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Haiku OS is back with another beta release

Ports of popular software, including Firefox and NetBSD's Virtual Machine Monitor, are included in this update two years in the making.

Jordan Gloor

Jordan Gloor

— 2 min read
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The Haiku logo, which features green, orange, and yellow leaves accenting the word "Haiku," over a graident pattern of soft blues, yellows, and, greens.

Haiku, Inc. announced the Haiku R1 operating system's sixth beta release this week. Haiku is an independent, open source OS inspired by the storied BeOS operating system from the 1990s. Here's what to know.

What's new in Haiku R1 Beta 6

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A screen recording of myself trying the live-boot version Haiku R1 Beta 6.

Haiku, which has been in development since 2001 and still yet to see a full release, has some interesting additions in R1 Beta 6.

  • Mozilla Firefox port: The popular open source web browser is now officially supported on Haiku.
    • Firefox-based alternative web browsers are also here, including LibreWolf and Waterfox.
  • Go language port: The Go programming language, albeit slightly out-of-date version of it, now works on Haiku, enabling the operation of a lot of popular Go-written programs.
  • QEMU virtualization: You can now host guest operating systems on Haiku with QEMU thanks to the implementation of NetBSD Virtual Machine Monitor (NVMM).
    • Your hardware must already support virtualization.
  • User interface changes: Context menus showing actions with shortcuts now react and change when you press the Shift key. Also, the Tracker file-finding application now lets you filter results by directory.
  • System optimizations: A lot of work went into making Haiku faster and more reliable, especially in the area of retrieving files and managing memory.
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Zooming out

Why this announcement matters: Haiku is not technically a Linux distribution because its kernel is independently developed. More diversity in the operating system ecosystem avoids widespread issues like this year's Copy Fail vulnerability.

My take: I like some of the unique user interface choices on Haiku, so I'm excited to see its continued development.

Diving in

Go further: Read the official R1 Beta 6 release announcement to get all the details.

Get it now: To get started using this release of Haiku, head to the Haiku R1 Beta 6 download page.

If you already run Haiku R1 Beta 5, you can upgrade by running the following commands:

pkgman add-repo https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haiku/r1beta6/$(getarch)/current
pkgman add-repo https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haikuports/r1beta6/$(getarch)/current
pkgman full-sync

Then, reboot.

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