I am considering getting an MNT Reform. This is a small ARM powered laptop that tries to use open hardware throughout. It it something of a safe space for the more obscure operating systems with system images available for Plan 9 / 9Front and Genode. These operating systems interest me. Haiku is not yet represented.
The forthcoming Pocket Reform looks so cute!
Do we have any Reform owners on this forum who can share their experiences with this machine? Also, whilst it might be fun to acquire the Pocket model to use 9Front and Genode - I envision using it mainly for writing on-the-go and thus don’t need any tentpole software suites - are there any plans to bring Haiku onto it?
Not currently, no, it does not support any ARM systems. However if sufficient number of persons became available, I imagine that could change quickly. The other possibility is that Reform sports a RISC-V option in the near future and we can leapfrog ARM altogether. This is not too far fetched IMO, see the many current options here.
MNT are also working on a “rack Reform” which would presumably be a single board computer like the Raspberry Pi and of benefit to our developers. EU designed and built, too!
Is this the sort of system that appeals to users of this forum, either in the concept, or because you own one?
for some definition of “quickly”, or maybe you are saying the people who are already working on the ARM hort are not the right persons, which wouldn’t be very nice to us
We will get there eventually, but we had to solve several non-trivial issues and there are a few more to come.
Far from it: I value all your work otherwise I would not be one of Haiku’s monthly donors. I will amend “person” in my post to the plural, to emphasis it is simply numbers not quality of contributors that is the limiting factor.
I see no reference to Haiku on a search of their own Discourse. I may well start a thread to discuss, perhaps it is the sort of OS that appeals to that crowd. In which case they may desire to pull our system over, rather than the overburdened Haiku developer having to push it onto their hardware.
