The subject (and question) is in the title.
For those not "in the know", Haiku OS is a modern re-imagining of the revolutionary BeOS from the early 90s:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
I've been 'watching' this thing for at least 7 or 8 years. It started development in the early noughties, but the 'alpha' stuff was very buggy. It's only since the 'beta' stuff has been available that it's become halfway usable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
Prior to r1_beta_2, I couldn't do anything with it. It didn't want to know. r1_beta_2, some 3 1/2 years ago, actually installed. Most stuff worked; I had sound, but no video.
With r1_beta_3 a couple of years back, we were reprising the old behaviour; hanging early during the boot process, and dropping out to a console that was simply a long list of complaints. So I gave up on it for a while.
r1_beta_4 was released back in December. I wasn't aware of this until around a week ago. I downloaded & installed it - this thing uses its own, individual file format (BFS), though will read just about everything else - and it happily (and very rapidly) booted to desktop. At last, video works in addition to sound, and they actually have a choice of browsers now; their own Webkit-based WebPositive sort of works, but it's a bit of a dog's dinner if I'm honest. The ported Otter browser isn't much better, and has major certificate issues, so a lot of sites refuse to connect.
However, somebody has ported Gnome's Epiphany browser to Haiku. I've never tried this before, and I'm pretty impressed if I'm honest. It's a kind of mixture between a somewhat older Firefox and the elderly KDE Konqueror, though it's got a load of neat little touches all over the place. I like it, TBH.
The devs are in the middle of trying to port Firefox itself ATM. It's early days, but apparently they're making progress.....
It's an "ongoing project", that's all I can say. But with a large number of familiar apps ported across to Haiku already, along with some uniquely Haiku-only applications, all available through the "Haiku Depot", it's definitely usable on a daily basis, if you don't mind roughing it a bit!
The package management system makes use of OpenSuse's "libsolv" for dependency-checking, and it works pretty darned well, so app installation is a breeze. I think it's worth a look.
Mike.
For those not "in the know", Haiku OS is a modern re-imagining of the revolutionary BeOS from the early 90s:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
I've been 'watching' this thing for at least 7 or 8 years. It started development in the early noughties, but the 'alpha' stuff was very buggy. It's only since the 'beta' stuff has been available that it's become halfway usable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
Prior to r1_beta_2, I couldn't do anything with it. It didn't want to know. r1_beta_2, some 3 1/2 years ago, actually installed. Most stuff worked; I had sound, but no video.
With r1_beta_3 a couple of years back, we were reprising the old behaviour; hanging early during the boot process, and dropping out to a console that was simply a long list of complaints. So I gave up on it for a while.
r1_beta_4 was released back in December. I wasn't aware of this until around a week ago. I downloaded & installed it - this thing uses its own, individual file format (BFS), though will read just about everything else - and it happily (and very rapidly) booted to desktop. At last, video works in addition to sound, and they actually have a choice of browsers now; their own Webkit-based WebPositive sort of works, but it's a bit of a dog's dinner if I'm honest. The ported Otter browser isn't much better, and has major certificate issues, so a lot of sites refuse to connect.
However, somebody has ported Gnome's Epiphany browser to Haiku. I've never tried this before, and I'm pretty impressed if I'm honest. It's a kind of mixture between a somewhat older Firefox and the elderly KDE Konqueror, though it's got a load of neat little touches all over the place. I like it, TBH.
The devs are in the middle of trying to port Firefox itself ATM. It's early days, but apparently they're making progress.....
It's an "ongoing project", that's all I can say. But with a large number of familiar apps ported across to Haiku already, along with some uniquely Haiku-only applications, all available through the "Haiku Depot", it's definitely usable on a daily basis, if you don't mind roughing it a bit!
The package management system makes use of OpenSuse's "libsolv" for dependency-checking, and it works pretty darned well, so app installation is a breeze. I think it's worth a look.
Mike.
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