Haiku OS

[Stephen Coates]

I like to try out lots of niche OSs. I played with BeOS years ago and really liked it. I've known about Haiku for a long time but haven't really bothered trying it out until recently.

[Harrison]

Like Steve I've also been interested in this OS because of it being based on BeOS. The OS was a commercial failure because it didn't have the financial backing or momentum to push it into the mainstream at the time. It was a very nice OS and system. Originally RISC based hardware, so fast at the time, it took a lot of its ideas from both the Amiga and Mac in terms of both hardware and OS design, as well as some UI ideas from OS/2. They tried to market the original as a design OS running on its own BeBox hardware in an attempt to target the same creative market as the Apple Mac at the time. I played around with it a lot at the time at all the design trade expos.

I seem to remember it had a port of 3D Cinema but I didn't find it when I had a quick look.