Interview with Haiku developer Paweł Dziepak
haiku-os.org
haiku-os.org
Are there many here that were BeOS lovers? I'm too young for that, unfortunately, but found Haiku when it was alpha 3, and have fond memories of playing with it for months. Having a true desktop operating system with a great architecture and quite an amazing SDK... now I use OS X and elementary OS, but I still fire up a VM now and then.
In the interview, he talks about attributes, which are basically meta-data at the file-system level. Such an amazing but simple idea, that works wonders. Having a mail client that literally works with files on the file-system is quite a different experience!
I used it on the desktop for about six months to a year (1999? 2000?). R4.5. Switched away when they sold to Palm.
I still have a copy of Giampalo's "Practical Filesystem Design" somewhere in the house. It looks like he's published it online: http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf.
I remember at the time being upset that Apple had gone with NeXT instead of BeOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#History), but in retrospect it was obviously the right call, even from a technical point of view. It's really crazy that OS X 10.0 was such a pig on the systems of the time, but now fits in a phone...
PS: Does anyone know if Be's developer notes/articles are archived anywhere? I remember there being some really great articles from the OS developers about stuff like how the app_server worked, etc.
EDIT: Ah yes, the Be Newsletters: http://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/index.html. These are fricking great. I strongly recommend reading them for anyone interested in OS internals.
EDIT: Haiku also has the Be newsletters (https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/index.html) and "Programming the Be Operating System" (https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/programming_the_be_oper...), which actually does encompass everything I think you were looking for.
I was so ticked because OpenStep and NeXTSTEP were so responsive and I couldn't figure out what the people at Apple had done to it. Plus, changing how the menu[1] worked and moving the vertical scrollbar were and are grave sins as far as I'm concerned.
1) The UI rule that is used to justify using the Mac menu bar doesn't make any sense for touch, big monitors, or multi-monitors.
Double buffered, compositing window system.
NeXTSTEP had nice menu that could be detached - it was so easy
well, its a tad bit longer than the NeXTSTEP menu near the window and OS X doesn't allow tear-offs. I find it irritating and stupid compared to what NeXT had. There are quite a few things they dropped in the conversion from NeXTSTEP / OpenStep to OS X that I miss.
I had two machines one my desk at one point, a NeXTSTEP box[1] and a box running BeOS. I loved them both. I spent a bit more time on NeXTSTEP because I took to Objective-C a bit better than C++. I didn't really like Mac OS at that point, but its "children" were a lot of fun.
1) we had a HP LaserJet 4 with the PS expansion and my boss ran the printer out of paper over the weekend. The NeXTSTEP box was on and announced in a very irritated female voice with a British accent "The Printer is out of Paper". This scared my boss and she had words on Monday.
Yep, I recently stumbled across my Beos 3.1 copy with complete packaging, separate intel and powerpc discs, BeOS sticker and a 'We Be Geeks' plastic pocket thingy which gave me a huge burst of nostalgia.
I'm also (perhaps unsurprisingly) a fan of Haiku, while I run a Linux distro 24/7 these days and only play around Haiku in a VM, I would love to some day be able to use it for my desktop needs.
It's an uphill battle though, few developers and few porters means there's a shortage of progress and software available which most potential users would consider a 'bare minimum' these days.
Perhaps the most obvious is the lack of a modern browser, WebPositive is an attempt to rectify this but it's a huge undertaking with at the moment only one guy working on it which means progress is slow, despite him putting in a ton of work.
My hope is that a R1 release complete with package management and WebPositive working sufficiently well for day to day web use, will serve as something of a tipping point where people can start to see it's potential as a day to day OS and start using it while also developing/porting further software they feel it is lacking.
Yes, BeOS was fantastic: it booted in 14seconds on my computer and was immediately very responsive where Linux and Windows booted in >1m20s plus they weren't very responsive (Windows was slow as a snail after the boot until it really finished booting)..
Unfortunately even though BeOS was much, much more pleasant to use than Linux or Windows (thanks to its responsiveness), the lack of applications for BeOS meant that I rarely used it in fact..
And now SSDs mean that even normal OSs feel quite responsive, so I'm not waiting Haiku anymore..
IMHO its developers made a fatal mistake when they didn't use Linux for their kernel, it meant that it would take much more time to have an usable OS and they missed their 'window of opportunity'.. Yes, I know about Blue.Eyed.OS but it was a failed project from the start due to their strange indecision about licensing..
Update: Here is the song for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlOi-L-N0X4
I once wrote a _MacOS_ shareware review site for a friend, as a single, small perl script that looked through a tree in the filesystem of a BeOS box (on mac-clone hardware), and spit out html. The descriptions and reviews were just metadata columns I added to the relevant mime-types.
Still, you can't argue with 5 second boots. Took Apple what, 15 years to catch up with that?
Yes! I loved to play around with it.
A multimedia OS, dumping C for C++ with a feel that I didn't had since my Amiga days, when I used to spend time with friends doing demoscene stuff and playing around with ProTracker.
I'm one. I used BeOS 5 on my home computer for a while, a long time ago. Not for production work, mind you, but for everyday stuff and programming of my own, nonetheless.
Similar to Bill Gates vision of Information at Your Fingertips with the later Microsoft's Cairo project and even later WinFS (both vamporware) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_operating_system, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
Microsoft's NTFS and especially its newer ReFS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS ) are conceptually similar to BFS. The missing piece is a layer above the kernel driver that would have been WinFS - a shell integration and search API.
But I don't agree ReFS is in the same boat. ReFS, at least as it exists today, has more in common with Plan 9's Fossil/Venti than anything else. Most notably, it explicitly doesn't support alternate streams, which is the exact piece of NTFS that is most like BFS, nor does it support extended attributes (the vestigial HPFS-era predecessor to alternate data streams). Given that it also lacks things like hard links, file system transactions (N.B., this is database-like transactions for a collection of file system operations, not traditional file system journaling), and a bunch of other things that I associate with BFS-like everything-is-a-database file systems, I don't think that comparison is apt.
Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 add additional
features when using ReFS, including alternate data
streams [...]
ReFS features are still evolving and like NTFS is designed to be extendable (as has happened with NTFS).
It is of course NTFS that was involved in all the history of WinNT, Cairo and WinFS and still is the major FS. (I just mentioned ReFS for completeness)
Neither NTFS ADS nor Apple'S Resource fork and HFS+ ADS are something new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Alternate_data_streams_.28..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system)#Apple and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork
And neither the Explorer shell nor OSX Finder expose it as GUI - what a shame.
dotNet API's lags behind WinAPI, so dotNet/PowerShell just catches up a bit - nothing special.
Windows 9 will be interesting indeed. But I have my doubts... given that Win Vista had the advanced search dialog in Explorer shell. The newer Win 7 had no such dialog and generally the whole metadata idea was buried away in the slightly changed UI (removed list-group bar, changed metadata bar, folder doesn't remember state, custom added columns not saved, etc.) Even the great "Photo gallery" application has a optional download as part of their LIVE apps and Media player hides the playlist with its star-rating by default, etc. I don't comment Win 8.x.
I disagree with you blowing off the significance of ADS support showing up in PowerShell. You could already access ADS in .NET, but PowerShell it's interesting to see native cmdlets in PowerShell for working with ADS because it's the shell. To me, this indicates that Microsoft is anticipating developers will want to directly work with ADS from PowerShell, and that is interesting to me.
OSX Finder "information window" with its metadata feature stayed almost the same since OSX 10.4 Tiger which also marked the introduction of Spotlight desktop search.
The command line shell of WinNT, the Win32 console implementation is a bit complex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32_console ). Win 7+ ships with at least 3 shells: cmd.exe and PowerShell as well as the GUI shell explorer.exe (+ shell32.dll).
ADS (called Zone.Identifier) are added by Internet Explorer and recently by other browsers to mark files downloaded from external sites as possibly unsafe to run.
Notably, while all of the above use resource forks, they're not exposed to the user directly as resource forks, but rather as additional Finder widgets and behaviors.
It's ironic that Windows XP exposed the ADS in the file property dialog "summary" tab: http://www.infosecwriters.com/texts.php?op=display&id=53
Vista onwards one can only view (also in XP) and edit metadata for supported file formats like jpg, doc, docx, mp3, etc. Such formats have its own metadata format like ID3 for mp3 and EXIF/IPTC/XMP for jpeg that explorer.exe and windows media player support.
OSX uses ADS or sidecar files (on FAT/NTFS/network) but only supports 7 colors that can be mapped to tags (mean on every PC different things; similar to MS Outlook tags). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidecar_file
Seeing the OSX sidecar files is really annoying (beginning with a dot and have otherwise the same name as the original file) on Windows. (a bit similar to the thumbs.db) The same goes for WinNT6+ that creates multi GB preview cache-database files in the users directory instead of one "thumbs.db" per directory - ultra annoying :(
It would be great, if Microsoft and Apple could agree on a new metadata sidecar standard (like XMP from Adobe, now ISO standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform ).
My proposal: One zip file containing all XMP metadata sidecar files and file preview pictures of the current directory.
Amazing Technology that loss (By pain factor.
1) Amiga (1985- ?) (It was light year ahead of everyone especially Apple (Toaster anyone) Drama from Commodore CEO was the cause of death.
2) BeOS (1992-2001) BeOS was to be OSX but Apple refused to pay more then $125 mill and BeOS wanted $200 mill.
3) Dvorak keyboard (1936) lost to QWERTY which was designed so poorly to slow down people's typing so that mechanical typewriters wouldn't jam. Dvorak keyboard was designed for typing speed.
2. NeXT would have been considered the "Fantastic technology that was never appreciated" if everyone would have went with BeOS. And do you really think that the Be experience would have been the one that survived to OSX?
3. QWERTY being designed to slow people down is a myth long since debunked. Further, as i understand it, Colemak is the way to go today. Why is everyone sticking with Dvorak? :)
Where, USA?
Because in Europe it was Atari ST and Amiga everywhere.
The first time I could put my eyes on a physical Mac I was already at the university. We had just one little tiny room with 10 LCs and the secretaries at CS department had 3 more.
On the other hand, we had lots of PCs, UNIX Terminals, Amiga and Ataris to choose from.
I bought the 1020 5.25" Floppy drive and PC-Transformer software to run PC-DOS 2.0 on it for my Turbo Pascal class.
I also bought something called AMax which had a parallel port dongle that contained a Macintosh ROM (Since a lot of Apple Macintosh systems were defective at the time and prone to overheating until the Mac II series fixed that, the market was flooded with Mac parts like motherboards and ROM chips) that allowed the 68000 based Amiga 1000 to boot Macintosh Floppy disks and run the Macintosh System and Mac games and software on it. At first it lacked sound, but after an update it got fixed. Amaz using the Amiga coprocessors was able to run the Macintosh System faster than a real Macintosh. The Atari ST had something just like it called the Magic Sack.
I even had a Commodore 64 and Apple // emulator that could use the 1020 drive to run software for those systems.
The Amiga and Atari ST did a lot of emulation back in the day, because they used the coprocessors to emulate some of the older systems.
Everyone in my fraternity laughed at me for owning a Commodore instead of a real computer like an IBM PC or Macintosh. I told them I could run IBM PC and Macintosh software with my Amiga and it cost half if not three times less than their systems. They still had the image of the old Commodore 64 and the slow 1541 floppy drive. In the USA Commodore was seen as a 'toy computer company' and so was Atari, because they sold their 8 bit computers really cheap in toy stores and department stores instead of computer stores like the PC clones and the Apple computers.
Commodore and Atari did better marketing in Europe but in the USA, not much was done. I do recall they advertised in magazines about the Amiga and Atari ST, but they should have advertised in Byte and PC Magazine and other magazines not about their own computers to reach new markets.
I remember Commodore made PC Clones running MS-DOS called the Commodore Colt series. "It's not a clone, it's a Commodore!" was a bad slogan. Everyone thought it was based on the Commodore 128 or something that had flopped. The Commodore 128 was cool because it had a Z80 coprocessor for CP/M-80 mode, and the 8510 CPU ran faster in 128 mode, but most people used Commodore 64 mode and bought the 128 to replace a broke 64.
Commodore made the Plus4 and Commodore 16 series to compete with the Atari 800XL and ect, but had changed the interface for devices to try and force everyone to buy new ones and so it failed. They dumped the whole lot really cheap in Mexico where it did quite well selling for under $100 in super markets. It was a waste of time, they should have spent that money on making the Amiga series better and making better PC Clones that used the Amiga coprocessors to speed up MS-DOS and Windows programs.
The Amiga 2000/3000/4000 had these Zorro slots that took IBM PC bridgecards that used 8088, 80286, 80386 chips with a PC on a card that ran MS-DOS and Windows in an AmigaOS Window, and the motherboards had ISA slots for the bridgecard to use PC expansion cards and even use them in AmigaOS mode as well.
The Macintosh didn't have a better user experience, instead it had better marketing and a better reputation in the USA than the Amiga and Atari ST. The Macintosh II series competed with Commodore and Atari better, and then IBM made the PS/2 series and OS/2 with Microsoft. The Amiga and Atari ST still ran things faster and were better and did true preemtive mutlitasking which the Macintosh and PC Clones could not even do. Apple tried to kill the Amiga and Atari ST with Copeland but it was vaporware. Microsoft and IBM tried to kill them with OS/2, but Microsoft stabbed IBM in the back and made Windows 95 that stole a lot of business from Apple, Commodore, and Atari. Around that time Linux was just getting popular, and it ran rings around the Amiga and Atari ST, it was free and ran on PC Clones and did true preemptive multitasking even better.
I remember in 1995 putting my Amiga 1000 in a closet while I got a 486DX 50Mhz PC Clone dual booting Windows 95 and Slackware Linux. I really wanted to buy a faster Amiga, but the PC Clones became so cheap it was cheaper to buy a PC clone. My Amiga 1000 had shot craps after Nine years of service some keys didn't work on the keyboard and the floppy drive had malfunctioned. The cost of a new floppy drive and keyboard was too much, I'd rather put the money towards a PC Clone.
I had tried BeOS for Intel as well. I had IBM OS/2 2.0 and when I got OS/2 3.0 Warp my CD-ROM drive wasn't supported so I went back to Windows 95 and Linux that did support my CD-ROM drive.
Haiku is a good operating system, I run it in Virtual Box, you have to enable a serial port or it crashes during boot.
I have to say people who used to love the Commodore Amiga ought to check out AROS instead: http://aros.sourceforge.net/
It might bring back some memories.
3. QWERTY is still considered to be developed to reduce key jams by most historians.
I read the Japanese and Smithsonian Papers and well not Debunked just another a different theory that doesn't disprove the idea of mechanical issues with the typewriter.
Thanks on the Colemak mention. I hadn't run into that layout till now.
(And the Amiga was a far superior experience to a Mac. It had colour for starters. )
But however much I prefered the Amiga due to my love for Commodore and the technical advantages, the Macintosh has a friendlier design.
Re. 2: looks like superior tech lost to greed.
Re. 3: I never felt that my typing speed was the limiting factor in my productivity.
There was a lot of stuff that had to be added to BeOS to make it Apple-class. Nevermind device support and nobody knows what the power foot print was like at the time.
It does seem like there is a space for it though, if it runs on ARM and has some touch, I could see a ton of Raspberry Pi type projects where something like BeOS/Haiku could be really compelling. Seems like it could conceivably be an interesting android like competitor.
I have to disagree here, the cause of death for Amiga was in my opinion the PC with which Amiga could not compete performance-wise due to sticking with the Motorola 680x0 cpu's.
The Amiga's bitplane based graphics didn't help either as it was slow even with the dedicated blitter and when the PC got VGA mode x 'one byte per pixel' 256 color planar modes the jig was up in terms of the Amiga being able to keep up in terms of game graphics.
replace light years to 6+ years of everyone else. Not the reason it died. It died due to Amiga getting caught up in the biggest tech industry drama story.
All the hard work put on the icons and the GUI. It was truly remarkable.
If i'm not mistaken, I compiled my first C program on that OS.
Reading the SDK documentation was also a great source of ideas for a newbie in C++. I remember that the idea of flattenable objects blow my mind :D
To this day I still wonder why it hasn't gained more adoption.
Mad respect at all those folks working on Haiku!
Has this been tackled in Haiku?