Haiku Applications
An operating system is not really interesting without applications, and the days when Haiku was short of those are definitely over. By default, Haiku comes with a small but vital set of pre-installed applications - see the full list here. Others will have to be installed after installation.
How to install applications
Haiku uses a novel approach to package management. The HPKG file format at first doen't look very different from DEB or RPM files in Linux, but an application can be installed just by dropping the package in the right directory, and uninstalled just by deleting the package.[1] However, this is not the recommended way to do it.
If the package was not in a repository, but just downloaded from a website, just double-click on it. This will open the package in HaikuDepot and install it with any other dependencies.
There are two ways to install applications from Haiku repositories. The HaikuDepot application presents a familiar "app store" appearance. Alternatively, you can install application in Terminal using the pkgman command.[2]
Uninstalling an application is just as easy. Again you can do this from both the HaikuDepot application or in Terminal using pkgman.
For now, Haiku does not have the concept of dependency uninstallation. If you only ever installed one KDE-based application, say Kate, then if you uninstall Kate, all the QT and KDE libraries it relies on will be left in place and they will be updated. While this seem wasteful of disk space, it does speed up the installation of other KDE apps later on.
Application categories
These categories are used in the HaikuDepot application. Please be aware that an app can be in more than one category.
