Two App Requests
Stephen B. - April 8th, 2026
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BeOS and Haiku are often characterized as OSes with “no apps.” But those of us who use the OS know differently – many of us can rattle off a list of BeOS applications that we consider downright essential. These are the applications that would be at the top of your “to download and install” list, if you were setting up a brand new BeOS / Haiku installation. In other words, the list of applications you would bring if you were planning to be stranded on a desert island (at which point you may be asking “…and this would be a desert island with an electrical outlet?” Yes, yes it would).
It’s getting close to the 3rd anniversary of the date that I did an idle WHOIS lookup on “beosnews.com” – which was in fact a typo, as I had been intending to check if benews.com was still in the grasp of domain-squatters. After a rather excited EMail to Jason (of BeDoper fame) about my discovery, I realized the typo, but I was still enamored of the idea of starting a new BeOS news site. So after a trip to my friendly neighbourhood domain name registrar, a new hosting account (the beauties of working for a hosting company), and an install of the now-totally-defunct-BBlog, BeOSNews was online. At that point, I’m embarrassed to say, I had some lofty notions about
It’s getting close to the 3rd anniversary of the date that I did an idle WHOIS lookup on “beosnews.com” – which was in fact a typo, as I had been intending to check if benews.com was still in the grasp of domain-squatters. After a rather excited EMail to Jason (of BeDoper fame) about my discovery, I realized the typo, but I was still enamored of the idea of starting a new BeOS news site. So after a trip to my friendly neighbourhood domain name registrar, a new hosting account (the beauties of working for a hosting company), and an install of the now-totally-defunct-BBlog, BeOSNews was online. At that point, I’m embarrassed to say, I had some lofty notions about
When Haiku-related news items are discussed on more general tech sites like OSNews, ArsTechnica, or SlashDot, someone will invariably raise the question: what is the point in cloning an OS that has been “dead” for close to a decade now? Often it’s not a question, but an assertion that there is no point today. Like most BeOS / Haiku advocates, I am typically inclined to dismiss this as just contrarian nay-saying, of which there is certainly no shortage. I do still think, however, that it’s important for us to genuinely consider the question – and by extension, the question of “are there still legitimate reasons to be a BeOS user today?”
Earlier today I downloaded the latest pre-Alpha build of Haiku from Haiku-Files.org, with the intention of giving it a spin on some real hardware (as opposed to a virtual machine). While the difficulties of installing Haiku on real hardware are frequently mentioned, the process is surprisingly simple if you already have a working install of a R5 (or ZETA, presumably). After downloading the image, an article in the venerable BeOS Tips Server showed me the necessary commands to mount an image using the Terminal. I had already set aside a small partition on my BeOS drive (about 16GB) for testing, playing around, etc – so the Haiku installation process was simply a matter of opening the partition from the Desktop, then opening the mounted Haiku image and copying all of its contents to the 16GB partition. Then I ran “bootman” in the Terminal, configured it to include a “Haiku” option in the boot menu, and rebooted. The very first impression I got after starting Haiku? It’s fast – damn’d fast. I’d even venture to say that it’s now equal to R5 in the responsiveness department, if even more responsive (on an AthlonXP 2800+, with 512MB RAM). And it looks fantastic. I’m irreparably biased, of course – given that I’m already a fan of the appearance of R5. But the aesthetic differences between Haiku and R5 are all changes for the better (something that couldn’t always be said for ZETA). The subtle changes to the title tab appearance / widgets look great, as does the font rendering, the “arrow” widgets in Deskbar menus, and the vector icons. A few more quick observations, while they’re still fresh in my mind:
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