Haiku Project Makes First Test Release

Posted September 14, 2009, 10:20 p.m.

The developers of the Haiku operating system, an open source effort to build a BeOS-inspired, desktop-oriented operating system, have made their first formal test release. The Haiku R1 Alpha 1 release is available for daring testers from the project web site.

I wrote a bit about Haiku last month. It is one of my favorite open source projects. The various Linux and BSD Unix distributions are great operating system for what they are, and they can’t be beat for server purposes, but they don’t ‘just work’ as well as they should as desktop systems. Despite the strides made by some key projects like Ubuntu which have finally made Linux usable by mere mortals, it still isn’t totally ‘put together’ for desktop end users. Haiku, however, is being built differently. It’s target user is the desktop user. It, like BeOS before it, approaches the user with a simple, beautiful, minimalist interface that stays out of your way. It doesn’t expect you to be a nerd to use it.

Of course, at this early stage, being a nerd helps—Haiku doesn’t yet support wireless networking and may need some nerd-attention to get running on some computers. The system is off to a great start though. Check it out!

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Everything stands or falls with the act of speaking out.

Yet ever since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying, ‘God is hard to find.’

The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours.

‘Pull yourself together’ is seldom said to anyone who can.

We must reject the notion that demography is destiny, the pathetic and simplistic notion that skin pigmentation dictates voter behavior. We must treat all people as individuals rather than as members of special interest groups.

Suffering overwhelms you because you take it like a coward. Meet it bravely, with a Christian spirit, and you will esteem it like a treasure.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The logic and rational explanation of a natural phenomenon—however comprehensive it may be—always makes an abstraction of that phenomenon.

God is said to rejoice more over the penitent than over the innocent, because often penitents rise from sin more cautious, humble, and fervent.

Most men are not untrue, but they are afraid. Most of the errors of public life . . . come not because men are morally bad, but because they are afraid of somebody.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

But it is as foolish to reject the senses because they sometimes seem to deceive us as it is to reject mathematics because we sometimes make mistakes in our checkbooks.

If every man had faith, we would need no more laws. . . .

Brooks’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

I believe; help my unbelief!

We often hear that love, happiness, or personal contentment constitute the means of a good marriage and reasons to redefine marriage, but these things are the fruits of marriage, not the nature of marriage.

Politics allows people to vote for the impossible, which may be one reason why politicians are often more popular than economists . . .