I agree. Haiku is a great option if one wants to give their old computer a new lease of life.

However, anyone trying it out must be aware that it is still in beta, and the OS does behave as such. Performance takes a hit at times. It is not at all optimised for battery usage. Suspend/resume do not work (and as per the developers, it is not a priority). I could go on.

Having said that, it is a distinct piece of software as well as philosophy, which one must definitely try out at least once.

Also, none of the newer OSes (besides NetBSD, Puppy Linux derivatives, and maybe Antix Linux) even support the computers that this OS targets. :-)

On Haiku? I haven’t tried it.

I have tried past Haiku betas on an old-but-no-so-old ThinkPad X31, and the experience wasn’t buggy enough to go back NetBSD.

I really liked the conclusion of the article. As someone who uses NetBSD as my primary computer, an old Nokia with Symbian as my secondary phone, self-host whatever I can, and with a general aversion to Electron apps, the conclusion really resonated with me.

We like to imagine a world of Haiku clients, talking to NetBSD back-end servers, and nothing but feature-phones – maybe running a revived Symbian. No AI, no Electron apps anywhere. A sky as clear and blue as the Haiku desktop, with no trace of a Cloud to be seen. That sounds idyllic to us. If it does to you as well, we think you might enjoy trying Haiku.