It depends a bit on what you are doing and want to use Haiku for, but
I would recommend installing a Linux on your dual core with a build
environment to build Haiku. Then you make two partitions for Haiku,
one where you can create a Haiku installation from Linux and one for
holding more persistent data within Haiku. I too have a computer
(notebook) that only runs Haiku and no BeOS/ZETA and in the past
weeks, I was on the go a lot. So I was forced to use Haiku
exclusively to develop stuff. (I don't really like doing serious work
in Linux, somehow I don't feel at home and productive there.) Haiku
definitely survives a day of normal development work. Sure, there are
some serious bugs left, but you have to try pretty hard to actually
hit those. There are some ways of stressing the system that make
Haiku's kernel crash, but my personal experience is that I can work
just fine for at least a day. For using some of the new Haiku
features, like writing applications that use the layout management,
it's just way more convenient to develop and test in Haiku at this
point. Due to the much better caching, the system is usually way
faster too.
