Haiku Project Announces Availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 2

The Haiku Project is proud to announce the availability of Haiku R1A2, its second official alpha release. Haiku is an open source operating system that specifically targets personal computing intended for desktop use. Alpha 2 is a stable development release and a milestone on the way to the upcoming Release 1.

Eight months ago the Haiku Project released its first alpha, making many aware of its presence. Alpha 2 is the direct result of the contributions of many volunteers from around the world. With it the project hopes to entice more people to contribute, growing the project and reaching the goals for R1, and beyond.

The Haiku developer team is excited to have this improved version available to a wider audience and more extensively tested, and invites the public to help improve the quality of Haiku.

Notable Changes Between Alpha 1 and Alpha 2

• WiFi support with WEP encryption introduced
• WebPositive - a native Webkit based browser
• New Locale Kit allows localization/translation
• Improved USB mass storage performance
• ACPI enabled by default
• Bash command-line shell updated to version 4.x
• Message Signal Interrupts (MSI)
• Increased POSIX compliance
• Increased performance

For More info, see the Release Notes.

Haiku R1/Alpha 2 Availability

• Disk images (multiple formats) available from: /get-haiku
• Purchase CD (from the end of May): http://www.cafepress.com/haiku_os

About Haiku

The Haiku Project is a volunteer based initiative started on August 18th, 2001, whose goal is to develop and promote the adoption of Haiku, an operating system which is fast and responsive, easy to use, powerful and enjoyable for everyone, both users and developers. Haiku adopts design and concepts introduced in BeOS™ and take these to the next level by fusing them with recent advances.

Give Haiku a whirl today to see what you think, and discover what you have been missing!

Please use Haiku's bug tracker to report any bugs found.