-base is mature enough, I would happily do the same with Haiku. In fact, if Haiku continues following the legacy BeOS left behind then I would actually try to push my family to use Haiku before Linux as I feel it’s much more centralized and better oriented for the average Desktop user.

fortheloveofhaiku,

This is exactly the sort of ignorance the OP was talking about.

Haha, thanks for understanding what I’m talking about.

Hackers, tinkerers and tech enthusiasts are interested in seeing the > BeOS legacy live on. Sue us.

Exactly!

Rox,

I sadly have to agree with you on the Linux animosity, I’ve never
understood it and I find it totally counter-productive in getting
users interested in Haiku

I completely agree here. After this post and the great replies I received, I feel a lot more comfortable jumping in. Hopefully others don’t feel shunned away. The community surrounding any piece of software tends to be an important consideration for users no matter which domain the software lies in. Case in point – look at all of the people still keeping Amiga alive.

As for GPL, I’m sure there are some licence crusaders here in the
forums and obviously any core Haiku code can’t use GPL as that in
effect would mean relicencing the entire project.

Thanks for pointing that out. I did see that most of the Core source was licensed in MIT. I don’t think I’d try to jump on Core code right off the bat but if I ever do, at least I know which license to follow :slight_smile:

I don’t think you choosing GPL for a Haiku project is of any
consequence.

That is great to hear! I was definitely concerned but you’re absolutely right. Nobody has a problem with all of the existing software using GPL-related licenses so all should be well there.

devs were hoping that some company might be interested in picking up
the source code as they thought that was it’s best shot at becoming
relevant again and didn’t want to prevent that from happening by not
allowing the prospective company to develop it as a proprietary
project.

Thanks for sharing that good bit of history and information. I had no idea.

Good to have you here, hope you stay!

Thanks! I’m definitely leaning towards it :slight_smile:

ModeenF,

Any way welcome :slight_smile:

Thanks for the warm welcome :slight_smile: I’m glad to hear you got a great helpful hand from the BeOS community. I can definitely understand why your experience with the Linux community drove you away. Also, I appreciate the good licensing information!

Ryan,

I’m Ryan Leavengood, one of the Haiku developers and also part of
Haiku, Inc. Thanks for your compliments for the job we are doing,
though I’m sure we all agree we could certainly try to develop Haiku
just a tad bit faster.

No problem! Thank you guys for sharing all of your great work you’ve done!

But like any other forum, it can be hit or miss. Just don’t confuse
the community in this forum with the whole Haiku community.

Very good point. From what I’ve seen in just the relies to this post alone, you’re definitely right.

If you are interested in contributing to Haiku in some way, please,
please, please do so. We really need the help, and like you said,
even small contributions are valuable in such a small community.
Don’t let a few bad forum posts turn you away.

Haha, you’re doing an excellent job at reeling me in. I’ll be sure to take a look at the ‘small tasks’ list again to see if there’s anything quick and easy to get started with. I do appreciate you taking the time to reply to my post. When I get some time to jump in, I’m guessing the Developer’s Mailing List would be the right place to seek help if needed, right?

11

Yes indeed.

If you are already using Linux it is pretty easy to get a Haiku development setup going, and I personally use VirtualBox to test Haiku when in Linux. It is fairly easy to set up a vmware build profile (since VirtualBox can use vmdk files) and then use jam @yourprofilename update <some haiku component> to update it. Check out build/jam/UserBuildConfig.readme for info about build profiles.

One caveat on a Linux setup: if you are on a 64 bit machine please be sure to take note of the special steps required in that case when setting up your Haiku build environment. Those steps are detailed on the build guide on the website. I recently set up a new machine and did not notice those special steps and it caused me some trouble.

12

I don’t think that’s true. Here’s an example of a scenario: All of the Haiku operating system has an MIT license except for one GPL source code file. If someone or some company made a copy of the Haiku source code AND made changes to the one GPL file AND released their new version of Haiku, then the GPL would require them to release the changes they made to that one file.

In other words, as of now, I think almost nothing would change if someone submitted source code licensed under the GPL. I wanted to point this out, not to be antagonistic, but in hopes to help people better understand different free and open source licenses. I think many people think the GPL is scary or dangerous when it’s really kind of not. :confused:

Even so, despite being the freetard that I am, I have no problem with the MIT license. :smiley: All the code I write for Haiku (which isn’t much) has an MIT license.

13

So this leaves me to ask the question: What are the demographics of the Haiku community? I’m not asking about region, age, etc… I want to know, with all of these users (which there is a fair amount), what do you use Haiku for, how/why did you come to Haiku, and what do you want to give back? Feel free to answer this question or take it rhetorically.

Hi kurtis.

I use HAIKU for my main OS. I use Windows or Ubuntu Linux when I must, but that is becomming more and more rarely these days. I have a web server set up and use haiku to serve several web addresses:

http://coquilletkd.com

http://nwmacalendar.com

http://fatelk.com

http://coquilledowntownstudio.com

As well as using HAIKU for my personal home computer and my work laptop. The only time I need an alternate to HAIKU is when I need information that I can only get from a flash enabled web site. Other than that, Haiku has filled my needs for some time.

I came to HAIKU from BeOS. I found BeOS to be much more easy to use and understand than Windows 95/98, having moved to Windows only after I found that MSDOS no longer filled my needs. I have used BeOS, then ZETA, and now HAIKU with Windows/Linux as a fallback if I needed it since BeOS R4.

The alpha HAIKU of today is far superior to the BeOS of R4 days.

14

Well that would depend, certainly I don’t think ‘one’ GPL file in a project the size of Haiku would realistically make Haiku a ‘derivative’ work in any legal sense. That said, the base concept of GPL is that a program which uses GPL licenced code becomes a derivative and thus fall under the same licence obligations, this is of course due to GPL’s goal of ensuring that the GPL licenced code including any modifications to it stays open.

So I doubt there’s any intention from the Haiku devs to ever ship it in binary form with the core system containing GPL licenced code (unless there would be a sudden consensus to switch licence which is extremely unlikely). That doesn’t preclude having it available in source form though, IIRC the NTFS file system add-on requires the end user to compile and link it since it can’t be enabled and shipped in binary form due to it having GPL licenced code linking directly against the kernel, which would in theory atleast make the kernel a derivative work of the GPL code and thus fall under the very same licence.

I certainly don’t.

[quote=drcouzelis]
Even so, despite being the freetard that I am, I have no problem with the MIT license. :smiley: All the code I write for Haiku (which isn’t much) has an MIT license.[/quote]
Generally I think it’s good practice that if you contribute code directly into a project then you should try to do so under the original licence as otherwise you will likely limit the value of your contribution, also as the code author you always have the right to dual-licence your code any way you wish. For standalone projects however I see no reason for any developer to choose anything other than his/her preferred licence.

15

[quote=bbjimmy]So this leaves me to ask the question: What are the demographics of the Haiku community? I’m not asking about region, age, etc… I want to know, with all of these users (which there is a fair amount), what do you use Haiku for, how/why did you come to Haiku, and what do you want to give back? Feel free to answer this question or take it rhetorically.

Hi kurtis.

I use HAIKU for my main OS. I use Windows or Ubuntu Linux when I must, but that is becomming more and more rarely these days. I have a web server set up and use haiku to serve several web addresses:

http://coquilletkd.com

http://nwmacalendar.com

http://fatelk.com

http://coquilledowntownstudio.com

As well as using HAIKU for my personal home computer and my work laptop. The only time I need an alternate to HAIKU is when I need information that I can only get from a flash enabled web site. Other than that, Haiku has filled my needs for some time.

I came to HAIKU from BeOS. I found BeOS to be much more easy to use and understand than Windows 95/98, having moved to Windows only after I found that MSDOS no longer filled my needs. I have used BeOS, then ZETA, and now HAIKU with Windows/Linux as a fallback if I needed it since BeOS R4.

The alpha HAIKU of today is far superior to the BeOS of R4 days.[/quote]

Hey bbjimmy,

Thanks for replying! I’m amazed that you managed to successfully stick through the evolution of BeOS over all of these years. That is really great! People in your situation and with your commitment is what I assumed was completely lost with the demise of Be, Inc. Hopefully there’s more out there like you and all the more reason and motivation for me to jump in and help out!

By the way, I think that’s cool that you host sites from a Haiku computer. Be careful, though, if you’re worried about important data. I have a feeling that the security isn’t exactly up to par yet.

Also, I quickly checked out your sites (I’m a web programmer, it’s a habit, haha) – I’m glad to see you supporting the kids!

16

Woah. What application (Apache, PoorMan…) do you use to serve the websites? Do you serve them all from the same computer?

17

Yes, they are all served from the same computer. I use Xitami, and araneum web servers.

Xitami : http://www.bebits.com/app/2383

araneum: http://haikuware.com/directory/view-details/internet-network/servers/araneum-http-server

and TrackerBase for limited database operations: http://haikuware.com/directory/view-details/internet-network/database/trackerbase

Using the TrackerBase idea, I use people files for website authentication and session management with some added attributes. ( hash of the user password, last time a page was loaded etc.)

with BFS, one does not need mysql.

I am also using this same server for the attendance roll and payment documentation for multiple martial arts dojo locations. A student can attend class at any location and we keep the roll etc centralized.

With Haiku it is easy and just works.

18

Another somewhat old-timer here, starting from the days when you got BeOS with a BeBox. Honestly there has been some fallback, to MacOS X mostly and some NetBSD, with which I go back even longer; falling back usually to get a usable web browser. In the years immediately preceding Haiku’s emergence, I nearly stopped using BeOS altogether. But Haiku is honestly better than BeOS was, not only in terms of getting stuff to work on it right now but also, I believe, in its prospects as an evolving system. Better engineered, maybe it’s a natural consequence of starting from scratch with a known design goal. I also like its apparent development philosophy, and perhaps this is only a natural consequence of extreme lack of resources (I’ve been fooled by this before), but development seems practical and conservative.

As for platforms for development, what little I’ve done has been all on Haiku disk partitions. Very minor driver fix years ago, network code recently (perhaps in vain, seems to have languished for months), 3rd party software. No cross compilers, no VMs. I’ve probably been missing out on something this way, but it’s a simple way to go.

19

Hi kurtis!

I just remembered Miroslav Stimac’s master thesis “The desktop operating system Haiku”. Maybe that’ll be of interest to you.

Regards,
Humdinger

20

Hey humdinger,

Great read! Thanks for sharing. I thought this part was especially interesting:

  1. I thought it was kinda funny because I felt sentiment towards the Linux community, before posting this thread :)
  2. This type of 'market research' might indicate people are willing to pay for commercial software. Just an idea for others out there.