Introducing Haiku

Haiku is an open-source operating system inspired by BeOS and licensed under the MIT license. Specifically targeting personal computing, Haiku is a fast, efficient, simple to use, easy to learn, and yet very powerful system for computer users of all levels.

Haiku has modest minimal system requirements (starting at 256MB of RAM and CPUs down to Pentium II) but will also take advantage of newer (and faster) hardware.

We are currently in beta phase, which means all features from BeOS (and more) are implemented, and the current focus is on polishing the user experience and fixing remaining bugs.

More information on Haiku website

What’s BeOS?

The Be Operating System (BeOS), a discontinued operating system by Be Inc., introduced progressive concepts and technologies that we believe represent the ideal means to simple and efficient personal computing. Haiku is the realization of those concepts and technologies in the form of an operating system that is open source and free. With only very few components open-sourced by Be Inc., almost all of the OS was built from scratch; modelled after the BeOS, though with many aspects extended and modernized.

Who is Haiku targeted towards?

Haiku is targeted towards a variety of user groups. These include:

• General desktop users
• Computer hobbyists/“tinkerers”
• App developers
• Computer software researchers

Why Haiku?

The project was initially created to give a continuation to the way BeOS did things. The goal was to bring a modern operating system (including multiple CPU support, memory protection, pre-emptive multitasking) to the home and desktop computer.

While other operating systems have made a lot of progress on that area since then, Haiku still provides a more streamlined user experience, largely thanks to it being developed and designed by a single team of developers, and not merely as an aggregation of many independant projects, as most Linux distributions are.