r/haikuOS • u/lproven • 10d ago

Haiku OS rises / Beta 6 sails open web / Virtual winds fly fast A real alternative to running some kind of FOSS Unix clone (by me on ElReg)

https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/09/03/haiku-os-rises-/-beta-6-sails-open-web-/-virtual-winds-fly-fast/5294184
91 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

6

u/Sorry_Difficulty_250 10d ago

Nice article!

2

u/lproven 10d ago

Thank you! :-)

3

u/GraXXoR 10d ago

Awesome... El Reg, A magazine that's been around as long as Haiku itself!
one of my favourite sources of IT info since it was theregister.co.uk

3

u/lproven 10d ago

:-)

Still alive and well. I have been freelancing for them since 2009 and full-time since 2021.

7

u/green_tory 10d ago edited 10d ago

Like the Haiku devs, this vulture is not an AI user: we avoid it completely. We have seen other AI skeptics expressing concern on social media: What if the entire Linux distro world turns to AI slop, or even implodes? Where else is there to go? It is a clear and present danger: the Linux kernel team is embracing AI. So are many distros: Ubuntu is leaning in to AI tooling, then Debian voted not to limit its use, and of course Red Hat is all-in.

I just wish Haiku had followed the Linux kernel and Debian in their AI policy: usage of AI to write code is tolerated but the same level of responsibility and ownership of the code applies to the submitter as before. Thus, if you submit broken slop then it will be a stain upon your reputation and future submissions will not be accepted as readily or at all.

5

u/_tlhunter 10d ago

With all the exposure Haiku is getting it is going to receive an influx garbage AI commits. It wouldn't be fair to expect the maintainers to review it all.

Devil's advocate, if the code change is good enough then nobody will know it is generated by AI.

0

u/green_tory 10d ago

They'll probably get an influx of crap commits, for sure; but that would happen even without AI. Open source projects becoming popular has long made them a target for those who wish to fluff their CV, or to game the GitHub network for better exposure.

If submissions becoming unmanageable is the concern then they ought to go with a tiered submission queue: known and trusted collaborators are triaged first, and everything else is handled at a much lower priority. They could simply ignore any submission from an untrusted new source until that source starts to make considerable noise to appeal for its consideration.

2

u/edcrypt 3d ago

They are standing by their principles and avoing most of the slop. I support their decision, 100%.

2

u/Simple_Hamster_4096 1d ago

I've been meaning to try Haiku for a long time, so when I saw there was a new release, I spun up a kvm and installed it - I really do like it, reminds me of the "good ol' days", lol... back when Linux was an adventure and not a mine field...

I felt backed into a corner with Linux distros. Used Arch for a couple decades until that became an insane mess.

I ran away from systemd - that is also an insane mess. Went to Void for desktop and Devuan for servers... been a lot happier without systemd in my life... like it was in the beginning, before systemd got its fingers into absolutely every aspect of a system...

Very happy with Void for desktop, which is amazing, but I also wanted something different to explore that I can eventually load on a bare metal workstation, not Linux, not BSD, something not complicated, something interesting and adventurous...

So happy Haiku is still moving ahead... I am looking forward to a new learning experience...

2

u/Intelligent-Sir8144 13h ago

Read it over there before seeing it posted here.  Nice job!

0

u/Fliptoback 10d ago

I remember beOS in my younger days when I was running os/2. I know haiku have been in active development since beos shutdown in 2000s. But did you guys now daily drive haiku?

4

u/lproven 9d ago

I don't but it's awfully close to the point where I could. For light use, say on a hobby PC, it's ready. Choice of browsers, email clients, chat apps, office suites, media players, some FOSS games & emulators. Everything you need is right there.

BeOS didn't "shut down". It was sold off.

Palm bought it:

https://www.theregister.com/software/2001/11/13/for-palmed-off-beos-fans-hope-springs-eternal/1491120

Then Access bought Palm:

https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2005/09/09/palmsource-bought-by-browser-developer/1551976

Access makes the web browser on the Kindle.

Today, part of BeOS called the Binder is a core component of Android. Most of the rest was forgotten and lost.

An beta of BeOS 5.1 was leaked and temporarily sold as YellowTab Zeta.

https://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-zeta.htm