Cheap laptop recommendation

Maturin said:
Get a used one.
As long as you don't want high end graphics support - "gaming laptop", for which FreeBSD wasn't the best choice, or need a large full power CPU for lots of large compiling jobs, which IMO ain't no laptop for anyway, a good, solid used one will do the job, saves you a lot of money, and is more probable to be supported than any brand new hardware (see the according sites for which HW is supported.)
You may exchange the drive(s), add some more RAM, or need to exchange the WLAN module (~twenty bucks), but anyway it was worth a thought.
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I always have to disagree on the gaming bit. FreeBSD support for games is pretty great. And GPU performance is better is most cases then on other platforms in my experience.
 
Erichans said:
You could have them in pairs, great for managing add-ons ;): Powering up cycle [...]
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Hahaha... 'IPL', great! And of course, the really famous photos of thinkpads on the ISS. I was kind of sad totally gutted to see them using crappy microsoft surfaces and iphones on the recent artemis 2 mission. Whatever happened to you, IBM? 😥
1778766807007.png


View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZEX2mISrn48
 
Thinkpad t430 , corei5 and 8gb of ram ,
Beware of lenovo thinkpads and wifi cards,the bios has a whitelist of models..
So if not in whitelist cannot change the wifi card
But in FreeBSD I have no problem with wifi
 
blackbird9 said:
I must look into getting hold of one of the AMD T14 thinkpads... I noticed a few people on this forum have said they are good, I seem to remember Mr Vermaden suggested that model as well, which is another good recommendation. For some reason AMD processor thinkpads don't seem to turn up very often in the UK, they all seem to be intel machines here, but I guess it's just what is on the market.
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I have an Intel T14 and it is working very well. Wifi has been my biggest challenge, Ethernet is working easily.
If that's of any assistance
:)
 
LibreQuest said:
I always have to disagree on the gaming bit. FreeBSD support for games is pretty great. And GPU performance is better is most cases then on other platforms in my experience.
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I did not say "games are not running on FreeBSD".
I said, if gaming was top priority then neither a cheap old laptop nor FreeBSD was first choice to pick.

If we are not talking some ancient ASCII games running in the terminal or the few open source games ported from Linux to FreeBSD, and also not games for consoles, the vast majority of (commercial) games are made for Windows.
So, apart from the GPU support on FreeBSD in some cases may be even better than on other platforms, you still have to create an environment first to make them run at all, which neither comes turn key nor is a trivial newbie's task, often with lots of guess'n'try fumbling, since most documentation on this one comes from Linux universe, so is insufficient, not seldom obsolete ancient crap, if there is any documenation at all.
And, yes, some then run pretty well in VirtualBox, Wine, DOSBox,... "on FreeBSD".
But many do not. Many seem to be running, or to be more correct: run technically, because you can start them and they run. But sooner or later you figure out: not actually playable smoothly - too slow, too laggy. Many others simply crash at a certain point. And many simply won't start at all, no matter what you try.
For several mizuma, winetricks or proton do a good job. But not for all. And if one of those is updated to a new version, or steam is, I experienced no game runs at all anymore. [...]

I wouldn't rate that "pretty great support" but "sufficient enough."

But to me that's not important, since to me games are not crucial, and FreeBSD's top priority is not meant to be a good gaming platform at all.
 
Maturin said:
I did not say "games are not running on FreeBSD".
I said, if gaming was top priority then neither an old laptop nor FreeBSD was first choice to pick.

If we are not talking some ancient ASCII games running in the terminal or the few open source games ported from Linux to FreeBSD, and also not games for consoles, the vast majority of games are made for Windows.
So, apart from the GPU support on FreeBSD in some cases may be even better than on other platforms, you still have to create an environment first to make them run at all, which neither comes turn key nor is a trivial newbie's task, often with lots of guess & try fumbling, since most documentation on this one comes from Linux universe, so is insufficient, not seldom obsolete ancient crap, if there is any documenation at all.
And, yes, some then run pretty well in VirtualBox, Wine, DOSBox,... "on FreeBSD".
But some do not. Many seem to be running - or to be more correct: run technically, because you can start them and they run. But sooner or later you figure out: not actually playable smoothly - too slow, too laggy. Many others simply crash at a certain point. And many simply won't start at all, no matter what you try.
For several mizuma, winetricks or proton do a good job. But not for all. And if one of those is updated to a new version, or steam is, I experienced no game runs at all anymore. [...]

I wouldn't rate that "pretty good support" but "sufficient enough" at best.

But to me that's not important, since to me games are not crucial, and FreeBSD's top priority is not meant to be a good gaming platform at all.
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You forgot about linux-steam-utils

FreshPorts -- games/linux-steam-utils: Steam launcher for FreeBSD

A set of workarounds for running the Linux Steam client under FreeBSD.
www.freshports.org www.freshports.org

That works very well also. And Mizuma has a lot of games stores working. And newer titles that I like to play work just fine. I have about 350 games on Steam and there are some that don't work at all. But the majority work. The Rockstar games don't work. :/ But that's alright. :D And in Epic games I have a few titles but not many. I use Epic to play Hitman 3 sometimes. And I have a few on GOG as well. I also just load some up in wine. I guess it depends on what you want to play. :/

I wouldn't discourage anyone, who's first priority is gaming, from trying FreeBSD as the gaming system of choice. In fact I would find it interesting to hear their experience.

EDIT: But on topic, I am using an HP 14-dq2020nr. I've upgraded the ram to 24GB and changed out the wifi for an Intel AX210. The wifi performance is super now.

And as far as gaming, I only play a few games on here. Luanti, Urban Terror, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: World at War, Half-Life 2, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Contracts, Hitman: Blood Money and The Saboteur (super laggy sometimes on the iGPU). But I have other systems for playing games. :D
 
Maturin said:
So, we are on the same page, just slightly "disagreeing" in the fine tuning of the term "supported greatly." :cool:
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Yeah, I agree with that.

EDIT: I'll just add this though. I used Linux for 20 years before moving to FreeBSD. So on Linux lots of games didn't work. And then to move for FreeBSD which had support for the titles I played was pretty great. So in my experience it was a good move for all my software and even games which was nice. The Metro series runs great too by the way. :D I've played it on Radeon and Nvidia cards on FreeBSD. It even keeps up with high refresh rate displays just fine. But I switch out hardware a lot and like to build systems.
 
cracauer@ said:
Thinkpad T14 AMD gen 1 (not T14s).
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Thanks for this recommendation. I've been looking for a laptop that's as compatible as possible with FreeBSD recently and it looks like I can get a second hand one of these T14 Gen 1 AMD models for less than £300.

It seems there may be a couple of similar models:

1. Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U 16GB 256GB SSD
2. Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 15.3in Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U 16GB 512GB SSD

Do you know if there are any compatibility differences running FreeBSD on these 2 models?
Also if there are any big differences in battery life.

Ideally I'd like the laptop to be 100% compatible with FreeBSD so everything works, including Wifi and camera/microphone etc.

Also I would like to run a ZFS mirror on it so I don't have to worry so much about data loss.

From a quick chat with a seller, he said it's possible to add a second mSATA SSD on item 1. above, but I wondered if I made a 2-way mirror with the main SSD if that would slow things down to the lowest SSD speed - but maybe not if ZFS always uses the fastest disk in the mirror, as data would be read faster and thus available faster on a read operation?
 
froggit9000 said:
Thanks for this recommendation. I've been looking for a laptop that's as compatible as possible with FreeBSD recently and it looks like I can get a second hand one of these T14 Gen 1 AMD models for less than £300.

It seems there may be a couple of similar models:

1. Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U 16GB 256GB SSD
2. Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 15.3in Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U 16GB 512GB SSD
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How can a T14 have a 15.3" screen?

Mine are 14" with Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U. With base RAM and no SSD they cost maybe $150 in the US.

froggit9000 said:
Do you know if there are any compatibility differences running FreeBSD on these 2 models?
Also if there are any big differences in battery life.

Ideally I'd like the laptop to be 100% compatible with FreeBSD so everything works, including Wifi and camera/microphone etc.

Also I would like to run a ZFS mirror on it so I don't have to worry so much about data loss.

From a quick chat with a seller, he said it's possible to add a second mSATA SSD on item 1. above, but I wondered if I made a 2-way mirror with the main SSD if that would slow things down to the lowest SSD speed - but maybe not if ZFS always uses the fastest disk in the mirror, as data would be read faster and thus available faster on a read operation?
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I don't think so. There's no additional slot, much less mSATA.
 
cracauer@ said:
Thinkpad T14 AMD gen 1 (not T14s).
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Everyone here worth listening to (regarding FreeBSD) will tell you that the best choice is a Thinkpad. I'm not worth listening to, but I would also make the same suggestion. If you are buying any laptop, I would suggest that you spend your money on the memory. I bought my school laptop from a pawn shop in Taunton, MA for $170 (16GB of soldered-in[sadly] RAM). Worth it!

However, it's important to make sure a used device is safe to use. Lots of clowns (like Anonymous) like to compromise things and then donate them for themselves, the Police, Facebook, and the DoJ to benefit from (discretion and botnets are so legal, good, and kewl). (e.g. I found two Netgear routers at the Salvation Army in Bridgewater, MA that were ready to phone-home and pretend it was factory.
 
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