Haiku beta 4: a thing of beauty
The official release notes garnered a great number of comments last month¹, including loads of informative stuff directly from upstream dev waddlesplash.
Haiku sounds much more usable than I'd realized:
> The new version supports HiDPI displays [...] and has significantly improved Wi-Fi support, including via some USB Wi-Fi adapters[.]
> [...]
> It has translation layers for both X11 and Wayland, as well as for Gtk apps, alongside the WINE support it gained this time last year. This means a number of new apps, including the GNOME Web browser Epiphany, a full graphical version of Emacs, updated POSIX layer, WINE, and more.
> [...]
> In testing, we didn't experience a single crash[.] [...] Just for reference, this article was written on Haiku itself, on the bare metal of an old ThinkPad W500, using a Markdown editor called Ghostwriter.
All I really need for most of my computer use is a web browser, Emacs, and a decent command line, and I imagine similar is true for many HN readers. Sounds like Haiku is ready for hobbyists in this crowd to use for a fair chunk of our most common computing tasks.
I love the Linux desktop, but I'm really curious about non-Unix F/OSS desktops. I will have to see if there's a place for Haiku in my life on some old hardware!
I am confused about this:
> Haiku, like BeOS before it, is not a Unix. If you actively like Unix, and what you want to do already works well on Unix – any Unix, and that includes macOS, as well as Linux and FreeBSD – then you probably won't see much appeal here.
Don’t they support the same set of terminal command as in other Unix-like systems? From what I saw [1] there aren’t much difference. Well that is what what people care about unix, right?
[1]: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/applications/list...
"17 years"
"image thumbnails in the file manager"
It took them one less year than Gnome to implement that one!
The register once again does competent tech journalism.
This is a project I would love to be involved in. I still have my BeBox!!
Sorry I missed the marketing - I love that it's different, but who's the target user and what's the pitch for them to use Haiku? The author warned about backlash, but having a tight pitch is a key ingredient in continuing the warm vibes and avoiding backlash.
IMHO not-Linux isn't so scary anymore, plenty of people have fought with MacOS to get the better hardware, slicker desktop, etc.
Does it run Docker? If so, I'd love to see a solid integration where I can have bug-compatible linux environment for development, but Haiku for simplicity, speed & UI
It probably can be used to save under-powered hardware from being discarded; one would think that for limited-scope usage (e.g. browsing/basic productivity etc), it should perform well.
It is lovely to use once you learn the keyboard shortcuts
My main gripes for now:
- no full disk encryption which means it can only really be used as a kiosk computer and not contain anything sensitive.
- I haven't been able to play anything reliably from netflix or hbomax. either with otterbrowser or epiphany/Gnome Web. Probably Widevine can't be run on those and even tweaking user agents won't help.
Right now it is relegated as a kiosk computer for the kitchen to follow recipes and play music on an old laptop when I am cooking.
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Thanks for sharing this! I filed it late in the day and forgot to do so myself, so enjoy the karma. :-)