Comment by ofalkaed
16 hours ago
Haiku will win in the end, at least win what many in the free software world are trying to win. Or at least what I think this blog is trying to get at, but it is a weird post I am not completely sure what it is trying to get at. But I do appreciate its methods even if I am somewhat confused by them.
The year of the linux desktop is not going to happen, far too much baggage. The year of the Haiku deaktop will happen; they are doing everything right and staying under the radar until they are ready.
Like all permissively licensed software, it certainly will win what many in the free software world are trying to win: a bunch of nerds will do a ton of free work for corporations in exchange for absolutely nothing. Not even the drivers they need to run their own software on their own hardware. See: BSD, Minix, etc.
Permissively licensed software is everywhere. It's winning. What exactly it's winning, I'm not sure. Permissively licensed software is in my hypervisor. It's in my ankle monitor. Permissively licensed software will power the terminator drone that kills me in WW3. But it isn't in my laptop because the drivers don't work.
I've been using desktop linux for 15 years, at least. I play Steam Games on my Linux Desktop. I work on one. It's not prefect, but neither are the other OSes.
I have been using desktop linux for more than a decade longer than you and have config files older than 15 years. No idea what our individual experiences have to do with this but I win, I guess?
I guess what I am saying is that its been the year of the linux desktop for 15 years for me. What is the status of Haiku running on real hardware? Can it use linux device drivers yet?
I think Haiku is a neat project and I wish it well, its just hard to imagine what path it has to desktop dominance.
That is a hot take. I’d take the other side of that bet.
What do you want to bet and which assertion are we betting on?
Haiku has stayed out of the open source drama and focused on its goals; slowly and steadily working towards them even when the goalposts move. The big thing is their determination and staying focused on the user experience in a way Linux has not and can not without a single distro wining which is not going to happen. When it comes to the desktop, Haiku is offering everything Linux doesn't.
Huh? I like haiku and all but have never seen it running anywhere. At least Linux has a few percent market share. While not huge it is in the millions of folks successfully using it across the world every day.