I have no idea if there is a HCL list anywhere, so i am asking instead.
I am looking to pick up a box of some kind to use as a dedicated Haiku machine, so what do i choose?
I am thinking perhaps an APU of some sort, perhaps a 5600G or something similar as i understand Haiku doesn’t have hardware accelerated graphics, perhaps even a 3xxx series one that can be had for pennies. Is Intel better in this regard? Used AM4 machines are very cheap these days.
Are Intel AX211 or similar Wifi adapters a safe bet?
Any issues with cpu’s or the amount of memory i will choose?
From my experience,most desktop computers work fine and laptops can sometimes be tricky,but I also own some that work perfectly fine.
It’s hard to know all hardware details before buying.
Using a APU is absolutely enough for Haiku,no need for a dedicated graphics card.
I recommend using either Intel or some newer AMD Ryzen.
Pre-Ryzen stuff like Athlon is known to randomly crash due to a bug that hasn’t been fixed for years.
It has become a lot better over the last months,but if I were to buy a new computer today,it clearly wouldn’t be a AMD Athlon.
Intel Wifi is generally known to work well in most cases,but that doesn’t mean every single model will work perfectly fine.
I think I’ve read that users here had good results with the AX211,but I may confuse the numbers,better use the search function here and so some research before buying.
As for the amout of memory,people have recently reported that 128MB is enough to boot Haiku,but I’d recommend 4GB or,even better,8GB if you want to have many applications open,especially webbrowsing can eat quite a lot of RAM.
One of the computers I use is the Atari VCS 800. The caveats are that the Wi-Fi is not supported (although, I suppose the card can be replaced), no sound (it only has audio over HDMI, which Haiku does not support), and you have to set Haiku to use fail safe graphics because it’s AMD and it’ll crash on boot if you don’t. Also, it’s only for the US.
It’s hard to stick one’s neck out on that question. We can speak generally, but there’s always that one oddball machine. The XZX4311-A works, and the XZX4311-C works, but you had to go and get the XZX4311-B which was only ever sold in North-central Mongolia in 2019 …
Your best bet is to install Haiku to a USB stick. Then walk up to the salesperson and say “I will buy that computer if it can boot THIS.”
If you are buying online, your best bet is to see if they advertise Linux / BSD compatibility.
AX211 should work fine (on some hardware it randomly doesn’t initialize, and I haven’t managed to figure out why, but there’s plenty of devices on which it does work and people use it.)
H-kon, long time no see. From memory, you were working with Opera back in the 90’s. Are you still connected to Opera/Vivaldi or you’ve moved on to other projects? Great to see old BeOS community members sticking around.
Hi Zenja, I kind of left the IT world after Opera, it made a sour taste in my mouth to be honest
I am testing Haiku now on a Ryzen 4650GE at the moment with 24GB of memory, and it seems to work although i can’t get it to boot on the sata with Mint22 running on the Nvme. The ThinkCentre tiny has an odd BIOS for sure where the option simply disappears pressing F12 during boot.
I have an older box i will try it on as well tomorrow, or i’ll find something else in my piles. Glad to know that Intel wifi adapters are supported well. None of the realtek’s i have tried did work.
You may need to enable Bios CSM mode even when booting via EFI. On all my boxes, I install rEFInd, it really makes dual booting a pleasure on EFI boxes, and can work with poor EFI software supplied by motherboard manufacturers.
Also, depending on your boot problem, you may also need to check if the correct BeFS partition ID was written when you created the partition.
I’ve got relatively modern Ryzen hardware hardware, and Haiku works great here.
I recently installed Haiku R1/B5 on a Chuwi HeroBox Pro and discovered that audio and Wi-Fi are not supported. I was kind of bummed by that. Of course I didn’t check ahead of time to see if the hardware would be supported. So that’s on me.
With audio, you may need to experiment with your boot order, ie sometimes you need to boot into another OS first to map analog pins out. Also check if sound comes out of headphone jack instead of speakers.
I can recommend older Thinklpads with intel graphics:
x220
x230
x301
T430
T430s
NOT T431
T460s
T470s
Yoga 15 (Touchscreen works, Wifi does not, use usb wifi adapter)
iMac 2010 27" works (no audio)
iMac 2015 27" does NOT work
imac 2017 27" works (no audio)
If someone has a tip on the imac Audio situation, please tell me)
These Thinkpad models cover a wide range of machines each, some coming with nVidia cards. So be careful which one you get if you go that route (try to check exact model numbers).
Thats why i wrote with intel graphics, the only nvidia is in the yoga 15, works without problems in framebuffer mode, but kernel panics often while coldbooting,
I’ve found some older kit won’t work, while there are some brand new laptops that will run Haiku perfectly (one model I’ve tested recently is Dell Latitude 5420 (Intel i7 vPro)
For desktops, my goto is an OptiPlex 790. These are readily available on the used market, being pretty much ubiquitous in office environments back in the day. Combined with something like a TL-WN725N wireless dongle, the experience is seamless. Indeed, I use one of these as my daily driver Haiku development machine and have never had any issue. The newer Dell NUC models don’t seem to work, though, and most I’ve tried won’t even get past the boot screen.
I’m lucky enough to work in IT and have lots of kit I can re-purpose and test for things like Haiku. Never had much luck with any HP models I’ve tested, but we mainly buy Dell, and more recently custom laptop builds.
I even managed just last week to install Haiku on a really crappy (even for the time) 2010-model Packard Bell netbook, with everything - including WiFi - detected and working! Pretty neat.
I guess what I’m saying is don’t neccessarily limit yourself to old hardware. For example, I have Haiku running on a 2024 Custom-build laptop from PCSpecialist (Initia Li 14) with everything working, including wifi.
Was this with beta5? I would test again with a recent nightly; there have been a bunch of fixes recently to problems that had “stuck with no icons lit” as symptoms.
