[openbeos] Re: What's innovative about Haiku?
- From: Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:35:55 +0200
Hi Salvo,
> as some of you already know, I asked my professor if I can use my gsoc
> project as my thesis project,
> since I should get my degree in a couple of months.
> He asked me what's "innovative" about Haiku? Why it's better than linux and
> why it is
> different from other OS Desktops.
> A thesis can't be about a _simple_ implementation, so I have to provide him
> good
> resources about Haiku, that explains why Haiku is innovative etc..
>
> I don't think I'm the right person to answer this questions, but perhaps
> some of you are! :)
Well... I think it is tough to answer this question to someone sceptical.
But the same could be said about the main stream operating systems. What is
"innovative" about MacOS X? It's hard to come up with a single absolutely
convincing unique to MacOS technical advantage. It looks to me that many
good ideas are floating around in the OS universe and are implemented in one
form or the other in these main stream operating systems.
It is easier to answer "why is it worthwhile to work on Haiku". Haiku's main
selling point is the common vision of how a computer should work on the
desktop (as opposed to for example Linux), and in which direction the future
development should go. Haiku is not composed of tons of competing
sub-projects, with software evolution doing it's work. It is not hard to
imagine that this will lead to very strong benefits for users of the system.
Some areas in which Haiku is innovative:
inter process communication
automatic multi threading in applications
probably more, it's too early in the morning...
Also, the "common vision" concept results in the fact that available
techniques are actually used by other components. So as a user, you get to
actually *use* extended attributes. You get to define your own file types
and their attributes, and you get to search based on these attributes using
the native file manager. Another example is my vector format for icons.
Because this was not some obscure sub-project amongst other competing
projects, I was able to integrate this technique throughout the entire
operating system where icons are used and for the benefit of all
applications. Once R1 is completed, this way of working on the common
project (the entire system) will hopefully continue. And it should be the
main selling point of Haiku. That being said, I am aware that there are
other systems out there, which have an almost identical philosophy (for
example Syllable). These people, as well as we, are aware that creative
energy is wasted, but there is nothing that we can do about it
realistically. Too many hours have been spent, noone would give up their
project to join the other. I am working on Haiku, since I believe it already
has quite a few adventages over these other projects. Like the fixed "R5
clone" target for R1, and Tracker and Deskbar being already written as well
as other bigger applications. I believe we will be "there" faster. But from
a purely technical point of view, Haiku probably does not have a single
"innovative" feature, which isn't implemented somewhere else too (?). But I
believe Haiku is a good project to make the whole combination of innovative
details available in a grand, smooth design to the users of the system.
Best regards,
-Stephan
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