Thank you very much for checking out Haiku! This is our first public release. We hope to attract new developers to our project and give future users a chance to check out Haiku. We realize that this <i>alpha release</i> does not yet fully live up to the goals that we have set for ourselves and doesn't offer all the features and well-rounded end-user experience planned for the final R1 version. However, we are hoping that this release will let you discover the great potential in Haiku and share with us in the excitement.
We were working very hard to fix all possibly show stopping bugs, however, being an alpha release, there are bound to be plenty left undiscovered. We discourage using alpha versions as a production system. <i>Your data could very well be altered, mangled or downright destroyed.</i>
One of the main reasons for releasing an alpha version is to attract more people to test the system and discover bugs or provide suggestions for future enhancements. Please file bugs and enhancements in our bug tracker after using its search function to avoid duplicates.
The first release(s) of Haiku will be very much like the BeOS R5, the OS it is reimplementing. If you never experienced it, here are a few short introductions to some of its features:
Because of our binary and source compatibility to BeOS, many BeOS applications run on Haiku. After downloading a package, simply unzip it (double clicking should open <i>Expander</i>) to a folder in <tt>/boot/apps/</tt> and start the application from there.
Since Haiku is a reimplementation, the API is still the same as for BeOS R5 (with some additions). Therefore the documentation in the BeBook is still a valid resource. Thanks to ACCESS, who own the rights to former Be Inc. property, we are allowed to provide a copy of the BeBook.
