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FreeBSD On Laptops Is Still A Big Challenge But The Slimbook Could Soon Be Running Well
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Let's contribute to this list of FreeBSD-compatible laptops: https://bsd-hardware.info/?view=computers&type=Notebook
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FreeBSD runs great on many laptops, but certainly not all laptops. Intel is suppose to be supporting FreeBSD more than ever, but their latest wifi chips are just now starting to see drivers as of 4/14.
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Originally posted by kylew77 View PostIt sucks that in 2020 your best Open Source OS laptop is still a Chromebook. Run an Acer Chromebook with LInux in a chroot on it for games and light development but it sucks that it is stuck forever at 4GB of RAM. Plus having no graphical acceleration in the chroot means like 15 fps games so nothing too fancy. Run FreeBSD on my main workstation with little problems. Duel Intel Xeons used off Ebay and lots of ECC DDR3. If I had to buy a laptop today for running either OpenBSD or FreeBSD it would probably be an older model one since support for newer models is so patchy. I don't know if the Wireless AC card in my Chromebook would run under under a BSD even!
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Originally posted by kylew77 View PostIt sucks that in 2020 your best Open Source OS laptop is still a Chromebook. Run an Acer Chromebook with LInux in a chroot on it for games and light development but it sucks that it is stuck forever at 4GB of RAM. Plus having no graphical acceleration in the chroot means like 15 fps games so nothing too fancy. Run FreeBSD on my main workstation with little problems. Duel Intel Xeons used off Ebay and lots of ECC DDR3. If I had to buy a laptop today for running either OpenBSD or FreeBSD it would probably be an older model one since support for newer models is so patchy. I don't know if the Wireless AC card in my Chromebook would run under under a BSD even!
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It sucks that in 2020 your best Open Source OS laptop is still a Chromebook. Run an Acer Chromebook with LInux in a chroot on it for games and light development but it sucks that it is stuck forever at 4GB of RAM. Plus having no graphical acceleration in the chroot means like 15 fps games so nothing too fancy. Run FreeBSD on my main workstation with little problems. Duel Intel Xeons used off Ebay and lots of ECC DDR3. If I had to buy a laptop today for running either OpenBSD or FreeBSD it would probably be an older model one since support for newer models is so patchy. I don't know if the Wireless AC card in my Chromebook would run under under a BSD even!
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That's something I hope for. I have one of those mentioned here "works in Linux" Dell laptops (precission 3540). I was hoping that the firmware would be easier to tackle. And yes, Linux runs AOK (just mind that the crappy BIOS is very sparse in options and won't even let you deactivate the discrete GPU, that gave me trouble installing later because it only lets you use AHCI mode for SATA).
The WIFI was the big first problem. All the newish laptops I have worked on use the Atheros ath10k driver and it just doesn't work. Three Wifi USB dongles later, two using officially supported firmware, the other was supposed to work by a forum user. The last one wasn't even detected with lspci (broken hardware?) the other two got detected but will never adquire SSID and will switch off after a few seconds, so there I am moving the laptop around the house with a wifi repeater and an ethernet cable.
Then the touchpad and nub won't work. It seems like FreeBSD doesn't support the mouse interface usin the more modern I2C bus. All they seem to have is an old patch that wasn't updated in a year. It is only supposed to work in X (it doesn't for me). Again, you can carry an USB mouse, but that was already too much. my 2016 Thinkpad has the same two problems as above.
Graphics: This is what I had differences with Freebsd and GhostBSD. Intel and radeon grphics: it felt sluggish and had artifacts or freezes when switching from CLI to X in FreeBSD, worked flawlessly in GhostBSD. And GhostBSD uses the SAME Kernel as FreeBSD 12.1, so I have no idea how the experience is different.
So yeah, since my 2016 Thinkpad FreeBSD has been a CLI only partition which only has Internet when plugged with a ethernet cable :P
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Originally posted by antnythr View PostIt would be great to see better laptop support in FreeBSD. I converted from Windows and used FreeBSD as my sole desktop OS from ~2008-2012 and it was great.
When I got my first laptop (XPS 15z) I ended up having to switch to Linux because the touchpad didn’t work and I couldn’t make use of the stupid Optimus graphics. I couldn’t find a way shut off the nVidia card either, so the laptop had unbelievably terrible battery life and even with the fans running at full tilt would heat up to the point it was uncomfortable to keep on my lap.
I have a Mac now and I’m pretty happy with it, but I definitely still follow what’s going on and enjoy seeing how FreeBSD is progressing.
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Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
In my experience the Thinkpad range and HP business range work very well with FreeBSD. Mostly because their components are fairly stable and don't get replaced randomly. The model advertised is the exact model you get. From what I understand this is actually a fairly difficult thing to achieve in this day and age because the upstream component manufacturers cannot keep up supply of specific product batches.
Nothing is more frustrating than being recommended a laptop on a mailing list only to find out that the older model is vastly superior to the "modern" one that you bought XD
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It would be great to see better laptop support in FreeBSD. I converted from Windows and used FreeBSD as my sole desktop OS from ~2008-2012 and it was great.
When I got my first laptop (XPS 15z) I ended up having to switch to Linux because the touchpad didn’t work and I couldn’t make use of the stupid Optimus graphics. I couldn’t find a way shut off the nVidia card either, so the laptop had unbelievably terrible battery life and even with the fans running at full tilt would heat up to the point it was uncomfortable to keep on my lap.
I have a Mac now and I’m pretty happy with it, but I definitely still follow what’s going on and enjoy seeing how FreeBSD is progressing.
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I stick to laptops with nvidia graphics. You can use Intel graphics too I suppose. Maybe AMD is good now, not sure, but didn't used to be.
I have a couple lenovo and couple Dell that work fine. I avoid HP because they won't boot with non-HP hardware installed.
I usually swap out the wifi card for Intel. They work. It's like 20 to 30 bucks and two screws. Many Qualcomm cards work too, especially if you get one that was around when the guy who wrote the FreeBSD drivers worked for Qualcomm.
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