FreeBSD-friendly laptop recommendations

dbdemon

dbdemon

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 as long as it has the above features.

I also don't mind some tweaking to make it work, although I'm hoping I won't have to spend months on it. I want to get on with doing something productive.

I'm a complete numpty with hardware. Any and all recommendations or other advice are welcome.
 
I noticed this X13 Gen 2 from Lenovo for $550 USD yesterday, if you think you'd be satisfied with 8 GB of RAM.

'seems like a bargain for a new laptop with a three-year warranty. Plus it has real wired Ethernet; just buy the weird Ethernet extension adapter for it from eBay.

Note: I'd avoid any laptop that doesn't have any good, cheap option for reliable wired Ethernet. The USB-C Ethernet adapters often stink (e.g., Can the throughput of an AX88179-based USB Ethernet adapter be improved?).

I bought an X1 Carbon Gen 9 last year and love it in many respects, but it costs $300 to get reliable wired Ethernet on it using a Thunderbolt dock or adapter. And even then, the adapter's not so portable.
 
December 2022 from Tracker, replies there might be useful:

forums.freebsd.org

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...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

July 2023: A laptop compatible with FreeBSD?

I use an HP ZBook 17 G2, around eight years old. Probably not much help to you, because I guess there will be few of these available secondhand.
 
A year ago I had similar issue. I found used thinkpads more pricey than expected - and then you don't know what you get. So finally I decided for a new one, simple business version as it is used only with FreeBSD, and second-newest (at that time) cpu generation. That became a Fujitsu A3511, i3-1115G4, 256GB WDC SN530, full HD, 5+ hours on battery, a real lot of connectors and complete repair manual. Bluetooth and camera never used, everything else worked after some patching (patches are now in main). Its not the most elegant neither most robust, but suits me and was below 350€.
 
grahamperrin said:
cracauer@ thanks, I meant, details about the wake/resume issue.
Click to expand...

Oh. Yeah mine misbehaves badly when waking up and leaves filesystems dirty. I currently don't own a laptop that suspends/resumes under FreeBSD.

What I would like to have is the equivalent of Linux' kernel-driven (not BIOS driven) suspend-to-disk support. But that is a huge job to implement.
 
i have a realtek usb3 + usb3 hub device which i bought from aliexpress for maybe $15
it does > 900mbs both tx and rx and it is in fact faster than the pci realtek on the box i have it hooked

idVendor = 0x0bda
idProduct = 0x8153
 
dbdemon said:
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.
Click to expand...

I bought a refurb Thinkpad T430s going on 4 years ago for AU$250. I5 2.6GHz 8GiB RAM, 120GB SSD. It's been good value since getting suspend / resume working reliably.

dbdemon said:
Suspend & resume must work reliably
Click to expand...

i915kms works now, took a while to suss out on 12.3R.

dbdemon said:
Economical use of power i.e. able to scale with workload
Click to expand...

1.2 to 3.something GHz via powerd x 4 cores, does me.

dbdemon said:
Low fan noise, at least with small workloads or when idle
Click to expand...

Summer here, 25°C ambient, CPUs 45-48°C idle, fan off or ~3krpm, scarcely audible at full speed, hard to get too hot.

dbdemon said:
Decent battery life (as good as can be expected for the price)
Click to expand...

My battery is down to about 60% original, about 3h at idle 8.4W after power tuning; due for a replacement.

dbdemon said:
It doesn't need fantastic performance as long as it has the above features.

I also don't mind some tweaking to make it work, although I'm hoping I won't have to spend months on it. I want to get on with doing something productive.
Click to expand...

Another plus for Thinkpads is the wikis devoted to them, so there's a fan base, albeit mostly Linux based.

dbdemon said:
I'm a complete numpty with hardware. Any and all recommendations or other advice are welcome.
Click to expand...

With Thinkpads it seems basically the older the better, but kidz want speeed as ever.

My beloved (IBM) T23 only expired two years ago. 1133MHz P-III but a keyboard to die for. I'd bought it used C.2005 so got 15 years of merciless flogging out if it.

And I have two X200, one with broken fan, with the older great keyboard & working suspend. I must be getting old ...
 
Well, I have a ThinkBook 14 Gen 4 AMD, which has a SODIMM slot and a Ryzen 7 5825U... this is what I use for FreeBSD laptop. I did have to swap out the original RealTek wifi card for an Intel-branded one. Works great, I don't care for fingerprint reader. That one can even compile www/firefox without complaining. I get linker errors towards the end, but those seem to be due to some weird unresolved dependencies, rather than the hardware not being up to task.

USB-C, HDMI, USB 3.1 - they all work no issues. I even have a no-name USB ethernet adapter that I had to use sometimes - no issues with it. Makes me wonder why other brands don't play with FreeBSD as well as Lenovo does? WTF... (I did have trouble on a Zephyrus laptop that cost twice as much as the ThinkBook).
 
dr3mro said:
Thinkpad x270
Click to expand...
You can run it with 32GB, even though the spec says it should only work with 16GB.

Frame.work 11th gen are also very solid and it's an open design. 12th gen work if you're willing to put in some work. If you get the 11th gen, you can upgrade the mainboard quite easily some time down the road.
 
cmoerz said:
You can run it with 32GB, even though the spec says it should only work with 16GB.

Frame.work 11th gen are also very solid and it's an open design. 12th gen work if you're willing to put in some work. If you get the 11th gen, you can upgrade the mainboard quite easily some time down the road.
Click to expand...
I took a look - that stuff is actually pretty big and heavy: 4.something Kg, which translates to 9 lbs... That's a desktop replacement, not a real laptop (even if it looks like one). I guess that's the tradeoff between being compact and having user swappable components... ?
 
When it comes to FreeBSD, Lenovo must be the first choice. X series won't do you any wrong. I owned one X1 carbon 2016 for nearly 5 years, runs smooth and have all the things you requested.
 
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