Media Release: The Haiku Project Celebrates the Release of Beta 3

Source: Haiku Project

Article note: Congrats to the Haiku folks! BeOS was full of good ideas, and the Haiku developments have significantly improved it (their package management scheme is great, neither commercial BeOS IP stack was all that great, etc.).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 25, 2021

THE HAIKU PROJECT CELEBRATES THE RELEASE OF BETA 3

Poetry is in motion. The Haiku Project, its developers and team members announced the Haiku operating system released its third beta release, version R1/Beta3, July 25th, 2021. Version R1B3 continues the trend of more frequent releases to provide users and developers with an up to date and stable platform to work on.

This release combines the best of Haiku’s history as a spiritual successor of BeOS and the hard work of a passionate community. It provides several new features and performance improvements that make Haiku even better.

Beta 3 includes the new Czech translation for the system and bundled applications. With this addition, Haiku is now available in 28 different languages. The Haiku Project is thankful to those who have given their time to ensure Haiku is available in a wide variety of languages so the operating system can be used all over the world.

WebKit, the backend of the bundled web browser developed by the Haiku team, WebPositive, received multiple major improvements. This provides a good base for further improvements as well as an improved browsing and website rendering experience in WebPositive, which developers will continue to focus on for the next release, Beta 4 and as Haiku nears its first initial release, R1.

Additional improvements include:

  • A better installation process, with various fixes to the disk partitioner (DriveSetup GUI) to make the process easier and go more smoothly.
  • Improved hardware drivers, with a focus on:
    • improvements to Wi-Fi networking to match FreeBSD 13
    • audio drivers, mass storage, USB
    • performance on NVIDIA graphics cards (GeForce 6200-GeForce Go 6400).
  • Significantly improved WebPositive stability and compatibility.
  • Software updates can now be resumed in case of network issues.
  • New and updated ports of various software, including deprecating Python 2 and making Python 3 the default version installed
  • Greater POSIX compatibility
  • Numerous bug fixes.

All of these improvements have been implemented for the community and by the community, to provide greater control to the end-user over the devices they use every day.

A complete list of changes can be found at https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta3/release-notes/.

Of course, all this would not be possible without the generous donations from donors all over the world, as well as a passionate and hardworking community. The Haiku Project thanks those who have contributed with their time or with their donations.

Haiku could always use developers and volunteers, with plenty of opportunities for anyone interested to make their mark and the computing world a better place.

Haiku is a free and open-source operating system for personal computing - the download is provided as an ISO file which can be burned to physical media to be installed onto physical hardware, or used in a virtual machine.

For more information, to download or to volunteer, visit https://haiku-os.org or https://haiku-os.org/community/getting-involved/.

ENDS

For media enquiries, please contact: contact@haiku-os.org

Download press kit here

NOTES TO EDITORS

Note that screenshots, logos and other resources are included in the press kit for this release for use in publications.

About Haiku:

Haiku is a free and open-source operating system inspired by BeOS and licensed under the MIT license. Specifically targeting personal computing, Haiku is a fast, efficient, simple to use, easy to learn, and yet very powerful system for computer users of all levels, and can be downloaded freely from the official project website as an ISO file. Maintained by a passionate and friendly volunteer community (known collectively as the “Haiku Project”), Haiku welcomes all volunteers and contributors regardless of their skill level or background. For more information please visit https://haiku-os.org

About Haiku Inc:

Haiku Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (registered in the United States) dedicated to supporting the Haiku Project and the development of Haiku. Haiku Inc. holds the trademark registrations for Haiku, collects donations on behalf of and manages finances for the Haiku Project. In the past, donations collected have been used to fund paid development contracts and the Haiku Code Drive - a program similar to Google’s Summer of Code. For more information, please visit https://haiku-inc.org

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