I have a Dell Dimension 4100.
It’s specs are:
-Pentium III 800 MHz
-128 MB of DDR1 RAM
-40 GB HDD
-Generic ATI graphics card that can only run at resolutions of 720x480 or below
I only really worry about two things, the RAM and the graphics card.
Most modern operating systems today require at least 800x600 for resolution. This could be a problem for me if this is also the case for Haiku.
I also saw that some users experienced problems when usimg only 128 MB of RAM, especially if installing from a CD. My computer cannot boot or install from USB, despite it having two USB ports, so a CD is my only option.
So pretty much, all I’m really asking is, will the resolution thing be a problem, as well as the RAM? Will Haiku be compatable with 20 year old hardware?
The release notes for the beta1 say the minimum RAM for running Haiku is 256 MiB. I think for installing Haiku even more is needed. That’s supposed to depend on the number/size(?) of the packages that are to be copied.
I never really understodd that, maybe someone in the know can shed some light here.
You probably can lessen this need for more memory when installing, if you already have a running Haiku computer around. There, you can mount the USB stick (or the image file) and remove all source packages and the huge Noto sans CJK package. That should reduce the install size by a few hundred GiB… (edit: <- that’s MiB, ofc… 
)
Anyway, without finding another 128 MiB RAM stick, you’re probably out of luck…
The resolution minimum is supposed to be 800x600. Some tall window may give you problems. Remember that with CTRL+ALT+left-mouse-drag, you can move windows around.
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The packagefs seems to need a lot of RAM to handle the source packages included with the beta images. So for those, you need about 400-500MB to boot; but installing doesn’t need any more than that.
Nightly images work in 256MB indeed. We should be able to slim down to 128MB if someone did the needed work to optimize packagefs, but that hasn’t been done yet.
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Thanks for the info. So it’s not just when installing but booting in general. That’s not ideal…
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Considering the beta image is too large for a CD anyway, it probably doesn’t matter. I can’t think of any systems with DVD drives or that can boot from USB which have < 1GB RAM. So that should be enough.
But really, someone just needs to take the time to optimize packagefs.
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Um, what? DVD drives were already a thing by 1998. We were using DVD-ROMS in a PC that had maybe 128MB of RAM tops. The release notes should be updated with a clearly marked erratum to indicate an actual tested minimum.
My question for the relsoution bit, is if it will even run. Because Xp refuses to run if the graphics card cannot output at least 800x600. So will it even run at a resolution of 720x480?
So, pretty much, it won’t run on 128 MB of RAM?
Not at present. Someone needs to optimize packagefs, as I said.
That shouldn’t be a problem. It may depend on the driver for your graphics card. I currently use the VESA driver, which does provide 640x480 and Haiku runs with that. Which looks ridiculous, of course, on my 1920x1080 panel. 
Not exactly sure what RAM the machine has (WRT CAS latency for example), but upgrading to 512MB should be pretty inexpensive.