Hardware requirements to run the USB live stick

[helioclock]

SKU-2 (the Live USB Stick) is meant to run on an Intel or AMD PC you
already own – no Pi required. Minimum spec is intentionally generic
rather than tied to a specific chip family, since this is built to run
on whatever hardware you’re bringing to it:

– Any Intel or AMD x86_64 PC, with either UEFI or legacy BIOS boot
support
– A 2GHz dual-core processor or better – this is Ubuntu 24.04
Desktop’s own baseline, not a Helioclock-specific requirement
– 2GB RAM minimum, 4GB or more recommended for smooth operation
– A USB port that can boot from the stick – USB 3.0 is recommended for
speed, but not required
– Any display with HDMI or DisplayPort

The stick itself ships as a physical 32GB USB drive with a full Ubuntu
Desktop install already on it – not a downloadable image you flash
yourself, and not a stripped-down live-only session.

Since this is meant for hardware people already have sitting around,
here’s a rough real-world floor rather than just a spec sheet number:
a dual-core machine from the Haswell generation or newer (2013+) –
think Intel Core i3/i5 4000-series, or an AMD A8/A10 “Kaveri” APU or
newer – with integrated graphics of that same era (Intel HD 4600 or
better, AMD Radeon R5/R7 APU graphics) should run this comfortably. No
discrete GPU needed – it wouldn’t add anything here even if you have
one.

To be transparent about this: this is a reasoned estimate based on
CPU-benchmark equivalence to the baseline spec above, not something
tested on that exact hardware. If you’re running SKU-2 on an older
machine, I’d genuinely like to hear how it performs – that’s real data
I don’t have yet.

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