In my experience of using haiku, I can debatable say it the best OS I ever used, compared to when I used Linux and window, along with this I can say doing a direct comparison with window and Linux I was shocked on how many category haiku actually excel in comparison to the main 2, with me running minetest on each to me using ffmpeg gave me the most interesting results with some video being 5 to 10s faster in loading speed and impressive encoding/decoding, along with me being able to run both 32 bit and 64 bit haiku was the best decision of my life, and was very much easier than trying to choose Linux distribution or dual boot windows/Linux(which I occasionally use sometime), and not to mention almost having pre installed app that are fully native to the experience just made me happy as it show a lot of time was put into making this project (honorable mention:poor man was the best app I used and it allowed me to set up a bunch of work), and there was almost zero bloat with any of the app most of the apps are very small compared to me trying to run latest window software which wouldāve been 1 gb at most, it was honestly reliving to experience a OS be very light and excel at what it does but ultimately I want to know what is why do you use haiku over other OS
Because itās fun. Light and fast as well, but mainly fun and with a great community. It also balances familiarity (I can open a terminal emulator and feel right at home) with genuinely different ideas. We desperately need to think differently, because computing is quickly sinking into a sea of sameness.
Iām bad at cross-compiling, so doing compilations in Haiku is the most fun. 
I like Haiku because it is fast, not only for installing but in actual use.
But, I only use it for familiarization, my main computers/laptops run Linux or BSD, for the past decade & a half. (Since 1999)
This is wonderful, but now you gave me a idea of what I can run on all three operating systems, as another similar, they share in common emulation and we can compare 3-D games and 2-D games from NES era to psp so thank you so much 
Personally i like that it is what i truly have missed for the last couple decades: A true enduser / singleuser system in the spirit of the 16 - / early 32 Bit era (think MacOS < 10, Windows 9x, AmigaOS etc.). Yes, i understand the benefits of a multiuser system but everything feels just so sluggish today compared to what we could have.
I like that it is specifically a desktop operating system and that you can feel that in every part.
Itās not some server,phone,desktop one-fits-all solution that can boot everywhere but feels rather non-ideal on each of them.
Itās designed for use by one user,with a screen,a mouse and a keyboard,not for serving hundreds of users at the same time,and also not for touch devices.
The user interface is well-designed,it allows you to get your work done without getting in your way and itās optimized for traditional mouse/keyboard input.
I also like the speed very much and that it can make old devices useful again.
And programming for Haiku is really fun.
Iād probably never have learned C++ without Haiku.
Thatās a big part of it for me, though of course there are other attractions. Iāve got a Mac laptop on the table here thatās really far better for software downloaded from elsewhere, but Iāve never been able to really get into building my own like I do on Haiku (and BeOS), so my stuff runs only on Haiku.
Cute and user friendly. Thatās how it feels to use Haiku whereas other OSās like Windows 11, Mac OS, and the various desktops running on Linux and FreeBSD feels efficient but impersonal in comparison. It brought to mind how I felt when I swapped a VW Golf for a Renault Twingo. The Golf was the better car especially on motorways. But the Twingo was fun.
I use Haiku because I can understand it (mostly). When something is broken, I can usually dive into the code, sometimes I can fix it, or else I can at least understand where the problem lies and why itās too complicated for me to fix.
I canāt do that with closed source projects, and I also canāt do that with the typical Linux system where the code is spread accross hundred of repositories, teams and programming languages.
I like haiku because it is more reliable than Windows or Linux. I have had my computer end up not able to boot after updating both Windows and many Linux based distributions. The same thing happens under Haiku, but I can boot the last state and carry on with my work until the issue is resolved. Try that in Mint or Windows!
I just decided to update Windows 11 om my laptop (Usually use Haiku) last night. Itās been 9 hours so far and the hard disk is still thrashing. The laptop is useless until the update finally settles down
five hours later and Windows is still thrashing the hard drive, no wonder updates can crash your computer in Windows
Unfortunately I do not use it daily, but when I do I love the look and feel, as well as how efficiently it uses resources of old hardware. I hope I can keep 2000s hardware running as long components last even if it is just for emulation and software history preservation.
I have always been an alternative OS fan, ever since OS/2 and OS/2 Warp came out and was gutted when they ditched itā¦ I learnt REXX and everything. I still have a Mac Cube with OS9 and miss BeOS which I played with at university and loved to bits.
I am still a retro computer fan to this day and love keeping old computers working. I have a bunch of Atom based industrial fanless PCs with Compact Flash storage and just 2GB - 4GB RAM and even the 4GB models were almost unusable with lighter distros such as Lubuntu and AntiX.
When I heard of Haiku I gave it a try and was shocked at just how usable those small computers became once more despite having only a single CPU and slow storage.
With solid browser choice, decent Wifi Drivers and recent CUPS printing they are actually entirely usable for secondary screens / sub devices / music players for keeping my main machine clutter freeā¦
But best of all, itās seeing just how damn enthusiastic the Haiku community is it takes me back to my 8 bit childhood days of tweaking and poking stuff to understand how it works. It has a real āPioneer / Hobbyistā vibe going on and has a charm all of its own.
I have windows 2000 running in a VM on Linux Mint 22 on a 2011 iMac running in VMWare and it absolutely flies. Itās so stupid that office 2005 running on windows 2000 is actually 10 x faster than a recent Mac version of Microsoft Office running native on that exact same Mac used to before I moved over to Linux. And to be frank, I hardly need any of the new Office functions nor do I need Copilot.
I hate how bloated modern software has become and Haiku allows me to run a minimal desktop with minimal apps that boot in fractions of a seconds rather than fractions of a minute.
(Except of course ported browsers are still slow compared to WebPositive).
Hi,
Iām not a Haiku user (yet?). Iām an AmigaOS user.
Since many years, I tried maybe 30 different Linux distributions. I tried them because I often read people saying Linux was faster than Windows.
And since I tried Haiku, I am convinced all these people are wrong. Haiku is a lot faster on the same hardware. It flies literally. It seems a real-time operating system with a user desktop. It is so great to use than I found it more fun to use than Linux.
Ok, the desktop experience is not the same but as Iām not expert on Linux, both systems are equally easy/difficult to use. Thereās always a learning curve. Difficult to say which one is the easiest one.
I am sure everyone should use Haiku.
Philippe.
Phillipe, if you havenāt already, try taking a look at the shortcut-page.
-Especially whatās not āobviousā; things Iāve longed for for many years are ā¦
Having a title-bar the size of a ātabā, and being able to move that tab to any position, so you can stack windows. Haiku does that; it allows you to shift-click the window title to move it.
-But wait; that isnāt necessary at all. If you have multiple windows open, just CMD-drag your titlebar onto another windowās titlebar. Uhmā¦ CMD-drag (yes, Iām a former Mac-user too) ā¦ That might be ALT-drag or CTL-drag for many people in here (I swapped the modifier keys using the Keymap application; an EXCELLENT application, which allows me to easily get the keyboard layout right - thatās āimpossibleā on Linux)
Something youād probably like as an AmigaOS user, is that you can CMD+CTL+right mouse button drag the window to resize it (or left mouse button for moving the window). I use this a lot.
-But read through the page mentioned above and see if there are features youāve missed. 
My reason for switching to Haiku
1: I like Atari TOS (especially the speed of it)
2: I like Mac OS (by that, I mean System 7.6 ā¦ 9.x)
3: I like Mac OS X 10.5.8 (the best version of Mac OS X, before they started ruining it)
4: I like BTRFS from Linux
5: I like convenience.
6: I like a quick and responsive design.
7: I like simplicity.
Long and boring storyā¦
ā¦ And the reason that really prompted my switch, is that Iāve been using my <5W Raspberry Pi 4B for two years as my main computer (because I couldnāt afford to turn on my 200W Mac Pro).
The problem with the Raspberry Pi 4B, is that youāre almost forced to use Linux, but Linux has something called X11, Window-server and other old-fashioned junk (sorry, it really is, and I believe systemd was written to prepare the way for a modern window-manager, but there will be ābackwards-compatibility-issuesā for many years to come anyway).
This windowing-system drags Linux down to being inconvenient for me, and for two years, Iāve wanted to make one of my applications draw in real-time to a window. I attempted to use XCB (for its speed), but itās buggy and missing a lot of things. I hoped I could use OpenGL for drawing in real-time (not needing 3D, just a frame-buffer), but after two years, I must admit that I failed miserably (and Iām not the only one, because I searched the web and someone else was trying to do the same thing as me, he gave up).
-But thank you to the Haiku-team (and everyone who contributed - big or small) for bringing Haiku to life.
Iām especially impressed with the Keymap application (it looks so much like my long lost keyboard editor on the Atari ST).
-But Iām also impressed with Web+, because Iām a former browser-developer and know how hard it is to develop web-browsers; itās a ānever-ending-storyā! -Iām impressed how modern and well-working it is. Granted, there are a few sites (YouTube, Starblast and a few other games) which do not work, but I can live with that; maybe those issues will be fixed one day.
Now ā¦ the only issue I have with Haiku, is its name. The name is fine in itself, but when searching the web, I only get poemsā¦ I want techie-results.
Search Haiku, but add OS, & you will get what you wantā¦.
Itās the only OS with integrity.
What does that mean?
We donāt verify package checksums at boot or anything?