Laptops known to work

cfw · Nov 30, 2014

Are there any laptops known to work with FreeBSD?

Is there a list of compatible notebooks?

I'm specifically wondering if any of the recent Thinkpad T or X series have at least wireless and graphics working (not necessarily accelerated 3D). Suspend/resume and USB 3.0 would also be nice.

fonz · Nov 30, 2014

Perhaps the very first thread in this forum helps? Thread 17308

cfw · Nov 30, 2014

fonz said:
Perhaps the very first thread in this forum helps? Thread 17308

It would if the link to the list wasn't dead for weeks now.

fonz · Nov 30, 2014

There's also the wiki.

cfw · Nov 30, 2014

Thanks, that's very useful.

Is the compatibility list gone for good?

fonz · Nov 30, 2014

cfw said:
Is the compatibility list gone for good?

It might be, I'm not sure. You can probably consider the wiki to be more authoritative anyway.

jrm@ · Nov 30, 2014

cfw said:
I'm specifically wondering if any of the recent Thinkpad T or X series have at least wireless and graphics working (not necessarily accelerated 3D). Suspend/resume and USB 3.0 would also be nice.

Haswell support isn't ready yet, but it's rumored to be ready soon. The FreeBSD Foundation is supporting a developer to do the work. You could still run with the VESA driver until that time.

I own an X220 with Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 wireless and with FreeBSD 10.1 everything works including suspend and resume. My girlfriend has a T530 and everything works as well although there are a few quirks with suspend and resume.

For the most part if you make the right choice with the wireless and graphics cards (search the forums for more information) both the T and X series Thinkpads are well supported. Warning: Lenovo has a white list, that makes it difficult to add a new wireless card. If the included card has problems you'll have to hack the BIOS to add a new one.

cfw · Nov 30, 2014

Thanks for the hint on the whitelist, that's important to know.

I can't find the X220 in the online shop but it's plentiful on eBay and looks like a very good option.

I can't tell which X1 is meant here: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops/Thinkpad_X1_Carbon. Is it the new one or Gen 1?

jrm@ · Nov 30, 2014

One correction: the brightness keys don't work with the X220 with 10.1. At least not by default.

The X220 has been supplanted by, first, the X230 and now the X240. If you don't mind slightly older hardware, a used X220 has advantages (in my opinion) over the newer models. The big two for me are the keyboard layout and the separate trackpad buttons. I disable the trackpad and use the pointing stick. Without the discrete buttons, I'm not sure if one can disable the trackpad and still use the buttons.

Sorry, I'm not sure about the X1 Carbon.

cfw · Nov 30, 2014

It's probably safer to pick the X220 than the new ones for compatibility.

I like the 3K display on the T540p but it seems like a gamble.

Thanks for the insights.

BSDBernd · Dec 2, 2014

cfw said:
Are there any laptops known to work with FreeBSD?

Is there a list of compatible notebooks?

I'm specifically wondering if any of the recent Thinkpad T or X series have at least wireless and graphics working (not necessarily accelerated 3D). Suspend/resume and USB 3.0 would also be nice.

Here is a list of laptops that have been tested with 11.0-CURRENT (partly earlier versions of it) with the test proposed on that site and where you can see what works and what not: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops.

And also: look at the hardware notes of the FreeBSD version you want to install. If you e.g. want to install 10.1-RELEASE: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.1R/hardware.html. There you see a (very long) list of all the hardware that is supported.