What makes Haiku better for personal computing, from the end-user perspective? Or to put it in another perspective, who is the eventual target user for Haiku? I'd like to find an excuse to test it out even knowing it's in alpha stages, but this seems to be missing from the FAQs. The only noteworthy statement is that it is fast, efficient, and easy to use. I'm not sure if those are sticking points for most users.
> Linux-based distributions stack up software – the Linux kernel, the X Window System, and various DEs with disparate toolkits such as GTK+ and Qt – that do not necessarily share the same guidelines and/or goals. This lack of consistency and overall vision manifests itself in increased complexity, insufficient integration, and inefficient solutions, making the use of your computer more complicated than it should actually be.
> Instead, Haiku has a single focus on personal computing and is driven by a unified vision for the whole OS. That, we believe, enables Haiku to provide a leaner, cleaner and more efficient system capable of providing a better user experience that is simple and uniform throughout.
BSD only has one less layer as an "external" system (the initial userland libraries and utilities). X11, the desktop environment, etc. are still "stacked up."
In its time, BeOS (which Haiku intends to clone) was super fast and had a minimalistic UI that was very joyful to use compared to Windows and Linux back then.
I wasn't too familiar with C++ or filesystems to comment on the veracity of the claims, but my understanding is they also exposed some seriously good APIs for the time and a neat filesystem. But as an end-user I would raise that there were a few very avant-garde apps - to me at least.
But that was over 15 years ago... Everything has been moving forward fast since. Hardware (an iPhone 4 was as powerful as Deep Blue), software, languages, libraries, network speeds, computing paradigms, etc.
Put another way, it's basically ... cool, but meh.
As a former BeOS user for a while, I've been looking every now and then at Haiku out of curiosity, hoping it would soon come out and pick up momentum. But in all honesty, and as much as I respect the impressive work the team poured into it, progress has been so slow and there has been so much to catch up with since that I suspect it'll be too little too late to make any difference by the time there's a stable release. Then again, who knows...
I love it’s old school interface. It’s C++ API is old-school, for better or worse, so developing for it isn’t as nice as I would prefer, but for computing — documents, personal information management, and so on, I find it very enjoyable to use. And damned snappy, too.
Would I prefer a Linux distribution with a window manager/desktop based on Haiku/BeOS? Probably. A modern one that supported HiDPI would be amazing. One can dream...
If more and more software continues to be ported though, I’m not wedded to any one kernel. If I could do my entire job in Haiku, I would. It’s amazing to watch it get better and better as the years go on!
> What makes Haiku better for personal computing, from the end-user perspective?
It is a clone of BeOS which was much faster/responsive than Linux or Windows at the time (probably due to its use of multithreading).
It is an OS which target desktops, so it's a bit more integrated and coherent than the collection of software that Linux has.
But they decided to not use Linux/*BSD as their base kernel so they are in perpetual alpha/beta..
I think the UI is cool. I like the way that windows can dock together. The application APIs are (reportedly) very good. Still destined to be a curiosity.
