Freebsd 7.0 on Lenovo X300

[ctaranotte]

Before I break up my saving account, sell my house, my wife and my kids and take a 10-year loan, I am just wondering whether someone has ever tried to install 7.0 on a Lenovo X300. :e

[vermaden]

CPU: Core 2 Duo SL7100 --> should scale without any problems
GFX: Intel GMA X3100 --> works great with Intel drivers 2.4.2 for example
NET: Intel Wireless WiFi 4965AGN --> this one is supported by driver in 8-CURRENT maybe there are pathes for 7.x ( http://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=2927&postcount=3 )
BLU: Bluetooth --> dunno here, should work but you should confirm that

Other components should work fine imho.

Fingerprint reader and camera propably will not work.

[ctaranotte]

Hi vemarden,

It is the third forum we meet and it is always a pleasure.

Thanks for your reply.

Wifi:
I know about the Intel Wireless WiFi 4965AGN.

Fingerprint reader:
fprint (http://reactivated.net/fprint/wiki/Main_Page) has been ported.

Bluetooth:
I agree it should work.

Camera:
Least of my concerns

My question was about if there is something I should know before taking the plunge.

OK, it's Hanouka/Christmas/whatever time. I am on my way to buy a lenovo X300 and try all this. :)

[bsdgooch]

I tried running 7.0-RELEASE for a while, but I went to 8.0-CURRENT and never went back. The iwn(4) driver on 8.0-CURRENT works a lot better than the "unsupported" 7.x driver mentioned in another thread.

The thing to keep in mind is that ACPI support is only so-so. Volume controls, screen brightness and other Fn keys don't work "out-of-the-box", and it will only resume from suspend if you're running Xorg and using only one CPU core.

I have to say that NetBSD 5 (Beta) works nicely, and of course recent Linux distros work well (Ubuntu, Fedora, and Gentoo).

I guess if you're a hardcore hobbyist like me it may be fun for you to run FreeBSD on the X300. I'm going to try some suspend/resume patches I saw floating around on freebsd-acpi mailing list and see if I can get my other CPU core back, but other than that, I look forward to tracking 8.0-CURRENT and seeing all the nifty things the FreeBSD devs are up to.

Good luck!

[ctaranotte]

Thanks for the information.

I am going to follow your advice and install NetBSD-current.

One last word, how about OpenSolaris? Do you know if it would run on the X300?

BTW: Soon for sale a Windows XP Professional license plus the original and unsealed CD companion.

[ctaranotte]

Thanks for the information.

I am going to follow your advice and install NetBSD-current.

One last word, how about OpenSolaris? Do you know if it would run on the X300?

BTW: Soon for sale a Windows XP Professional license plus the original and unsealed CD companion.

[vermaden]

One last word, how about OpenSolaris? Do you know if it would run on the X300?

I am running OpenSolaris 2008.11 on my Dell D630 ( http://daemonforums.org/showpost.php?p=13876&postcount=2 ) and even suspend to RAM works out of the box, also I do not have any problems with my two batteries, for example Ubuntu detected 2nd battery as A/C line :D

On FreeBSD also everything works, but I did not checked suspend/resume feature.

[bsdgooch]

Yes, OpenSolaris 2008.11 runs well on the X300. Suspend/resume, wireless, sound, X, etc...
OpenSolaris was pretty speedy (responsive) too -- which sorta surprised me, having ran a seemingly "slower" Ubuntu Intrepid and Fedora 10 setup not too long before that. Programs seemed to load more quickly; maybe it's ZFS, who knows? It's all subjective, really...

[ctaranotte]

Thank you for your input.

I am going to try NetBSD and OpenSolaris.

I will keep you posted

[bsdgooch]

Oops! Actually there was no suspend/resume on OpenSolaris for me on my X300, I'm not sure why I mis-remembered that particular detail (since I've been investigating suspend/resume on different operating systems for the past several months).

[ctaranotte]

Oops! Actually there was no suspend/resume on OpenSolaris for me on my X300.

Thanks for the tip but I am not really using suspend/resume.

I have installed NetBSD-current so far (I know, I know, this is the FreeBSD official forum but I am an hardcore FreeBSD user and the X300 is to be connected to my FreeBSD home and company servers ;)).

I will try OpenSolaris in the next weeks.

Did you manage to get the fingerprint reader working?

Regards

[vermaden]

How is NetBSD current doing there?

What is working and what is not? ;)

[bsdgooch]

Fingerprint scanner is working using fprint (and libusb):

ports/security/fprint_demo
ports/security/libfprint
ports/security/pam_fprint

Also, I've been running 7.1 with a good, working driver for the Intel 4965 wireless card via a backport from 8.0-current (with a few fixes by me):

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=221758+0+/usr/local/www/db/text/2008/freebsd-stable/20080928.freebsd-stable

I'm waiting on a little feedback from gavin@ before I post it anywhere.

NetBSD worked well, although I didn't run it for long. I was able to get a nice, stable, mostly working setup, but it was mainly for experimentation.