Welcome to Haiku
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. Your data could very well be altered, mangled or downright destroyed.This alpha release doesn't yet offer all the features and well-rounded end-user experience planned for the final R1 version. It's only the first step to get there and is therefore addressing foremost developers that want to have a look or help out.
Getting to know the system
The first release(s) of Haiku will be very much like the BeOS R5, the OS it is reimplementing.If you never experienced it, there are a few short introductions to some of its features:
- Filesystem layout
- Haiku's GUI
- Workspaces
- Twitcher
- Tracker
- Deskbar
- Filetypes (plus Workshop)
- Attributes
- Index
- Queries
Getting to know the API
Since Haiku is a reimplementation, the API is still the same as for BeOS R5 for the most part. 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.There are additional resources that should help you getting started:
Reporting bugs
The main reason for releasing an alpha version is to get 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.Getting in contact
Get in contact with other developers and users and join the discussions in our forums or mailing lists.- Haiku Forums
- General mailing list
- Development mailing list
- Overview of more specific mailing lists
3rd party software
Because of our binary and source compatibility to BeOS, many applications still run on Haiku. After downloading a package, simply unzip it to a folder in /boot/apps/ and start the binary from there.Popular software repositories are: