Plus any share of the low end hobbyist electronics market provided they get the driver support.
It just makes sense for a low end bare bones system … that runs FAST… should target this share of the market. especially when all the rest are becoming bloated.
Maybe we could see a version of Haiku that people could buy for £5 or $5 just to revive their old hardware.
That’s pretty much what I want to do with Haiku. and get it to run on my netbook as a sweet , high powered, private and secure, personal organiser.
Is there still a netbook market? I still have an old Acer Netbook lying around somewhere, but I don’t see those cheap and cheerful little laptops around in the shops any more. The tablet seems to have killed it.
Netbooks are still very popular in China and in various Asian countries. There are a lot of those cheap Ultrabooks floating around like the HP Stream. (HP do not call it an ultrabook tho.)
But surely there are compile time flags that you could use to increase the power of your system. I have never compiled anything or looked into compiling anything on Haiku tho, so maybe I am wrong.
Yeah I know that me and my uncle who are both of oriental descent bouoght HP Streams recently… luckily i swapped mine for an old Dell… only because it had Windows 10 on it and it was slow as hell.
After having either tinkered with or used several Palms, a Nokia n800, a pocket PC, a handheld PC (Compaq C140), and a Newton (eMate 300), I think it’s safe to say that all of the above have crossed into nostalgia.
That said, netbooks are not dead. The current trend of ‘cloudbooks’, such as the HP Stream, are making a strong resurgence since the Chromebook had put a dent in the mobile market, and I totally agree with the OP and would think it would be wise to target this class/form factor of hardware. With 7-hour batteries, multi-touch touchpads, HDMI, USB3, SSDs (eMMC flash on cheaper ones), and other technologies standard for under $300, they are here to stay, and might even be the future (for a short while, at least.) I might also add that quality subnotebooks, such as the MacBook (Air) and Ultrabooks, like the 2016 Zenbook, are excellent devices to target as well.
And… I’d also add here that the Raspberry Pi (arm_el) would be an excellent little board to target, as you can literally make it be anything from a 90s-style handheld box to a mini-desktop connected to a TV. Other ideas would be the Up board or the Minnowboard.
But seriously, I second that Haiku really does need to target the new netbooks. I’ve tried booting Haiku on the HP Stream 1st and 2nd generation, and the Stream Pro, and all of them can’t find the boot image and quit.
Here in Brazil there are almost no netbooks on the market.
Now what is coming up strong are the Raspberries. My dream is to see the Haiku in Raspberry and distribute it in schools and its use by children.