Haiku brings back those BeOS glory days

If you haven't heard of Haiku by now, it's probably for good reason: as of a year ago, the OS could barely connect to the internet, and certainly wasn't anywhere close to replacing your Linux build of choice. Luckily the open source replacement for the gone-but-not-forgotten BeOS of yore is maturing nicely, and it just had a bit of a coming out party at the Southern California Linux Expo this last weekend. There are still plenty of glitches to iron out, with applications like Firefox crashing and glitching frequently, and a shortage of hardware support, but the core elements of BeOS are there and just as lovable as ever. For instance, that few second start time never gets old, same for that 60MB disk image, and the most excellent processor utilization. Check out the in-depth preview on Ars for a better idea of the past future (or is it future past?) of operating systems, or just download the latest nightly on Haiku to find out for yourself.

[Via Ars Technica]

[John @ Feb 12th 2008 3:17PM]

Speaking of small disk images, is there any word on how large MinWin will be?

[Tom @ Feb 12th 2008 3:23PM]

First Google entry says 25mb:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/win7_minwin_inside.asp

Mind putting some freakin' effort in?

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 12th 2008 3:23PM]

I don't know... I mean, there's this thing called Google. You might want to check there before asking a blog that has absolutely nothing to do with Windows kernels in an completely unrelated post.

Or is this your way of starting a Windows flame war?

[John @ Feb 12th 2008 3:24PM]

uh... that was my way of asking a question. But you're welcome to have inane conspiracy theories too.

[fahnboi @ Feb 12th 2008 3:39PM]

@Andir, that's all he does is start flame wars, check his history.

[John @ Feb 12th 2008 3:53PM]

what the fuck is this?? I saw small disk image and it reminded me of another OS with a small disk image, and I did not know how large MinWin was. End of story. Will one of you explain how that is starting a "flame war"?

[Brian Stuckey @ Feb 12th 2008 3:26PM]

I loved BeOS. It ran better than anything else on my old PIII laptop. The only problem was that there wasn't any usable software for it! Still, I might have to get a copy of this and boot it in VMW.

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 12th 2008 3:34PM]

It's kind of funny, I was digging for one of my old motherboard manuals, and I ran across my old BeOS 5 book and installation disk. I was going to boot it up for old time's sake.

[Galley @ Feb 12th 2008 5:24PM]

BeOS was the most responsive OS I have ever used; and that was on a 400Mhz K6-III with 128MB of RAM.

[Randavance @ Feb 12th 2008 11:24PM]

BeOS is a reminder of the days when code was compact, clean, and intuitive, and remarkably efficient. A lot had to be done on little power.

And for anyone who wants the best damn metaphorical comparison of OSs back in the day, look no farther than "In the beginning there was command line.

http://www.spack.org/wiki/InTheBeginningWasTheCommandLine#head-8cd12953799bb75a80f0e450b3ffb9f645282802

[Jon @ Feb 12th 2008 3:46PM]

So does Haiku support pervasive mulithreading?

This is brilliant if it does and would absolutely burn every modern operating system to the ground, especially now with the advent of multicore processors.

[WS @ Feb 12th 2008 3:54PM]

LOL... burn every OS to the ground? Yeah, it will be the fastest OS with no software to run and no usability whatsoever... can't wait.

A hobbyists dream, but a users nightmare...

[Mike @ Feb 12th 2008 4:02PM]

WS welcome to the wide world of Linux

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 12th 2008 4:04PM]

In BeOS, each window had it's own thread, it was built from the ground up with heavy use of independent shared objects and threading. So I would assume, yeah. It is a bit harder to write programs on than the standard Windows interface, but it was well worth it. ;)

[ethana2 @ Feb 12th 2008 4:06PM]

Mike? ..what?

[Jon @ Feb 12th 2008 4:12PM]

Mainstream? You missed my point. It's fast, and i'd use it for hobby purposes.

It won't become mainstream until Sun, IBM, or Apple picks it up to distribute with their hardware. but it's got a lot of maturitng to do before that would ever become an option.

[Gav @ Feb 12th 2008 4:15PM]

@Andir3.0

Microsoft have a similar research project, that looks very promising.
It's called 'Singularity' - Google It.

Say what you like about Microsoft, but they do have some good programmers working for them.

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 12th 2008 4:24PM]

Yeah, I had read about Singularity quite a while ago. I thought MS hired some of the original BeOS team after they crushed Be.

[WS @ Feb 12th 2008 7:24PM]

@ Mike. I know all too well the woes of Linux. I used Gentoo for almost 3 years... Spent half my life compiling, and the other reading through mans and config files trying to isolate bugs or get my hardware to work...

Without big software companies, your OS is as useless as the worlds best video game console without any games...

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Feb 12th 2008 10:42PM]

Pervasive Multithreading sounds closely related to Blast Processing.

[jason @ Feb 12th 2008 3:59PM]

When I click on screenshots at the Haiku site, I keep getting database errors. They really need to get their house in order. There is no way I would install an OS, when they can't even properly program their website.

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 12th 2008 4:07PM]

I'm sure they didn't expect to have this amount of attention. They've been front paged on Slashdot... and I'm sure many other sites. I'd say the simple fact that the server isn't on fire is a good thing.

[CBMTTek @ Feb 12th 2008 4:23PM]

They are spending all their time working the OS instead of doing something simple like updating the web page.

[Student Driver @ Feb 12th 2008 4:41PM]

@CBMTTek

Well, they would have noticed that their website was down provided Firefox wasn't busy crashing in their OS.

Maybe we'll see these as desktops connected to servers running HURD...

[Adam @ Feb 12th 2008 4:09PM]

Sweet setup, i'll have to test it on my "Multi-OS machine when it's up-and debugged. I wonder if it is going to be packaged with a full integrated boot-loader like Ubuntu to be offered as a windows side-along. It looks like it could end up being the main install on some of the linux laptops that are floating around for 100 bucks thanks to that small disk image. Or maybe even marketed towards the new-to-linux crowd. :).

[Kaminix @ Feb 12th 2008 4:15PM]

This is not exciting... yet.

[CBMTTek @ Feb 12th 2008 4:25PM]

Actually, this is VERY exciting.

BeOS was (is) an outstanding desktop OS, and had there been more applications available, there would probably be as many BeOS forums/techsites as there are Linux sites.

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 12th 2008 4:31PM]

As much of a Linux fan as I am, I'd say there would be more fan sites if the applications were available. It's user interface was very intuitive and the performance was awesome.

[Tim @ Feb 12th 2008 4:40PM]

I loved BeOS! There were a lot of developpers of small useful programs, but no major software developpers. Still, it was a nice experience using it. I think I still have a professional install version of 5.0, I know i have 4.5.2 and a couple version of Personal Studio sitting around.

Ahh the good old days.

[DucentiVigintiDuo @ Feb 12th 2008 5:01PM]

Hoping I won't get tomatoes thrown at me, can anybody help me with instructions on how to install this or is it not available yet?
I'm on a MacBook and I could either do this through partitioning (bootcamp or sans) or Parallels.
Thanks in advance!

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 12th 2008 5:09PM]

From the "Read" link: http://www.haiku-os.org/downloads

[DucentiVigintiDuo @ Feb 12th 2008 5:54PM]

Andir, thanks for the reply, but I could locate the downloads page.
It's just not clear to me exactly how I should extract the files in order to install them since there is no apparent iso.

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 12th 2008 6:58PM]

Then you might not want to test it out just yet. There are still some issues and it's probably best if you didn't. It's still pretty much in the development stage.

[hoodlum @ Feb 12th 2008 5:58PM]

do i spot an Amiga ball in that screenshot?

[Loonie @ Feb 12th 2008 5:59PM]

BeOS just blew me away when I first used it, it was as if I'd suddenly obtained a whole new computer. It was so sad to see the sinister actions that led to its demise.

To think I could have been using Cubase, Logic et al on that... ah, what could have been.

[Roy @ Feb 12th 2008 7:01PM]

haha, i remember the BeOS...i bought stock in them shortly before they ...went out of business?

[tekdroid @ Feb 12th 2008 7:19PM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
BeOS was simply the only OS after Amiga which made me excited about the potential for computers, and more importantly, using one.

I could go into features like installing the OS on another partition while using the OS itself, with all personalisation saved. I could talk about trying to bring it to its knees like Windows would, without it breaking a sweat. I could talk about its elegant design, blistering database-like file system along with its power. I could talk about 15 second bootup time which never seemed to really increase. I could talk about ease-of-use and briliant handling of what would be flaws in other OSs.

...but only using can get across just how great it was.

In an ideal world, innovative products that meet real needs would rise to the top and would compete on their own merits. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world. Needless to say, Be eventually got a settlement from our anticompetitive friends at Microsoft, but it was all over by then.

[erik @ Feb 12th 2008 8:07PM]

Hells Yes! I've missed my wonderful BeOS since I used to triple boot it with Windows 95 OSR/2 and Red Hat...in 1997 (or thereabouts). I have no idea why I'm so attached to this also-ran OS but I just loved it so much.

Ah the wonder pointless tech brings a geek like me...

[KazO @ Feb 12th 2008 10:29PM]

I actually recently eBay'd my BeOS5 pro/GoBe/bible bundle on eBay, where it seemed to get some attention. There was a time when Be was the only OS I had at home. One of my favorite features was how brainless it was to get a TV tuner working, back when in Win9x it could be a major PITA.

I'd heard of Haiku; good to see it's at least 'usable' at this point.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Feb 12th 2008 10:44PM]

Looks like a Unix box running vtwm. What's the big deal?

[Shaunt Gharibian @ Feb 13th 2008 1:52AM]

beos was the primary OS on my old Pentium II rig a couple years ago...

i couldn't get my sound driver working in windows, so i just switched to beos for a year or so


too bad there was no major software for it....

[Shaunt Gharibian @ Feb 13th 2008 1:53AM]

beos was the primary OS on my old Pentium II rig a couple years ago...

i couldn't get my sound driver working in windows, so i just switched to beos for a year or so


too bad there was no major software for it....

[happy_penguin @ Feb 13th 2008 3:12AM]

I loved BeOS. I'm sort of an OS whore. I love to try them all but BeOS was really nice. Fast. Elegant. Pretty. I wish it had gone further.

[frankXchange @ Feb 13th 2008 10:32AM]

Good to hear. I was thinking of BeOS when I reading the article about MS wanting to get XP to run on OLPC machines. I don't remember much about Be, but I wondered if it might be a solution to providing a fast, small, graphically-oriented solution. I couldn't find ANYTHING recent on the net though, so I'm a suprised to see this article.

[Oinquer @ Feb 13th 2008 11:23AM]

..try puppy linux...clean, little, fast in low power machines, and good software for it...i use it at work almost no glitches found.

[Sergio Nayar @ Feb 13th 2008 12:36PM]

BeOS was made possible by some ex-Amiga OS programmers and BeOS have a lot in common with the Amiga OS, in fact many (if not all) of the aspects of BeOS where taken from AmigaOS which in my opinions is one of the best OSes that ever existed.

Too bad we will never see an OS as BeOS or AmigaOS ever... Can you imagine the pressure Computer manufacturers or even component manufacturer will do if something like this ever see the light of day? Nobody will purchase another PC for the next 5 years or so!


http://www.cucug.org/sr/sr9912.html