In a significant milestone for the Haiku OS community, developers have announced that the first-ever port of the Mozilla Firefox browser to Haiku is nearing completion.
This achievement marks more than a year of dedicated effort and signals a major enhancement in web browsing capabilities for users of this niche operating system.
For unfamiliar users, we clarify that Haiku is a free and open-source OS that is a direct descendant of BeOS, an operating system originally designed in the mid-1990s. It’s designed to be simple, efficient, and easy to use.
To sum it up in a few words, it can be said that Haiku provides an old-school UI with new tech speed. Unfortunately, over the years, the operating system has fallen significantly behind its remaining competitors in the face of Windows, macOS, and Linux. Today, it’s mostly used by tech enthusiasts as a highly niche OS.
Another major factor holding back the wider adoption of Haiku OS among users is the lack of apps. Today, it’s impossible to reach a wide audience without an operating system offering the full array of desktop applications that the average computer user uses to perform their daily activities. And this is where Firefox comes in.
Currently, Haiku OS uses WebPositive as its default browser, with alternatives like Epiphany and Falkon also available.
Although it gets the job done, it doesn’t quite match the features, standards, and user experience of top leaders like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. However, there’s some great news on the horizon.
In an exciting announcement on the Haiku forums, one of the OS developers posted a message that he has managed to port Firefox. The attached screenshot is from version 128.
This is really big news. After so many years, Haiku OS users can finally rely on a modern web browser, one of the must-have applications for any desktop operating system.
While exciting, it’s important to note that Firefox isn’t yet available as a package ready for installation on Haiku OS. This development is more of a proof of concept at this stage, with a proper release planned for the future.
The most enthusiastic users can attempt to build it from source code, though this may be really challenging for the average user. Additionally, your system must have sufficient memory and CPU cores to handle this task.
Anyway, the introduction of Firefox brings more than just an additional application to Haiku OS; it represents a significant step forward in making the platform more accessible and appealing to new users. And that’s great. So, congrats to the Haiku OS developers who made this happen!
