Operating Systems > Not Quite Mainstream OSes

Haiku Alpha 2

(1/5) > >>

hm_murdock:
Well, it boots and runs. It runs BeOS software. I'm supposed to be able to make the WiFi in my netbook work, but I can't find where in the UI one would configure networking. There's an incredibly chintzy little network manager, but it makes the stuff from System 7 look like server configuration.

Since the thing is built on Linux, I assume that the old fashioned methods work. I hope.

As far as speed, it boots on a Celeron 600 lappy in about twenty seconds from the Live CD. Think more like ten if starting from the HD. On my dual-core Atom netbook, we're thinking more... Oh... Five second boot-time? I can't say about stability, since I can't really use it for anything. I need to just put it through its paces running a bunch of crap until it blows up,  but I don't think it will. It seems pretty rock-solid. It's a great re-implementation of BeOS in FOSS.

As much as I hate to harp on it, Haiku makes a lot of other FOSS projects look downright lazy. GNUStep is who I'm looking at. Linux+GNUStep could have easily become the FOSS Mac OS X, but the GNUStep devs seem far more interested in creating a panacea for other developers without a clear aim as to what people would run the software on.

Haiku though has in a decade, gone from "big ideas" to a complete product. Haiku and ReactOS really seem to be the caliber of teams that FOSS needs. Hats off to 'em!

piratePenguin:
Damn, it's a big ask to write so much software and get a new operating system to the state they've achieved right now.

But getting adoption is still going to be the ultimate task. If they keep up their perseverance, I imagine a 1.0 release in a couple years could shake things up for some of us.

Hats off, surely.

hm_murdock:
They even managed to re-implement the BeOS filesystem. Journaling and DB-like structure intact. Full filesystem queries are available. You can get a Live CD image or an image ready for VM at their site. I think it's worth checking out, it's less than a 200MB d/l. Just don't get it from the Ibiblio mirror, it's slower than molasses in winter  :P

Lead Head:
The SourceForge link seemed to work pretty good. Going to throw the ISO onto a Live-CD tomorrow and check it out.

hm_murdock:
Hit us back with what you think. Don't be too surprised if the OS and its interface is kinda blah. All they've done is faithfully re-implement BeOS, and the things it could do were really really badass...

... In 1995. Now it's just this weird thing that kinda is there to remind everybody of what a Macintosh used to kind of be like. Technically impressive, yes. Interesting, no.

If you can find some software to run on it and manage to get your networking going, though, I think it'd be great for day to day use though.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page