Haiku - Part 4

Hujambo! Habari gani?

Oops, sorry about that... Lately I've been getting my English mixed up with my Swahili - they are so similar. Anyways, this is the 4th installment in the Haiku series and it may be the last... but maybe not. If you haven't read the other parts yet and you want to you can read them here: Part1 Part2 Part3....

Alright, so in this part of the series I said that I would take a look at what makes Haiku different from other OS's, specifically Linux. I also said I'd walk you through some of the 'competitors' of Haiku. If you see an error in this post, just shut up about it... Just joking, it is entirely possible that there is an error in the following post, because:

a) I am not a total expert in these matters

b) I am watching The Office right now.

Lets jump right in: What makes Haiku different? Well for this answer we turn to the official Haiku website which states: 'Haiku has a single focus on personal computing and is driven by a unified vision for the whole OS.' Just as BSD has a focus on security, Haiku is focused on a fast, lean, user friendly system. These values have been carried from its predecessor BeOS (if you don't know what this is, read the other posts). For this very reason Haiku is focused on being completely unified. Unlike Linux which has stacks of things running on top of each other (Kernel, X windows system, etc.) Haiku has chosen to be contained in one unit which makes up the entire operating system. The idea is that when the OS is not unified it makes solutions very complicated and compatibility difficult. Haiku also strives to keep their focus on the desktop computer user, which means that they have gone with bash in the terminal and have kept the gui very clean, these decisions make Haiku easier for the average user. Keeping with the theme of ease, development is done with object orientated programming languages.

Lets get into 'competitors' for a moment. Some observant readers may have noticed that I put quotes around the word 'competitors', and that is because... THERE ARE NONE. If I had been posting this a few years ago, the preceding line would have read 'THERE ARE FIVE'. Yes indeed folks, there were four recreations of BeOS and one continuation of BeOS. The recreations were: Blue Eyed OS, Cosmoe, E/OS, and BeOS Workstation. Some of these, including Blue Eyed OS were built on top of the linux kernel, which set them far enough apart from Haiku to not pose too much of a threat. There also was one continuation attempt called Zeta, but this disappeared after Palmsource began questioning the legality of Zeta using BeOS code. So thats is it, Haiku is triumphant, and it looks like it will stay that way with lots of Blue Eyed OS going over to the Haiku camp.

Once again, if you happen to find an error (quite possible), don't hesitate to correct me. We all love getting feedback here at the GuysOnFOSS head offices so feel free to shoot us an email, or check out the forums.

Shukrani kwa ajili ya kusoma!

-The Thoth-