Pros and Cons of Amithlon type systems

[the_leander]

Doesn't Haiku have the same limitation that AROS has in regards to drivers? I assume you'd want to support a limited set of architecture first, but wouldn't the ideal be to ultimately support as broad a range of hardware as possible? Am I missing something here?

Haiku can use all of BeOS's drivers, but also includes a source level BSD compatibility layer to allow for network drivers to be recompiled and dropped in.

However, as with AROS, some Haiku forks are looking to include gallium3d as a means to boost hardware compatibility whilst reducing developer overhead.

[the_leander]

Technically, under the hood beos/haiku is very awesome, but the look and the gui is so but horrible and ugly. If they made it skinnable and allowed you to modify the interface alot, I think it would be alot more usable. Its so horrid ugly.

R5.1 allowed for skinning. Haiku's interface iirc should allow for the same. Personally I liked the skin that came with Zeta 1.1/1.2

 If the gui looked like/worked like amiga os, I'd use it I think.

Without massive modifications, AOS's gui doesn't exactly win any style awards either.

[the_leander]

Even R5 came with multiple skins out of the box, Amiga, MacOS and Win98 iirc.

Yeah but only as an easter egg. R5.1 was the first to offer them without having to perform the secret dance whilst an attractive woman of the female persuasion pressed their norks into the screen to activate the functionality