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Haiku, R1/Beta3

The third beta for Haiku R1 marks twenty months of hard work to improve Haiku's hardware support and its overall stability. Since Beta 2, there have been 87 contributors with over 1,248 code commits in total. More than 251 bugs and enhancement tickets have been resolved for this release.

Please keep in mind that this is beta-quality software, which means it is feature complete but still contains known and unknown bugs. While we are mostly confident in its stability, we cannot provide assurances against data loss.

To download Haiku or learn how to upgrade from R1/beta2, see "Get Haiku!". For press inquiries, see "Press contact".

Get Haiku!

System requirements

This release is available on the x86 32-bit platform, as well as the x86_64 platform.

Note that BeOS R5 compatibility is only provided on the 32-bit images.

+---------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Minimum (32-bit)                | Recommended (64-bit)                 |
+---------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Processor: Intel Pentium II     | Processor: Intel Core i3             |
|            AMD Athlon           |            AMD Phenom II             |
| Memory:    384 MiB              | Memory:    2 GiB                     |
| Monitor:   800x600              | Monitor:   1366x768                  |
| Storage:   3 GiB                | Storage:   16 GiB                    |
+---------------------------------+--------------------------------------+

SSE2 support is required to use the WebPositive web browser. On machines where this is not available, it is recommended to install the NetSurf browser instead.

Highlights

Installation process

It's possible to use Installer to cleanly reset an existing system by installing over it.
It's possible to go back to FirstBootPrompt from Installer if you change your mind and want to use live mode.
Improvements to DriveSetup GUI and backend to make disk partitioning easier and more reliable.

Package management

The system update can now resume downloads in case it is interrupted.
Support for running a script on package uninstall
Performance improvements for package icons handling in HaikuDepot
Numerous stability and user improvements to HaikuDepot
Deprecated Python 2 and switched to Python 3.7 as the default version of Python shipped with Haiku

User interface

Implement center and right-aligned BTextView support and various fixes to BTextControl for better handling of cursor movements.
Improved support for dark color scheme
Integration of PadBlocker in Input preferences (disable touchpad when keyboard is used)
Scale scroll bars according to UI/font size
Several changes to make localization better
Support of CPUs with more than 8 cores in ProcessController load graphs
Display CPU manufacturer logo in Pulse
Numerous stability and compatibility improvements to MediaPlayer
The application icon in the shutdown dialog is animated when the application does not want to close

app_server (graphics server)

Various fixes for clipping and flickering problems in app_server
Support for more composite drawing operations (used in the web browser for javascript canvas support)
Fixed the font overlay/fallback system and added an extra font to it (Noto Sans Symbols 2)
Reworked memory management and fixed some memory corruption bugs

Web browser

Accept-Language header was missing, breaking some websites
A dark "Document Color" system theme color triggers "dark mode" on websites
"Search the web" context menu works again
Easy selection of default search engine from a list of common ones
Search shortcuts, for example typing "w Haiku" in the address bar will open the Wikipedia article about Haiku.
WebKit engine (haikuwebkit) upgraded to WebKit 612.1.21

APIs

Introduced a new version of the "net services" APIs (http and gopher clients). It is moved to a static library, allowing us to make changes without breaking applications. Existing applications can continue to use the old API (present until beta2) but that will be removed later. It is recommended to adjust and recompile such applications before the next Haiku release.

Storage and file systems

Improvements to XFS driver
Fixed a kernel panic in the NFS driver
Support Sun VTOC partition tables

BeOS compatibility

Reworked the initialization of the Locale Kit and Translation Kit to fix deadlocks when both are used (affected applications: BeLive, Tracker)
Implemented B_OUTLINE_RESIZE to allow windows to stop redrawing during resize operations
BeControlLook that alters controls to resemble BeOS R5.

POSIX compatibility

Added mlock and munlock.
Removed a limitation on the number of dead joinable threads
Fixed pselect interaction with signals
Fixed the return code of fsync when called on fifo pipes
asprintf is moved to libbsd because it is not a standard POSIX function
Added exp10, exp10f and exp10l to math.h (only in {{{_GNU_SOURCE}}})
Fixed behavior of write() in O_APPEND mode
Implemented posix_fallocate
Added ut_host in utmpx.h
Added ppoll()
Implemented a missing escape sequence in terminal to insert repeated characters

System performance

Optimize create_area to avoid O(n^2^) algorithm
Optimize BMenuItem::RemoveItem to be O(1) instead of O(n)
Improvements on cpufreq management
Improve caching in MediaPlayer to allow playing 4K video
Implement selective ACK (SACK) to improve TCP performance on lossy network links

Internationalization

This release adds the Czech translation for all the system and bundled applications. With this addition, Haiku is now available in 28 different languages.

Hardware compatibility

Sound

Improved es1370 audio drivers
Improved hda audio drivers

Mass storage

Support for SD/MMC readers on the PCI bus (SDHCI)
Improved ramfs driver stability
Improved NVMe driver performance

Network

Improved virtio driver performance
Updated wireless network drivers to match with FreeBSD 13
Remove the "wavelan" WiFi driver which supported only some very old 11Mbps Wifi cards

USB

Improved USB 3 drivers

Graphics

Improved Intel_Extreme drivers (Gen4 through Gen7)
Improved NVIDIA GeForce 6200-6400 drivers

New Contributors

Haiku saw 34 new contributors to the source code since R1/beta2

Máximo Castañeda
Jaidyn Ann
Han Pengfei
David Sebek
Coldfirex
Lt-Henry
Jeremy Visser
beaglejoe
Sylvain78
roired
Pawan Wadhwani
Mitsunori YOSHIDA
Jessica Tallon
Andriy Voskoboinyk
Anarchos
syedsouban
Siddhant Gupta
Shannon Mackey
Sean Long
Saloni
ROIRED XSoto
rofl0r
Oishika Pradhan
Mark Barnett
Maciej Bałuta
jpdw
jiceland
JadedTuna
HrithikKumar49
Heinrich Schuchardt
Daniel Schaefer
Bailey Carlson
Andriy Gapon
Adam Fowler

Source code

The source code of Haiku itself can be accessed from GitHub at https://github.com/haiku/haiku or via Haiku's Git instance at https://git.haiku-os.org.

https://github.com/haiku/haiku

https://git.haiku-os.org

Reporting issues

There are almost 3,600 open tickets on Haiku's bug tracker and over 13,432 closed items. If you find what you believe to be an issue, please search the bug tracker to see if it has already been reported, and if not, file a new ticket at https://dev.haiku-os.org/.

https://dev.haiku-os.org/

For information about major issues that have been fixed since the release, visit https://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/R1/Beta3/ReleaseAddendum.

https://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/R1/Beta3/ReleaseAddendum

For more help, take the 'Quick Tour' and read the 'User Guide', both linked on the Haiku desktop. WebPositive opens by default with our 'Welcome' page which provides useful information and many helpful links, as does the Haiku Project's website at https://www.haiku-os.org.

https://www.haiku-os.org

For support and/or help with anything related to Haiku, feel free to post on our forums at https://discuss.haiku-os.org, or send a message to our general mailing list at https://www.freelists.org/list/haiku so our friendly community may assist you.

https://discuss.haiku-os.org

https://www.freelists.org/list/haiku

Press contact

Press inquiries may be directed to our team via email at contact@haiku-os.org