Haiku (operating system)
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Haiku, originally OpenBeOS, is a free and open-source operating system for personal computers. It is a community-driven continuation of BeOS and aims to be binary-compatible with it, but is largely a reimplementation with the exception of certain components like the Deskbar.<ref name="haiku_beta_4">Template:Cite web</ref> The Haiku project began in 2001, supported by the nonprofit Haiku Inc., and the operating system remains in beta.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
History and project
On 17 August 2001 Palm, Inc. announced the purchase of Be, Inc., marking the end of BeOS development. The day after, Michael Phipps started the OpenBeOS project<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> to support the BeOS user community by creating an open-source, backward-compatible replacement for BeOS.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> Palm refused to license the BeOS code to a third-party,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> meaning that OpenBeOS had to be reverse-engineered.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2003, Phipps founded the non-profit organization Haiku, Inc. in Rochester, New York, United States, to financially support development.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 2004, the project held its first North American developers' conference, WalterCon;<ref name=":1">Template:Cite web</ref> it was also announced on this day that OpenBeOS was renamed to Haiku<ref name=":0" /> to avoid infringing on Palm's trademarks.<ref name="OBOS-to-HAIKU">Template:Cite web</ref> The BeUnited.org nonprofit organization, which promoted open standards for BeOS-compatible operating system projects,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> announced that Haiku would be its "reference platform".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In February 2007, the project held a Tech Talk at Googleplex, attended by ex-Be engineers as well as Jean-Louis Gassée who voiced his support for the project.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=":1" /> There is also an annual conference, BeGeistert, held in Germany since 1998 when BeOS was active.<ref>Haiku Support Association (2014). "BeGeistert". Retrieved on October 24, 2014.</ref><ref name="dampf">HPS (2000-10-06). "BeOS Fans machen Dampf" (BeOS fans go for it). Heise online. Template:In lang</ref>
Development
Apart from the graphical user interface (Tracker and Deskbar, which were open sourced with BeOS 5), Haiku is original software.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite web</ref> The modular design<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> of BeOS allowed individual components of Haiku to initially be developed in teams in relative isolation, in many cases developing them as replacements for the BeOS components prior to the completion of other parts of the operating system.Template:Citation needed
The first project by OpenBeOS was a community-created "stop-gap" update for BeOS 5.0.3 in 2002, featuring open source replacement for some BeOS components.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The kernel of NewOS, for x86, SuperH, and PowerPC architectures was successfully forked that same year,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Haiku has been based on it since.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The app_server window manager was completed in 2005.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In July 2006, Haiku developer Stephan Aßmus introduced Icon-O-Matic, an icon editor, and a storage format (HVIF) with a rendering engine based on Anti-Grain Geometry.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The PackageInstaller was created by Łukasz Zemczak at the 2007 Google Summer of Code.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Java support was eventually added by a team from BeUnited who had ported it to BeOS,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> followed by WLAN from the FreeBSD stack.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Alongside a port to GCC4, the first alpha release finally arrived after seven years of development.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Initially targeting full BeOS 5 compatibility, a community poll was launched to redefine the future of Haiku beyond a free software refactoring of BeOS from the late 1990s. It was decided to add support for contemporary systems, protocols, hardware, web standards, and compatibility with FLOSS libraries.<ref name="auto">Template:Cite web</ref> On October 27, 2009, Haiku obtained Qt4 support.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The WebPositive browser was first preloaded with Alpha2, replacing BeZillaBrowser.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> After this, much time was spent on building a package management system, which went live in September 2013.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Beta1 arrived in 2018, and one of the most notable new features<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> was the PackageFS and package installation through the HaikuDepot and pkgman; Beta1 was the first official Haiku release to support full package management.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Wine was first ported to Haiku in 2022.<ref name=":4" />
Release history
| Version | Release date | OS name | Architecture | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Template:Version | 2009-09-14<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | hrev33109 | IA-32 | |
| Template:Version | 2010-05-10<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | hrev36769 | ||
| Template:Version | 2011-06-20 | hrev42211 | ||
| Template:Version | 2012-11-11<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | hrev44702 | IA-32, X86-64 | |
| Template:Version | 2018-09-28 | hrev52295 | ||
| Template:Version | 2020-06-09<ref name="PhoronixR1B2Rel">Template:Cite web</ref> | hrev54154 | ||
| Template:Version | 2021-07-26<ref name="PhoronixR1B3Rel">Template:Cite web</ref> | hrev55182 | ||
| Template:Version | 2022-12-23<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | hrev56578 | ||
| Template:Version | 2024-09-13<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | hrev57937 | ||
| Template:Version | ||||
Architecture
Template:Expand section As with BeOS, Haiku is written in C++ and provides an object-oriented API.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite web</ref> The Haiku kernel is a modular hybrid kernel which began as a fork of NewOS, a modular monokernel written by former Be Inc. engineer Travis Geiselbrecht.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Many features have been implemented, including a virtual file system (VFS) layer and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) support.Template:Citation needed It runs on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 processors, and recently has been ported to RISC-V;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> there is also a port for ARM under development, but is currently far behind the x86 port.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The application program interface (API) is based on that of BeOS, which is divided into a number of "kits" which collect related classes together and bear some relation to the library which contains the supporting code. In 2007, Access Co Ltd, the owners of Be, Inc's intellectual property, released the text of this (BeBook) under a Creative Commons licence.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The boot loader is filesystem agnostic and can also chainload GRUB, LILO and NTLDR.Template:Citation needed
Since the Beta1 release, Haiku's memory management includes ASLR, DEP, and SMAP.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Graphics operations and window management is handled by the app_server protocol.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> VESA is used as a fallback video output mode.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Haiku is POSIX compatible and has translation layers for X11 and Wayland.<ref name="haiku_beta_4"/>
User interface
The graphical user interface is formed of Tracker, a file manager, and the Deskbar, an always-on-top taskbar that is placed in the upper right corner of the screen containing a menu, tray, and a list of running programs. Tracker is an evolution from OpenTracker, which was released under a license with two addenda restricting the use of Be Inc. trademarks;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Zeta also modified OpenTracker on their own operating system.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The icons in Haiku are named stippi and were designed by Stephan Aßmus.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Aßmus also created the Haiku Vector Icon Format (HVIF), a vector storage format to store icons in Haiku, and is aimed at fast rendering and small file sizes.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Software
Package management is done by the graphical application HaikuDepot, and a command-line equivalent called pkgman.<ref name=":5">Template:Cite web</ref> Packages can also be activated by installing them from remote repositories with pkgman, or dropping them over a special packages directory.<ref name=":5" /> Haiku package management mounts activated packages over a read-only system directory. The Haiku package management system performs dependency solving with libsolv from the openSUSE project.Template:Citation needed
It comes with a number of preloaded applications, such as a WebKit-based web browser WebPositive, a document reader BePDF, a simple web server PoorMan, text editors Pe and StyledEdit, an IRC client Vision, and a Bash-based terminal emulator Terminal.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Compatibility with BeOS
Haiku R1 aims to be compatible with BeOS 5 at both the source and binary level,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> allowing software written and compiled for BeOS to be compiled and run without modification on Haiku.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite web</ref> The 64-bit version of Haiku, however, does not have BeOS compatibility at the binary level, but the API still does. (The same would apply to other non-IA32 ports, such as RISC-V.)<ref name=":3" /> Installation of these PKG format files are done using the PackageInstaller.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Reception
In 2013 after the release of Haiku Alpha 4, Ars Technica reviewed the operating system and praised it for being fast, but ultimately stating that it "may not be much more than an interesting diversion, something to play with on a spare bit of hardware".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Haiku Beta 4 was reviewed by ZDNET in 2023 where it stated: "Haiku is for those who experienced either NeXT or AfterStep and want an operating system that looks and feels a bit old school but performs faster than any OS they've ever experienced." It further praised Haiku's kernel, file system, and object-oriented API.<ref name=":2"/>
As of 2018, the Free Software Foundation has included Haiku in a list of non-endorsed operating systems because: "Haiku includes some software that you're not allowed to modify. It also includes nonfree firmware blobs."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
See also
References
External links
- Template:Official website
- Haiku Inc. company website
- Template:DistroWatch
- Template:YouTube
- Template:Cite web
- Hardware List, hardware compatible with Haiku (at Besly)
- Pages with broken file links
- Haiku (operating system)
- 2002 software
- BeOS
- Free software operating systems
- Free software programmed in C++
- Object-oriented operating systems
- Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media
- Self-hosting software
- Software using the MIT license
- IA-32 operating systems
- X86-64 operating systems