I’ll say what I think makes BeOS so special after all this time -
even after all this time, and all the problems, people are still talking about BeOS, and are passionate about it. The fact that this passion is being used by developers working on Haiku is proof of this.
If it wasn’t so darned special no one would give a rodents behind any more, would they!?
[quote=phatpenguin]
even after all this time, and all the problems, people are still talking about BeOS, and are passionate about it. The fact that this passion is being used by developers working on Haiku is proof of this.[/quote]
But this is only as special as Atari, Amiga, DOS, NeXT, OS/2, RISC OS and so on. There are people who are still passionate about those systems too, practically any system with more than a handful of users attracts this sort of retro-computing interest.
It depends on the application. It’s still very useful as a practical and super-fast tool. In fact, in my opinion it’s still the first choice for a radio station on a small budget. We’ve been using BeOS for years now to run our FM radio station’s automation (WJIH 95.9 Oneonta, NY). We first installed it on a $50 Dell Optiplex P3 500 Mhz machine. It ran for two years straight without a hiccup, shutdown or anything. On power outages, it would simply restart by itself and continue where it left off. We updated to a newer computer only because the sheer raw power of newer processors allows faster generation of daily 24-hour playlists. On the old Optiplex, I accidentally opened 40+ songs at the same time and it ran all of them simultaneously. Maybe now other OS’s could do that as well, but not at that time or at least not as well. Responsiveness in changes to audio settings such as changing EQ settings is instantaneous, as if you were changing settings on a physical EQ. For a radio station, opening and playing media instantly is critical. I can’t wait to try Haiku’s alpha when it comes out.
BeOS isn’t special today. But Haiku is!! Awesome work everyone. This is simply astonishing. I never believed it would ever be this good!
I know I’m a bit late in posting.
What makes BeOS so special today? My short answer is, it isn’t really special outside the fact that it harnessed many qualities and features that most operating systems today are just starting to tap into. But really, we’re not talking about BeOS here, anymore. We’re talking about Haiku.
What makes Haiku so special today? My short answer: It makes sense.
Longer answer:
I have been waiting silently off to the side for a release of anything Haiku – be it alpha, beta or stable, I don’t care. BeOS really captured what I, as a user, really wanted in an Operating System: Ease of use and powerful multimedia capabilities. It had speed, UNBELIEVABLE SPEED, too. Haiku, just judging on my computer, captures almost exactly the same feeling, but with a nice twist - Modern OS potential.
I am a FreeBSD user (for both desktop and server) as well as a Linux user. I’m actually quite tired of Linux’s attempts to be a great Desktop OS. It just isn’t there. It can be used as a desktop OS relatively easy, however there just isn’t a consistent environment. Graphics drivers are absolutely horrid on Linux (sorry guys, but they are) and Xorg just isn’t modern enough. Haiku gives what Linux or *nix systems have been trying to accomplish for how many years? Everyone says “Linux is great on the desktop”. Maybe. But when you have a problem in the linux community and criticize how some things are done, the new slogan is, “Linux is for power-users”. . .
Haiku, as I mentioned, eliminates much of the headache. You don’t need or should ever need to use the command line. Ever. It’s simplistic in nature. It just makes sense to use this system as a catapult in the new direction of Open Source Desktops and what the open source community is capable of making.
Anyways, /end rant.
Congratulations to all involved with Haiku Project with this new Alpha 1. It’s very impressive and the wait was worth it. Let the coding continue!
-10
I’m new to Haiku, but I did at one time bounce between AmigaOS and BeOS. I must say that Haiku is coming along quite well. BeOS is special today because it was one of those OS’ that really brought something new to the table. New ways of doing things and a new style. And it did it early on, relatively speaking.
Haiku seems special to me for several reasons.
I have to digress for a bit and reply to this:
“But this is only as special as Atari, Amiga, DOS, NeXT, OS/2, RISC OS and so on. There are people who are still passionate about those systems too, practically any system with more than a handful of users attracts this sort of retro-computing interest.”
At one time, there was this OS called UNIX. And then along came someone who decided to create his own OS that was free of licensing issues. He was inspired by UNIX. He called the new OS - Linux. (UNIX-Linux, BeOS-Haiku)
I guess in a sense, we are all into ‘retro-computing’. UNIX has been around how long? How much of OS X still looks similar to Mac OS 7? Windows…
Anyway. It’s nice that we have so many choices now, and so many of them are free.
Thanks to the Haiku team for their hard work!
I started with BeOS in the 1999 and used it as a 2nd development station where I worked. It was fun to play with.
What brought me to it at the time was hearing another developer at work talk about it and he was pretty into it. I did some searching on the net and found some demo videos that showed it’s multimedia prowess. I thought that what pretty cool. I was just getting into film at the time and I thought that an open source competitor, even if not as evolved, to Final Cut Pro would be something to get into.
By the time I did get around to installing, the emphasis and focus had changed and it seemed that Be, Inc was moving away from that capability and targeting more of a general audience. That isn’t a bad thing, mind you. Just that the strong multimedia, small footprint, capability was a big selling point for me initially.
I’ve just downloaded the alpha and will be installing Haiku today.
[quote=gnarlyc]
At one time, there was this OS called UNIX. And then along came someone who decided to create his own OS that was free of licensing issues. He was inspired by UNIX. He called the new OS - Linux. (UNIX-Linux, BeOS-Haiku)
[quote]
To be correct, Torvalds cloned MINIX not UNIX. So a clone of a clone of UNIX. He didn’t create his own OS, he only created a kernel. What licensing issues is Linux free of? I can think of plenty of hell the GPL causes. I can’t help but wonder how many people are illegally using NVIDIA’s or ATI’s drivers…
I always liked the BeOS for a few simple reasons. First, it favors function but doesn’t neglect form (GUIs are simple, applications are powerful). Second, developers seem to be mature enough to adhere to the OS standards rather than reinvent the wheel even if they think there’s a “better” way. Third, it’s a desktop oriented OS rather than a server/desktop/enterprise hydra. Fourth, it’s simple; I have had major issues with every OS I’ve tried and the BeOS was always the most straight-forward to fix. Fifth, while it may lack application choice, the best choice is usually there (recent example: I was looking for PDF annotators, of which Windows has like three and Linux has only Adobe; I laughed upon noticing BePDF does have this feature).
Actually, I think most of that can be summed up with “it’s a desktop OS” and subsequently developers tend to focus their efforts on the same problems, leading to consistency, interoperability, simplicity, and well thought out applications.
Nice one, Izomiac. I would add that UNIX has long had a philosophy of lots of small utilities that could be strung together - command-line UNIX, that is - the GUI side of UNIX and its lookalikes (incl. Mac OSX) has quickly become bloated, complicated and slow. Moore’s Law is all that keeps them afloat. BeOS and now Haiku was the only desktop OS to attempt a similar philosophy on the GUI side, and I hope we can maintain that. Resize a graphic? Use TAResizer. Convert a graphic to another format? Use PicConvert. And so on. (this is from memory; I’m not on my Haiku setup right now). Small, fast, well-designed programs that do one thing and do it well.
Which, BTW is why there is a lot of resistance in this community against the idea of OpenOffice for Haiku. In fact, most of us are looking forward to a simpler browser than Firefox.
I’ve heard good things about AmigaOS and RiscOS, but I’ve not had the chance to work with them. BeOS, when I encountered it, was like seeing a Mac for the first time back in the DOS days: “Yes, that’s how it should be!”
It’s Amiga, not AmigaOS.
Check out.
http://aros.sourceforge.net/
http://www.morphosppc.com/
I don’t know much about RiscOS, so I can’t point you in the right direction there. I guess Risc is still being developed though. The original Amiga still is too, but you need legacy hardware for it.
No, it’s AmigaOS not Amiga. Amiga is the hardware. AmigaOS is the operating system.
Michel was right in saying AmigaOS.
Ah, Terribly sorry.
I really should have known that. My first computer was an Amiga… I feel like a bit of a jerk.
Try not to use wikipedia as a source. At least for me, I don’t consider anything on it to be true and I immediatly disregard it.
No worries, it happens. I’m sure we can forgive you.
Wikipedia is very good source of information. I find it mostly accurate. It is a good resource to start with, for general information, but always a good idea to search internet too to confirm. I really believe checking Wikipedia as a basic reference is a good habit to get into.
Oh yes, as a base source it works. I was just suggesting don’t use it as a reference, like when you pointed me towards my mistake.
I’ve found many errors, mostly in biased information which tends to pop up every now and then. There are several “flame wars” that take place on Wikipedia. Usually between processor types, compilers, operating systems and licenses. Well at least that’s what I see. There are topics which are near immune to such issues, and topics that aren’t faced by such issues.
Back to the actually topic of the thread. Here’s something I realized today, BeOS was rather free from ridiculous licensing policies and terms of use. Examples include Apple’s policies on development and tools. How can it be a security breach to take a screen shot of beta version of XCode? This same policy applies to some Microsoft products. In regards to the GPL, you could legally use non-gpl code in the kernel, such as NVIDIA’s and ATI’s drivers, without relicencing.
BeO is special today because there are no commercial applications for it.
No? Well, maybe there is, but I cannot find any apps that will be useful to me besides the Firefox version. I downloaded a ftp positiv app - didn’t work.
What I would love is the simplicity og Haiku or BeOS, you may call it whatever you like, and a picture browser with IPTC editing and a small picture editor that can ftp to clients.
If you can put it into one app that would be great. And of course wifi.
Something like PhotoMechanic and Lightroom ;o)
I don’t need a flying teapot.
So, please forget all the small apps that you can sit with your nerd friends and show off, I don’t need them ;o)
Oh, and can you develop a version for the iPhone?
I never tried BeOS but I always liked the interface and simplicity. Now I have installed the Alpha on my Macbook Pro and it is like going back in another century, positively meant. Lot of issues of course, it won’t recognize all my RAM for instance.
But keep going on and call it whatever you like, just keep it simple and fast.
[quote=myyr]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…[/quote]
The main “clientele” for Haiku will initially be the many that remember how without dedicated 3d hardware BeOS R5 was capable of rotating multiple video clips on a 3d cube in realtime on a Pentium II 400Mhz with 128 MB of ram without a stutter while the mere concept of video running while 3d was drawn on Windows 98 was but a pipe dream. A system built for parallelism ahead of its day that is now relevant because of the pervasiveness of multicore processors, where the apps themselves do not need a “Grand Central” for them to multithread efficiently, the OS takes care of it for you and also the notion of a fully integrated OS environment that provides common ground for apps to have consistency in more than just looks, but operation and interoperability between running apps the OS and the user files is something that I’m sure will push Haiku forward.
If Haiku stays true to the original tenants of the BeOS philosophy you are looking at Metadata for Any and ALL FILES becoming mainstream (and actually useful!) and something that goes beyond a “Me Too!” type of patch-up procedural seen in most OSes and Files Systems today or something that instead of a software feature should be standard in every OS. I mean even Google is making a push on metadata plugins for file systems these days, we have it right out of the box!
And once that the OS has a bigger hardware base for deployment and more and more configurations become available I’m sure a percentage of Linux users who were never too comfortable with how Linux has held the user experience as a second class citizen will perhaps come over, try Haiku and maybe call it their Home OS. Because the User Experience really, really matters. I cannot stress this enough. Just ask any machead about it and you’ll soon realize that you will only pry their macs away from their cold dead hands. We will have to improve upon what we started with. You only go onward from here and we can expand greatly from what we have now, but first things first.
Finally, we will, as a community of Users and Developers, at some point in the near future have to relegate BeOS as the “where we started as an idea” point and focus on the “Where We’re Going as a Platform” full time. Just like NeXT and OS X. NeXT is where OS X comes from, but you now focus on OS X and NeXT, even while it was a great OS is hardly ever mentioned. And the sooner we do this the better. This not only for the sake of direction, but because this will be the image of Haiku.
I apologize if I sound preachy, but I really like the ideals behind Haiku, and I want it to succeed.
“A system built for parallelism ahead of its day that is now relevant because of the pervasiveness of multicore processors, where the apps themselves do not need a “Grand Central” for them to multithread efficiently, the OS takes care of it for you”
Grand Central Dispatch is an OS-provided thread pool with some compiler support to simplify task parallelism. BeOS / Haiku simply doesn’t provide an equivalent.
GCD is also open source and in general a pretty simple concept above and beyond the C blocks. Adding it or something similar to Haiku would be pretty easy.
In addition GCD still requires programmers to understand the complexities of multi-threaded programming and it does not solve any of the usual locking problems associated with shared data and multiple threads. Plus Mac OS X still has a single UI thread which programmer’s will still find a way to block occasionally (GCD or no), producing the much loved “pinwheel of death.”
Since for better or worse Haiku inherited BeOS’ highly threaded approach, app UI lock-ups or pauses are less likely. Of course deadlocks and other thread errors are always a risk in complex threaded code.
[quote=leavengood]
Since for better or worse Haiku inherited BeOS’ highly threaded approach, app UI lock-ups or pauses are less likely. Of course deadlocks and other thread errors are always a risk in complex threaded code.[/quote]
UI “pauses” in BeOS or Haiku, and UI “pauses” in OS X, require exactly the same mistake, the programmer assumes some routine will execute with no noticeable delay and in fact it takes longer*. In OS X the user typically gets a “pinwheel of death”, in Haiku, it is policy not to provide any indication of the problem, the affected window is just unresponsive.
It really isn’t clear that forcibly adding yet more threads (one per window) helps. If you think about it this is entirely arbitrary, Be could have decided you must have one thread per open file instead of per window. Or (more sensibly) they could have let developers choose how many message pumps they want, with the default being just one for the whole application. In practice having one UI thread (which never waits for anything with a noticeable delay) and one or more other worker threads works well with any number of windows.
There are also other approaches to interactivity (e.g. using continuation passing style) which Be ruled out by insisting on kernel threads as the solution. Very nasty hacks would be necessary to support these alternate paradigms on BeOS or Haiku, which is a shame.