BeOS-Inspired Haiku Working On Supporting Modern CPU Features Like AVX

[thunderbird32]

At a certain point Haiku will be the only viable alternative to Linux...

Maybe, but for the time being (whatever else you feel about them aside) the BSDs have a much bigger userbase than Haiku. I can't see that changing over the near-term.

[Danielsan]

Maybe, but for the time being (whatever else you feel about them aside) the BSDs have a much bigger userbase than Haiku. I can't see that changing over the near-term.

While I don't disagree with your statement, my only point is BSDs are constantly failed to have a proper desktop version while HAIKU is entirely focus on the desktop use.

[Vistaus]

Maybe, but for the time being (whatever else you feel about them aside) the BSDs have a much bigger userbase than Haiku. I can't see that changing over the near-term.

Lolwut? I'm pretty sure Haiku has more desktop users than all of the BSD's combined. BSD is bigger than Haiku on servers, but Haiku isn't a server distribution anyway.

[S.Pam]

If you run beta 2 on bare metal it might be worth running software update. Running very smooth on my main ryzen computer

[cb88]

AFAIK that problem concerns basically the boot loader and the 1st stage boot phase of the kernel. Everything else is standardised (except for device drivers of course).
PPC or rather POWER today is a great option for whoever wants a fully trustworthy, user-controllable system but I don't think it makes much sense to run Haiku on it.

Reread what you just said yourself.... with ARM you can't count on anything being there, there are almost always custom buses.... GPUs that don't exist anywhere else, etc etc.. in short on arm NOTHING, is standardized. The only reason Linux works as it does is it happens to be a dumping round for all the non standard crap used on ARM, to implementing it on another OS is needlessly time consuming and frankly there are better things to focus on than supporting 1000 different ARM variants that are different for no reason at all.

[jacob]

Reread what you just said yourself.... with ARM you can't count on anything being there, there are almost always custom buses.... GPUs that don't exist anywhere else, etc etc.. in short on arm NOTHING, is standardized. The only reason Linux works as it does is it happens to be a dumping round for all the non standard crap used on ARM, to implementing it on another OS is needlessly time consuming and frankly there are better things to focus on than supporting 1000 different ARM variants that are different for no reason at all.

But no one is saying it should support 1000s of different ARM SoCs. Just one. Haiku is a hobbyist OS and as such it would be a great fit for a RPi. That's it. OK, that still makes a few different variants but there is no reason why it shouldn't be manageable, especially if Linux has already done the heavy lifting so that all the required initialisation and low-level support code is known and documented.

[cb88]

But no one is saying it should support 1000s of different ARM SoCs. Just one. Haiku is a hobbyist OS and as such it would be a great fit for a RPi. That's it. OK, that still makes a few different variants but there is no reason why it shouldn't be manageable, especially if Linux has already done the heavy lifting so that all the required initialisation and low-level support code is known and documented.

By the time someone spends the time to get one ARM SoC half way working... its EOL... and you can't buy it anymore... so yes you end up with 100 half implemented ARM ports and zero you can buy off the shelf. Most of the Linux code cannot be used in Haiku... as it is GPL, one exception for this is MIT licensed graphics code.

[Danielsan]

I wonder why them instead of creating a GPU driver from scratch just don't create a compatibility layer with the mesa stack like WINE does with the Win DLL...

[S.Pam]

I wonder why them instead of creating a GPU driver from scratch just don't create a compatibility layer with the mesa stack like WINE does with the Win DLL...

They have a BSD compatibility layer to be able to provide drivers. They could not use Linux simply because it is a mess and not a stable API, making porting much much harder.

It would be cool though if WDDM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window...y_Driver_Model) could be supported somehow. I do think that it would be a terribly difficult task to achieve.

[smitty3268]

Lolwut? I'm pretty sure Haiku has more desktop users than all of the BSD's combined. BSD is bigger than Haiku on servers, but Haiku isn't a server distribution anyway.

From the Ars review, you can't surf the modern internet on Haiku, so I seriously doubt there are many desktop users. You can on BSD.