Best hardware and laptops for FreeBSD? I'll start

K

kriptomahsun

Since there is none, here I'll go.
1)Dell Inspiron 15 7559(2016 era)
CPU: i7 6700HQ
GPU: Nvidia GTX960M
Battery:74Wh
My report:
-UEFI loader:OK works, it doesn't work at all laptop types!
-Battery life:OK is close to Linux, around 5 hours with powerd enabled.
-Touchpad:OK function buttons work well.
-HDMI:OK but no sound over HDMI however.
-Screen backlight controlling:OK
-Audio:OK is clear. Also very loud it can be.
 
dbdemon

Thread 'FreeBSD-friendly laptop recommendations'

I want to buy myself a FreeBSD-friendly laptop, so I'm looking for recommendations.

Times are hard and unfortunately I can't justify anything particularly expensive, so it would probably have to be a slightly older model. Possibly used/refurbished? That's fine, I don't mind.

Some of the specific features I'm looking for:
  1. Suspend & resume must work reliably
  2. Economical use of power i.e. able to scale with workload
  3. Low fan noise, at least with small workloads or when idle
  4. Decent battery life (as good as can be expected for the price)
It doesn't need fantastic performance...
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Scribner

Thread 'How Do I Find a Laptop Fully Compatible With FreeBSD?'

First off, I am a complete newbie in every possible way. I am not much of a computer person, though I was able to get Ubuntu working, but only because it was so easy.

FreeBSD is a different beast. I have my heart set on getting it to work, but I know it won't be easy. I have another thread in the "Installing and Upgrading" forum if you want to help me there.

I have just learned that getting a FreeBSD laptop isn't as easy as buying whatever laptop you like and installing from a USB drive. I previously wanted a Dell Latitude 3590, but k.jacker graciously pointed out that some of the...
Tracker

Thread 'Used Laptop recommendations for FreeBSD'

Looking to get a second hand/used laptop, current one is 10+ yrs old.

Any recommendations for a newer model that's hopefully supported by FreeBSD (13.x?) to get up and running without much of a hassle ?
- wifi, suspend/resume, external monitor, decent battery, 12 gb+ ram support ... must

Low budget secondary market recommendations with hopefully easier spare parts to find - should it conk off.

Also any tips on what to keep in mind when buying a used machine?

Thinkpad or some other machines ?
 
blackbird9 said:
Thinkpad...
Click to expand...
Everyone says that, but then their price gets skyrocketed. I insistingly won't buy a thinkpad for this reason, f.. Lenovo for their greed.

There must always be alternatives. Now even the shittiest low thinkpad is somewhat expensive here. There are many good brands either way, with good Linux/BSD support.
 
I am strongly in the Thinkpad camp, too. Right now I buy AMD-powered T14 models. The major problem I am facing is that the wifi cards are coded by the BIOS so that you can't put in generic ones.
 
cracauer@ said:
I strongly in the Thinkpad camp, too. Right now I buy AMD-powered T14 models. The major problem I am facing is that the wifi cards are coded by the BIOS so that you can't put in generic ones.
Click to expand...
As I said too much pampering on one brand, will result in extreme prices of that particular brand of laptop. This helps companies becoming a cartel, or a monopoly. Latest Thinkpads suck actually. They are not that Linux/BSD friendly at all. Also soldered RAM's, learned from Apple.
 
I have a couple of Acer laptops (Pentium M and an i3) an HP 840 business laptop (i7) and a Framework 13 Ryzen 7. The two Acers and the HP work well. Each have and small issues but no show stoppers. The Framework ethernet NIC is a USB NIC. The wifi card is PCI attached but unsupported by FreeBSD. The HP's touchpad is overly sensitive but can be toned down a little with some tuning. My favourite ATM is the HP though the Framework is a pretty close second. Updating our mtw(4) driver to support the new chipset is on my list of things to do. I use an rtwn(4) for now, though an alternative could be one of spare ath(4) I have lying around here. But long term I want ot tackle the mtw(4).

The Framework is the beefiest and certainly the most versitle. I use it and the Acer 4752 (ongoing bge(4) work) as development platforms.
 
cracauer@ said:
I am strongly in the Thinkpad camp, too. Right now I buy AMD-powered T14 models. The major problem I am facing is that the wifi cards are coded by the BIOS so that you can't put in generic ones.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the information. I'm facing the same problem. Only a few days ago I tried to replace a unsupported wifi card with a Intel
one in my Lenovo Ideapad Gen 5 AMD Ryzen 7 cpu and graphics.. The notebook was not even looking at the Intel card. Do you have a work around for it or have a link to some further reading? It's such a shame. The Ideapad is very FreeBSD friendly. Everything works including suspend/resume but when it comes to wifi it turns into a nasty (you choose the word).

Important to say, the same wifi card works fine with FreeBSD on a different computer.
 
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