Gallium3D Support For Haiku Operating System

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Gallium3D Support For Haiku Operating System

Gallium3D, the graphics driver architecture created by Tungsten Graphics designed to overhaul graphics drivers on Linux and other operating systems, has caused quite a stir lately. Gallium3D this year alone has picked up support for features like OpenGL ES, OpenCL, network debugging support, and many other prominent changes, albeit the GPU hardware drivers are still lacking...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzUxMg

[philcostin]

Initial Gallium3D support was added to Haiku a while ago and AFAIK is being merged over time.

Mesa has been included in the Haiku tree for some time - and now that Gallium3D has been in development, it is now looking to be a most perfect fit for the project! It's great to think we could have hardware accelerated OpenGL 3.2 or newer support on Haiku maybe within a year or two. With an uprated game kit and some nice development tools, it would make a very nice gaming platform.

[aljen]

Rest of Gallium3D port to Haiku is in Haiku SVN, only software renderer is available for now
http://dev.haiku-os.org/browser/haiku/branches/components/gallium3d/src/add-ons/opengl

[aljen]

Also screenshot (http://www.haiku-os.it/immagini/news/gallium.png) from first testrun

[cb88]

Haiku has had a softpipe port of Gallium3d for a good while

I'm not sure that the hardware drivers are there though

here is the original git repo http://github.com/aljen/haiku-opengl/tree/master

I think development on it might be going straight into haiku svn now though

[V!NCENT]

What?! No... fscking... way! :D:D:D

The last time I looked at Haiku they just managed to be self-contained or something (can compile itself from their own OS).

This rocks :D How's the wireless network support? I might actually give this OS a go ^^,

[MaestroMaus]

Sorry but I don't get it. Why is Haiku still being developed? Has BeOS something Linux doesn't? It looks like a pure waste of resources to me...

[V!NCENT]

Sorry but I don't get it. Why is Haiku still being developed? Has BeOS something Linux doesn't? It looks like a pure waste of resources to me...
Haiku is meant to be super fast, sleek and smooth because it's solely developped as a desktop OS. Linux is a big, fits everything jungle that needs to be tied together with ugly hack in distro's like Ubuntu, and is not really optimised for desktop use. Haiku, doesn't have these problems.

[pmorph]

Sorry but I don't get it. Why is Haiku still being developed? Has BeOS something Linux doesn't? It looks like a pure waste of resources to me...

Why not Linux?

Linux-based distributions are a collection of numerous software that do not necessarily follow the same development guidelines and/or goals. This lack of overall vision often results in increased complexity, insufficient integration, and sometimes inefficient solutions, making the use of your computer more complicated than it should actually be.

Seems reasonable to me.

[89c51]

haiku -with all the work that has been done in open source so far- seems to have potential

as long as they port (to the native toolkit) what works well (ie Firefox Thunderbird OOo) it can be a viable alternative


quality will be the key to success and as long as they keep the million crap apps that don't work away they will have no problem

[MaestroMaus]

Haiku is meant to be super fast, sleek and smooth because it's solely developped as a desktop OS. Linux is a big, fits everything jungle that needs to be tied together with ugly hack in distro's like Ubuntu, and is not really optimised for desktop use. Haiku, doesn't have these problems.

Thanks, now it makes sense. Not a fan of yet another OS (with the possibility of even more forks) but WTH...

[V!NCENT]

Thanks, now it makes sense. Not a fan of yet another OS (with the possibility of even more forks) but WTH...
I wouldn't mind a fast OS system that is sleek and can run at decent speed on my EeePC 900 :/ Fedora doesn't even run X without 256MB RAM.

I mean c'mon... And everything is open source and portable so I don't really see the problem here. It's just some folks who want to resurrect their favo OS. What's the problem

[kraftman]

Haiku is meant to be super fast, sleek and smooth because it's solely developped as a desktop OS. Linux is a big, fits everything jungle that needs to be tied together with ugly hack in distro's like Ubuntu, and is not really optimised for desktop use. Haiku, doesn't have these problems.

Haha good joke :D I'd love to see this Haiku to be at least half as fast as Linux or any other OS. Don't spread FUD, Linux isn't big. It's hard to understand you only use just some part of the Linux kernel archive? Desktop distros are optimized for desktop use (or at least they should be and if they're not, nothing prevents you from doing this...). Fedora probably has every heavy feature enabled, so if you want compare something to Haiku use Arch Linux with similar DE like Haiku has, etc. You can only dream about some Linux advantages on desktop like interactivity, responsiveness and much more...

[V!NCENT]

Haha good joke :D I'd love to see this Haiku to be at least half as fast as Linux or any other OS. Don't spread FUD, Linux isn't big. It's hard to understand you only use just some part of the Linux kernel archive? Desktop distros are optimized for desktop use (or at least they should be and if they're not, nothing prevents you from doing this...). Fedora probably has every heavy feature enabled, so if you want compare something to Haiku use Arch Linux with similar DE like Haiku has, etc. You can only dream about some Linux advantages on desktop like interactivity, responsiveness and much more...
Ubuntu is supposed to be the slick, stripped down Linux distro and it runs like shit on a pentium3. Now if I would turn all these features of, then I would not get all the advantages of Linux...

[kraftman]

Ubuntu is supposed to be the slick, stripped down Linux distro and it runs like shit on a pentium3. Now if I would turn all these features of, then I would not get all the advantages of Linux...

I know what you mean. I'm talking about strict e kernel advantages (like preemption) not features like compiz, some scripts etc. To make a fair comparison, compare some thin distro to Haiku. Btw. I ran Kubuntu 8.10 or 8.04 on Duron 850Mhz, 512MB SD Ram and it ran very good (probably it wasn't full of scripts or something like this yet).

Edit:

In theory if you put Linux kernel to Haiku's environment you won't make it slower. My point is some distros can be bloated, but Linux kernel isn't.

P.S. If Ubuntu is supposed to be slick and stripped down Linux distro it doesn't mean it is ;)

[cb88]

@kraftman actually Haiku also has some other good points such as higher preference for native apps thus reducing multi toolkit bloat

haiku speedwise is probably not as fast as linux yet but in many cases it is already faster for many tasks than BeOS (considering BeOS isn't opetimised for newish hardware...BeOS however kicks Linux's Butt on old HW and I am comparing a very light Archlinux install to it)

Also have you not seen all the people that are having problems with Linux desktop latency? I men get real the big distros shouldn't be running a server kernel on a desktop distro

Haiku stands a far Better chance of dethroning Windows IMO than Linux because it has GUI ease of use as a high priority when it hits alpha download it and check it out sure its not mature but it shows promise. The good design enherently leads to low learnig curve which Im not sure I've seen a Linux distro that has this yet.

And don't forget ever other OS had to start somewhere as well...

[philcostin]

I don't want to even compare Linux and Haiku. I use Linux on the desktop, and I agree that it's probably not for everyone. It's GREAT for me - but not for people that don't really care about computers. The great thing about Haiku is - it's /just/ a desktop OS. And a fast one at that...

The way I would describe it is - Mac OS X but free and open source, with a neat and snappy UI rather than heavier and flashier UI.

[KDesk]

It is great how Gallium3D can be used in so many OS, everybody wins, and the code duplication is less.

[MaestroMaus]

I have nothing against Haiku itself. Heck I don't even know if it is any good, I never even heard of BeOS or Haiku before. My only beef is that we should all trie to make Linux get some real desktop market share before we start splintering up in other opensource branches (which keeps happening for some reason).

@cb88: You do realize that it is a personal preference your choosing here. Not a universal better preference. FE: I want "multitoolkit bloat" because that enables me to run more programs which in turn gives me a bigger database to nitpick from, I want a server grade kernel running on my desktop and I want a flashy desktop.

[DDevine]

MaestroMaus there is no such thing as a "Server grade kernel" - except maybe in Windows where drivers for Windows server have to be inspected and signed off...

A desktop targeted kernel however will benefit a desktop user more than a server targeted kernel because it is tuned to slightly different things. On the desktop you would want to use BFS (Brain Fuck Scheduler) rather than the CFS that is in Mainline and is scalable to 4096 processors. BFS only scales efficiently to about 16 processors but is much more responsive to the user and therefore is much better on the desktop.

It is clear here that many of you do not know what BeOS and Haiku are all about. Firstly, the BeOS shell had a set of UI guidelines/philosophies which many people loved, the other thing that people loved about BeOS was that it is BLOODY EXCELLENT at multitasking. Even under extreme load there is no lag on user input or the UI. Multimedia performance in BeOS/Haiku is miles ahead of Linux - even using the Vesa driver you can play several high res videos (with audio) simultaneously without dropping a frame. Nobody thinks that a user focused desktop with these features is worth developing? Though yes, the userland of Haiku is a bit too weak, so even as a relatively new Haiku enthusiast I will be using Linux full time for years to come.

I wrote a blog entry about Haiku the other day, some of you may find my view on security for Haiku interesting - Link to My Blog! (http://ddevnet.net/blog/index.php?itemid=18)

[philcostin]

I can almost understand why someone might feel attached to Linux and wish to see it succeed on the desktop more so than Haiku - but I recently dropped that attitude when I realised that it's none of my business if people choose to run windows or whatever, providing I don't have to maintain their computer. It wasn't until I actually tried using Haiku that I realised - hey, this thing is pretty good! It doesn't replace Linux at all, so at least as far as I'm concerned, the flaming looks pretty childish. It won't stop me using Slackware or FreeBSD as my own main Desktop since I'm a power-user.. but once Haiku has some productivity apps ported over to it, it makes for a great system for people that:

a) Don't care about the OS and just want to get something done.
b) Want a system that just does what it needs to do and gets out of the way
c) Is light, fast and thoroughly threaded for great media performance

..would find it great to use.

[DDevine]

I thoroughly agree with philcostin.

When the userland for Haiku get just a bit stronger (up to date Firefox, Flash support, Open Office etc.) then it will be awesome... It does not replace Linux at all, at least not yet on the Desktop ;) Probably never on the server though the Haiku VM comes with a "Poor Man's web server" which I found funny.

[V!NCENT]

I know what you mean. I'm talking about strict e kernel advantages (like preemption) not features like compiz, some scripts etc.
No you don't understand... it's the entire modular ecosystem that is not made for each other and strictly tuned because you need choice. That's what is making Linux so strong but also keeps it at a distance. You need distro's to 'fix' the integration model. 'nuff said. Don't get me wrong I use Linux as my primary OS (well not now because of hardware failure, but you get the point) and only installed Haiku in a desktop VM but I know oppertunity and quality when I see it.

[MaestroMaus]

MaestroMaus there is no such thing as a "Server grade kernel" - except maybe in Windows where drivers for Windows server have to be inspected and signed off...
Maybe you noticed the "" marks around the word. That's because I was quoting someone before me...

As for the people who seem to think I am flaming, again: I don't know anything about Haiku and I don't flame on Haiku. I just hate the billions of open source projects who try to achieve the same but take century's because they lack the manpower.

[nanonyme]

"albeit the GPU hardware drivers are still lacking" => no real Gallium3D support for Haiku coming...

[philcostin]

Maybe you noticed the "" marks around the word. That's because I was quoting someone before me...

As for the people who seem to think I am flaming, again: I don't know anything about Haiku and I don't flame on Haiku. I just hate the billions of open source projects who try to achieve the same but take century's because they lack the manpower.

Well, I don't think you were flaming, my own comment was a rather general one to say that I understand why someone would want Linux to succeed specifically since I've wanted that for the last 14 years or so that I've been using it - just that Haiku is a great no-nonsense OS and looks like it will have a great future on the desktop - the two OSes aren't competing for the same users in my opinion.

Plenty of the reasons that many Windows power users don't like Linux or at least choose not to invest time learning an Open Source OS to get to know it better would melt away in the case of Haiku - at least once a few more apps and API functions become available.

[kraftman]

@kraftman actually Haiku also has some other good points such as higher preference for native apps thus reducing multi toolkit bloat

haiku speedwise is probably not as fast as linux yet but in many cases it is already faster for many tasks than BeOS (considering BeOS isn't opetimised for newish hardware...BeOS however kicks Linux's Butt on old HW and I am comparing a very light Archlinux install to it)

Also have you not seen all the people that are having problems with Linux desktop latency? I men get real the big distros shouldn't be running a server kernel on a desktop distro

Haiku stands a far Better chance of dethroning Windows IMO than Linux because it has GUI ease of use as a high priority when it hits alpha download it and check it out sure its not mature but it shows promise. The good design enherently leads to low learnig curve which Im not sure I've seen a Linux distro that has this yet.

And don't forget ever other OS had to start somewhere as well...

Yeah, sure... I have no single latency problem (except some bug or firmware problem with heavy I/O, but not related to this) with Linux. Some Gentooers with messed configs usually have problems. If you want a desktop distro with a desktop kernel you just choose a desktop distro. If you want a server distro with a server kernel you choose a server distro. This is such simple.

@DDevine

A desktop targeted kernel however will benefit a desktop user more than a server targeted kernel because it is tuned to slightly different things. On the desktop you would want to use BFS (Brain Fuck Scheduler) rather than the CFS that is in Mainline and is scalable to 4096 processors. BFS only scales efficiently to about 16 processors but is much more responsive to the user and therefore is much better on the desktop.Wrong, there's no overload when you have support up to 4096CPUs enabled on Linux (from some time, before you just had this disabled; and CFS is tuned for smaller systems).

EDIT: BFS is just a mess and far less responsive then CFS - it seems not exactly and it's better for some people.

CFS is optimized for desktops, surprised?

P.S. Brain Fuck Scheduler? ......................... sorry for this

P.S.2

We find it critically important
that the mainline Linux scheduler performs well on those systems
too [desktop] - and if you (or anyone else) can reproduce suboptimal behavior
please let the scheduler folks know so that we can fix/improve it.

[nanonyme]

The first thing it brings to my mind is breadth-first search... :p
Very stupid acronym, too used in computer science.

[skadge]

Can we expect a port of PTS on Haiku? it would be nice to have one more supported platform!

[89c51]

Alpha version released today and i believe it deserves a place in the News


:)

[sundown]

You guys are so jumping the bandwagon. Can't you just stick to linux?

[AdrenalineJunky]

Ubuntu is supposed to be the slick, stripped down Linux distro and it runs like shit on a pentium3. Now if I would turn all these features of, then I would not get all the advantages of Linux...

wait... what?

antix is a sleek/stripped down linux, puppy is, DSL is, arch can be.. there are many more, but ubuntu is NOT one of them.

[philcostin]

You guys are so jumping the bandwagon. Can't you just stick to linux?

Why not Linux AND Haiku?

[sundown]

Why not Linux AND Haiku?

Because I don't want the new kid on the block to take all the fruits earned by linux in all those past hard fought years just like that. :)

[philcostin]

Because I don't want the new kid on the block to take all the fruits earned by linux in all those past hard fought years just like that. :)

I can understand why you might feel that way, because I did too. But I eventually realized that Haiku has the opportunity to shine where Linux doesn't. It is a different thing entirely. Linux is a kernel and when placed with a set of utilities, makes a great operating system. Unfortunately, I have learned very well that people who do not care about computers will never see things the way we do. They see computers as an appliance. You switch it on, expect some kind of "customer service" and switch it off again. They simply do not care about the computer and view it entirely as a tool, much in the same way we do not care about.. maybe a bus. However, I learned that it is not fair to blame those people just because they are not interested enough to switch to Linux. Free and open source software developers do not owe those people anything at all. So, if some developers choose to implement another system, you should not see it as a threat to Linux. Haiku was never intended to threaten Linux or BSD. It does however, (I believe) become a much easier to understand concept for those people that really do not care about computers, but just want to get the job done (pretty much in the way Ubuntu has succeeded, and is succeeding as a distribution).

I will continue to use Linux for a very long time, along with NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris and Haiku.

Linux will never die out simply due to the fact that people who do not care about computers will not nprmally choose to install it. However, Haiku can certainly thrive in that area... and why shouldn't it?

[Apopas]

Because I don't want the new kid on the block to take all the fruits earned by linux in all those past hard fought years just like that. :)
As long as it is a free OS, it should have the absolute support of the opensource community.

[Xheyther]

I can understand why you might feel that way, because I did too. But I eventually realized that Haiku has the opportunity to shine where Linux doesn't. It is a different thing entirely. Linux is a kernel and when placed with a set of utilities, makes a great operating system. Unfortunately, I have learned very well that people who do not care about computers will never see things the way we do. They see computers as an appliance. You switch it on, expect some kind of "customer service" and switch it off again. They simply do not care about the computer and view it entirely as a tool, much in the same way we do not care about.. maybe a bus. However, I learned that it is not fair to blame those people just because they are not interested enough to switch to Linux. Free and open source software developers do not owe those people anything at all. So, if some developers choose to implement another system, you should not see it as a threat to Linux. Haiku was never intended to threaten Linux or BSD. It does however, (I believe) become a much easier to understand concept for those people that really do not care about computers, but just want to get the job done (pretty much in the way Ubuntu has succeeded, and is succeeding as a distribution).

I will continue to use Linux for a very long time, along with NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris and Haiku.

Linux will never die out simply due to the fact that people who do not care about computers will not nprmally choose to install it. However, Haiku can certainly thrive in that area... and why shouldn't it?

I totally agree with that.
It's almost exactly what I think.

[nhaehnle]

What I never understood about Haiku and other, similar projects is: Why do they not use the Linux kernel?

Even the BSDs have serious trouble keeping up with the DRM driver development, and I expect Haiku to be in an even worse position. Seriously, writing drivers for all hardware out there, taking into account all the quirks that might exist, and so on, is a lot of work. Why do those people not build on the massive amount of work that already goes into the Linux kernel to solve that exact problem?

Obviously, Haiku has a very different philosophy from Linux which means that it might need Haiku-specific kernel extensions and so on, but with Git those could easily be maintained in a Haiku-tree essentially forever if Linus doesn't want to merge them into his tree.

Your users do not care about the underlying kernel, as long as it works. What they do care about is applications and (for developers) development frameworks. So if you're serious about creating a kick-ass replacement operating system, *userspace* is what you should focus on.

Trying to reimplement all those hardware drivers is just an amazingly dumb waste of time.

[nanonyme]

Afaik the reason why they have their own kernel is that they're reimplementing BeOS which was at a time apparently quite a popular operating system and its kernel was as far as I've understood quite different from what Linux is. Whether or not all of this makes sense or not, I've no idea. I don't personally think people should be forbidden for having whatever software development hobbies they want. After all, in sports terms, it'd be a bit like people lobbying for banning American football because we could just all play soccer.

[nhaehnle]

Obviously people can hack on whatever the hell they want - hey, I also started writing my own kernel once. It's just that the Haiku people seem to care about the desktop more than anything, so it seems a bit odd that they would voluntarily waste their time in kernel land. But maybe that's just me ;)

[Apopas]

They say they want compatibity with every application that already exists for BeOS, but these applications are few and old, for example Opera for BeOS it's in 3.6.2 version and Abiword in 0.7. So I don't think this is a big deal...
Maybe they have some special plans for the desktop things of Haiku and the Linux kernel limits them.

[philcostin]

If they want to build their own kernel, great! No need to limit ourselves to "one kernel to rule them all". Probably has a lot to do with licensing, freedom and people wanting to work on their own kernels.

[nanonyme]

More like "if they have enough manpower, fine". As long as they don't expect Linux coders to start implementing them drivers, I don't see anything wrong with it. ;)

[Wingfeather]

*scratches head*

I have to say, Linux guys come across as a strange bunch sometimes. When for example there are mutliple confusingly-similar, but different, implementations of <Tool X> - none of which are optimal, by the way - they love to bang on about the Freedom (and don't forget to capitalise it, by God). And it's almost as if the freedom to choose between this multitude of equally-flawed creations makes up for the fact that none of them are actually correct. Seems silly to me. But, I digress.
My point is that as soon as anyone tries to usefully depart from linux and create a slick desktop experience (and it might even be usable by non-C experts :eek: ) they're denigrated for wasting everyone's resources.

One possible reason for the existence of Haiku? "Not everyone thinks linux is perfect."

But, I'm just guessing.

[V!NCENT]

*scratches head*

I have to say, Linux guys come across as a strange bunch sometimes. When for example there are mutliple confusingly-similar, but different, implementations of <Tool X> - none of which are optimal, by the way - they love to bang on about the Freedom (and don't forget to capitalise it, by God). And it's almost as if the freedom to choose between this multitude of equally-flawed creations makes up for the fact that none of them are actually correct. Seems silly to me. But, I digress.
My point is that as soon as anyone tries to usefully depart from linux and create a slick desktop experience (and it might even be usable by non-C experts :eek: ) they're denigrated for wasting everyone's resources.

One possible reason for the existence of Haiku? "Not everyone thinks linux is perfect."

But, I'm just guessing.
I am with you on that 100%. I will not dump Linux though, but Haiku might just be the ultimate FLOSS desktop out there. Instead of playing catching up, which they appearently don't seem to be trying to do, Haiku needs to be a platform on it's own that can amuse users; it needs to have some extra value that will make people think "Hey that's better! Cool I want that!" instead of "Now I can finaly dump Windows eXperience Pain!".

... if you know what I mean ;)

[nhaehnle]

*scratches head*

I have to say, Linux guys come across as a strange bunch sometimes. When for example there are mutliple confusingly-similar, but different, implementations of <Tool X> - none of which are optimal, by the way - they love to bang on about the Freedom (and don't forget to capitalise it, by God). And it's almost as if the freedom to choose between this multitude of equally-flawed creations makes up for the fact that none of them are actually correct. Seems silly to me. But, I digress.
My point is that as soon as anyone tries to usefully depart from linux and create a slick desktop experience (and it might even be usable by non-C experts :eek: ) they're denigrated for wasting everyone's resources.

The question is in *where* the duplication of effort lies. There is a very significant qualitative difference between hardware drivers and everything else.

The difference is in testing and hardware availability.

If there are 1000 different text editors, that's no big deal - I also tend to think having that many text editors is rather silly, but who cares. If you like writing text editors, go do that.

However, having 1000 different drivers for a piece of hardware is a truly horrible idea. Why? Because "one piece of hardware" in reality actually means "several different revisions of the hardware that are different in very subtle ways, and one revision of the hardware might have a bug where all other revisions of the hardware are fine". Think of the nightmare of ACPI tables, broken EDID data, and all those fun things.

By having even two different drivers for the same hardware, you're significantly splitting up your testing base. It's entirely possible that the developers of Haiku never see e.g. a certain weird piece of USB hardware with a strange bug. On the other hand, it is very likely that some Linux person has seen this hardware and added a fix for it to the Linux kernel.

This is *very* different from e.g. desktop applications. They just don't have this kind of issues.

Also, and I feel kind of silly for trying to repeat it again and again and again:

My point is that as soon as anyone tries to usefully depart from linux and create a slick desktop experience (and it might even be usable by non-C experts ) they're denigrated for wasting everyone's resources.

If you want to create a slick *desktop* experience, then clearly your key differentiation from the competition should be in the desktop, *not* the kernel. I would welcome a serious project that takes the Linux kernel and adds an entirely fresh userspace on top of it. Not saying that I would support it with my own effort, but it would be pretty cool.

But Haiku is more or less doomed to never become widely useful because of lack of hardware support, and they could avoid that by just using the Linux kernel (or a BSD kernel, or whatever, just *not* something entirely new).

Yes, it's true, you might want to use a different scheduler that's better suited for desktop tasks, or add some other tweaks. But nothing stops you from doing that within the Linux kernel, and you'll still get all the hardware drivers for free.

[nanonyme]

If you want to create a slick *desktop* experience, then clearly your key differentiation from the competition should be in the desktop, *not* the kernel. I would welcome a serious project that takes the Linux kernel and adds an entirely fresh userspace on top of it. Not saying that I would support it with my own effort, but it would be pretty cool.I agree, that does sound pretty cool. ;) I personally wouldn't probably have enough vision to even start with that. :D (getting rid of GNU might be a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-with-a-tazer-ten-times-just-to-see-if-it-hurts kind of cumbersome but I'd find that an interesting idea too; maybe a completely POSIX-compliant userspace?)