What is the cheapest, readily available machine you can buy to run Haiku on where all the hardware is known to work?
Just a little background on the original post. I’m a life long macOS user but it seems like every year I’m more and more interested in looking for something else.
I know that Haiku doesn’t support the software that I need but I’d like to set up a machine to start running it on so I can try it out, tinker and track it’s progress.
One thing that makes me want to move on from macOS is constant stream of yearly updates that change things for no benefit, break a ton of stuff and overall don’t add anything that I care about.
The Haiku experience seems to be much more focused on just doing things right and sticking with what works rather than shipping crazy UI experiments year after year for marketing purposes.
So it would be great to get some hardware that will give me a good experience so I can really try it out but doesn’t cost much since I’m not going to be really using it for much. I’m open to building something or buying a prebuilt system but it would be nice to know that installation should be smooth and all the hardware will work.
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I’m kind of surprised to see the lack of interest in raspberry pi support since it would show off the performance of haiku on even low end hardware and also give people who just want to try it out and tinker an easy inexpensive way to do so.
The Raspberry Pi support is in-progress: ARM64 Port Status - #76 by tqh. @tqh has been contributing a lot of ARM patches recently.
As for guaranteed to work, seems like the older Lenovo ThinkPads have worked out well. Maybe @PulkoMandy can chime in on how well his Lenovo ThinkPad X220 works https://twitter.com/pulkomandy/status/1431280622752960515.
My System76 Oryx Pro works completely, except for audio on the speakers (audio on headphones works), and external video out isn’t supported on any newer graphics hardware.
Almost forgot, there’s a thread on the topic of systems compatible with Haiku: Computers compatible with Haiku (current version)
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Low cost:
- new/used Micro/Mini PCs and laptops <= $100 USD
Some of the Haiku users own Pi 400 and Pi-3/4/and ARMv8 laptop variants…
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But the ARM based computers are unsupported for now.
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I got a (very decent) Intel i5/8GB Dell Latidude laptop second hand for €25 which i’ve dedicated to Haiku.
Really, if you’re looking for cheap hardware, reusing somewhat older hardware should be on the top of the list. It will likely outperform the cheapest new machine at a lower price.
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I have a Dell Latitude E5410. With the original network card swapped out for an Intel 7260, and with a little driver tinkering to get the speakers working, all of the hardware works perfectly. Great, quick Haiku laptop. You can find them pretty inexpensively (eBay link, and the network card is an additional ~$10 from Amazon).
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This was extremely helpful. So is the status of the pi port that it’s a huge pain to install but works ok once you get it set up? I got the impression it wasn’t really usable yet.
The two cheapest Haiku PCs I have are a
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ASRock DeskMINI A300W. The case & motherboard (and CPU fan) were $170. How much higher than that, depends on which CPU and how much memory you get. Mine has an AMD Ryzen 5 3400 APU and 16GB and probably came out to around $500, in total. Video works, but you have to force it into fail safe video since a change made a while back. Sound works. Ethernet works. Wi-Fi, I never tried but suspects it works because it shows up in the Network preferences.
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Atari VCS 800. You can get one new for as low as $300 (Gamestop, Black Onyx, no controllers). It’s got 8GB of RAM and an AMD R1606G CPU. Memory is expandable to 32GB and you can put an internal M.2 (not NVME) drive in. Video works with no changes. Ethernet works. Wi-Fi does not. Sound currently does not work, because it only goes through HDMI. The case is neat looking. You can tell people you’re using an Atari computer to run Haiku.
All prices are US $.
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Doesn’t work at all… yet.
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You seem misled yourself. I said “own ARM hardware”. You are the person pointing out the working status of the OS. I own ARM hardware, but never said I was runing Haiku on it.
If you want to know the ARM port status there is another thread for that…
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Then again, the topic is “Working Haiku Box” so the mention of ARM hardware is questionable.
I, too, own ARM hardware… and I hope to be able to run Haiku on one of them in the future… but we’ll have to settle for x86 hardware for now.
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That’s partly my fault. I misinterpreted it at first.
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Haiku is primarily and fully supported on x86 and x86_64 hardware only.
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ARM64 Port Status is still a work in progress. tqh is the current lead contributor on that porting effort - and can answer any of those related questions.
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’ My Haiku RISC-V port progress’ for RISCV64 hardware is still a work in progress. X512 is the current lead contributor on that porting effort - and can answer any of those related questions.
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i5 Lenovo Thinkpad X220 or X230 are cheap Haiku box options.
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I’d get the lenovo m710q suggested by @extrowerk some time ago. Haven’t tried it myself but it’s small, smart, reasonably powerful, and cheap (second hand).
If you want a laptop I can cast another vote for the x220 or x230 thinkpads, but if you’re going to use one as a laptop rather than with an external monitor then make sure you get one with an IPS LCD because the TN panel is really terrible. Also, the x230 is preferable because it has USB3 while the x220 only has USB2 (unless you get the expensive and rarer i7 CPU model).
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Anybody running Haiku on an Intel NUC?
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Runs fine on NUC8i5BEH1.
But it is certainly not the cheapest.
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