Then I installed Haiku on my XPS13 under KVM/Qemu. Everything runs blazingly fast. I’m thinking of maybe using that install for organizing my photos. The metadata functionality built into the BeFS is great for that.

I must say that I am really impressed.

Honestly... my problem with Apple laptops isn't the hardware, it's the crappy version of XNU/Darwin/NextStep that comes with them. I would buy a Mac if it came with HaikuOS and supported all the peripherals. But what is the chance of that?

FWIW... I still have a powermac with "real" BeOS on it. Haven't booted it in several years. I did look at HaikuOS running on an X86-64 VM and for the tasks I gave it (compile a few package, run emacs, serve a web page or two) it worked like a champ. I think the developer docs could use some help, but maybe I should volunteer to help them out.

Haiku is a community-driven continuation of BeOS, a discontinued operating system for personal computers. It is binary-compatible with BeOS, but also supports contemporary systems, protocols, hardware, and web standards. - wikipedia

Hard to tell if this is a major breakthrough or just an incremental improvement.

My only qualm is how HaikuOS, and AmigaOS for that matter, fail to carry over their aesthetics to a high-resolution/HiDPI world. I see gradients, overly-empahsized embosses in the UI screenshots. They lack the serene feeling of their user interfaces from 25 years ago, and feel like DVD menus now. I used to feel the same about KDE, but it has since moved on from flashy rendering AFAIR.

What I mean isn't to adopt a completely flat design, which I also dislike, but for instance, Windows 11's UI seems easier on the eyes than Haiku now.

I also know that UI is hard, no question about it. All the good luck and best wishes to the team.

Sorry guys - Haiku is a great idea, but it needs to become a real operating system semi-advanced users can use daily. And it hasn't been at that since years.

Linux works.