When Haiku rhymes.

I have been using Haiku off and on since Alpha 3! I am booting from a usb stick on my Desktop and installed to my new HP Mini 110 notebook! Everything seemed to be running smoothly until mid September! You see I upgrade my Laptop and HP mini notebook as well as my USB stick once a month by installing the latest anyboot image. When I did that back in mid September this year, my HP pavilion laptop stopped showing the desktop unless I enable safe video mode in Bootman! Also my new HP Mini 110 will require I enable the safe video mode in bootman. Before my mid September upgrade, this was not required and Haiku booted nicely to the desktop. My new HP Mini netbook can not detect the Ethernet nor the wifi adapters!

Although this is annoying, it is not a regression like the issue with the Desktop not displaying! Haiku simply does not have the drivers for the Ethernet and wifi adapters! Although I suspect this will be corrected over time! Also the Nov. 5th build is showing more memory use than any other revision I had used before! This is simply because Haiku did not correctly show how much memory it was using in the past! Also, I am experiencing random crashes in Virtual Box and WebPositive freezes every five minutes or so! I can get mad and angry about all of the problems I have been having with Haiku, but it would be in vain! I simply forgot this OS is still in Alpha stage of development! I got used to Haiku running smoothly after Alpha 3 that it spoiled me! I imagine when more commits got submitted late summer and early fall, some regressions were bound to slip in! So if I seemed grumpy and irritable in the forums and IRC chat, I am sorry!

With all of the "complaints" out of the way, I am free to talk about all of the great things about Haiku! I have been using Linux for years now and I believe that software freedom is more important than convenience. However, that does not mean I do not like convenience! My point is that Haiku is very convenient as far as the user is concerned! Every program and configuration option is only a few clicks or keystrokes away. Haiku has a very consistent UI, which is simple, but very functional. After using Linux for six years, I was amazed at how little memory haiku uses! Some will say the reason it uses so little memory is because it is not as full featured as Linux and does not have as many processes to consume more memory! This may be true to a point, but really do we need Compiz and all the other resource wasting "features" Linux, Windows, Mac has?

What do we really want to do with a computer? For me it is surfing the web, sending emails, watching videos on the 'net, Office productivity, etc. While all those animations, renderings and transparencies may LOOK cool, they consume more CPU cycles and Memory than it is worth! Haiku does have some cool gradients in the "yellow tab" and in the icons! My opinion is that too much gradients and animations distract you from the original intent of the icon. However, I do think the deskbar would look awesome black with 60 percent transparency! Having transparent icons and windows would look good but only if it could be done with as little memory and CPU consumption as possible! I would like to keep Haiku as minimal but highly functional as possible!

Well, I have done enough damage for one post! I will post another soon!