Applications

Before diving into all the applications that come with Haiku, let's have a more detailed look at how to install and uninstall programs. The most convenient way to find, install, update and uninstall applications is via Haiku's package management system. However, since Haiku is largely binary and source compatible to its ancestor BeOS, you might find older archives (.zip and .pkg) that can still be installed as well.

Below you'll always find the /system/ hierarchy of the mentioned. If you intend to install packages only for a single user (once Haiku becomes multi-user aware), you should use the mirrored filesystem hierarchy under home: ~/config/. See topic Filesystem layout for more information.

Haiku packages (.hpkg)

The simplest way is to use HaikuDepot to find, download and automatically install and uninstall a package. If you have downloaded a package from somewhere else — maybe because it's not (yet) in a public repository — just double-click it to open in HaikuDepot and install from there.

You'll find the newly installed application in /system/apps/ or, in case of a commandline application, in /system/bin/. All other files the program depends upon (libraries, data, add-ons, etc.) appear automatically in the right locations in the filesystem.

Topics Deskbar or LaunchBox describe how to add shortcuts to your newly installed application.

By the way, although you can unpack a .hpkg file like any other archive, this is not what the package mangement is doing when you're installing a package. The underlying filesystem only appears to spread files in their respective folders, there's no physical moving around taking place. This is why installing/uninstalling is so very fast and clean.

If the package depends on some other library or package, a window will pop up, asking if the necessary files shall be downloaded and installed as well.

Uninstalling is just as easy: Simply find the package in HaikuDepot and click Uninstall.

If you're working in the Terminal or want to do un/installing of packages in a script, you should have a look at the command pkgman --help.

Old BeOS archives (.zip and .pkg)

BeOS archives that include all they need in their app's folder can simply be unpacked (double clicking opens Expander or the old PackageInstaller) anywhere in /boot/home/ and run from there. Uninstalling such self-contained applications is easy: just delete the app's folder.

This is true for the majority of old BeOS applications. If you happen upon one that doesn't work out-of-the-box, because it wants to spread its files to hard-coded locations that are not guaranteed to exist, you can try to fix things manually. The folder /system/non-packaged/ allows you to recreate the needed folder hierarchy. As more and more real .hpkg packages become available and old BeOS applications get re-packaged, this will become less needed. Please consult this online article on how to use the non-packaged hierarchy.

Haiku's applications

Haiku comes with a set of mostly small but essential applications. You'll find all of them at /boot/system/apps/. Applications that are not usually launched by a double-click on a data file (e.g. ShowImage for image files) can be found in the Applications menu of the Deskbar.

	ActivityMonitor		A tool to track system resources like CPU and memory usage.
	BootManager		A tool to install a boot menu in the Master Boot Record (MBR) of a drive.
	CharacterMap		An application that shows the Unicode character map.
	CodyCam		A tool to regularly upload images from a webcam to a server.
	DeskCalc		A calculator.
	DiskProbe		A HEX editor for files and devices.
	DiskUsage		A tool to visualize a disk's memory usage.
	DriveSetup		A harddisk partitioning tool.
	Expander		A tool to unpack common archives.
	HaikuDepot		A tool to find, download, install, update and uninstall (application) packages
	Icon-O-Matic		An app to create Haiku's vector icons.
	Installer		The tool to install Haiku to a partition.
	Magnify		A magnified view of the area around your mouse pointer.
	Mail		An email client.
	MediaPlayer		A player for all supported audio/video files.
	MidiPlayer		A player for MIDI files.
	PackageInstaller		Installer for BeOS packages in PKG format.
	People		A contact manager.
	PoorMan		A simple web server.
	Screenshot		A tool to take screenshots.
	ShowImage		A simple image viewer.
	SoundRecorder		A tool to record audio from line-in or a microphone. [still missing]
	StyledEdit		A simple text editor.
	Terminal		Access to the bash.
	TextSearch		A search tool for text files.
	TV		A viewer for analog TV. [still missing]
	WebPositive		A native web browser

Haiku's commandline applications

Besides the normal commandline tools coming with the bash shell or are necessary to be POSIX compliant, there are a few Haiku-specific commandline applications worth mentioning. These commands are often useful for scripting purposes, see also topic Bash and Scripting.

	List of all commandline applications
	Haiku-specific commandline applications

Bundled applications

Besides the above listed programs, which are all maintained by the Haiku project, there are a few essential applications bundled in a standard Haiku system. Bugs and feature requests for those have to be filed with the particular maintainer.

	BePDF		A PDF viewer.
	Pe		An advanced texteditor with syntax coloring and much more.
	Vision		An IRC client.
	WonderBrush		YellowBite's graphics programm.