100 days with Haiku

100 days with Haiku

  • mdo  DigitalBox
  •   News
  •   January 20, 2025

Haiku Insider website has reached 100 articles published on a daily basis!

It's a good occasion for me to look at what has been achieved so far, and to share with you my experience of my 100 days using Haiku.

But before talking about Haiku, let's review a little bit of history...

As you might know, when the end of BeOS development was confirmed in 2001, a free and open-source operating system emerged as a continuation of BeOS.

It's nowadays known under the name of Haiku, and is supported by the non-profit organization Haiku, Inc.

Back in 1998

I've personally heard of BeOS in 1997 in a french media named "Amiga News".

During that period, I really discovered this OS in 1998 when I decided to buy a license of BeOS 3.1 for Intel.

At that time, it was not an easy task due to limited commercial distribution in Europe, and a limited hardware support for the Intel platform (1).

BeOS was a breath of fresh air compared to the existing operating systems at the end of the 90's.

BeOS R4

That's why, since then, I followed the various evolution of BeOS until the last Personal Edition 5.0, which was freely downloadable on the BeOS website.

Unfortunately, BeOS was dead when it was bought by Palm Inc in 2001, and - as far I can remember up to Internet Achives - I stopped my interest in BeOS mid 2002 (2).

Year 2024

I've heard about Haiku before 2024, however I didn't give it too much interest, maybe because when I first tested it, it was in a virtual machine.

If I remember, it was not very responsive, so my experience was not conclusive at that time.

Last year, in June, I give it a try again.

I decided - this time - to install it on one of my machines - a NUC Intel- where Linux was installed.

After several attempts which were failing (the master boot part was not correct), I finally succeed to make things working by using the BootManager application.

The story was then different.

HaikuOS with Gimp

Installed on a bare machine from 2017, Haiku was now responsive enough and showcase its full potential.

From this first step, I then resolve my various remaining problems :

  • Wifi not auto-reconnecting ? I used a trick to fix that (Auto-reconnect Wifi)
  • Audio via HDMI not working ? I plugged speakers to the Jack output of my NUC
  • Connection to my NAS not working ? I used the mount_nfs utility (Connect to your NAS)
  • Transfer of files from/to Haiku located in a VM ? I used for that SCP tool (File sharing between Haiku and host OS)
  • Big files transfer too slow with my NAS ? I used instead SCP tool (same as above)

I discovered that many things were possible under Haiku, however not everything was always crystal clear:

  • What a strange name "config" (ie "/boot/home/config/non-packaged/bin") for a folder which overrides the applications binary ? (Understanding non-packaged)
  • Having a Mac keyboard, it takes me several weeks to understand a screenshot command exists! Because it's not visible in the menu and the "print" key -which is supposed to trigger this application- doesn't exist on Mac keyboard (Redefine print screen)
  • Attaching an icon to an application was not easy as well, because you need first to understand that you can't attach icon to an application which is in a system folder (Attach icon to an application).

And there are many others examples like this :)

For sure, the official website contains some useful information, and the forum is a great tool to exchange information between users.

But I understood there were enough topics to deal with, which could also be interesting to share to others users like me.

The idea of "Haiku Insider" website was born.

Haiku Insider

My main motivation by creating this website was to learn what was possible under Haiku, and what was not.

By that, I mean :

  • Which applications are available and working fine ?
  • Can I play games under Haiku ?
  • Which languages can be used to create some programs ?
  • How the system is working and what are its unique features ?
  • And much more

I decided to create daily articles, because I had enough materials and topics to deal with, and I wanted to improve my knowledge on the system : answering these questions and sharing them was a kind of challenge for sure.

The articles could be simple news about this website (one month!) or external websites (Haiku on Hackaday), but they can also be a quick presentation about software ported to Haiku (Discover Flameshot).

One big step I am proud of - when learning the system-, is the port of the Nifskope application (Nifskope on Haiku).


Nifskope port

It's my first port done via the Haikuporter tool, and I provided later the backstages of this port (Behind the scenes : porting NifSkope).

Thanks to the community and the tools available, it was possible :)

Today, I use two machines to create and publish my articles for Haiku Insider :

  • A MacBook Pro 2019 with MacOS (Haiku being accessible via UTM)
  • A NUC Intel with Haiku OS stable release (maybe I can put the Haiku sticker on it now :) )

The MacBook Pro is useful because it's a laptop : when I can't access my NUC or when the laptop is easier to use, I'm login under UTM to use Haiku (to test the system or some programs), and I'm writing the articles under MacOS (screenshoting Haiku's screen visible from UTM).

The NUC Intel is my preferred machine to create the articles : its more responsive than Haiku under UTM, and it's where I can install all the possible applications (SSD of 1 TB) compared to the MacBook Pro where I have a limited hard disk space dedicated to Haiku VM (15-20 Gb maximum).

A big step was reached for the website when 50 articles were published.

In less than 2 months, due to the daily frequency, I have indeed published 50 articles, with some likes and comments on them, meaning it was followed by some Haiku's users.

Since that milestone, I decided to target the publication of 100 articles keeping the daily basis frequency.

Not easy, you would say.

I confirm, the challenge of daily publishing was big :)

Before being able to reach this milestone, another big news came into the Haiku ecosystem : the availability of Firefox's port ("Iceweasel") !

It was a nice step forward, and I can confirm Firefox is a monster to compile : that version compiled after hours and hours under my NUC, however I had to update the memory capacity.

I decided to upgrade from 8Gb to 32Gb during that period.

Firefox / Iceweasel

I think that Firefox is a big step to prove that the system is able to handle complex applications like this.

It's also the occasion for the developers to optimize the system and to fix some bugs relative to the arrival of this new application.

Even if Firefox / Iceweasel is still have some bug fixes in progress, it has became my preferred browser in my daily usage of Haiku.

The next step I had in mind, is to be able to contribute to Haiku sources in some way.

For that, I identified a simple enhancement to be done in Icon-O-Matic : adding the possibility to remove a Transformer item.

After installing all the pre-requisites, sending my proposal to the Gerrit repository and having my changes validated after a few exchanges, I finally got my contribution added to the Haiku sources (First contribution to Haiku).


Icon-O-Matic enhancement

What a great satisfaction !

This experience will be very useful for me for future contributions, as I have understood the whole workflow to follow until the publication of a patch :)

And now, here we are : the website has 100 articles published !

When I started the blog, I never imagined I would reach the number of 100 so quickly.

These 100 posts cover a wide range of topics—from beginner-friendly guides to more technical exploration.

This milestone isn’t just about quantity. It’s a reflection of the richness of Haiku as a platform.

Every article I wrote revealed something new to me.

Applications ecosystem

During that 100 days I've learned to discover the various applications available for Haiku. Below is a quick overview of what I have discovered.

Native

By "native", I mean the applications written especially for Haiku.

I've discovered a nice internet radio player (StreamRadio), an IRC client (Use Vision), the integrated icon editor (Using Icon-O-Matic), but also a C++ IDE (Develop with Genio) or the default web brower WebPositive.

Maybe you don't do 3D printing, but I advice you to install STLover, an application to modify STL models and which is showcasing nicely the Haiku's possibilities (Use STLover).

STLover

Ports

The applications ported to Haiku are more numerous.

For productivity, you can install LibreOffice (Use LibreOffice), but also KeepassXC to handle your passwords (Passwords with KeepassXC)

An utility I used a lot is Flameshot which is a screen capture application (Discover Flameshot).

You can also install Akregator as an RSS reader (Akregator for RSS), Gimp if you need to edit images (Use Gimp), or RawTherapee if you are a photographer (Photo processing with RawTherapee).

In case you need to handle databases, you can install PostgreSQL (Install PostgreSQL) but also access databases via the available SQL clients in Java (SQL clients).

Gaming

I was surprised that Haiku works fine for retrogaming (Retrogaming under Haiku, DOSBox emulation) and you can play a lot of retrogames from old consoles or old personal computers.

Outside retrogaming the choice is more limited, but you can use Minecraft (Play Minecraft), test Morrowind game (Play Morrowind) or check the very responsive OpenArena (Play OpenArena) !

OpenArena

2D games like Battle for Wesnoth are working perfectly fine under Haiku.

The current limitation is the rendering computation needed, that's why games like 0 A.D. are too slow to be useable.

Games written in Python can also be quite smooth to play (PyGame and Python).

Development

On the development side, I have explored several languages like :

Genio native IDE

I was quite surprised by the quality of some ports like the Qt framework / Qt Creator. A really nice job was done in this area ! The current C# port is experimental, and I wasn't able to use it for the moment.

System

The system has some unique features like attributes and their indexes, but I didn't go further in that direction for the moment.

The backup or restore of the system can be done easily (Backup your system, Restore your system) and you can also create a live USB stick (Create live USB stick).

It can be useful also to use the SSH server (SSH server), or understand how to deal with the PATH (Mastering your PATH) or the Filetypes (Mastering FileTypes).

The scripting under Haiku can also be powerful to use (Scripting: photo of the day)


Scripting / Photo of the day

This list is partial for sure and you might have your own point of view :)

Areas to improve

Everything was not always smooth, because Haiku has still some limitations on some areas. As of today, I would say the points to improve are :

  • A better audio support via HDMI or USB
  • A support for additional Wifi cards
  • A printing support for non-native applications like LibreOffice. Indeed, today a trick is necessary (Printing on Haiku)
  • A good email client handling HTML emails, and better support on the various email providers (Configuring e-mail)
  • An enhancement of the documentation for developers : today's the Haiku Book is incomplete as you need to refer to the BeBook for some topics. It means the initial effort for new developers is higher compared to a situation where all the API is well documented.

The Haiku Book online

The current version of Haiku is far from being a beta for me, it's quite stable today, and I can already do a lot of things with it.

I'm sure that things will move into the right direction, up to the community and to the Fund raising which is growing year after year.

How fast ?

Time will tell:)

What's next ?

I would answer to this question by "slowing down to go deeper" :)

With 100 articles behind me, I’ve decided to shift my focus.

Instead of writing daily, I plan to explore new ways to contribute to Haiku.

I have several ideas in mind:

These next steps will allow me to continue exploring what Haiku has to offer.

Articles will continue to be published, I still have around 40 possible articles in the pipeline, but the frequency will be more "normal" for me depending on the time I will dedicate to that :)

Haiku OS is more than just a system to me.

It’s a journey - blend of nostalgia for BeOS and excitement for what’s to come. Writing these 100 articles has been both a challenge and a joy, and

I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned along the way.

If you’re curious about Haiku, I invite you to explore it for yourself.

And if you’d like to relive this journey, you can start with the archives of this blog, where every article tells a piece of the system's story.

(1) 3 semaines avec BeOS 3.1 (french)
(2) Labeille.net (french)


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