[OT] Haiku OS

[Richard Gaskin]

Richmond Mathewson wrote:

 > https://www.haiku-os.org/
 >
 > Does anyone know if Haiku OS;
 >
 > 1. Shows any sign whatsoever of gaining any traction?

Slim to none.  Microsoft owns the desktop, Linux is the de-facto 
standard beyond the desktop, Apple owns the high-end of the market.

I see little room in that mix for another OS.

Everything changes, and it's likely that sooner or later a new OS will 
come along that'll wow us all.

But with all due respect to the great ideas in the project I don't think 
it'll be Haiku OS, mainly because it's a desktop-only OS in a 
multi-device world, with little in its underpinnings suggesting it can 
be easily adapted to new form factors.


 > 2. Is there any point of attempting to compile LiveCode for Haiku OS
 > (beyond a spare time project)?

In all honesty I can imagine few activities which could produce a lower ROI.

It might have been different.  Haiku OS is the open source fork of 
Jean-Louis Gassée's BeOS, at one time the front-runner when Apple was 
shopping for a replacement for what we now call Mac Classic.  But once 
Jobs' NeXT became a candidate, even at its much higher acquisition 
price, being a Unix meant a larger supporting ecosystem, a proven 
standard calming to developers and investors alike.

It's almost too bad, since BeOS has a lot of great ideas, all the way 
down to the metadata-rich file system, arguably well ahead of its time.

But history has spoken, and at this time I see little profit in 
deploying apps to Haiku OS.

That said, as a learning exercise studying Haiku OS can be very 
fruitful.  There really are some great ideas in there.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com