What is stopping you from contributing towards the development of Haiku?

the developers are supposed to provide helpful "context" and "comment" for each string. So, ideally, the context would say "Settings Windows, Appearance tab", and the comment would say "Don't translate %color%, it will be replaced at runtime". Unfortunately, our sourcefiles currently aren't very good at that. You can open enhancement requests for this at the bug tracker, when you come accross a string you're not sure how to translate, where it's used in the app, etc.

tighter qt integration into haiku means i finally get to quit linux, so i'm all for it.

We have Clang 3.4 and GCC 4.8 (secondary arch) in nightly builds, HaikuPorts, HaikuDepot, etc...

It depends on what you mean by contributing. Personally, I have made a couple of small one time donations. Just recently - I signed up for a small monthly contribution. My pay was just increased yesterday, maybe I can donate more now.

Coding is another story. This is a huge task. There are many coding guidelines/standards and to code in the same style and to the same standard would take quite a bit of time. This is where my problem is (time).

I spend roughly half of my work week using Visual Studio with either VB.Net or C#. These hours are used for building interfaces to link to Oracle servers. I've been spoiled with such a large IDE (code completion/GUI drag and drop) that going back to PE or Paladin seems so distant. Having a GUI with code completion is great, especially when learning a new API.

I'm also a father of three and a student. Time is valuable and unfortunately, Haiku is only a very small portion of that. I'm not saying it isn't a worthy cause, just that my personal involvement will most likely be limited to donations - at least until my schooling is over.

I've booted haiku on 90% of the pc hardware I can find successfully. Laptops have lots of proprietary firmware builds that are generally not FOSS friendly, many laptops that struggle with haiku frequently struggle with freebsd,linux etc.

km - I would suggest submitting requests for hardware you know isn't supported, or trying to get with some who can help develop the drivers for it, aside from just giving up. Linux didn't get it's hardware drivers for free (monetarily), or in time either and it still doesn't support 100% of any pc or customized form factor pc (notebook) either. Asking for Haiku to be able to do that at this time, to me, is a little short sighted. No offense.

Do not have much time to be able to contribute code, then I have helped by donating money (already made ​​two donations). For now I am building my house and it has sucked my resources. As soon as the construction is finished and paid my dues, I can contribute to higher values. In the future I want to contribute code, but first I have to study C++ a little more.

Hello All

I hadn't make donation for the moment.
I have used Beos in the past and I follow news of Haiku.

I try to learn C++ (I'm not developper) and Beos\Haiku seems be the better choice.
I'm beginner and my first impression is :

- Hardware support is required (Above all virtualization under VMware or/& VirtualBox - copy/paste, sharing with host, screen resolution (auto resize), sound)

- IDE
Not necessary IDE like VisualStudio/Codebocks etc.
Pe like with intellisense/autocomplete + git will be a good option. (Paladin like)
intellisense/autocomplete = help beginner to discover API.
git : VCS tool is not simple to understand. GUI for git.

Often I heard people say : "Simple editor with gcc is enough". When you know. It's true.

Congratulations for the work !
(to do is hard, to judge is easy)

(sorry for my english)

I have supported the Haiku Project for several years. I'm not a programmer. I tried to encourage users and developers to try Haiku. I have a very little success in this field. I run a web site with news, articles, forum and support for Haiku. All the time I want to stop doing it, because I have lost faith in the success of the project. The current state of the project and the approach of developers to certain matters, do not help in promotion of Haiku.

Sorry to have been a bit harsh. What I find with most OS's is that they present you with the default setup (desktop, and apps) - but no quick and easily understandable guide to assist you in going any further. There are user-guides, help files, tips, and online info, etc. - but it's like you have the two extremes: the default setup, then a lot of reading to do to understand how it all works. There's no "bridge" between these two states, if you like.

It would be good to see a document or video included on the desktop that gives a general overview of the OS - a bit of history, the philosophy behind it, its layout, how apps are installed, etc., - but not in a technical way, more of a lighthearted way. This makes it much easier for the non-technical user to understand. Once the new user has a general overview of the OS, and knows how apps are installed, the next time they run it they can confidently operate it without any worry.

Maybe Haiku's unique features would make it more attractive to universities or professions in performing their work, rather than to everyday indivduals. If they become interested in the possibilities of a feature they might contribute code or money, and may even develop some new apps to extend those features. For example:

* "Replicants dragged to the Desktop." This feature might be useful to people who need to monitor machinery, processes, or datastreams, like engineers, scientists, meteorologists, stock market workers, and music producers.

* "Windows stacked, resized, and moved together, or tiled." This feature could be useful to people who need to work with many documents open at the same time, like authors, playrights, magazine editors, publishers, journalists, and newsreaders (who use laptops now).

* "Up to 32 virtual workspaces, each with a different background color, image, and screen resolution." If a piece of art could be made to fill each workspace, this feature could be useful to people who work with displays, like graphic artists, advertisers, and TV and media producers.

* "Context menus are a quick alternative to digging through window after window." This feature could be of interest to people who work with data searching, like forensic analysts, and database workers.

" Meta-data - "attributes" - are used for contacts, emails, media library, etc. They can be indexed and then deliver nearly instant search results." This feature could be of interest to librarians, archivists, museum workers, and music and video collectors.

* And "multi-threading" - where if one application crashes it does not crash the whole OS and require a reboot. This feature could be useful for people who need to control machinery, like robotic engineers (robots, drones), aeronautical engineers (flight simulators, rockets, rovers), car manufacturers (in-car computers), and general manufacturers.

In fact, you could give each feature a unique name relevant to a profession, like "datastrips", "tiled-reader", "multidisplayartist", "forensicologist", "indexer", and "robotasker", and try to "sell" the feature to an interested party to contribute to its development :)

Would anyone like to volunteer to put something like that together? :)

As a 'newbie' around here, I look forward to seeing/reading that, thanks for offering to do it.

I have found various bits & pieces for myself, but then I've been using Linux (also BSD) for a while now (since 1999), so have a good idea of what & where to search. (An MS Windows refugee may not.)

Well, a small $ contribution just to payback all of the live cds I must have downloaded over the years, plus server bandwidth etc. There's no doubt that Haiku is starting to resemble a functional core of an everyday OS. I'm still impressed that the Wifi, although not always consistent (still drops a bit every now and then /Wifi Link 5100 agn) works and connects, and the Package Management is done with so little fuss. And Webpositive is starting to look good (still crashes a lot though).

Would be nice to see a PM update utility intergrated at some point. Can I suggest a visual hint as to when updates are availble using the different coloured Haiku leaves? Have the one at the top of the deskbar/tracker glow or change from yellow (available) to green (updating) to blue (updated)? :) Bah, i bet someone's already suggested it right?

Either way, hoping Haiku can attract some sort of champion/ sponsorship, either from business, media or industry soon. It's going to need it.