Haiku feels as snappy as BeOS, despite the project's team adding new features (such as internationalisation). "The Haiku kernel actually runs circles around BeOS," Aßmus says. "For example compiling Haiku on Haiku is more than seven times faster compared to compiling it on BeOS and only about 20 per cent slower compared to compiling it on Linux, on a dual core machine."

Kernel development has probably been the most challenging aspect of Haiku development, Aßmus believes. Hunting down kernel, file system or driver bugs is challenging, particularly given sometimes they crop up only on certain hardware configurations. I am not part of the kernel team; I completely admire them."

Of the development he has participated in directly, working on the Haiku Media Kit, particularly integrating the FFmpeg open source multimedia framework, has been most challenging.

Aßmus is also proud of the graphics subsystem, which he mostly implemented. "I integrated the excellent Anti-Grain Geometry library as the actual drawing backend into the Haiku application server. It all feels pretty fast considering it runs completely without hardware acceleration."