As everyone has probably already read on half a dozen other sites, the Haiku Project recently made the second Alpha version available, officially dubbed “Haiku R1A2” (R1 Alpha 2). Here’s the announcement on the Haiku website, IsComputerOn, BeGroovy, and OSNews.

The release can be obtained, in various formats & via various download methods, from the main Get Haiku page. The most notable changes since Alpha 1 are the inclusion of Wifi support (with support for WEP encryption and several common wireless chipsets) and, of course, WebPositive – a Haiku-native browser based on webkit (and with a GUI based on NetPositive).

Playing around with the release for a few hours should bring a warm glow to any old BeOS user’s heart (or at least the nostalgia center of the brain). A few quick first impressions: the installation has seen a few improvements, and it’s as painless as always. WebPositive is already stable and functional enough for most day-to-day usage, and it’s quite pleasant to use. And, even more so than Alpha 1, it is noticeably faster & more responsive than R5 on the same hardware.