My AI mini workstation from HP has seen some non-AI workloads this weekend. I installed Capture One for photo editing and a couple of software synthesizers. And realized along the way that while built-in speakers are nice, high-end audio is a lot better! :-) For months, I have been listening to music on devices that are designed for speech: a pair of Jabra headphones and the speakers of my various laptops.

Last week, I wrote about my initial FreeBSD experiences on my new toy, an AI workstation from HP. FreeBSD runs lightning fast on it, but the desktop was somewhat problematic. Well, I made lots of improvements this week! A bit of debugging While there are still some rough edges, there have been tons of improvements since last week. I do not have plans to use FreeBSD on the desktop in the long term, but still, I just could not believe that the FreeBSD GUI is this problematic on this device.

In the past few weeks, I installed five different operating systems on my latest toy: an AI workstation from HP. I love playing with OSes, but my main goal with the new machine is to learn various aspects of AI. I took my first steps in this adventure on Windows. Of course, you might ask: why on Windows? Well, it’s easy: because it’s easy… :-) There is nothing to install or configure there, as Windows has multiple built-in apps that support AI and can utilize the NPU (hardware-accelerated AI) support of the AMD Ryzen 395 chip.

Finally, I also installed FreeBSD on my new AI focused mini workstation from HP. I even managed to install GNOME on the machine with minimal effort. However, I also ran into many problems. So far it’s a mixed experience. Installation went smoothly, FreeBSD 15.0 was up and running in no time. However, FreeBSD is not found by any of the Linux boot managers I use (different flavors of GRUB), and it’s not in the EFI boot menu either.

The data sheet of my new AI-focused mini workstation from HP does not mention Fedora, but I could install it just fine. I expected this though, because when I asked around about Linux support and hardware AI acceleration for AMD Ryzen 39X chips, all responses came from Fedora users… :-) Installing Fedora on the HP Z2 Mini was a smooth experience, even though I hadn’t used the graphical installer for ages.

The data sheet of my new AI focused mini workstation from HP mentions Ubuntu 24.04 as the supported Linux distribution. I have tried that, but I could not get the installer to run. However, 25.10 installed without any problems, even from an openSUSE branded USB stick :-) Only the chameleon works with this machine:-) I must admit that I’m not an Ubuntu fan, but installed it anyway, as Ubuntu is the “official” Linux distro for this machine.

Last week I introduced you to my new toy at home: an AI focused mini workstation from HP. It arrived with Windows pre-installed, but of course I also wanted to have Linux on the box. Documentation mentions that I have to disable secure boot and make a few more changes before installing Linux. I did all the suggested BIOS changes before installing Linux. The data sheet mentions Ubuntu 24.04 as the supported Linux distribution.

There is a new toy in the house. It is a miniature workstation from HP, built around AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 chip. If you are interested in the specifications and other details, check the HP product page at https://www.hp.com/us-en/workstations/z2-mini-a.html. In the long run, this box will serve many purposes: learning AI, but running as much as possible locally instead of utilizing cloud services learning Kubernetes by building everything from scratch on multiple virtual machines home server: running complex test environments on a single box (128 GB of RAM should be enough in most cases :-) ) photo editing using Capture One Pro occasional gaming :-) For now, I have finished unboxing and taken the first steps with Windows.