Communications of the ACM
Developer Interview: How Haiku Is Building a Better Beos
Credit: Haiku-os.org
BeOS, an operating system that was originally designed for Apple hardware but was passed over for NeXT's OpenStep, has found a new life thanks to Haiku.
Haiku is an open source project that re-implements and extends BeOS, adding new features such as internationalization and Wi-Fi that support modern hardware, while maintaining the original system's speed and simplicity. The initial aim of the Haiku project is to create an open source, drop-in replacement for BeOS R5, says Haiku developer Stephan Abmus.
"Ideally, you could replace the contents of the system folder of your BeOS installation with the Haiku system and everything just continues to work," Abmus says.
The current version of Haiku is R1/Alpha 3, which has added improved file system and hardware support, MediaKit improvements, user interface tweaks, and support for more than four gigabytes of random access memory.
Abmus says that although typical end users might not see the advantages of Haiku, there are big differences between it and Linux-based operating systems. "Compiling Haiku on Haiku is more than seven times faster compared to compiling it on BeOS and only about 20 percent slower compared to compiling it on Linux, on a dual-core machine," Abmus says.
From Techworld Australia
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found