One thing that always makes me smileis an operating system that is not Windows.I'm a long time Linux userbut this OS - Haiku -intrigues me.Based on the old Be OS -it promises to be fastand lightweight.Cool.Let's download the beta and try it.Following the directionsI soon had a CD to play with.So let's have some fun.*drums**more drums**even more drums**flute music*Let's start with this old HP laptop,after the installit couldn't connect to the internet,the USB didn't workand the sound didn't work.We'll try one of the latest nightly builds55621- and go from there.I have noticed that with this laptopthat sometimes the desktop loads...poorly.A shutdown fixes that.And it boots within 35 seconds.For a single core AMDwith 2 gigs of memory - and an IDE drive,that's pretty good.But still no sound and no USB.It doesn't see WIFIbut the Ethernet port worksHaiku must be missing some drivers.The laptop probably has some oldand funky hardwarenot supported by Haiku.And using my cellphone tocapture this laptop sucks.So let's try a desktopthat my capture device can read.Remember this guy?The Lost Gateway?It's an AMD 64 CPUwith 2 gigs of memory.Let's try Haiku as a live CD.We'll go for broke with thatnightly build.And it boots nicely!Look at all those programs.Let's check out the ethernet connection.Oh yeah, we have internet!We also have USB!This is looking like it will be fun!Time to do a full install!And it installs quickly.Very cool.The standard browserWeb Positivecan do Youtube!Not bad, not bad.Let's go shopping!We'll hit the repositories.Our objectives:Libre Office,some media players,and maybe another browser.Holy cow they got LMMS!That's my music composing software.And it's an up to date version too!And Libre office, naturally.Fair warning -it took several minutesto download and install.Let's grab Otter broswer.Web Positive browsercrashed on a few sites.We'll use Otter browserto get some soundfonts for LMMS.Musescore is a good site to getsome nice soundfonts.Hmm....LMMS looks a bit cramped....let's change the screen resolution.Ah, that's better.Beyond that my AGP graphics cardpoops out on me.VLC plays back the video capture fileso far we're looking good.But I want more playback!Q-M- Play 2 installs withlots of video codexsso we don't have to go pokearound looking for them.How about some audio editing?The Be A E audio editorcouldn't even read a wav file.KWave - borrowed from theKDE projectdoes seem to work.It's pretty simplecompared to Audacitybut at this pointwe're looking for basic functionality.For video editing,how about Open Shot?The basics seem to work.It's surprising what canbe done with this operating systemon low end hardware.Haiku is still in beta...but it looks really promising.This is the 32 bit versionso we're a little limited here.Maybe the 64 bit versionon beefier hardwarewill be even betterLightweight operating systemsthat can resurrect old hardwareis where it's at!Thanks for watching.Discover new things.Experiment with old hardware.Play with alternative operating systems.And as always,stay curious.*** Captions by Subtitle Edit 3.5.13 ****music**drums flute and strings**yeah I made this music*