General Haiku Discussion

Whilst browsing through the Haiku forum, whether back when I first joined the forum or today, I have noticed threads such as "GUI Concept", various ones on UI redesign, and most resulting in long discussions or sometimes, to put it plainly, sometimes leading to debate or argument. And really, after reading through quite a bit of posts and threads, I thought I would try to unify this down to two different sides (and some variations in between) that seem to be shown throughout:

A. Keep it classic and simple

This view seems to adhere to the core of Haiku OS, and it calls for a simple Deskbar and BeOS window management design, keeping with the same appearance, such as in the UI controls and icons, and more importantly, the same principles and style, even in the code. This idea calls to keep things consistent, compatible, and to be a gentle continuation of the Be legacy.

B. Make it modern and/or follow trends

This view calls for "UI redesign", with things such as translucency, new ways of working with apps and workspaces, and having an overall different feel than Haiku currently has today, and thus, is the opposite viewpoint of the previous. This view also seems to be held by individuals who are trying Haiku from other systems for the first time, such as from Gnu/Linux, or younger users that want a more "modern" UI simply to follow the "trend". (But this summary of View B, of course, is just my opinion, and may not reflect everyone who has this view.)

My opinion: Balance

Personally, for those interested in my opinion, I respect View A due to its merits, and wouldn't want it to change, because Haiku is unique as a desktop environment and operating system with its classic look and feel. But I personally adhere to View B if I, or anyone else, were to fork or make changes, as the UI paradigm is moving forward and evolving daily in all software (with the exception of Windows; hopefully, 10 may repair the clear duality that was in 8.x). At the same time, too much freedom leads to anarchy and I'm honestly afraid that Haiku would split off in too many directions, it'd become like the world of Gnu/Linux distributions with a "flavor of the week" mentality, and would thereby lose its strength.

I guess I'm tired of seeing the various different threads that debate this, when there needs to be unity, and not division. But is this summation of the two views about right? Again, I'm hoping to discuss this, so hopefully everyone can say something peacefully -- but I do not in any way want to start any flame wars! Thanks, all.

Several weeks back, you may still remember my proposal of getting a new distro/fork out by Christmas, and I'm still avidly committed to that pursuit. One thing that got my attention back when I used Alpha 2, and that I really appreciate(d) about the Haiku OS was the ability to have control over the system, but to still have controls both in the shell and the filesystem to set limits if necessary. And one thing unique to Haiku that I hadn't seen on anything outside of both the classic Mac OS and OS X is the ability to protect system folders in a way that does not "take over" the system like Windows 6.0 and later. Tracker, for example, asks the user to hold Shift when pressing Delete to avoid removal of a core folder.

I mention all the above because I have noticed that in the latest revisions/nightlies, this concept appears to apply too broadly in favor of the new Depot setup. If I try to add files to certain areas, such as fonts, or if I try to modify it, the system tells me I have no permission to do so. Of course, on any other POSIX-compliant system like OS X or Gnu/Linux, I could set flags or do chmod to repair this sort of thing and regain control, but I don't know if that will work on core folders without the "root" user, as Haiku from what I've observed, seems to assume a unique single-user administrative power and views the filesystem differently in BeFS than in my experience with ext2/3/4 or hfs+. I haven't tried this approach yet because of these variances, but I'll definitely see if it works.

The reason why this is important is because I would like to be able to call functions in the system freely and place temp files and content in folders outside the "home" folder.

With all this said:

• In the unlikely scenario permissions changes aren't possible, is there a way to turn off this new FS behavior in config or in make files before producing a compiled build?
• If this is not possible, how can I download a full copy (not individual packages) of source code from an earlier Nightly revision or from Alpha 4, that does not have this on by default?

I'd really appreciate any assistance, advice, or input from anyone; thank you for reading, and I hope this may help others as well.

Hello, I noticed avrdude is in the depot now. Does anyone know of any avr development tools available for Haiku? All I really need is an assembler. Unless I passed it in the depot, I didn't see anything there. Any ideas?

Thanks

I jump here from time to time and see nothing has changed. Today, I am looking at website and OS icons design, and all it seem so retro.

If this project is going to be interesting for wider circle, please give some "Apple magic" and do complete redesign.

Visual appearance is so important today (not to me, but to many).

And please, provide decent Browser support ASAP. OS without support for modern web services is doomed right from the start.

I just had to write this, because I follow Haiku and Amiga scene, and I see that there is so little chance to catch up with modern OSes.