FreeBSD on Samsung RF511

beastDemian

beastDemian

Hello everyone,

I have a Samsung RF511 laptop and I wanted to replace my preinstalled Windows 7 with FreeBSD.

I don't know if FreeBSD is able to run on this laptop. I searched the web, but found virtually no information.

It runs on an Ivy Brdige (I5) processor which according this list (1) appears to be supported. The Graphics card is an NVidia GT 540M which is not in the compatibility list(1), but the 520 and 560 are listed as "working", so my guess is that it should work with the nvidia driver.

I'm concerned about two things primarely:

0) Has anybody on this forum successfully ran FreeBSD on this laptop?
1) What filesystem should I use? (I understand that ZFS is to be avoided entirely on laptop installations, but I might be wrong).
2) Are there any tips for improving performance on laptops?

I'm also considering waiting for 10.1 (I do hope newcons is completed in time for the release).

Regards.

[1] - https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics
 
bsdkeith said:
If you can afford the bandwidth to download GhostBSD (1.4gb) it may help you decide, it is a live installable version of FreeBSD, now at version 4.0 RC2. http://www.ghostbsd.org/
Click to expand...

Thanks, I might give it a spin in the near future, although I've already decided to switch to FreeBSD, so long as it works well.
 
Samsung says that it uses Optimus, which is not supported by FreeBSD X11 drivers. Check the BIOS to see if that can be disabled so just the Intel video is present.
 
wblock@ said:
Samsung says that it uses Optimus, which is not supported by FreeBSD X11 drivers. Check the BIOS to see if that can be disabled so just the Intel video is present.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up, I seem to have missed that.
Apparently it can't be disabled. I don't see any option to do so, and this thread I found on the x11 mailing list, confirms that it can't.

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/free ... 11591.html

Just in case, I tried running the GhostBSD live cd, but no luck.

Looks like I won't be buying any more products from samsung. 3 years ago I didn't envision that I would want to change the OS on my laptop. Today i just realized that I got an overpriced windows box.

Thanks @wblock@ and @bsdkeith.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
wblock@ said:
You can still run FreeBSD in VirtualBox, using Windows as a sort of hardware driver layer.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm running it on VirtualBox for the time being. Do you happen to know if there is a way to disable Optimus by software and just leave only the video card active?

I was contemplating the posibility of doing a port of bbswitch, it looks like...well, not exactly fun, but something that might get me a little closer to my initial goal.
 
beastDemian said:
wblock@ said:
You can still run FreeBSD in VirtualBox, using Windows as a sort of hardware driver layer.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm running it on VirtualBox for the time being. Do you happen to know if there is a way to disable Optimus by software and just leave only the video card active?
Click to expand...

Sorry, no idea.
 
Ok, just in case someone else is experiencing the same problem: it is possible to disable the optimus technology if you're using FreeBSD.
In my case, I tested it with PCBSD and it correctly disables optimus, allowing me to boot in graphical mode.

It has something to do with one for their video scripts (or whatever they are called):

https://github.com/pcbsd/pcbsd/search?u ... &q=optimus

I plan to install a vanilla FreeBSD once 10.1 comes out, using one of those scripts to disable optimus.
In the meantime, PC-BSD is working just fine.
 
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