Hardware
gbOS86 targets Intel 6th-gen (Skylake) and newer laptops with Intel graphics. At every boot it reads your devices and loads matching drivers.
| Area | Supported |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core, 6th gen and newer. Missing instructions (SHA-NI, AVX-VNNI, GFNI, VAES, VPCLMULQDQ, AVX-IFMA) are emulated in the kernel; the hottest code is pre-patched. Faster on newer CPUs that have them natively. |
| Graphics, display | Intel i915 from Skylake to Raptor Lake, eDP panels, HDMI/DP. Newer chips use xe (untested). Colour fixes apply to i915 only. |
| Brightness | Backlight class and ACPI video, plus laptop hotkey drivers (Dell, HP, ThinkPad, IdeaPad, Asus, Acer, Samsung, MSI, Sony, Fujitsu, LG, Intel HID). |
| Wi-Fi | Intel 7260/7265, 8265, 9000-series, AX200/201/210/211, BE200 (iwldvm and iwlmvm). Realtek rtw88 and rtw89. MediaTek mt7921/22/25. Qualcomm ath10k and ath11k. Broadcom brcmfmac. |
| Bluetooth | USB Bluetooth from Intel, Realtek, MediaTek, Qualcomm and Broadcom, plus Intel PCIe Bluetooth. |
| Sound | Legacy HDA with the common codecs (Realtek, Conexant, Cirrus, IDT/SigmaTel, VIA), or SOF for newer machines with digital mics or SoundWire. The kernel picks per machine. SOF is best effort. |
| Touchpad, keyboard | Intel LPSS I2C-HID touchpads (most modern laptops), Intel sensor hub, PS/2 (Synaptics, ALPS, Elan), Synaptics RMI4. |
| Storage | Installing needs an internal NVMe SSD (the installer only targets NVMe). SATA-only laptops can still run live from USB. SD card readers (Realtek, SDHCI) are supported. |
| Other | USB webcams (UVC), Ethernet (r8169, e1000e, igc, common USB adapters). |
Not supported
Suspend and resume, fingerprint readers, IPU6 MIPI cameras, NVIDIA and AMD discrete GPUs, AMD CPUs, ARM. Some security-chip features (Google GSC, Trusty) do not exist on other laptops, so they are replaced in software.
The ideal laptop
A 2018 to 2022 business laptop: Intel 8th to 11th gen, Intel UHD or Iris Xe graphics, 8 GB or more of RAM, NVMe SSD, 1080p panel, Intel Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, Intel HDA audio. Dell Latitude, Lenovo ThinkPad and HP EliteBook of that period are the most predictable.
Reporting your laptop
Boot the stick once, shut down, put it in another computer and open gbos/logs/boot-N/hwdetect.txt. Post it in Hardware Compatibility with the model name and what works.