Haiku: The BeOS-Inspired Open-Source Desktop OS Explained
If you think modern Linux distros are too complicated, Haiku is an open-source OS that aspires to be as simple and elegant as its namesake Japanese poetry format. While it's still in beta, if you have fond memories of BeOS, Haiku might be a promising alternative to desktop Linux.
Haiku is an open-source reimplementation of BeOS. BeOS was developed by Be, Incorporated in the '90s. The company was founded by Jean-Louis Gassée, who had headed the Mac group at Apple in the '80s.
BeOS was originally designed for the company's short-lived BeBox machines, before being ported to Mac clones, then the Mac itself, and finally Intel-based PCs.
BeOS was designed to work well with multimedia and to run as efficiently as possible. One forward-thinking element was its support for multiple processors when this was uncommon on desktop computers in the 1990s.
BeOS' multithreading allowed it to stay responsive even when running heavy graphics and video, which astonished a lot of observers, as seen in this promotional video from the late '90s...