On April 14, 2007 at 20:53:46 PM, by Petter Holt Juliussen, in Haiku
There are an ever ongoing discussion in the BeOS community about distributions, and now the announced distributions of Haiku. We're all acquainted with the distribution hell of Linux, and there are few of us that are interested in seeing the same situation for Haiku. Different APIs, different package managers, poor compatibility, different looks. The list is longer.
With Linux, this is bound to happen. Linux is first of all a kernel, and to be able to use it as a desktop operating system, you will have to assemble it piece by piece from the kernel up to window manager. And there's not only one window manager. There are plenty of which you can chose between. With a system as divided as this, different views on how to put it together is natural and needed, as there are no unified system put together by a “Linux Inc.”. This generates a complete mess for the end users. Haiku is different. It's one system. No need for any distributors to assemble and choose between the different pieces for you. Haiku is ready to be installed on any/most computers by most computer users.
During the last few weeks at least two Haiku distributions has been announced, and as far as I know, more will come. I can't help ask why? Why are Haiku distributions needed? In my eyes, Haiku is (at least will be) a complete system, ready for install – just as much as Windows and OS X is. Windows either doesn't ship with plenty of applications and games. It's just the basics. If people want a more powerful image editor than Paint, they get Photoshop. If they want a better video editor than Windows Movie Maker, they get Sony Vegas.
The last few days I've been trying to understand this “I-want-to-create-a-distro”-mentality. I've been reading, following discussions, and seen some of the arguments as to why creating a distro (of any OS):
- Putting a system together for end users.
- Poor or none consensus on which direction to choose.
- Make it work on different kinds of platforms/hardware.
- Different distributions for different kinds of usage.
Does any of these arguments apply to distribution of Haiku?
- No, not generally. Haiku comes ready. It's not only a basis for different distributions. It has what you need to make your computer function. You can browse the web (when a browser is available – preferably a native one), view images, videos, listen to music, send mail and so on. I feel that Haiku do bundle some quality basic applications, and I also think they can bundle a few more basic, native and good applications, for R1, which will make this argument even more invalid.
- I can see this one coming. Tough decisions will be made in the future about which direction to chose for Haiku. For example when it comes to package management. Will there even be package management? How will it function, and how much will it do for you? The BeOS community seems generally very united on a lot of these questions, but when Haiku is released, and new decisions needs to be made, the community has probably grown substantially, and new opinions will come forth. A fork of Haiku is highly plausible at this stage. But I don't think this either is a valid argument at this point.
- When the day comes when Haikus is mature enough to move onto other plaforms (PPC, smartphones, PDAs and so on), different distributions is needed. They don't have to be different from eachother, except supporting different architectures and bundling platform-specific drivers and preference-panels. It doesn't have to be Haiku Inc. that provides these distributions, but it's important that there are a tight relationship between the distributor and Haiku Inc. (to maintain the same goals), and that they are allowed to use the Haiku name. When it comes to BeOS MAX, it was maybe needed because it provided an easy way for people to install BeOS on newer hardware. That argument does not apply with Haiku.
- This is valid in any case. With different uses, I don't mean for example developing and artistry. I would rather see a “developer-tools-pack” for Haiku as provided by Be for BeOS. A dedicated developer-distro is silly. However, I do see the need for some different distributions when it comes to for example provide Haiku to people with special needs. DebianEdu/Skolelinux and OLPC comes to mind.
To summarize. I for one don't see the need for any Haiku distributions with the same goals; provide the end user with a desktop operating system. “Haiku MAX”, Pingwinek and Haiku share this goal. If it's about bundling applications, why not provide a application pack to install on top of Haiku? This will release us from unneeded confusion. If some day, a group of developers do want to head in a another direction, so be it, but that day are not today. I don't understand why people already have made up their mind about that their Haiku-distro is needed. At this point, it all seems to boil down to bundling of applications, and creating a distro-mess just because you would want your preferred applications bundled, is just silly. There are already enough confusion in this community. New people have problems understanding the difference between BeOS Pe / Max / Zeta / Dan0 / Phos / more. Throw BONE and net_server in the mix, and the confusion is even greater. To be a bit harsh. The problems arise when people need support: “How do I get this to run on Max?”. Imagine a future with 20 different Haiku (desktop-)distributions, and one #haiku channel. Is it expected that support is provided to people that use Haiku Distro #3, with Package Management System #4, and so on?
Let's instead join hands, as some people including me suggest, and build the greatest operating system ever. I think the community are good at providing healthy discussion about matters that concern us all. What direction will Haiku go next? Let's come to a consensus. That would benefit Haiku. Distribution-hell won't.
Comments (0) | 5187 hits
The Gathering 2006
On April 16, 2006 at 08:01:54 AM, by Petter Holt Juliussen, in Computers
Then it's over. The Gathering 2006 ended for my part this morning. I'm sure a lot of people stay until 12:00 when they shut down the power, but I and my friend found it wise to go before the "rush". The Gathering, in Vinkingskipet (Vikingship, OL 94 and all that) at Hamar (my town) in Norway, is the worlds next largest computer party with about 5500 gamers, demoers, programmers and computer musicians under one roof. It last for 5 days with a lot of competitions and seminars.
The nicest view you can imagine?
I'm not a gamer, but there were some workshops and seminars that was very interesting. We've heard Microsoft present Vista (with all it's new revolutionary technology), Opera talk about standards and their new widget system for Opera 9, an interesting talk with EFN (the Norwegian version of EFF), as well as "Demomaking for dummies". We also had a live video stream from the Scene Awards 2005 held at Breakpoint in Germany, which was very fun.
The Microsoft presentation of Vista didn't impress me at all. First of all, the guy presenting it didn't handle questions very good (especially the ones from the critics), and he kept saying "why are you here?" to those who didn't use Windows and said "We've had that in Mac for years". Vista didn't impress me either. It seemed utterly slow, and the "revolutionary" technologies didn't seem so revolutionary. In fact, it all felt kind of familiar, but he kept babelig about the "smart guys at Redmond which did this and that". Still, pretty interesting though.
Heres some recordings of these seminars/presentations (from The Gathering's FTP server):
- Opera: Standards and cool tools (Held in english, 884mb, ASF)
- Demomaking for dummies (Held in norwegian, 783mb, ASF)
- EFN: Intellectual property and digital media (Held in norwegian, 918mb, ASF)
I'm not sure of the quality of the recordings, and I'm not sure if they are any good. On the server there is a lot of demos from The Gathering's demo compo each year dating back to 1992, as well as more videos and pictures.
I would really love to se Haiku present R1 at The Gathering in 2007, maybe 2008. No more than a couple of hundered of the 5500 would probably show up (which was about the number of spectators at the seminars), since most of them are gamers, but it would still be fun to see the Haiku Operating System presented to the few real geeks there.
Comments (2) | 13470 hits
BeOS Media Center
On January 11, 2006 at 23:39:14 PM, by Petter Holt Juliussen, in Programming
First of, let me say that I have completely taken water above my head on this project. But as I'm eager to learn more, I started this new project to bring a Media Center to the BeOS. Inspiration, as you can see from the screenshot below, mainly comes from an open source project called Media Portal (HTPC software for Windows XP).
I've been using it for some time now, and it's great. But as any software it does have shortcommings. I wanted to help, but with my limited programming skills and not wanting to learn C#, I started my own little project for BeOS. It's not nearly something, other than Media Portals graphics, but it's a start.
Click it for a larger version
The thing I'm working on now is the "Movies" part. I'm still working out a plan on how to integrate IMDB information lookup. I'm learning as I go, and it's very likely that I'll never manage to complete this project. I don't want any expectations, I just wanted to show what I've done so far.
Update: One more thing, is it possible to add some kind of video controller using something from VLC for an example? Or would I need to write my own video player? Please kill my project as soon as possible. :)
Comments (26) | 26629 hits
Life is Good
On December 14, 2005 at 15:46:54 PM, by Petter Holt Juliussen, in Electronics
GPE
Yep, thats GPE on the Palm LifeDrive. Thanks to Alex Osborne at hackndev.com this has become reality! Theres still some miles left, but it runs :)
Comments (0) | 6007 hits
Linux on the Palm LifeDrive!
On December 04, 2005 at 16:02:03 PM, by Petter Holt Juliussen, in Electronics
I have for the last few months been following a project aimed to run Linux on the Palm LifeDrive. When I bought mine, there was a lot of discussion going on about how slow and crappy the LifeDrive was. Reading all the bad reviews, and the good ones, I decided to buy one. The LifeDrive had indeed problems, and at one point I was really looking forward to seeing a project that would port Linux to the LifeDrive. I have been generally happy about my LifeDrive, and with the very recent update 2.0 released by Palm, things are really starting to shape up for this pretty device.
Still, running Linux on this device would be way cool. If this means that either GPE (preferably), OPIE or even Qtopia could be started on the LifeDrive, I would be very thrilled.
The Linux on the Palm LifeDrive project is runned by one guy, and seeing the progress the last few days, I'm really impressed. With help from other Linux on Palm projects and the porting of Garux (Linux bootloader for the Palm OS), he has been able to start the kernel.
Linux' tux on the LifeDrive
The current status of the project is frequently updated at handhelds.org, and the current status of today includes working bootloader, LCD, keypad with the MMC/SD slot working partially. I asked Alex Osborne, the single one member of the project team, if there is something I could do to help. What Alex needs is more information about the LifeDrive's internals, as well as pics of the LifeDrive dissected (mostly for finding information). Anyone know for instance what kind of WiFi chipset the LifeDrive uses? Such information is much appreciated.
Keep it up Alex - you are doing a great thing for us LifeDrive owners!
Comments (11) | 12914 hits
