The third beta release of Haiku continues the trend of more frequent releases in order to provide our users and developers with an up to date and stable platform to work on.

Please keep in mind that this is beta-quality software, which means it is feature complete but still contains known and unknown bugs. While we are mostly confident in its stability, we cannot provide assurances against data loss.

System requirements

This release is available on the x86 32-bit platform, as well as the x86_64 platform. Note that BeOS R5 compatibility is only provided on the 32-bit images, but the 64bit version is faster and recommended if you don't need BeOS compatibility.

MINIMUM (32-bit)

Processor: Intel Pentium II; AMD Athlon Memory: 256MB Monitor: 800x600 Storage: 3GB

RECOMMENDED (64-bit)

Processor: Intel Core i3; AMD Phenom II Memory: 2GB Monitor: 1366x768 Storage: 16GB

SSE2 support is required to use the WebPositive web browser. On machines where this is not available, it is recommended to install the NetSurf browser instead.

Highlights

Installation process

• It's possible to use Installer to cleanly reset an existing system by installing over it.
• It's possible to go back to FirstBootPrompt from Installer if you change your mind and want to use live mode.
• Improvements to DriveSetup GUI and backend to make disk partitioning easier and more reliable.

Package management

• The system update can now resume downloads in case it is interrupted.
• Support for running a script on package uninstall
• Performance improvements for package icons handling in HaikuDepot
• Numerous stability and user improvements to HaikuDepot

User interface

• Implement center and right-aligned BTextView support and various fixes to BTextControl for better handling of cursor movements.
• Improved support for dark color scheme
• Integration of PadBlocker in Input preferences (disable touchpad when keyboard is used)
• Scale scroll bars according to UI/font size
• Several changes to make localization better
• Support of CPUs with more than 8 cores in ProcessController load graphs
• Display CPU manufacturer logo in Pulse
• Numerous stability and compatibility improvements to MediaPlayer
• Numerous stability and user improvements to HaikuDepot

app_server (graphics server)

• Various fixes for clipping and flickering problems in app_server
• Support for drawing a bitmap with horizontal and vertical repetition ("tiles")
• Support for more composite drawing operations (used in the web browser for javascript canvas support)
• Fixed the font overlay/fallback system and added an extra font to it (Noto Sans Symbols 2)
• Reworked memory management and fixed some memory corruption bugs

Web browser

• Accept-Language header was missing, breaking some websites
• "Search the web" context menu works again
• Easy selection of default search engine from a list of common ones
• Search shortcuts, for example typing "w Haiku" in the address bar will open the Wikipedia article about Haiku.

APIs

• Introduced a new version of the "net services" APIs (http and gopher clients). It is moved to a static library, allowing us to make changes without breaking applications. Existing applications can continue to use the old API (present until beta2) but that will be removed later. It is recommended to adjust and recompile such applications before the next Haiku release.

Storage and file systems

• Improvements to XFS driver
• Fixed a kernel panic in the NFS driver
• Support Sun VTOC partition tables

BeOS compatibility

• Reworked the initialization of the Locale Kit and Translation Kit to fix deadlocks when both are used (affected applications: BeLive, Tracker)
• Implemented B_OUTLINE_RESIZE to allow windows to stop redrawing during resize operations

POSIX compatibility

• Added mlock and munlock.
• Removed a limitation on the number of dead joinable threads
• Fixed pselect interaction with signals
• Fixed the return code of fsync when called on fifo pipes
• asprintf is moved to libbsd because it is not a standard POSIX function
• Added exp10, exp10f and exp10l to math.h (only in _GNU_SOURCE)
• Fixed behavior of write() in O_APPEND mode
• Implemented posix_fallocate
• Added ut_host in utmpx.h
• Implemented a missing escape sequence in terminal to insert repeated characters

System performance

• Optimize create_area to avoid O(n²) algorithm
• Optimize BMenuItem::RemoveItem to be O(1) instead of O(n)
• Improvements on cpufreq management
• Improve caching in MediaPlayer to allow playing 4K video
• Implement selective ACK (SACK) to improve TCP performance on lossy network links

Hardware compatibility

Sound

• Improved es1370 audio drivers
• Improved hda audio drivers

Mass storage

• Support for SD/MMC readers on the PCI bus (SDHCI)
• Improved ramfs driver stability
• Improved NVMe driver performance

Network

• Improved virtio driver performance
• Updated network drivers to match with FreeBSD 13
• Remove the "wavelan" WiFi driver which supported only some very old 11Mbps Wifi cards

USB

• Improved USB 3 drivers

Graphics

• Improved NVIDIA GeForce 6200-6400 drivers