Advantage of Haiku OS: Unity

The Beta release of Haiku OS is now available. If you enjoy tinkering with computer software, then give it a try.

There are several advantages of Haiku. In this post I'll only discuss one of the advantages.That advantage being the unity of the Haiku platform.

I first used Haiku back when it was called BeOS, and I continued to use if for a few years after Be, Inc, which was the original developer, went bankrupt. I had stopped using it mainly because it lacked a decent web browser. Web surfing is a common pastime of mine, and the lack of a good web browser was annoying. But recently the web browser situation has been improving as the Haiku team has been slowly improving its web browser to the point of which is bearable for me. Although this is still an area that needs improvement and could be considered a disadvantage by some, it is much better than it has been in the past and it continues to show improvements.

The biggest and, I think, the best advantage of Haiku OS is that it is a unified OS. Other popular POSIX Operating Systems such as Linux and BSD suffer from disunity and fragmentation. As an example of this fragmentation, please see this list of Linux distributions along with its accompanying graphical chart. Fragmentation is caused by multiple distributions being available for the same OS. Developers on Haiku OS would not have to worry whether or not their code could run on other versions or distributions of Haiku because there is only one distribution for which to develop. This simplifies development processes.

Another aspect of Haiku's unity is it prevents confusion with the general user community. Computer developers and power users would typically have no problem combing through the fragmented Linux and Unix systems. However, for an average user this is typically not applicable. I remember on several occasions when Microsoft introduced different versions such as Home, Professional, and Server. When they did this, I remember hearing the general users being confused about which version to use and for what purpose. The Haiku OS has only one version (or distribution) with all the same features. Having one version is an advantage in this regard to prevent confusion that is caused by multiple distributions or versions.

Another advantage, which may be discussed later, is that Haiku is a more efficient OS. The GUI is quicker in response to user action than other systems. This is especially seen on older computers.

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