What makes BeOS so special today?

1

Of course, Haiku is based on BeOS R5. However, I believe there need to be more exposure of knowledge about BeOS to the public to understand what Haiku is. That means we need to have a very good understanding on BeOS itself.

Anyway, what makes BeOS (R5) so special compare to Windows, Linux, or Apple? After all these years of halt of development of BeOS, are there any very unique feature that BeOS has compare to other operating system?

Is it true that BeOS is very Unix-like?

I still remember my old relative being sad about BeOS becoming obsolete. Still today. :frowning:

2

Actually, this is a very bad way to put it… Haiku is not based on any BeOS code at all, it’s inspired by it, and compatible with it.

This would pretty much be like saying that FreeBSD is based on Linux… it’s plain wrong.

BeOS was only “unix-like” in that it shipped with a bash shell and a full complement of commandline utilities. It also sported a relatively good POSIX compliance layer (Haiku is much better even)… but these do not make “UNIX”, and that’s where the similarity to UNIX pretty much ends.

Sorry, I feel obligated to mention these clarifications as there is a lot of misunderstanding and misconceptions about these things floating around, and it wouldn’t do to let the Haiku forums harbor misinformation without correction.

3

Actually, this is a very bad way to put it… Haiku is not based on any BeOS code at all, it’s inspired by it, and compatible with it.[/quote]

Actually, Haiku did inherit some code from BeOS, specifically OpenTracker (for the Tracker file manager and the Deskbar) which was open-source by Be Inc. before their demise. ;)[/quote]

4

Fair enough :wink:

5

From an end-users point of view, I believe it’s fair to say that Haiku is ‘based on’ BeOS, in that for the time being it’s a near-perfect copy, so saying ‘inspired by’ (like BeOS itself was ‘inspired by’ the Amiga) is a euphemism at best. It’s a clone! But that’s just terminology.

As to the original question, what attracts me personally to Haiku is first and foremost that it is open source. This means among other things that it cannot die as long as people are interested in it. But let’s not dwell on political issues :slight_smile:

From a technical standpoint, there are a number of advantages over GNU/Linux+Gnome, which has been my main OS for a while now. Some of these probably apply to Windows as well (I was never really a Windows user, so I don’t know):

It’s an integrated system. A Linux distribution is a put together by a bunch of components from many different places, sometimes in a very bulky layer-upon-layer fashion.

My favourite example here is Network Manager, which is what you use to manage your networking connections on Ubuntu systems, among others, from the graphical user interface. The base Linux system inherited from UNIX a set of command line tools for doing these things (ifconfig, and the various WiFi-related kludges that Linux has later added - instead of adopting the more sensible BSD extensions to ifconfig, but I digress). Since command line tools are deemed ‘user hostile’ by the general populace, Network Manager was created to do these things from the GUI, but that system isn’t perfect, so sometimes you still need to drop down to the command line (for using bridge interfaces, for instance), and sometimes the two end methods end up fighting for control. BeOS has none of this, since the developers think of everything from the kernel and up as a coherent system.

On a related note, all BeOS applications look and operate (mostly) the same, for the same reason: there’s really only one way of writing graphical user interfaces, namely by using BeOS’s own collection of functionality. On Linux (and to some extent, Windows), developers have access to a wide variety of such libraries for writing user interfaces, leading to the unintegrated feeling once you use something which wasn’t written with the Linux desktop environment you use in mind. This doesn’t happen on Haiku, since it’s a cohesive, unified system from kernel to GUI.

Similarly, BeOS applications were built to speak to one another, and they all speak the same language (The BMessage construct - used for everything from scripting to telling applications that a button was pressed). On a modern Linux system, again, once you venture outside a given desktop environment, things sometimes get a little weird. Happily, BeOS’s way of doing things is very sensible and it is pervasive throughout the system, so apps are thoroughly scriptable more or less for free.

Then there’s the file system. BeOS allows you to store an arbitrary number of ‘attributes’ along with files. The canonical example is MP3 files: a CD ripper (or program to dig such data out of ID3 tags) can store things like Artist, Title, Album or Year in a attribute in the filesystem, and then all BeOS applications have easy access to that via a simple and familiar interface. There’s no need to make a complicated database format to create an iTunes-killer for Haiku. You can just use the file system.

Also, it’s got sliding yellow tabs for window decoration. How ace is that?

6

I don’t personally consider it a “clone” either… If anything, it’s simply “compatible”.

With the massive improvements over BeOS in POSIX, performance, and the availability of GCC4 compiler - Haiku is already well past the “clone” stage IMO.

7

I don’t personally consider it a “clone” either… If anything, it’s simply “compatible”.

With the massive improvements over BeOS in POSIX, performance, and the availability of GCC4 compiler - Haiku is already well past the “clone” stage IMO.[/quote]

A programmer would care about POSIX and GCC4. However, most laymen wouldn’t care or necessarily know. I think you really need to come to terms with the fact that people will view Haiku as a clone or copy of BeOS and just go with it. Trying to nitpick exact terminology is just going to bog down Haiku’s PR and confuse people. It’s also going to appear adversarial if someone asks about this BeOS “clone” and random people start “clarifying” how they should refer to the OS rather than giving any useful info or help.

I’m just sayin’… there are better fights to fight than getting in a tizzy about clone or based on or inspired by, etc. Especially when you get more popular and are trying to attact new users with limited attention spans.

The only reason I want to try out Haiku/OpenBeOS sometime is because I always wanted to play with BeOS and had heard great things about it. So Haiku’s got that halo effect from YEARS ago. Trying to distance yourself from BeOS is only going to sabotage any PR efforts leading up to your first real release. Use that any way you can and put aside some of the programmer mindset of trying to precisely define and clarify terminology in cases where it honestly doesn’t matter. Engineers are like that too. :wink:

8

Great - and as I said before, FreeBSD is not a clone of Linux or vice-versa - so we should be correcting this misconception every chance we get.

Natively-compiled Haiku software will usually not run on BeOS, and eventually BeOS software will not run on Haiku (post R1) - and other architectural changes will occur at that point as well, making Haiku further and further away from BeOS.

The concepts behind BeOS serve as a “starting point” for Haiku, but it doesn’t aim to be a clone. People continuing to purport this as the goal are only lying to themselves and others.

I think you’re simply speculating based on how stupid you believe people are. People can be educated, it only takes people willing to start doing it :slight_smile:

9

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.

I love the elegance of BeOS/Haiku. The file system layout is amazingly intuitive. The interface is minimalistic, yet perfectly functional. Everything is cohecive, well integrated. BeOS was ridiculously smooth. Haiku is open, and the BeOS/Haiku community is absolutely amazing. We’ve stuck together for the last 10 years now!!!

10

[quote=umccullough]Great - and as I said before, FreeBSD is not a clone of Linux or vice-versa - so we should be correcting this misconception every chance we get.

Natively-compiled Haiku software will usually not run on BeOS, and eventually BeOS software will not run on Haiku (post R1) - and other architectural changes will occur at that point as well, making Haiku further and further away from BeOS.

The concepts behind BeOS serve as a “starting point” for Haiku, but it doesn’t aim to be a clone. People continuing to purport this as the goal are only lying to themselves and others.

I think you’re simply speculating based on how stupid you believe people are. People can be educated, it only takes people willing to start doing it :)[/quote]

Oh, I’m not speculating! I’m in IT but not a programmer. This means that I deal with executives and external and internal customers and attempt to train them to do complex tasks like put their fingers on a fingerprint reader and wonder why they decide to randomly change what finger they use and complain they can’t get logged into our system.

A programmer is more insulated in that they typically interface with people who know how to relate to them and speak their language, who understand their mindset. Whenever our on-staff programmer attempts to work with our employees to tweak or create an in-house program, invariably one of the non-programmer IT guys has to be a go-between to translate concepts between the programmer and the regular person.

I ran across a US government agency with ambiguous file format specifications. Files could be submitted as ANSI, but it didn’t say what kind of ANSI. 7bit, 8bit, the lower 128 characters, a specific character set, a specific ISO standard, what? So some files were getting rejected that should have been valid based on several interpretations of the ambiguous “standard”. However, the people I tried to talk to about tightening up the standard were not programmers and could not understand where the problem was.

I’m not saying programmers are bad or anything, just that I recognize that there’s a certain mindset that good programmers tend to have and it’s not always conducive to relating to or communicating with non-programmers.

You say FreeBSD isn’t based on Linux. I say it’s primarily a CLI with some random window manager slapped on depending on what distribution you use. And what is it, really? It’s being represented by whatever quirks and abilities the default window manager is; that’s what a “normal” user identifies with.

Technically correct that an app made for Haiku won’t run on BeOS R5. However, for all practical purposes, people are waiting for Haiku to be released so they have an updated BeOS, not so that someone makes a new app for them to try to run on their BeOS R5 or R4 install from 5+ years ago. So I say, the fact that apps made for Haiku won’t run on BeOS is confusing and getting in the way for a new, novice user.

Of course, do whatever you want, but I am voicing this as I fear attempts to evangelize this OS might get bogged down with exactness at the expense of simplicity and clarity. It doesn’t matter that FreeBSD isn’t a clone of Linux. What matters is that neither one of them are Windows or Mac OS X and Haiku is something different (BETTER) than all of the above.

If you’re talking to other technical potential end-users, you can be as exact as you want but probably those users will already know that type of basic information. If you’re trying to grow your potential userbase with regular people, i.e. the ones who care if you have a web browser and an office suite and an mp3 player, you need to take a different approach. I hope when it comes time to do a PR blitz, you get someone who isn’t very technical to help out. Or maybe find a technical writer who writes instructions/manuals for end users (as opposed to professionals–think office and photoshop manuals versus Oracle manual or linux man pages) and have them be a filter to make things simple for regular folk to understand.

And just to be clear, I’m not taking issue with you, personally. Just with the approach I see you expousing and I can see how that could easily become the overall Haiku PR mindset when doing PR-type stuff. I think that would be a mistake, is all.

(sorry for the verbosity, I tend to get long-winded)

11

I personally don’t believe that distinguishing Haiku from BeOS is bad PR… I believe it’s damage control. I believe there are far more people who believe BeOS is dead and shouldn’t be revived… or have never heard of BeOS than there are die-hard BeOS fans waiting for its revival.

Please keep in mind, I am that go-between guy you were referring to. I translate customer requirements into technical requirements every day. Worse, I work with people in the insurance industry… I know what you’re trying to say, but I don’t agree that it is better to continue stating that Haiku is the same as BeOS.

I believe Haiku needs its own identity. Without its own identity, it will not grow and become something great by itself.

I hear what people say, I know what their perceptions are, and I have heard plenty of misconception that needs to be corrected. The last thing we need is for someone to identify Haiku as BeOS, and skip it thinking: “I used BeOS for a while, it was neat, but irrelevant now.”

Haiku needs a message of its own… that it takes the best features of BeOS and goes beyond.

12

Besides, most people don’t start arguments over this. When it’s quickly explained why Haiku is not a BeOS-clone, most just say, “Oh, I see. Neat. Where can I download the ISO?”. :slight_smile:

“What makes BeOS so special today?”

No. 1 (of 1000): My main Ubuntu system is so unintegrated that I can’t drag an attachment from an email onto the desktop.

No.2: Every app in Ubuntu quits with a different key combo: CTRL+Q, CTRL+W, ALT-F… it’s insane.

I could go on and on, but there’s no reason to get myself worked up over it… :slight_smile:

13

Or, the person doesn’t want to deal with the hassle and never downloads the ISO. 'tis my fear.

I dunno. I guess we’ll see how things play out when a release is ready. I tend to evaluate based on worst-case scenarios, though, so perhaps things will go smooth.

14

It’s pretty simple for application developers to get this right, so I suppose it is merely a bug unless you are running some text-only mail client from a terminal. There were of course a great many bugs in BeOS. “My mail app has a bug” seems like it’s not something special about BeOS OR Ubuntu.

I suppose it’s conceivable you just couldn’t figure out how to get it to the desktop. On my system I can drag the attachment icon to the workspace switcher, hover for a moment over a workspace and it is opened for me to drop the icon. Similarly if I drag it over the title of a hidden window, and hover, the window is brought to the front for me to drop the icon onto it.

And how does BeOS prevent this? Well, that’s maybe a trick question. Of course it doesn’t, the method of quitting applications in BeOS varies too. It’s under the control of the application developer, just like with Ubuntu.

15

Actually, it was not the engineers, but the former PR guru (me) who came up with the “inspired by the BeOS” thing. :slight_smile: This was intended to be the articulation of a two-pronged “cherish the legacy but pursue our own identity” approach thought out for the development stage of Haiku that mainly targets former BeOS fans, developers and hobbyists.

The reasoning for this approach was that claiming to be a mere clone of a dead OS from the 90s had negative implications. So we chose to create a loose connection with the BeOS (to cater to former BeOS user base) while leaving the door open for developing Haiku’s own identity as it matures in the future.

As the OS matures and sells itself on its own value, the BeOS legacy will become less relevant and more of historical trivia rather than a selling point. When that happens, arguing whether it is a clone or not will become irrelevant. So, like Humdinger said, don’t get worked up guys. It’s mostly about the code anyway. :slight_smile:

16

Hi NoHaikuForMe!
How was your vacation? Haven’t seen any demotivating comments from you in some time. :slight_smile:

It’s Thunderbird, so it seems to be a screw up in the system integration. Had it since I started with Ubuntu 7.10. Several reinstalls and Thunderbird updates didn’t cure it. I guess there’s some config file somewhere, but I don’t know where to even start looking for it.

I may not be your biggest computer buff, but I do know how to sucessfully drag&drop. :slight_smile:

[quote][quote]
No.2: Every app in Ubuntu quits with a different key combo: CTRL+Q, CTRL+W, ALT-F… it’s insane.
[/quote]

And how does BeOS prevent this? Well, that’s maybe a trick question. Of course it doesn’t, the method of quitting applications in BeOS varies too. It’s under the control of the application developer, just like with Ubuntu.
[/quote]

Yes, but with Haiku, there’s only one desktop environment/windowmanager. If a programmer wants to conform to Haiku’s interface guide (and everyone so far does), there’s ONE correct way. Under Linux there are many “right” ways, depending in what environment the app is run.

A “uniform” system is what makes Haiku special.

Just for fun, here’s
No. 3: I take a screenshot, tell it to copy to clipboard, but pasting into Gimp doesn’t do anything. Copy text from an app to the clipboard, close the app, try to paste into another app. Doesn’t work.

Why is it so hard for you to concede that Haiku does have a nice integration of system technologies that just isn’t matched by the diversity of Linux distributions?
You know, you can still dislike the Haiku project in general while admitting to some positive aspects now and then.

17

I don’t have Thunderbird. I’m not sure I know anyone who uses Thunderbird. I guess it’s a bug, I’m not inclined to install Thunderbird to try to investigate a bug when the thrust of your point was that somehow a bug in Thunderbird (a cross platform piece of software which could just as well be running on BeOS) means BeOS is better integrated than Ubuntu.

[quote]
Yes, but with Haiku, there’s only one desktop environment/windowmanager. If a programmer wants to conform to Haiku’s interface guide (and everyone so far does), there’s ONE correct way. Under Linux there are many “right” ways, depending in what environment the app is run.[/quote]

Now you’re talking about Haiku. The question was about BeOS. So, where’s the HIG for BeOS? Oops, another trick question. In reality BeOS applications varied a great deal, it’s no harder to find interface inconsistencies than in Windows. Only if you set out to declare everything consistent and turn a blind eye to the exceptions can you make your argument - but this same approach works on any platform.

Again, this works perfectly for me. Indeed The GIMP even has a menu option specifically for creating a new image from the contents of the clipboard, but of course you can also paste into an existing image.

However perhaps I know what you did wrong here, did you close the program which took the screenshot before pasting into GIMP?

For this to work you need a third program to hold onto the contents of the clipboard when the first program exits. There are no good alternatives here, although the most obvious alternative looks superficially attractive until you try it on real users (X used to offer a solution which took this alternative, but it was limited to short snippets of text for reasons that will be obvious if you understand what’s going on here). You can get such programs but I don’t use one, and it seems you don’t either (at least in Ubuntu).

[quote]
Why is it so hard for you to concede that Haiku does have a nice integration of system technologies that just isn’t matched by the diversity of Linux distributions?
You know, you can still dislike the Haiku project in general while admitting to some positive aspects now and then.[/quote]

I don’t really see this nice integration you’re talking about. Of course I could write positive things about Haiku, just by choosing a low benchmark - BeFS is so much better than Amiga FFS, or isn’t it wonderful how in Haiku you can keep working even if an application hangs, unlike RISCOS. I can’t think of any reason to do that.

18

Yeah, damn, if only there were another Thunderbird user, that problem would have come up in the past 1,5 years…

The argument isn’t that there’s a HIG. Afterall, everyone is free to ignore HIGs. It’s the one “windowmanager” in BeOS/Haiku that establishes a standard as a consensus. Having more than one which define e.g. shortcuts differently, there’s no consensus what’s right and wrong.

However perhaps I know what you did wrong here, did you close the program which took the screenshot before pasting into GIMP?[/quote]

No.

[quote][quote]
Copy text from an app to the clipboard, close the app, try to paste into another app. Doesn’t work.
[/quote]

For this to work you need a third program to hold onto the contents of the clipboard when the first program exits. [/quote]

Yep. That is called a “crutch”.

Obviously. For you a third app passing around what should be in the system’s clipboard is integration enough.

I could really start to wonder about your motivation to post here at all. I won’t dwell on that though, because I suspect you’re just here to troll, scare away interested visitors and at least waste everyone’s time.

One last question before we can go back ignoring each other: you don’t happen to be German, are you? I knew an ex-BeOS dev who got very frustrated way back. I could imagine if he let his vitriol simmer for 5 or 6 years he might be jaded enough to invest that much time to sabotage our project.

19

Unix is like a tank - heavy iron, big engine, trained staff, specialized. Linux came from Unix, so the design is (for/mostly) the same. You can take the turret off, of course, and add some colors in and out, maybe install a wooden trim, hide the heavy levers behind user-friendly dash, hide most of the buttons-knobs-meters so user thinks that speedometer is all she/he has/needs, install comfy seat, call it ‘puppy’ or other cute names. it’s stripped but still that heavy-duty tank underneath it all.
Unix was a tank. alternative was a hyped-pimped soap-box car with big price tag called ‘Windows’… so Linux came to be what it is today.

Unix and Windows both were quite successful. Both had clientele. Both had different selling points. Who is the clientele for Beos and for Haiku? Are they the same? Can You (and do You want to) sell same product to people who buy with eyes/emotions and to those who buy with brains? Which kind of people are there more? So may questions to think about…

20

I would say that it’s less unique that in used to be, but that’s only because the development target has been copying R5. After the first release, I’m sure that we’ll see much more that sets Haiku apart from the crowd. Haiku is in a lot of ways what Zeta tried to be. There are numerous differences between R5 and Haiku ATM.

What makes it unique? Aside from overall speed, queries, and its licensing, there aren’t too many individual features that make it unique. The integration and combination of features present in other operating systems, however, is. Ease-of-use from the Mac, a heavily UNIX-like foundation, and Minesweeper from Windows.