To get it working I have to type "continue" at the two kernel panics on startup due to spurious / overzealous Thunderbolt PCI warnings. I also needed help from an Action Retro video to figure out how to setup the UEFI BIOS files on the correct partitions on the bootable Samsung USB stick I use. But it works enough that I can boot into it straight off USB when I want a break from Windows & Linux. They finally added support for the WiFi in my particular ThinkPad. There's basically no bluetooth support, so if you want a wireless mouse and keyboard, something like the Logi Pebble 2 bundle with wireless USB dongle works well.
Haiku has a Go 1.18 port now that mostly works, so that helps. A lot of Qt software has been ported across, though obviously the ideal would be truly native BeOS software.
The main thing I find Haiku lacks is a decent email client. That really prevents productive work for me. There's Claws Mail, but it has enough bugs that I didn't even find it usable, nevermind reliable. There's also some memory or networking issues they haven't tracked down. When I'm using terminal sessions, network responses often have dropped bytes in the output.
Actually the thing I'm really lacking is Claude Code. I ended up building my own minimal TUI API harness / client on Haiku to try and get work done. Haiku's web browsers (like WebPositive) sometimes have problems with the Claude website. I've been wanting to use Claude to help write more Haiku / BeOS software and fix various OS issues - a couple of weeks ago I used the Claude API and $30 API credit to make a USB UAC 2 audio driver for Haiku that works with Focusrite Scarlett devices (both playback and recording). But Haiku's AI policy means I can't contribute those fixes back. Though I understand their desire to keep the source pure and free from any potential copyright liability concerns, especially as they release it under an MIT license.
Only...there was no software. The system ran beautifully. But I had no web browser that was supported. All the software seemed to be ports from Linux and didn't seem to take advantage of Haiku's advantages.
I had a good speedy operating system that booted almost immediately to the desktop. But nothing to do when I got there.
BeOS back when I tried it in the V5.0 days had software written for it. There weren't multiple options for everything but there was variety. There was usefulness in the radio broadcasting software, the video editors that worked even on my POS box back in 1998/99. When the PE was released I'd hoped that would result in even more software becoming available. But no, it was shut down not too long after that. (I'll skip the whole YellowTab fraud saga.)
The situation seems even worse these days. It's been almost thirty years. Time to let go.
Vitruvian OS: https://v-os.dev/
I also don't understand this:
> Our infrastructure contains sensitive personal user data, and we aggressively keep this information private on a need-to-know basis at all times.
What do they mean by "infrastructure" here? Do they mean each installation or their site, bug tracker and so on (the usual interpretation of "infrastructure")? Why would it contain sensitive personal data?
From the FAQ and about pages I gathered that Haiku is just supposed to be simpler, more uniform in design/vision and less bloated than Linux, but nothing specific about why anyone should choose it. If I'm happy with my Linux DE and so on, why would I choose Haiku?
If I ever become a billionaire, I'm going to throw a boatload of money into an seL4-based desktop operating system.
It is amazing the project keeps going.
tier one: linux, windows, freebsd tier two: openbsd, netbsd tier three: haiku tier four: all others
One of the few OSes where my wifi and sound just worked out of the box :)
Its totally usable DESKTOP fOS.
So how did they do it? And does Haiku use the same tech under the hood or does it forus on matching the user experience?
On Linux I can use perl, ruby, python, php, julia - you name it. Good luck thinking you can do this on Haiku, as-is.
Edit: I should say that I like Haiku, but I used it many years ago, and the situation with regards to programming still has barely improved here for the most part. They are building literally a dream OS nobody will seriously use.