Submitted by The Haiku Project is proud to announce the availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 1, the first official development release of Haiku, an open source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. The purpose of this release is to make a stable development snapshot of Haiku available to a wider audience for more extensive testing and debugging.This first alpha release of Haiku comes approximately eight years after the project kicked off, and is the direct result of the dedication of many volunteer contributors from all over the world. You can download a Torrent, ISO, or RAW image file.
Additionally, a developer for the Haiku OS has submitted a patch that adds Haiku support to Gallium3D.
Click here to see a screenshot of the system.
Alpha == More users?
Perhaps more users will equate to more help and faster development.
now we need developers developers developers developers! Time to go to all the university computer science depts and post Haiku flyers
This is what I’m hoping happens. I hope that as Haiku reaches 1.0, it only continues to take off… not stagnate, like FreeDOS (which at the very least release an image with a major software version refresh).
I already had my ISO downloaded and was playing around with it before this news story even came up. I was seriously impressed by the Live CD’s ability to detect that my monitor was 1680×1050, and it booted into it. However, my network was not detected or even set up at all, which is pretty disappointing considering I’m pretty sure it worked in a slightly-older pre-alpha build and this is not WiFi I’m talking about… I’m using a standard wired ethernet connection. Still no network even in a (VirtualBox) virtual machine on another computer.
That said, the Live CD can be a bit slow, but I figured that was due to testing/debug tools, lack of file optimization on the disc, and/or a “first-time setup” kind of thing. All forgiveable, especially at this point. It turns out to be my third guess, as the release notes mention this.
As it is though, I’m highly impressed. This was well worth waiting for.
“However, my network was not detected or even set up at all, which is pretty disappointing considering I’m pretty sure it worked in a slightly-older pre-alpha build and this is not WiFi I’m talking about…”
This is the same problem I’m having. All the older and current revisions work perfectly with my wired Ethernet, but Haiku LiveCD does not. Why is this and will it be fixed and newer LiveCD images be released or what?
It’s all about the AVAILABILITY to the wider mass of people. The previous pre-alpha versions of Haiku used to come without a dedicated livecd or installer, so most of the people were not able to actually test it.
It was perfectly fine when you knew how to use it anyway, though.
This is an exciting time for we Haiku developers, and though it has been a long time in the making, it is still a proud moment.
I hope all the people waiting for a release before using Haiku can now finally try it out!
Anytime. I felt a bit of BeOS deja vu tonight myself, since I just came back from a party too where most of the people there were ex-BeOS engineers or developers (most of them now work for Google’s Android or Palm’s WebOS).
Among them was GeB who I haven’t seen in a few years. GeB was the developer of one of the most popular BeOS utils, ProcessController: http://www.bebits.com/app/313
So when I came back home and saw the Haiku announcement, I had to do something about it.
LOL, damn, I think Thom was actually prepping an article too… oh well
Nice!
Hmm, I see… If his article was mostly a review, he could post a new entry.
Edited 2009-09-14 04:20 UTC
You rock! Thom is going to love you.
That’s really funny because Rene Gollent and I were just talking about GeB and hoping he might one day be enticed back into developing for Haiku. ProcessController is an impressive application and one we love to show off inside Haiku.
Well whether or not GeB returns his BeOS legacy will live on in Haiku.
Say “hi” to Rene from me. I haven’t seen him around for quite some time…
I’m still alive
and hi 
Actually, I’m real curious: what is the overall response of the BeOS engineers to Haiku? What are their main praises and criticisms?
Just a reminder that Haiku is binary compatible with legacy BeOS applications. A lot of former BeOS developers have suspended their projects (or moved on to other platforms) and have been waiting for this moment to arrive before resuming their suspended projects (well, I’m one of these developers). So we should see a dramatic increase in number of applications during the following years.
You shouldn’t have gone to bed so early and let Eugenia post this, considering you were so eager to be the first to post
Congrats, Haiku developers, may all the bugs be found before Beta as a result of this public availability to more than merely the truly dedicated geeks
I *just* saw Thom’s Haiku article on the backend, and it will go live later, it’s a great article.
Edited 2009-09-14 04:29 UTC
That’s an incredibly great news! I’m testing Haiku since its birth and I hope it’ll grow on time even more.
That’s really cool
Just wanna say good luck to all Haiku developer. I really hope you guys continue this great project!
This is good. Funny enough, no more than 3 days ago i installed BeOS MAX 3.1, “just because” i wondered if it would work on my 3GHz, 1 Gig ram machine… and it did! i needed a driver from bebits, and broadcom support was obviously not there… now i get to d/l the Alpha, and install, and see how much has changed!
Congrats to all the people who worked on this over the years.
This is just awesome, going to test it out in VirtualBox.
… on releasing an alpha version that’s at least as stable as some people’s definition of beta (or even .0 release)
I can’t wait to get home and try this out.
I haven’t been this tickled since I bought the ‘Live CD’ on a whim when it first came out. After 2 hours with it I bought 4.5 from Dell and have run one version or another ever since.
To get the network enabled in VMWare edit the .vmx file to have the following:
ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.connectionType = “nat”
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable = “TRUE”
ethernet0.startConnected = “true”
ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000”
Start the VM open the Network Preference pane and set it to DHCP and close the pane. Reboot Haiku.
To get sound enabled in VMWare edit the .vmx file to have the following:
sound.present = “TRUE”
sound.startConnected=”true”
sound.virtualDev = “es1371”
sound.fileName = “-1”
sound.autodetect = “TRUE”
Then download and extract the following OSS zip to /boot/
http://haiku-files.org/files/optional-packages/OpenSound-x86-gcc2-2…
To enable VMWare Video, Mouse and Clipboard integration download the following zip and extract to /boot/
http://dev.osdrawer.net/versions/download/129?attachment_id=116
Reboot Haiku.
Uhm … just the word from the VMWare & VirtualBox user: Haiku runs perfectly inside VirtualBox too – and you don’t have to sweat to set up the network.
I don’t remember when was the last time I was so excited about testing a non-Windows OS. I once felt this way with Linux, but now that’s the same old same old.
Anyway, I tried the Alpha1 live CD on my two computers and I’m impressed. Yes, there’s a lot missing like Wi-Fi support, heck I can’t even swap the primary and secondary mouse buttons like in pretty much all OS’s I’ve ever tried. But everything that’s in there worked, and it worked well! I had video with the correct resolutions on both computers (laptop is widescreen, desktop isn’t). Sound worked for both Audigy 2ZS and Conexant HD Audio. I didn’t even have problems with a Dell USB multimedia keyboard with hub, nor with the USB mouse connected to that keyboard.
I’m looking forward to a great future for the Haiku project. I wish I could help more, but I’m not a C (or C++ or assembly) programmer. I’ll be pounding on the alpha and reporting bugs though. Congrats to the Haiku dev team!
Wow, I happy for you because of the working USB thing. Someone has a problem with the Apple keyboard btw.