Haiku

[fox]

I was interested in this OS as the successor to BeOS, which some of you might remember almost became the Mac OS. It has been in beta for years. At any rate, there is a nice YouTube review of the most recent verson here, showing that it has come a long way. It has a lot farther to go before it can be a regular driver for anyone (for example, wifi doesn't seem to work yet), but if you have a half-hour to burn, it's worth watching this review. You can actually get Haiku here if you want to try it out. You probably wouldn't want to install it though, because, if I remember correctly, the only option is to take over your whole disk. It does have some neat features, though.

[Jason]

I remember trying out BeOS. One of its big features at the time was that they claimed it had better performance than Windows. They showed in a demo running multiple videos at a time using commodity PC hardware. I thought it was cool looking but never really did anything with it.

[fox]

You can install Haiku on VirtualBox, although the automatic resizing doesn't work. I was able to find instructions for this and I got it to work. It's a work in progress, though. The only gui browsers available for it worked poorly and often froze. You can install software and update the installation easily, and I was even able to install LibreOffice after two tries. (Seems to work well.) I installed Trojita, an email client, and it was OK. The main reason someone might want to install it is just to see how the BeOS desktop functions - it's very different from any other desktop I have tried. I enjoyed playing with it, but it is still in beta and it needs a lot of work.

[Jason]

It looks very much like how I remember it.

[fox]

I also installed Haiku on VMware Player, to see if it ran any better on that VM app. I would say no better and no worse. The one advantage Player has over VirtualBox is that there are additions for it, in the Haiku repositories. I installed them, but they don't seem to give it any more functionality than was available in VirtualBox. Browsers are still buggy and can freeze.

[buster]

"one advantage Player has over VirtualBox is that there are additions for it,"

Another advantage is that it shows an exquisite taste in the selection of virtual machines.

[Jason]

"one advantage Player has over VirtualBox is that there are additions for it,"

Another advantage is that it shows an exquisite taste in the selection of virtual machines.

In the interest of maintaining our friendship and peace in the forum, I won't debate the issue but your taste needs refining.

[buster]

" I won't debate the issue but your taste needs refining. "

An excellent rejoinder! Whatever a rejoinder is.