Testing Haiku on ARM64 generic hardware

Zilog80

It all started as a reaction to those naive guidelines in the root ⁠AGENTS.md⁠ file of the official Haiku repository. I wondered: what can this AI—which no one in that community seems to care about—actually do for me, considering I already have to emulate x86 on my Mac just to give Haiku a spin?

So, here it is: an unofficial fork and port powered by a blend of human and artificial intelligence. Presenting Haiku on ARM64.

Test it in your ARM machine with QEMU https://github.com/enricopesce/haiku-arm64-port/releases/tag/v0.1.0-arm64-qemu-preview

Atomozero

Zilog80 How did you set up the compilation? And above all, do you know that if you run it on the Raspberry Pi, half the community will make a marble bust of you to put in front of every Haiku user's house?

Zilog80

Atomozero all is compiled with the standard haiku scripts. my primary objective was using haiku without emulate x86 hw arch in my Mac. I’m working on a fork of haiku ports I’m building an instance with all requirements to release arm64 haiku native packages. I don’t have any other arm64 hw in my own and I can’t test my release in real hw. At this time I’m using qemu .

clasqm

Atomozero And above all, do you know that if you run it on the Raspberry Pi, half the community will make a marble bust of you to put in front of every Haiku user's house?

Or the Apple M1 chip. There are millions of M1 MB Airs around and its owners are notoriously reluctant to upgrade (Okay, so I have one myself) as it is an absolutely superb machine. Apple will stop supporting it in the next 2-3 years, judging by past performance. Have to make the users upgrade somehow. And used M1 Macs will start flooding the market.

In other news, RiscV is maturing, and it looks like it will be less fractured than the ARM world.

Zilog80 I don’t have any other arm64 hw in my own and I can’t test my release in real hw.

Where do you live, does your country have Paypal and how much does a base RPi5 board cost there? If we all chip in a few bucks ...

Kevin

Exciting times! We are seeing more ARM64 and PPC progress. Maybe I will work on the SPARC port 🙂

Zilog80

example of command to run the image

qemu-system-aarch64 \
-machine virt,accel=hvf,acpi=off -cpu host -smp 4 -m 2048 \
-bios /opt/homebrew/Cellar/qemu/11.0.2/share/qemu/edk2-aarch64-code.fd \
-drive if=none,file=/Volumes/HaikuCase/haiku/generated.arm64/haiku-mmc.image,format=raw,id=drive0 \
-device virtio-blk-pci,drive=drive0,disable-legacy=on,vectors=0 \
-device virtio-gpu-pci,disable-legacy=on,vectors=0,xres=1920,yres=1080 \
-device qemu-xhci,id=xhci \
-device usb-kbd,bus=xhci.0 \
-device usb-tablet,bus=xhci.0 \
-serial file:/private/tmp/haiku-arm64.log \
-monitor none -display cocoa

Zilog80

clasqm Where do you live, does your country have Paypal and how much does a base RPi5 board cost there? If we all chip in a few bucks ...

Thank you for your support and initiative!
My main issue right now is time. Currently, I am experimenting with AI and using this time (and money) to better understand Haiku and see how I can contribute to the community. My main focus today is running QEMU and improving the ARM64 port.

I think recreating the entire bootstrap with all the development dependencies—so that everyone can compile the missing programs into ARM64 binaries—will be more complex than optimizing the kernel.

dcbeckman

clasqm In general, there are so many hardware trends already that could in theory drive more users to Haiku. Windows 11 MIDI 2.0 issues and frequent buggy updates that could drive musicians and DJs away from WIndows. Linux eyeing removing support for a lot of legacy hardware could do the same. Haiku is a modern, living OS. It is a shame Haiku often gets labeled as a retro OS when it clearly isn't. But supporting retro hardware is also a great way to encourage platform adoption right now.

Zilog80

It seems absurd, but in 2026 I still don’t have an x86 machine. HaikuPorter and the ports are incompatible and untested on macOS, and the same goes for an Alpine VM on native ARM64 hardware. There’s a serious lack of documentation, which results in many packages being compiled incorrectly with wrong linked libraries and missing packages needed for the development stage. Plus, I’m not a Haiku expert.
Basically, I can create an MMC image, but it doesn’t contain the packages required to compile everything else. After five days of testing I’m pretty fed up.
For now I’m releasing this:
https://github.com/enricopesce/haiku-arm64-port
It includes a lot of kernel changes to support ARM GICv3. I’ve tested it with 4 CPUs and it’s working very well and is stable.
Happy holidays to all!