Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 01:05:11 +1100 (EST) From: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> To: Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen@getmail.no> Cc: David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com>, freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Recommended laptop for FreeBSD 10.2 Xfce workstation? Message-ID: <20160401003029.F39547@sola.nimnet.asn.au> In-Reply-To: <20160331142243.6e81d13b04bb549362a1fea2@getmail.no> References: <56F6290E.10500@holgerdanske.com> <20160331142243.6e81d13b04bb549362a1fea2@getmail.no>
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On Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:22:43 +0200, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote: > On Fri, 25 Mar 2016 23:15:42 -0700 > David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> wrote: > > > freebsd-mobile: > > > > I'm looking for a new or used laptop that is known to work correctly > > with FreeBSD 10.2, Xfce, Firefox, Thunderbird, (whatever free) Office, > > etc., plus encryption and virtualization. > > > > Notes on your points: 1. Intel Graphics might not work. Most modern > laptops use UEFI, which allows you to use scfb - it might work, but > it isn't a graphics race horse. > 13. There are only a limited number of sd card controllers that has > been tested - if the laptop has a different one, it might not be > detected at all. If David is prepared to consider a used laptop, a bit earlier than the latest bleeding-edge hardware, there are likely quite a few suitable machines that won't have many of the issues that are still problematic with the very latest kit, whoever the manufacturer. > Some things you haven't mentioned: > suspend / hibernation - this might not work at all. FWIW, my newest > laptop have a SSD instead of a "spinning rust" hard drive - this > makes shutdown / startup time acceptable for me, so I don't need > suspend - I simply shutdown my laptop before going somewhere else. > YMMV. FreeBSD doesn't do hibernation (S4, suspend-to-disk) at all, but there are quite a few laptops that do a great job of S3 (suspend-to-RAM), for instance most of the higher-end Lenovos (T- and X- series especially), which have been and are frequently used by some FreeBSD developers. Explore the wiki: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops For an example of something not much older that might tick a lot of your boxes: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops/Thinkpad_T540p > battery time - on some laptops, FreeBSD's power management isn't as > good as in other operating systems (for example Linux), resulting in > a shorter run-time on battery when you run FreeBSD on the machine. I get nearly 6 hours at idle on my (older again) Lenovo X200 with the smaller 6-cell battery, but that's more a notebook. Power management responds well to some tuning, eg whether using the deeper sleep states and tuning powerd(8) for desired power saving vs responsiveness, etc. > Question: > 4. Why do you want to have an optical drive built into your laptop? > Do you use optical media that often? For me, I use optical media > rarely these days, so a usb connected optical reader / burner is > enough. Agreed, this requirement would seriously limit available choices. > It is hard to recommend anything specific; currently any given laptop > model lasts about 3 - 6 months before the vendor drops it (or changes > internal components). Also, figuring out what the internal components > actually are (in hope of matching against FreeBSD supported hardware > list) is difficult as vendors rarely describe the specification at > that level of detail. Well, as others on freebsd-questions responded on this topic, it's rarely worth buying new and cheap. With Lenovos, for example, the cheaper W- and G-series seem generally far more problematic than the more upmarket ones .. whereas if buying used you can probably get two higher-quality machines for the price of one lesser-quality new one, speaking generally of course. cheers, Ian (who still has one working IBM T23 with three spares :)
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