Just a heads-up for those trying it out, I've found a couple of regressions in Beta 6 that rendered my Haiku system unbootable, until I remembered about hammering the space key during the boot sequence to get to the safe mode menu.
In my case, my ThinkPad X1 (Yoga 3rd Gen) used to boot despite what appeared to be kernel panics, but typing "continue" at the kernel prompt would skip past them and everything would then work fine. In Beta 6, it now hangs at boot instead with no kernel panic warning. Disabling ACPI in the safe mode options gets me past that, and there's a way to disable ACPI permanently at boot via some configuration files - though obviously that isn't desirable.
It also seems there's been some work on USB Audio (yay!), but it now causes a kernel panic on boot if a Focusrite Scarlett is connected. Turning the Scarlett off avoids the kernel panic. The Scarlett has never officially worked in Haiku, but it at least never used to crash the system. In my case, I've reverted back to the USB Audio Scarlett Haiku driver that Claude Sonnet vibe coded for me, and for me that's working. (I can't contribute that code because of Haiku rules against AI code, but hopefully the humans will eventually find time to hand code it and get it working.)
I'm so happy. Haiku to me, is visually the most beautiful operating system out there. The icons, apps, designs. If there be anything that can ever steal the spotlight from Mac; it would be Haiku. And the OS is perhaps the one and only one that remains a tool in the old sense. All other operating systems are now service and signups and telemetry and notifications; this is the last resort remaining for the rest of us. I only wonder sometimes when it is going to become usable. With LLMs I'm wondering can't they be put to find the stability issues and make the solving faster?
What really sets Haiku (and the preceding BeOS) apart is that it's built for the express purpose of being a desktop operating system. As good as desktop Linux has gotten it still suffers from servers being the chief use case for Linux-based OSes, seen in quirks such as how poorly it handles running out of memory (not as big of a deal in the server world, particularly in the container era; just tweak your setup and reboot your containers). It's not bogged down with corporate IT needs either.
The last time we got an OS that was as purely desktop-end-user-oriented with no competing influences was Classic Mac OS, which had serious technical issues.
I wish Haiku all the best. It's always great to see some diversity in the FOSS OS landscape. Hope it finds its niche eventually like the BSDs did after the lawsuit drama.
Just a heads-up for those trying it out, I've found a couple of regressions in Beta 6 that rendered my Haiku system unbootable, until I remembered about hammering the space key during the boot sequence to get to the safe mode menu.
In my case, my ThinkPad X1 (Yoga 3rd Gen) used to boot despite what appeared to be kernel panics, but typing "continue" at the kernel prompt would skip past them and everything would then work fine. In Beta 6, it now hangs at boot instead with no kernel panic warning. Disabling ACPI in the safe mode options gets me past that, and there's a way to disable ACPI permanently at boot via some configuration files - though obviously that isn't desirable.
It also seems there's been some work on USB Audio (yay!), but it now causes a kernel panic on boot if a Focusrite Scarlett is connected. Turning the Scarlett off avoids the kernel panic. The Scarlett has never officially worked in Haiku, but it at least never used to crash the system. In my case, I've reverted back to the USB Audio Scarlett Haiku driver that Claude Sonnet vibe coded for me, and for me that's working. (I can't contribute that code because of Haiku rules against AI code, but hopefully the humans will eventually find time to hand code it and get it working.)
I'm so happy. Haiku to me, is visually the most beautiful operating system out there. The icons, apps, designs. If there be anything that can ever steal the spotlight from Mac; it would be Haiku. And the OS is perhaps the one and only one that remains a tool in the old sense. All other operating systems are now service and signups and telemetry and notifications; this is the last resort remaining for the rest of us. I only wonder sometimes when it is going to become usable. With LLMs I'm wondering can't they be put to find the stability issues and make the solving faster?
What really sets Haiku (and the preceding BeOS) apart is that it's built for the express purpose of being a desktop operating system. As good as desktop Linux has gotten it still suffers from servers being the chief use case for Linux-based OSes, seen in quirks such as how poorly it handles running out of memory (not as big of a deal in the server world, particularly in the container era; just tweak your setup and reboot your containers). It's not bogged down with corporate IT needs either.
The last time we got an OS that was as purely desktop-end-user-oriented with no competing influences was Classic Mac OS, which had serious technical issues.
I mean, Linux is still pretty squarely in service of the end user.
>All other operating systems are now service and signups and telemetry and notifications
What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense.
Code blooms, Haiku flies
A new release greets the world
Congrats to the team
Summer nears its end
And Haiku blooms like heather
New flowers emerge.
I see what you did there.
I wish Haiku all the best. It's always great to see some diversity in the FOSS OS landscape. Hope it finds its niche eventually like the BSDs did after the lawsuit drama.
Hopefully, it won't be a small niche. It would be great if Haiku ends up getting used for meaningful work.
Congratulations to the haiku team!
congrats to waddlesplash and team