After some testing of Haiku in Virtualbox I decided to install it an an USB-SSD and boot the laptop directly with Haiku.
Most things work very good.
The Laptop use Intel/Nvidia Optimus dual graphics card and 32 GB RAM. I have to find out which graphics card is in use. Think it is the Intel one.
What works:
Display 1920x1080
Sound
USB cable mouse
What doesn’t work:
Wifi Intel 9560 AC
Bluetooth
FN short keys
Boot process
Touchpad
Workrounds/Solutions:
boot:
With Windows 10 and Balena Etcher I wrote the Haiku iso (Beta 2) to my 500 GB SSD card. I booted it and installed Haiku again on the same SSD into the free space. Now I stopp the boot process with the space-key and choose the installed Haiku in the boot manager. Now I can boot the installed Haiku normally. (A normal boot after installation fails.)
bluetooth:
No solution. Doesn’t work.
FN-Keys:
No solution. Doesn’t work.
Touchpad:
No solution. Doesn’t work.
Wifi:
I bought a wireless mini bridge dongle. The Vonets VAP 11G-300 for 21 EUR. It has an ethernet adapter for the Laptop and works as a bridge to my wifi at home. The settings are done very fast via a web browser. Now I can use it with any computer which has an ethernet cable adapter. It works fast and stable. Solved.
I’m very happy with Haiku on my laptop. It is fast and stable so far. If I could adjust the brightness, all things would be easier to read for my eyes. It tuned the preferences and the windows and menues are much darker then the original ones. I use a dark wallpaper as well and so it works.
I think that Haiku is very interesting and could get much more users if there would be a modern web browser for it. In these times nearly everything depends on communication and a browser is a very important tool and probably the most used program on every computer. Without a modern browser no operating system will get popular. For an average and daily user it will be more or less useless.
Nvertheless I love Haiku and try to use it as my daily plattform for common office tasks.
I would help, if I could. But sadly I’m no developer. Most of the visited web sites are okay. I switch between WebPositive and Otter Browser.
I know that the developers do a hard job and that there is very much to do all the time. I’m staying on Haiku and will look where I can help. Perhaps with testing or translating some things.
Please make bugreports for the parts that don’t work at dev.haiku-os.org
We will probably need a bit more info about the hardware. I expect the Fn keys will be exposed as ACPI buttons, and the touchpad is possibly an I2C based one?
My problem is that I’n no expert. The Fn keys should work with ACPI. I know that from FreeBSD. But I don’t know what kind of touchpad is installed. I’ll try to figure out the technical details to make bugreports. Thanks for this advice.
Speaking of which, I’ve been making improvements to my hardware page and wanted to release it along with when beta3 is out… I’d thought this was the end of February, when is the new release going to be here?
The plan is “when it’s ready” as usual. There is still some work to do on DriveSetup and it will probably take a few weeks to get that done. Then we can start the release process.
The dates on the roadmap page are only indicative and not meant to be accurate. What matters is solving all the issues we want to solve in the release.
With the way Haiku is structured (remember, people working on their free time when they feel like it, and all of us having other paid jobs and other things to care for in our lifes) it is simply impossible to commit to specific deadlines.
For example, in my case, this month I have been quite busy at work and had no motivation for more C++ code in the evenings and week-ends. Also a friend asked me to beta test their (completely unrelated) software. So I did not touch Haiku a lot.
I’m trying to learn more about Haiku but I will work with it most of time in a virtual machine. I posted the working parts from my laptop.
But honestly I must say that the brightness on my laptop display is very much and reading normal “white backgrounded” web sites causes headache and pain to my eyes. It is not possible to use it for hours a day.
I have an installation on an 64GB USB-Stick which I will use from time to time directly on my laptop. But the other time I will use Haiku in a virtual machine. At least I can adjust the brightness there to get a usable desktop. So I can test and learn Haiku much better.
If the brightness will be adjustable in Haiku with ACPI and Fn-Keys, I would immidiately change back to a bare metal use of Haiku.
For learning and deeper understanding a virtual Haiku will do.
Yes the site is closed atm. The owner is working on the project.
But you can ahare the Hardware specs here.
I have a Intell extreme, and my fn-brghtness keys work (surprisingly) but the sliders in the Screen preferences have no effect.
Thanks for everyone who’s linked to my lists (and also @muffin for the Asus laptop); R1/beta3 isn’t here yet (saying this because I was hoping to have the new lists up when the new Haiku release was out), but I should have the renovated hardware list up sometime this week.
