Haiku - The Open Source Successor to BeOS (Overview & Demo)

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Not long after the fall of BeOS, the Haiku project came onto the scene to continue its legacy. And today we're going to install and explore it!
Haiku: www.haiku-os.org/
BeOS Video: • BeOS - The Forgotten ‘...
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#MichaelMJD #Haiku #BeOS

[@farhanatashiga3721]

To see an in-developement open source OS that's not a linux distro is fascinating

[@wikwayer]

Linux is getting too bloated for older machines I think only antix could work😢tbh

[@baseduck]

See: SerenityOS, Redox

[@thelakeman2538]

All the different BSDs are a thing too. But yeah Haiku looks pretty cool.

[@NaoPb]

@@wikwayer besides antix, q4os is kinda nice too. Though maybe slightly more heavy. Puppy linux would have been great if they still supported x86 but I think they have dropped that.

[@kreuner11]

Have you saw SerenityOS

[@waddlesplash]

Haiku development team member here. Thanks for an excellent video! The "CDPlayer" application is available in the software depot, but as it's based around CD drive features that are obsolete on modern systems, it's not of much use. CDs on Haiku should show up as virtual partitions with WAV audio files in them, and can be played in MediaPlayer (or "ripped" by just copying the audio files.)

[@username123x8]

Nice

[@DanielMonteiroNit]

Hey @waddlesplash, nice work! How binary compatible with R5 is with the current builds of Haiku? Searching around yields some old posts and somewhat vague messages (hope I'm not asking something stupid).

[@DanielMonteiroNit]

(in a big coincidence with MJD video, I began porting my games to Haiku just a couple of days ago!)

[@Adventures_EC]

How to develop for this OS? it would be great to learn about that.

[@waddlesplash]

@@DanielMonteiroNit The 32-bit x86 version is still binary compatible with R5, mostly (kernel drivers aren't compatible anymore, and a few other kinds of add-ons, but applications should work.) If there's an application which doesn't, it's likely a bug, and issues should be opened about it.

[@fransvannispen9156]

As one of the app developers for BeOS and Zeta, and former employee of YellowTab, it's good to see that the Haiku team pursuit their goal and it is now actually running. Great video!

[@cshaiku]

Hey Frans! LTNS. :D

[@jay1185]

As a former BeOS daily user (2000-2005) Haiku has kept me in the Be universe ever since I found out about it in 2017, a little before the beta released. When my family got our first 1GHz Athlon system in 2000, our K6-2 266MHz system became my computer and I tinkered with BeOS a little before completely switching the system over. I mainly played games on the newer, faster machine in the living room so it didn't need to do anything that required Windows. BeOS did everything that I wanted and needed it to do at the time. It was/is sleek, fast booting and feature packed! I'm glad to see you doing a video on Haku after the BeOS video. I love your vids and keep looking forward to the next one!

[@jasonblalock4429]

Just an idea: Since people seem to like videos about old quirky OSes and such, how about one covering LiteStep? There's quite a lot of history there, and it might be interesting for anyone still running a 9x box for whatever reason.

[@MichaelMJD]

I actually have this on my ideas list!

[@jasonblalock4429]

@@MichaelMJD Groovy! 🙂

[@wctcasc]

@@MichaelMJDI’m a big fan of your channel, I am subscribed to you. Good videos

[@panopolis8051]

@@MichaelMJD Another niche OS worth checking out is Menuet OS

[@tomyyoung2624]

Yes! Yes! Yes!

[@matthiasbreiter4177]

For many windows / linux users one note: you can move the haiku menu to any corner or bottom/top row of the screen. Simply move it with the mouse where you want it. So when you put it into the bottom row you effectively get the Windows task bar / start menu :)

[@mjdxp5688]

Been looking forward to this video! I hope someday Haiku ends up being a legitimate option for an alternative OS.

[@nightlystar2403]

Me too

[@YaSheNePrydumav]

I think if there is a wine app or something like that then you can use it as an alternative os

[@rubblemonkey6904]

@@YaSheNePrydumav They currently have a port of wine working in Haiku, It's still a work in progress but some programs are already working with it. GPU acceleration would also be helpful, and that's currently being worked on too (mostly AMD and Intel I think, because they opensource most of their drivers).

[@YaSheNePrydumav]

@@rubblemonkey6904 that's good, it would be great if haiku has an ability to make a custom screen resolution, and compatibility with UEFI (I've heard that haiku works doesn't work gpt partitions or has some problems)

[@bcarr1122]

Agreed--it looks fabulous, doesn't it?

[@AdamsOlympia]

I ran BEOS back in the day on my original rev-A iMac (233mhz PowerPC) ... It was a huge step up from Mac OS 9 in responsiveness and multitasking. It's such a great UI design, still holding up to this day.

[@4bits4e47]

The improved browser is a BIG plus. There was a rumor that HAIKU would be ported to the RPI 3 and 4, that may help HAIKU secure a "tiny system" market.

[@winelectronic101]

As I mentioned before, the multiple tabs of different applications in 1 window reminds me of the sets feature that was cancelled in Windows 10 post-update development.

[@pdmerritt]

I just found out Stardock has a Windows program that gives you this functionality. Forgot it's name but I'm planning on picking it up.

[@winelectronic101]

​@@pdmerritt I believe you are referring to Groupy, which I think has been discontinued years ago.

[@pdmerritt]

@@winelectronic101 you're right, it is groupy but if you look on their site... There is a Groupy 2 currently available.

[@Kudlaty771]

Dude, I have probably said this in a comment before, but that floppy disk backdrop is beautiful, and a very good idea...

[@rossgeography]

it's class isn't it! :)

[@bibopapa]

The best overview of Haiku so far thanks, and looking for more about Haiku! Great Video!

[@courtneymertz4596]

I feel like Open Source apps and operating systems are becoming more and more varied than the proprietary stuff from big name companies. All of them have their own uses and quirks, they are made from loving people, and they have what we want, in addition to most being free to download!

[@courtneymertz4596]

We don’t need the live-service-like Windows 11, we should give those computers in need the beauty of Open Source Operating Systems like Linux, FreeBSD and Haiku, and the wonderful free apps that come with them!

[@mearetom]

Yeah, feels it's getting popular now.

[@TheAtariSan]

The other day i cloned the firefox repo to trying to compile it for haiku, i will give you an update if i succeed when i have more free time.

[@DarasEs]

Please do, been wanting Firefox on Haiku for a while

[@NormanF62]

The drivers and applications were ported from BSD because the developers didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and creating a modern operating system would allow Haiku to fulfill its true potential. This freed them to work on the Haiku source code and push forward with what BeOS should have been had it been continued as a mainstream desktop.

[@CalebHawn]

Awesome video, was legitimately excited to watch it. Something you didn't mention was how app icons work in Haiku. Icons are vector images, meaning they can be resized to any size without losing quality. Windows .ico files on the other hand have multiple raster images of various sizes inside them. You can demo Haiku's images by right-clicking the desktop and selecting a size from the Icon view option, or just with Alt + and Alt -

[@technoWZ5598]

I really hope Haiku can compete with Linux distributions one day! Hopefully it also becomes a viable alternative to proprietary operating systems.

[@neobscura]

I highly doubt this is going to happen (you can't catch up with decades of dev and millions of people working behind the os environment) but I wish it would because while this looks like a fun quirky OS, it feels (important word I'm not peeking under the hood) super optimized. Maybe that's because it's barebone but it feels like it could be a very good OS for very specific simple tasks.

[@technoWZ5598]

@@neobscura Haiku is perfect for an ancient PC, but useless as a daily driver, but nice to try out nonetheless, and it has plenty of FOSS programs available to install, thus making it a potential operating system that enthusiasts like me could use. I wish it had better hardware and software support.

[@Anuclano]

Yes. It is integrated system with united style and API as opposed to Linux salade.

[@Anuclano]

@@neobscura First, it is a Unix-like OS like Linux, so it potentially can handle much of what Linux can without breaking anything or adding subsystems. Also, the current repo of 5000 packages is good, given that in Linux distros you often have about 20000 but that mostly includes backend libraries and not user-end applications. Also, it maintains binary compatibility between releases, like Windows and unlike Linux.

[@quickdudley]

@@Anuclano It's actually not a Unix-like OS but it has a good enough compatibility layer for the difference to not matter.

[@philtkaswahl2124]

One distinct UI element Haiku and BeOs before it is that offset tab atop the windows. Haiku making it so windows can be snapped together and said offset tabs become tandem tabs on a single window is pretty neat.

[@TAP7a]

A feature which has only very recently made its way back into a mature desktop environment, trialled in Windows 4 years ago and made its way into Pop!_OS's COSMIC desktop as a full feature in a mouse driven environment. For a long time it really was only OpenBeOS/Haiku that could do it!

[@AshtonSnapp]

F I N A L L Y

[@notkartuh]

first reply

[@spookynutsack]

second reply

[@png_salt]

negawatt

[@png_salt]

negawatt

[@png_salt]

negawatt

[@NuclearFury8]

Watching this right after the ReactOS was quite an eye opener, just the difference in smoothness and stability for two in-development OSes.

[@UltraZelda64]

This was a very good and informative walkthrough of Haiku.

[@n.miller907]

This is the most complete video on Haiku that I've seen on KZbin. The replicant feature blows my mind. I really have to give this OS a try!

[@terminallyonline5296]

What a fantastic media centre desktop experience! Responsive and not lacking in software for that purpose.

[@Hazdazos]

Every time I see BeOS (and now Haiku), I always think that this is what the Amiga OS would have evolved to look like if Commodore wasn't run by incompetent executives.

[@pdmerritt]

In fairness the BeOS executives didn't do too well either. I always wished Microsoft would've acquired them and scrapped Windows. This would've been right around the timeframe when Microsoft was considering a totall re-write of Windows.

[@ChamberOfTimeLover]

love Haiku, hope to use it as my main OS soon.

[@UlcerousAxis]

Hopped over here from the BeOS vid because I've only used Haiku in a VM - saw this a lot on various messageboards and imageboards and last I heard was having extreme driver-related issues. Good to see how it's faring now!

[@pawer_themaw]

"Hello everybody and welcome back to another video" has become an iconic youtube phrase, no doubt

[@mr.pavone9719]

Oh shiiiit, that 3D sound mixer, I remember that! I was in college and an upperclassman did a demo of BeOS for us in the lecture hall. We found it to be an incredible OS, especially compared to the Apple and Windows systems we were using for classeork and audio mixing for our production classes. The 3D mixer was a really popular application because we had to put a ton of work into mixib 3D audio pretty much by hand in Cool Edit Pro, our audio software.

[@NALTOHQ]

Ive tried to run Haiku for so long man. Glad to finally see you do this one.

[@michaelwright2986]

Well, this week I got, very cheap, a Thinkpad X61 without an HDD or OS. Now I know what to run on it. Thank you.

[@baumstamp5989]

imagine a world with beos/haiku as market leader in desktop and bsd as market leader in server

[@ReyLamurin]

@bluetoothspeakergaming Palm phones you mean

[@smorrow]

Inferno on all the set-top boxes (if we still call them that)

[@buildz17]

Gave this a go earlier, messed about and built a simple BeOS-compatible app. It's an interesting OS, that's for sure.

[@mikemcdonald5147]

wow BeOS that's old I remember when it came out and I joined using it. Was amazing back in the day. Had no idea HAIKU was around.

[@11Bbq]

As a writer I feel like this simplified OS that also conveniently brings a little nostalgia is perfect for staying on task and focusing on my job.

[@Powerm1nt.]

I love HaikuOS, I am a packager on this project and I contribute to the life of this amazing piece of software and history.

[@TheCharlemagne1978]

I'll be downloading this OS tonight

[@sbeehre]

Pretty impressive that its running this well on a P4 machine!

[@tsakeboya]

Finally, the Haiku video

[@zoltankaparthy9095]

Great to see an update to Haiku's status. Thanks.

[@DoinThatRag]

I was in college in the late 90s and I installed BeOS a few times. But I also used to regularly switch between 98, NT 4 Server/Workstation, RedHat, & Solaris. I tried them all. In the end, Diablo, WarCraft, StarCraft, & Quake won out. But I always really liked the look of BeOS.

[@UliTroyo]

I've been eagerly awaiting it! Now I'm just hoping you wrote at least one haiku for the occasion.

[@UliTroyo]

Wait, how can I ask That Michael write a haiku And not write my own?

[@InsanityPrevails]

Yay, the Haiku video is finally upon us :3

[@julioau]

Love the window manager from it, mad props! ;)

[@shemmac4700]

Love these alternative OS videos. Forgot there were so many. Pity not many of these survived

[@russiaman9407]

Hooray! We've been waiting for it!

[@russiaman9407]

Btw where Linode did go?

[@normalizedaudio2481]

At least someone looks at these old OS. It's too bad it didn't work out. Love to have been on the team!

[@gwgux]

Cool! Glad to see it covered here!

[@alexandredevert4935]

The UI is really neat

[@TheFanChar]

i think you could also make a video about kolibriOS, i think it would be really interesting to see an in-depth look at it

[@RETROMachines]

Good to see that someone still remembers BEoS today. I also feel not good for OS/2 Warp...

[@blainepalmerza]

Awesome video, Michael!

[@karmaduq]

Can also stick window edges together with a modifier. I really want to say that window tabs did line up next to each other in the original in the file manager when you modifier clicked a folder, though they weren't joined.

[@oz_jones]

Those haiku error messages are wonderful.

[@backprints]

holy shit this is still going!!! lets gooo!!!

[@busterscrugs]

it's a good monday when mjd drops a new video on an obscure OS

[@kaqqao]

2:55 Ah yes, the legendary pennyum. Worth every penny!

[@stephanieiwaniuk6088]

Good morning/afternoon/evening/night everyone!

[@NsndoBrasil]

How to install the HAIKO Operating System but I want to install it directly on the NotBook HD. I don't want to start with a pendrive or CD. How to do it I tried several ways but I can't. It is the same as Linux, I appreciate any help

[@aoxby8037]

A USB drive is the best way to do it. Use a program called rufus to turn a USB drive into a bootable drive, then boot from it on the computer you want to install on.

[@alessandrozara924]

I tried Haiku once. Also, since in this video you have mentioned NeXTSTEP, actually also the default applications bar on the right side of the screen is quite similar to NeXTSTEP's dock. Always talking about NeXTSTEP, this OS is the ancestor of Apple's Mac OS X. In fact, since Steve Jobs's NeXT company was bought by Apple, NeXTSTEP became the base of Apple's Mac OS. For more about this, you can watch the Computer Clan's video related to the comparison of NeXTSTEP and Mac OS.

[@phaedrus2633]

Haiku has a beautiful UI.

[@eduardoADSL]

It's really an interesting project and I liked running it from the live USB on my old netbook. Unfortunately I didn't succeed to install it because the boot partition wasn't detected, I tried in many different ways to no avail even after reading the documentation and many reddit posts, and from the live USB itself I faced issues like my wifi adapter not being detected. I wish the best for this project and the developers and I hope more people can be able to experience it. I will try again in the future, maybe in another hardware.

[@CaribouDataScience]

Is it a Unix like OS?

[@SockyNoob]

About time you did a video on this.

[@Mantikal]

I was amped up for this. I had forgotten about this OS. It's cool looking. I wanted it to work. I tried installing it on 4 different PCs. I tried changing all BIOS settings on all of them to legacy and was only able to install it on one. When I finally booted that one up and was able to update the system, almost every app crashed on me - especially the three available web browsers available from its package manager. This was it for me. I have move on. God bless all those who had a flawless install and operating experience with this OS. I remember about 18 years ago, when I first tried installing this - I never had a problem with it then.

[@yolahola1]

I know that Pentium 4 system probably could not stream KZbin videos, but it would’ve been cool to see you try to load one. It looks like that Browser’s a fork of FireFox, so I imagine the only bottleneck would be the hardware itself.

[@thelakeman2538]

It isn't, it's running webkit (like safari) and not gecko (firefox's engine). The haiku depot doesn't seem to have firefox or chromium, so your only other options are more niche ones like epihany (gnome web), falkon, and otter browser unless you wanna build chromium/firefox from source.

[@Stiky_Piston]

I was just about to request this, but then I got the notification for this lol

[@jzmmm]

Rose tinted glasses are a hell of a drug

[@LOC-Ness]

Cool to see this live on!

[@turbolenza35]

Best os ever.

[@samshort365]

Haiku is a really nice operating system. I have been using it on a dedicated modern machine since Beta 4 and I enjoy using it. It feels snappier than Linux and is way less complicated than FreeBSD on the same PC, so once out of Beta it could become the system of choice for people looking at moving over from Windows or Mac.

[@colinreece3452]

I have tried version 4 and v5 booted from flash drive, just get the logo then screen froze, any help appreciated.

[@someone-fw2lv]

These bizarro OS videos are really interesting, maybe you could cover yellowTAB/Magnussoft Zeta? It was essentially a BeOS continuation that used stolen code and seemed to be mostly sold through teleshopping. The strange modern editions of Atari TOS or AmigaOS would also probably be interesting topics.

[@ashtonvlogsph]

Haiku! I can't believe that a new OS is in currently under development, this is game changing!

[@qwerdsffds]

Haiku has been there for a while, but it's a new mjd video anyways!

[@scottharvey-davies1607]

Thanks for another great video buddy. Am currently throwing Haiku at a Atom netbook.... (dont ask about the BSD attempts... ;) )

[@Caesim9]

Hmmm.. good idea. I have a tiny Celeron netbook laying around

[@zweispurmopped]

Until learning you had to reboot after installing LibreOffice I was almost sold. 😊 Dear Haiku-People: Rebooting after each install is so windows, it's **PFLRTZZ!!1!** 😋 I hope this gets a lot more love and support for as much as I love my Linuxes, I think there should be more living operating systems in this world.

[@gcvrsa]

Haiku is still active?? I honestly had no idea. I was a huge BeOS fan back in the day.

[@mattl_]

Now we need a video of Apple Rhapsody :)

[@baturalp7043]

Appreciate the video 👍 You didn't struggle with booting it up like I expected you would though (i swear I didn't wish suffering upon you haha) but I found the solution to the problem I initially had in a comment so you still saved the day in a roundabout way lol

[@fluori5890]

honestly booting Haiku is really simple. The only hassle I've had is when installing on EFI systems. You just need to download the efi loader application and put it on a new fat32 EFI partition, as the installer doesn't do it automatically yet.

[@baturalp7043]

@@fluori5890 yeah apparently that's what i was missing. Thanks!

[@lapiswolf2780]

I thought of it as Haiku OS because that's how I remembered it. Also, just Haiku in the search bar brings up the literature style and not the OS.

[@KatJustice97]

High key seriously interested in switching to Haiku

[@lekevire]

I like Haiku but it really isn't meant for daily driving atm. Literally nothing supports it. No software, nothing. And I don't know how well WINE works on Haiku

[@Tech_Code127-76]

I wanted to see this video when you released BeOS video

[@UzumeCEDC]

I think I'm gonna like this video

[@dylon4906]

haiku/beos has such a unique interface, surprised that there hasnt been any attempt (to my knowledge) to bring it to linux with a compositor yet

[@mikoldeon]

It's a pretty cool way to see BeOS revived! Thank you, @waddlesplash and the team, for your hard work! Thank you, @MichaelMJD, for the video! :)

[@lark9266]

Hell yeah, Haiku! :]

[@Ubaids_VMs]

update idea (have not watched the full video when commenting so idk if it's there but I missed it) : a replicant of the pinned icon thingy would be SUPER NextStep/mac os like, I mean isn't a bunch of applications pinned on your desktop a dock. would be cool!

[@donaldmouseforsaturn]

what model is the dell monitor you use in your videos, such as this one

[@ibizenco]

Coming from your BeOS video. 🙂 I know BeOS, but I have never really seen videos about it. I may give Haiku a try. Can it be used as a daily-usage OS?

[@BrendonCarr]

Does Haiku not have any 16:9 aspect ratio screen resolutions? Whenever I see a demo, it's always on a 1280x1024 monitor. I do note that some nice work has been done on antialiasing the fonts, so that does give some hope that more modern resolutions are available now too.

[@asadfarraj]

I didn't watch the BeOS video, so it's kind of new to me. Could someone feasably use this OS as a kind of nostalgic throwback OS with actual modern functionality (unlike just using Windows XP for example, where functionality and security will go down with time)? It looks to be made for that.

[@panopolis8051]

Driver support is minimal compared to more popular OS, but if you have hardware that it supports you could use Haiku for a lot of basic computing

[@cactusjackNV]

Haiku is still being developed and isn't abandoned like old versions of Windows. To echo what panopolis said, hardware support is hit or miss unfortunately. In other words this isn't going to replace a gaming PC but can be very useful for other purposes.

[@havesomerespectandspoilthe5880]

@@panopolis8051 not really, driver support is kind of good now, the only thing missing is 3D acceleration and some weird i2c memory mapping (causes some touchpads on modern laptops to not work) Otherwise sound, wifi, printers, etc work well. They even beat FreeBSD to supporting modern A2XX intel wifi cards. Printing uses good ol CUPS, and there's even libinput support for graphics tablets (mine worked out of the box with pressure sensitivity, a huion h430p, but your mileage will vary as some tablets need proprietary drivers) Haiku is in a really nice spot right now, you can probably use it for many advanced tasks as well (albeit, slowly, as no 3D accel)

[@93dzrv24]

Never heard of this before! But it is so cool!

[@annaarthur724]

Installing Haiku on a modern system with uefi is a bit of a hazzle but it is doable. Made it on a Dell Inspiron Laptop with a Core i7

[@d3xbot]

alright, the only thing I could think of during the Brilliant ad read was "WHERE ARE THE FREAKISH EARS ON A STICK?!"

[@kdkdkjcrjd]

Great video!

[@DIYDUDE012]

Would it be possible to do a video on Sun Solaris? Would love to see that!

[@LandonEmma]

This brings me back to the Windows 7 days…

[@samtallant7023]

Love your videos wish to have an old pc myself one day

[@bretramsey5565]

I love your videos 📸

[@andytsai9844]

I wonder what legacy Be programs were even available, that and the fact I used a Be/Haiku style Windowing Manager on Linux with all the snaps and grouping Haiku added; I have no idea if it has any current use at all. That said, now we have VM as consumer tech.

[@MindSweptAway]

Brilliant video