My understanding is that there is not much BeOS in Haiku.

"The only BeOS code that has made it into Haiku are Tracker and the Deskbar (the file manager and the equivalent of the start menu/taskbar, respectively)."

Understood...but then what is Haiku. I stil remember when r5 was released...an unheard of OS. As a tech geek I installed it and was blown away. Especially the media capabilities...two streams playing at once. That OS was way ahead of its time, and a shameful demise. I was excited about Haiku until I saw how far behind it was. And I mean absolutely 0 disrespect to its authors... but today it seems like an attempt to keep stable an already decades old OS that lost its way.

>seems like an attempt to keep stable

No. They rewrote the whole thing (minus the deskbar/launcher). If it looks to you that they're just keeping the old system stable, that'd mean haiku has been very successful in recreating it as open source.

They're close to 1.0beta1, which is defined as feature-complete for 1.0. It's after they do get 1.0 that they plan on really taking the system's design forward.

Not that it doesn't already have a few fundamental improvements, such as the integrated kernel debugger, the support for newer architectures or the package manager.

What would blow you away today? I’m always curious to know what to build next.

A truly convergent desktop. And I don't even know the details to explain what I would like, I probably wouldn't even know until I used it. I do know Android for Desktop is not it, though. Being able to throw apps from my phone to my pc to my tv would be nice too, and not so clunky as casting.

I would continue, where the ideals of the 60s/70/80s/90s left off. Since IT gets dominated (sponsored) by service companies, book and grocery stores, things are a bit fucked up, to say at least ;-)

I want a new Desktop. Let's talk ;-)

Same here, but not Linux Desktop Distro #301, which is pretty much all anyone wants to make.

i3 should be good enough for anyone.