Ever since I successfully run Haiku on MacBook through virtual machine, I tried to find a computer that actually install Haiku. And I have nothing in my hands or mind, still.
There’s many aspect to this struggle. I want to share some of it with you guys, and find answers, finally.
I’m what people would call “end user”. Alongside being South Korean, not that confident with computing knowledge and as such neither. In short, I feel like I need “just work” option for Haiku box. But, as far as I know, if I searched forum correctly, Haiku seems about trial and fixing error with hardware compatibility.
I can’t sure if I know what I actually want. Buying a laptop, build a desktop tower, try mini PC, can’t focus on one option. It must be depend on what I want to do with it, but even with that, all I can think of is just want to daily drive Haiku as my personal computer. Maybe secondary to macOS, but still.
There’s definitely more to this conflicting thoughts, but my brain stopped working middle of writing this Topic. Can’t sure if I pick the right category, please understand. Hope I can get help for this struggle.
Second paragraph is basically how I am right now. Have been trying to find the right hardware, but I just couldn’t. That’s why I asking for a help directly
Most generic kind of hardware should work quite well, I run a desktop with a Ryzen CPU, nVidia graphics card (VESA mode), booting from an M.2 SSD. I used wired (onboard) ethernet and HDMI for display.
Everything works well and I get 4k screen resolution no problem. The only thing that doens’t work is audio over HDMI, but I know the motherboard’s analogue onboard audio works.
With laptops I’ve had reasonable luck with WiFi etc. working too, the biggest issue there has always been trackpad support, but an external mouse works just fine.
very conflicted with this. I have no monitor, so getting a notebook seems logical. Price and space concerns, also. But then I keep seeing the case of something doesn’t work with laptops and PC/desktop experience seems better.
oh, thank you for the help, but I already checked the database several times. I made this Topic because I just couldn’t figure out what should I choose
It depends on what level of compatibility you are looking for. Haiku will “run” on almost all x86 (32-bit or 64-bit) motherboards, but there is no 3D acceleration, no VSync or VRR, USB audio probably won’t work, etc. Basic integrated audio with 3.5mm out will usually work.
@Dott, I’m not sure if this is suitable for you, but you could also approach the situation from another angle. Maybe someone among your family or friends has a computer that they don’t need anymore because it doesn’t run the latest Windows well enough or isn’t supported anymore (the Windows 10 end of life this year will create a lot of those cases), or maybe at your workplace (many companies change hardware frequently and give away the old machines or sell them for a small symbolic price).
Of course you don’t have as many choices as if you buy a new machine but from what I gather from your initial post this might actually benefit you. Then you can try and install Haiku, report back how it went and seek help here on the forum if you run into problems. On the older machines I tried Haiku on it went quite well generally, sometimes with minor problems, many of which were fixed quite fast after a bugreport. But keep in mind, there is no guarantee for “just works” with Haiku, you might need a bit of resilience to get it installed. On the positive side you’ve got a very helpful and friendly community behind it.
The problem with compatibility lists is that they can never be complete or even accurate enough. And they can’t be, because even a specific model usually has several variations.
My dedicated Haiku machine is a Fujitsu AH531 (CPU: Intel i5-2450M 4 threads @ 2.5 GHz, GPU: Intel HD Graphics 3000, RAM: 8 Gb DDR3), and I can tell everything works, including the “usual suspects” such as WiFi, touchpad, sound, etc). However, I found several specifications for that model and some of them have significant differences. For example, some say it has a Nvidia GPU, or 2 Gb of RAM, or even a… Celeron CPU.
So, I know my AH531 is fully compatible, but cannot guarantee the one you will get from ebay or wherever will be fully compatible as well, unless you get one with the exact same specifications, which is probably unlikely.
I run Haiku almost exclusively on real hardware and have tested it on quite a large range of different configurations. as far as laptops go the biggest thorn in my side has always been what wifi module is installed, Broadcom BCM4311 has been the bane of my existence because apparently a lot of the stacks and stacks of old laptops i have kicking around here were cursed with a BCM4311 which we 100% dont have drivers for. better results with iprowifi and atheros modules.
Next hurdle is usually if the unit has hd audio how is that setup, some machines i have had the audio come out of the internal speakers fine and the headphone port didnt work, or the headphone port worked but the internal speakers didnt, or neither worked even if the audio device was detected, or maybe even both work, it’s really a mixed bag because it depends on how the vendor setup the hd audio channels in the firmware, and typically the os needs to do some initialization magic during startup to put the hd audio chip in the right mode (which haiku still seem to lack)
My best result so far when testing Haiku on direct hardware is the Terra Mobile 1515. Sound works, network and Wi-Fi work, Haiku starts without problems, and runs at a good resolution.
So far, I’ve only tested it via USB, not installed, so I don’t know if it has an SSD or an unsupported eMMC (but I’m guessing it’s an SSD).
I need to test it more thoroughly. Also the integrated drive.
Terra is a German manufacturer; I don’t know if it’s available elsewhere.
