I suppose the distribs can do it, as they develops distributions, not an OS.
They get a stable base for free, they build just over it. It won’t really work for Haiku, i fear.
" online browsers for surfing" ? Is that a thing?
A rolling development model may help although I believe this should be contemplated from R1 as a base/foundation.
There are mixed blessings with respect to the web browser as more and more of the applications one is generally interested to use can be run from the browser. Without a decent/modern browser, it will be difficult to attract new users to Haiku.
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I’m with Stacked_Lambda on this.
If you set your Haiku and Haikuports repos to “current” you are already in a rolling mode of sorts. But it is the development branch, where developers should be free to make changes, even if it breaks things (cough … qt4 … cough).
For non-developer users, a rolling release should be on top of a stable base where you know that the core functionality is going to be the same for a long time.
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I dont get it. While I understand that progress is something we all want, I dont get why you need “beta” sticker to touch Haiku. I understand “I wanted Haiku to support my gear, but it still doesnt" or lack of any kind of software, but "beta" sticker? Come on! I still remember times, when people said: "Gmail is cool, but I wont use it, because its beta, and Im waiting on stable one”. Oh wait… No, no one said that ever.
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It’s planned to spiit today’s current repo into edge and a stable repos after R1 Beta IIRC.
“beta” is not just a label. It actually means something - no new features, bugfixes only. It signals that the application has reached a level of stability that people can actually start writing apps for it.
Browser development is indeed 50 to 60% of my Haiku time, but fortunately I’m not alone working on Haiku. And, I’m doing it because I need a browser to get things done. If someone was providing me an up to date, well integrated Firefox, maybe I would consider changing my priorities. But not the other way around: I’m not going to stop working on the browser then hope someone ports Firefox.
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Maybe in the future there could be a GSoC project to port Rust and Servo to Haiku…
Rust is already ported 
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Because I feel with a beta version we will have a more stable base to actually use and developers work on fine tuning, bug fixes, and I can know the system I have should work for the basics. Last nightly I tried booted but had no networking or sound. Guessing that was about 6 months to a year ago. Hoping maybe a final beta will allow a fairly modern but still 4 year old i7 to work on most all cylinders out of the box, especially networking. Without internet, I can’t do much. I am just a general user so not an expert and just wanted a nice core to start from that hopefully works better than what I experienced last time. I guess that is where I am coming from. Also feel the os will get more exposure for developer interest if it gets past Alpha into Beta. Just my 2 cents, whether right or wrong, is my opinion. TJ
True. I had a bad day and I forgot about that. 
Well, tagging a version “beta” won’t make sound or network suddenly work. If you are interested in getting your problems fixed, send us bugreports.
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Yeh I get that. And I may one last time give it a whirl. I guess what I am trying to say and maybe not doing well is sticking with a nightly and not having a version stable enough to call Beta means no outside folks, or very few, will be attracted to trying Haiku unless at some point there is a concentrated effort to say hey… we have this OS fairly close folks… and feel it is a good time to get it out in more mass, get some more attention, and kind of lock things down as a base point for newbies to give it a whirl. I just don’t see if another 5 years go by, that folks like myself will still be around caring about it any more. I just think there is a certain point you have to draw a line and make some push to getting more attention to the project, and maybe getting a fairly close Beta out would be it. Maybe gain that just few more programmers into the fold that might be able to escalate and help and get Haiku on a tad faster track. I can be wrong… but just seems the longer this goes on as is, the Haiku user base will get even smaller so all the hard work being done now will become lost and Haiku will never get to that next step. Maybe 1 real good hard push to get people like myself to try it and maybe attract some new developers would be a good thing, as this is all spare time programmers it seems and my guess the project needs more. Just some thoughts in all. Thanks for getting it this far… just seems to me that next step needs to get done sooner than later is all. Have a nice rest of 2017. TJ
Huh. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who feels the way i feel about package management in Haiku. I argued against Linux-izing Haiku the moment package management was proposed. I fought it with words, but, since I was nobody in terms of Haiku’s leadership (everyone i was tight with had left, and with them, the unified vision), no one listened to me. It’s just the usual *nix-minded, open sores, “the way it’s always been done”, and “the way everyone else does it” mentality.
Haiku was supposed to be a BeOS clone. It has failed to live up to that goal. The user-responsiveness isn’t like BeOS (the whole reason i loved it, the kernel timer was wonderfully fine grained), the net_server is no longer the net_server and instead is some monolithic kernel component, and software management has been taken from the user and turned into a package management nightmare of libs and dependencies… We shouldn’t even HAVE external shared libraries anymore. The whole point of them is moot.
I gave up on Haiku when it stopped being a BeOS clone. I stop back here every few months to see what has changed and, as usual, nothing much has happened except more package management stuff. What made BeOS special isn’t here, so why would the people who really cared about BeOS stick around? Are any of the developers from the original Haiku project? You know, from back in the days when it was called OpenBeOS and before it was renamed at WalterCon…? Anyone here actually attend WalterCon or is it just me?
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I’m here since '98 or 99. 
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I won’t go into the tiring “package management is bad” debate, as it has been discussed and the argument refuted countless time. But labeling Haiku’s package management with the above terms is patently false. The fact that it took Haiku so long to get it working is precisely because it’s not how others do it, but in a unique(?) Haiku way.
Oh, and there are plenty of old hands still around. If anything, there are too few new contributers…
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What’s the unique Haiku way?
I know the project since OpenBeOS, and as most here I dabbled already around with BeOS itself. So what’s the alternative? There’s no other BeOS project around that I know of that’s actually getting somewhere (even if it is at snail speed and taking questionable turns here and there).
Yeah, the fact that Haiku is the only potential BeOS option left is why i keep checking in on the project. I just have no optimism for its roadmap or potential success (I’m not even sure what success would look like at this point). I have my replacement OS already (Mac OS). I stopped treating computers as a hobby, too, so i have no real interest other than academic curiosity and the emotional investment from my time with the BeOS community of the past. Today, i expect computers to be a tool for my creative work, not an end of their own. BeOS was my main OS for almost a year (when doing web and writing, not music or art), but it was just a hobby/toy outside that short stretch of time (a single year when the web browser and GoBe Productive made the system a working tool for me before it all fell apart, starting with Net+ being useless for the internet after Be abandoned BeOS).
I miss BeOS R5-era BeOS, but it’s not coming back. Not from Be, Access, or Haiku.
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Did you ever try SoftwareValet and BeDepot for BeOS?
BeDepot could maintain software you had installed on your system. Finally getting something similar running on Haiku is great!
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