In the mid-1990s, former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée founded Be Inc., a company best known for its BeOS operating system.
Despite its technical strengths, which included a responsive multitasking core, symmetric multiprocessing, and a 64-bit journaled file system called BFS, BeOS struggled to gain a foothold in a market dominated by Microsoft Windows. Apple briefly considered buying it, but ultimately decided the price was too high and instead acquired Steve Jobs's NeXT and used its OPENSTEP operating system as the basis for what became Mac OS X. In 2001, Be Inc. was absorbed by Palm, and BeOS quietly disappeared.
That should have been the end of the story, but soon after, a community-driven project called OpenBeOS emerged, which aimed to keep the spirit of BeOS alive. In 2004, it changed its name to Haiku, with a new logo to mark the new beginning. Since then, the Haiku project has continued to move forward at a steady pace, and Haiku R1 Beta 5 has just been released. Yes, it’s still in beta, even after almost 22 years, but it’s getting closer to that elusive first stable release.
So what's up?
Haiku R1 Beta 5 is the follow-up to R1 Beta 4, which came out over a year and a half ago. In that time, the developers have fixed nearly 350 bugs and requested improvements, but it's still not problem-free. As the team warns: “Please note that Haiku is beta-quality software, meaning it is fully featured but still contains known and unknown bugs. While we are increasingly confident in its stability, we cannot guarantee that no data loss will occur.”
You can download the latest version for 32- and 64-bit x86 platforms from the project website (BeOS R5 support is only available in the 32-bit version). The minimum system requirements for the 32-bit edition are fairly modest: an Intel Pentium II or AMD Athlon processor, 384MB of memory, an 800×600 monitor, and 3GB of storage. If you're looking for the 64-bit version, the recommended specs increase to an Intel Core i3 or AMD Phenom II processor, 2GB of memory, a 1366×768 monitor, and 16GB of storage.
What's new in Haiku R1 Beta 5? The most notable new addition is simplified color selection in Appearance preferences. Instead of having to scroll through 30 different color options, you now only have to adjust three primary colors and the system calculates the rest. This is especially helpful for dark mode enthusiasts, as it dynamically modifies text and background colors for optimal readability. Advanced users can still manually adjust the full color set if they want, but the new system makes customization more accessible.
The native icon editor, Icon-O-Matic, has also received a major update that includes the addition of “reference images,” which allow you to import bitmap images and trace vector paths over them. Along with perspective transformations and improved copy and paste functionality, icon creation and editing has become more intuitive. Other notable updates include improvements to PowerStatus, which now automatically detects batteries on first launch and provides more accurate notifications, and improvements to Tracker, the file manager, which better handles read-only volumes with clearer visual cues. Haiku now supports basic input and output for USB audio devices and has advanced TCP performance and network stack optimizations.