1. A Free Operating System Designed Specifically for Personal Computingby
Rusty Keele

2. The Plan for today A brief introduction A short history lesson
A show-and-tell overview
Some resources
A philosophical discussion

3. Introduction

4. About me BA in CS Work for UEN Started using computers in 1982
I’ve used many operating systems…
I am not a salesman for Haiku!

5. What is haiku? A free, open source, operating system
Designed specifically for personal computing
Based on the now discontinued BeOS

6. Anyone?
Has anyone here ever used BeOS or Haiku?

7. A History Lesson

8. A History of BeOS Jean-Louis Gassée An executive at Apple in the 1980s
Ousted from Apple in 1990
Started Be Inc. in 1991

9. Be, Inc. Built BeBox hardware and BeOS to run on it
First release was in 1995
Only about 2,000 BeBoxes sold from late 1995 to early 1997
Stopped making hardware, and focused on BeOS

10. Apple & Be Apple tried to buy BeOS in 1996, as a replacement for MacOS
But Be held out for more money...
...So Apple purchased Steve Job's NeXT instead!

11. The End of BeOS
BeOS was then ported to some Macintosh clones and the x86 architecture…
…But never really gained much traction on either platform
Last release of BeOS was R5 in 2000
Then the company was bought by Palm

12. BeOS was Loved! (by some)
It gained a small following of loyal fans
Like science fiction author Neal Stephenson
In the Beginning was the Command Line - his article about operating systems
You can read it for free at nning.html

13. OpenBeOS OpenBeOS project started in 2001 Goals:
Support the BeOS user community by creating an open-source, backward- compatible replacement for BeOS
To be source and binary compatible with BeOS

14. Haiku
In 2004 OpenBeOS changed its name to Haiku, after receiving a trademark infringement notification from Palm
September 2009: Haiku R1 Alpha 1 is released
Latest version: R1/Alpha 4.1, released in November 2012

15. Why Do Releases Take So Long?
Raise money and hire some programmers
Strict about their coding and interface guidelines
Careful attention makes for slow progress…
…But relatively stable and bug free releases

16. Only perfect spellers may
Why is it called Haiku?
Because of NetPositive's haiku error messages:
"Login incorrect.
Only perfect spellers may
Enter this system.
"These three are certain: Death, taxes, and site not found. You, victim of one."
See them all at

17. An Overview of haiku

18. System requirements Haiku currently only works on x86 systems
32 bit version only - no 64 bit system
Minimum memory required: 128 MB
CPU: Pentium II 400 MHz
Drive space: 700 MB

19. A Haiku Demo A VirtualBox Demonstration…
- Things to demo on VirtualBox:
Notice the fast start-up!
Deskbar
what it does
click on feather
click on other icons - right vs. left clicks
can move it around the screen
change preferences for it
open an app and show how it is displayed in the Deskbar
Windows and borders:
(open test.php and tracker window)
right shift to send window to background
window border: left click to move, right click to expand, ctrl-alt will select closest border - then drag mouse to move or expand
save shortcut: save-as, drag icon from tracker window to save window to change to that location
Yellow tab magic:
double click to hide window
shift to move the tab
hold down opt/win while dragging by another window to combine them, then use the tabs to change between them
...or line up borders to tile the windows and glue them together
File types: uses mime types, can change via the add-on sub-menu
Attributes
add-ons > filetype
You can create custome mime types, and add custom meta-data fields to them
Open the DVD folder and show my custom fields for my custom mime type
Can index these custom fields to use in Find
Queries/Find
Deskbar > Find
do a search...
can see the results for 7 days if you drill down in Deskbar
*** OPTIONAL DEMOS - IF YOU HAVE TIME ***
Apps
web browser
PDF file
MP3 / music file
MP4 / video file
demos: GL Teapot, Sudoku
replicants: calculator
no office suite yet
no package manager yet
Other
Twitcher: Ctrl+tab
Workspaces: Alt+Fx
Team monitor: Ctrl+Alt+del (have to insert it via VirtualBox)
Tracker window, can drill down by right clicking on a folder

20. Under the hood features
Specific focus on personal computing (not multi-user)
Custom kernel designed for responsiveness
Fully threaded design for great efficiency with multi-processor/core CPUs
Rich OO API for faster development
Database-like file system (BFS) with support for indexed metadata
Unified, cohesive interface

21. If You Are Interested
Resources for Haiku

22. The Website www.haiku-os.org Download the OS Learn about the project
Keep up on the latest news
Blogs, forums, articles, tickets, etc.

23. Learning and Getting Help
Included documentation
Welcome: get you started using the OS, and points you to other resources
Haiku User Guide: Details the GUI, the file system, the file explorer, the Deskbar, shortcuts, etc.
The BeBook: Details the programming API for BeOS/Haiku
The website
Community > Help and Support

24. Getting Involved Community > Getting Involved
Developing for Haiku (in C++)
Books:
Two programming books by Jon Yoder
Can download them for free on the Haiku website, under Development
Donating money

25. Why?

26. Why Should We Care About (or Use) Old Operating Systems?
What do you think?
How many of you are not using the absolute latest version of your OS right now?
So, technically, you are using an old Operating System!
Why haven't you updated?
Money, time, hassle, hardware, bandwidth…

27. Why we should care about old Operating Systems
An OS for older computers
Run legacy applications and older games
Collectors / historical reasons
Useful computers = less landfill!

28. Why we should care about old Operating Systems
Stop the Rat Race
Do we really need all the "features" of newer Operating Systems?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Privacy and tracking concerns
Fewer hassles

29. Why we should care about old Operating Systems
To provide variety in the world
Fun!
Learn about Operating Systems
Get involved developing an OS (with less people than Linux!)
Provide alternatives to the major Operating Systems
Haiku version 1.0 could lead to development for newer machines

30. The End rusty.keele@gmail.com Slides at c64sets.com/slides
Questions or comments?