News, interviews, reviews and tips about the Haiku operating system, without fear or favor

Featured Haiku Tips

Adding Haiku to GRUB2 in Ubuntu 9.10

Learn how to add Haiku to the boot menu in multi-boot systems that use GRUB2, the latest version adopted by most recent Linux distros.

Creating a Bleeding Edge (GCC2/4 hybrid) Haiku CD from Ubuntu 9.10

Guide for Ubuntu users who would like to try Haiku out and are brave enough to venture into the bleeding edge of building from sources.

Watching YouTube in Haiku Using Gnash

Haiku has some support for Flash through an experimental port of Gnash. These step-by-step instructions show how to install Gnash so that you can play YouTube videos in Haiku.

More tips...

HaikuZone Calls it a Day

News by Jorge G. Mare on Sun, 04/24/2011 - 16:15

This is just a quick note to let our followers know that, effective immediately, HaikuZone will no longer be active. This is our last post. The site will remain online for the time being, but only for archival purposes. You can continue informing yourself about the Haiku operating system at the Haiku Project website, from HaikuWare or IsComputerOn.

For those of you who have been following our posts on HaikuZone since it was started back in 2009, I hope you found our content useful and fun, and thank you for your support until now. Good luck and Sayonara!

Haiku Logo Trademark Registered

News by Jorge G. Mare on Tue, 03/29/2011 - 15:16

Haiku logo trademark certificateAfter close to seven years since the Haiku name and logo were made public during the WalterCon 2004 conference, the Haiku Project has finally realized their goal of securing the Haiku logo as a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). According to sources close to the project, this has been driven by and brought to a successful conclusion mainly by the initiative of Haiku Inc. board of director member Matthew Madia. The registration was filed in July of 2010 and the registration certificate was issued today, March 29, 2011. For those curious, here is the Registration Certificate available for download.

Haiku Selected for GSoC 2011

News by Jorge G. Mare on Sun, 03/20/2011 - 16:53

Haiku flier for Google Summer of Code 2011The Haiku Project has recently announced that they have been selected to participate this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC for short). Haiku made its GSoC debut back in 2007, soon after the project exhibited for the first time at a mainstream open source (SCALE 5x; photos here) and gave a high-visibility Google Tech Talk presentation at the Google Plex in Mountain View, with former Be Inc. CEO Jean Louis Gassée as a special guest (photos of the gathering and video of the talk).

How to Download the Latest Haiku Artwork

Tip submitted by Jorge G. Mare on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 12:44

If you are a Haiku user and fancy playing with graphics, you may want to know that a lot of the artwork used in Haiku itself and the Haiku website is freely available for download, and most of it is in editable file formats. This includes numerous variations of the Haiku logo, the graphics used in the boot splash screen, the Haiku icons, the system cursors and several other images used for various purposes. The icons are in Haiku's native HVIF icon format, which can be edited using the Icon-O-Matic application, and most of the remaining graphics are available as WonderBrush files, which can be edited using the native application with the same name. So if you want to create Haiku-themed graphics for your website, blog or t-shirt, there is plenty of material to play with. This tip will tell you how to easily download all the artwork and how to keep your artwork files in sync with the Haiku repository, both by using a simple command.

Haikuware Commits US$2500, Starts Three New Bounties

News by Jorge G. Mare on Sun, 09/12/2010 - 14:15

Haiku Bounties imageFollowing the successful Wifi Stack and Wifi Encryption bounties, Haikuware has announced three new bounties and its commitment to make a total of US$2500 available to cover 50% of their target goals. These are the new bounties being started:

While giving recognition to Haiku supporters, developers and administrators, Haikuware seems to be puzzled (and so are we) by some of the funding choices made by the project, such as pursuing two initiatives to develop Ext3 drivers. Haikuware has chosen, instead, bounties that are meant to fill in the blanks of what they consider to still be sore spots in Haiku from an end user point of view. Perhaps not so much for the Gallium port, but better printer support though a well integrated CUPS port and drivers enabling the use video capture/TV cards would certainly expand Haiku's areas of usefulness for both existing as well potential users.

How to Load Pages with Unverified SSL Certs in Web+

Tip submitted by Jorge G. Mare on Fri, 09/03/2010 - 11:24

Preventing the user from loading pages that do not have a verified SSL certficate is a good security practice that most browsers follow. Usually, when you attempt to access a page with a self-signed SSL certificate, your browser will show a warning message but still allow you to proceed for cases where you know (or assume at your own risk) that the site is safe. In most cases, there is also exception handling for adding sites to an exception list, so that you are not bugged with the warning message everytime you try to access sites known to be safe by the user.

Unfortunately, as of its latest version -- r544 released on August 18 -- Haiku's native browser WebPositive does not handle SSL certificate verification exceptions; so if you hit a site with an unverified certificate, you get an error message and you are unable to proceed to the page. Here is a temporary workaround that will allow you to override this behaviour. Needless to say, use it at your own risk (you have been warned).

Displaying Haiku on an External Monitor from a Laptop or Netbook

Tip submitted by Jorge G. Mare on Tue, 08/24/2010 - 11:44

From time to time I hear people saying that they cannot user their external monitor with Haiku from a laptop or netbook. While it is true that there is not much multi-monitor support in Haiku, there is still a very simple way that may just allow you to do this without any difficult tinkering. I came up with this trick a few years ago, when I was scheduled to give a Haiku talk at the Kansai Open Source conference in Japan. I had Haiku installed on my laptop, and for the presentation I had to use a projector to display the system on a big screen. However, switching to the external video output was not possible in Haiku. This was very bad news for me, as I wanted to run my Haiku demo natively, as opposed to in a VM, and that would have not been unless I could drive the PC projector. Well, with a bit of imagination, I came up with a simple but effective trick to do just this, and I am sharing my little secret with you.

Paladin 1.3 Released

News by Jorge G. Mare on Mon, 08/23/2010 - 08:00

Paladin iconHaiku developer Jon "DarkWyrm" Yoder recently released a new version of Paladin, a native integrated development environment (IDE) for Haiku. Paladin 1.3 comes only a few months after previous version 1.2.1, adding several new features, including Subversion and Mercurial based source control integration (Git support is in the works), a feature to import BeIDE projects, an update to ccache 3.0.1 for speedier re-compilation times, and the ability to perform dependency checking using fastdep, an alternative to GCC's dependency checker that much faster. Paladin's new packaging system currently under development could not make it into this release, but is expected to be part of the upcoming 1.4 version.

Paladin 1.3 can be downloaded from from Haikuware and DarkWyrm's Library. Please note that Haiku r38082 is required, as this new version of Paladin relies on a few recent bug fixes done to Haiku to run.

Slideshows: The Week in Images: Aug 15 - Aug 22

Slideshow submitted by Jorge G. Mare on Sun, 08/22/2010 - 22:56

This Week in Images starts with the most prominent news of this past week: Haiku's 9th Anniversary, celebrated by the community worldwide on August 18. We also show you images from a few interesting software releases that took place this week, including version 0.9.5 of QuickLaunch, the first release of the BurnItNow CD/DVD utility application, and the Pro version of the Synthetic Package Manager; we also offer you a real gem: a screenshot of Windows 3.11 inside DOSBox in Haiku that we found on the net. Isn't that fun!

Haiku at Picn*x 19 – The Linux 19th Anniversary Picnic

News by Jorge G. Mare on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 12:46

Linux Picnic bannerIt is not an exaggeration to say that Linux is at the center of the open source movement. So it is not unusual (in fact, quite common) for many open source events to bear the Linux name, when in the majority of the cases they embrace the wider ecosystem that encompasses an ample variety of open source software projects.

One such event is the Linux Picnic, also known as Picn*x, an outdoors community gathering held every year to celebrate all the accomplishments of Open Source Software since the release of the first Linux kernel in August 1991. Picn*x 19 is scheduled to be held in the San Francisco South Bay Area on Saturday August 21st, at the Sunnyvale Baylands Park, and you can expect Haiku to be there.

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