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Using Haiku OS as daily

Found at: zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/~cardboard64/phlog/01-haiku-os-as-daily-os.txt

%% Using Haiku OS as daily operating system %%

		
I use Linux as my OS most of the time and for years it has been the only OS on my computer, but I am not entierely satisfied with Linux: even for typical desktop usage, Linux (Ubuntu in my case) needs too much maintenance, and makes me spend too much time on system administation.
Recently, Haiku OS has improved support for my hardware, so I can almost use it as my daily operating system. Here I will report what works and what doesn't on my computer.

		
In a future post I may discuss the technical and non-technical merits of Haiku OS.

		
%
%% Haiku for daily tasks and non-programming work
If Haiku is well supported on your hardware, then it is much easier to use than Linux. There is pretty much no system administration required and the package manager is very fast.
Compared to Linux, it is much more polished and much less annoying to use and it works as you expect it to work.

		
Many Qt apps are available on Haiku and work well, including Krita. Libreoffice is also available. The web browsers available (QupZilla, WebPositive, NetSurf) are not entierely up to the last web standards but are good enough for most tasks.
The default browser, WebPositive, is also a Gopher client.

		
I could'nt get Haiku to connect to an external projector, but this may be related to my hardware (intel_extreme video driver). This means I couldn't use Haiku for presentations.

		
Haiku is not very optimized so it uses more battery than Linux and isn't suitable for portable use.

		
There is no software for making music other than MilkyTracker.

		
%
%% Haiku for programming
Most programming languages are supported on Haiku OS (I use Python, Ruby and Lua) but many packages, especially graphical ones won't work. For game development, LOVE is ported and works and Godot in being ported.

		
I haven't found yet a good IDE/text editor to replace Geany. Pe for C/C++ is decent. There is also Notepadqq and QtCreator (not tested) and Monkeystudio (outdated and only good for C/C++).

		
There is a ports system, haikuports, similar to Gentoo's builds system, which allows ony to easyly port software and many programs can be compiled to work on Haiku with little or none editing needed.

		
%
%% Conclusion
Haiku OS is almost usable as a daily OS. For me, the two things preventing me from using it are the lack of disk encryption and the lack of screen-dimming software such a f.lux. I lack some specialized software, but this also the case on Linux, and for some things I have substitutes or alternatives.


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