
Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD? - NhanH
I&#x27;m thinking of replacing my current XPS 13 running Debian with a FreeBSD laptop. I&#x27;m looking for something with a nice screen (preferably better than 1080), and reasonable spec (the usual i5, 8GB+ Ram &amp; SSD etc.). Is anyone currently using a FreeBSD laptop, or recommending one?
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cperciva
I have been running FreeBSD on laptops since 2004. Right now the major problem
you'll run into is that almost every system out there has Haswell video, and
FreeBSD doesn't have a working driver for that yet.

That said, there have been a lot of commits recently preparing the tree for
importing a version of the linux Haswell driver, so I'm optimistic that this
will be fixed soon. In the mean time, unless your need for a new laptop is
urgent, I'd suggest waiting.

~~~
tiffanyh
>> "there have been a lot of commits recently preparing the tree for importing
a version of the linux Haswell driver"

Not meaning to start a license flame war, but how does this work?

How does FreeBSD import something that's presumably GPL'ed?

~~~
feld
The Intel graphics driver code in Linux uses a license which is BSD
compatible.

Look at all the files here to see the license in the header:

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/gpu/dr...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/)

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davidw
If this is as open as claimed, it should be easy to get FreeBSD running on it
in short order:

[https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-
laptop](https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-laptop)

Downvoters - care to explain? Open hardware means it will work for everyone,
which is pretty cool in my book.

~~~
ion201
> Open hardware

Nope. Its i7 cpu is definitely not what I would consider open hardware. So
then what's the point of this? If there's nothing 'libre' about most of the
hardware inside then it's just a normal i7 laptop with Linux pre-installed. I
don't see how this is any different than just buying a laptop and immediately
replacing everything on it with OSS.

~~~
davidw
It's "open" in the sense of specs and lack of proprietary blobs, which is
probably a good start at getting FreeBSD running there, which is what the
question was all about, rather than having a purer-than-thou system.

------
ChuckMcM
These guys: [https://system76.com/laptops](https://system76.com/laptops) have
laptops that will run either FreeBSD or Linux. I run Ubuntu on a Thinkpad
T430s but looking to upgrade it to a Thinkpad T450s but I want to check out
the keyboard first.

~~~
houst0n_
They seem to have some pretty neg feedback:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1ix69a/system76_suppo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1ix69a/system76_support_am_i_crazy_or_is_this_a_bit/)

~~~
leef
I've been using an (ubuntu) system 76 laptop [1]for the last two years. Great
machine, no issues.

[1] -
[https://system76.com/laptops/gazelle](https://system76.com/laptops/gazelle)

~~~
photex
Been super happy with my Galago UltraPro as well. Only reason I haven't tried
FreeBSD on it yet is because of the Haswellian chipset within

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jrapdx3
Depends on how you intend to use it. In my scenario I initially planned to
dual-boot FBSD/Windows 8.1 but found a different solution.

In January 2014 I acquired a MS Surface Pro 2. Display is 1920x1080, and it
has 8G ram/245G SSD. A problem dual booting is FBSD didn't do Secure Boot,
which meant a hassle switching back into Win8.1. SB would have to be disabled
to install/run FBSD, and Win8.1 wants SB to be enabled.

However the SP2/Win8.1 came with client Hyper-V. Fortunately running FBSD in a
HV VM was pretty easy to do. In fact FBSD is distributed as a VHD image making
installation dead simple.

Running FBSD in a VM works well for my purposes, primarily developing web
servers and server-side systems. It's quite useful to run the server in the VM
and use a browser on the host OS to connect to it (e.g., for testing, etc.).

Surprisingly, an X server and GUI desktop running in the VM are reasonably
responsive, and not a problem editing stuff with Emacs once fonts and the like
are adjusted to taste.

Anyway we know mileage varies (a lot), but this kind of setup has its merits.
In my case, with far fewer moving parts to juggle it's proven to be a useable
alternative to dual booting.

~~~
wampus
Upon reading your post, it strikes me how archaic it seems to install any OS
these days. It would be awesome if every OS was available as a base VM image
that worked out of the box (networking, video, audio, etc.), ready to enhance
and customize. I wouldn't even want a host OS beyond what is needed to manage
the hypervisor.

------
bitshepherd
Having been running FreeBSD on laptops since ~2004-2005, I've had the best
luck out of Dell laptops. ThinkPads are a close second, but ACPI is wonky on
mine, resulting in being able to sleep but not wake up. Fun times when I need
to be mobile. :)

As with most things FreeBSD, you'll have better luck not running current
generation of hardware, but the previous generation, as support for the newest
hardware usually lags a bit.

------
thmzlt
I got a Thinkpad X230 for the exact same purpose. It doesn't have the nice
screen but takes two SSDs and 16GB of RAM.

I installed FreeBSD on it last night and apparently everything was detected
and seems to be working fine.

The FreeBSD wiki has a Laptops page:
[https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops](https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops)

~~~
NhanH
Sadly, the Thinkpad X230 seems to be replaced by the newer X240 now. Any idea
if it's working just as well? I probably can still get a refurbished X230
somewhere, but the screen is a bit too bad :(.

~~~
serf
X series laptops have historically had a lot of screen options to choose from
if one wishes to upgrade. I have a X201s with an IPS from the tablet version I
swapped in. 400+ nit outdoor panel, couldn't be happier with it.

------
jdeve1op
I used to use FreeBSD 4.3 ⇒ 9.0 on desktops/laptops since 2002, and on 2012 I
gave up and installed Arch Linux. Now I don't care much of broken ports or
some inconsistencies in my local make.conf, "make buildworld" is a forgotten
nightmare - if comparing with an update of linux kernel, which just works fine
through pacman.

The most of pain I've got from USB support - literally I have been fighting
with getting my built-in SD cardreader actually reading cards - not pretending
to do so, for months. And nobody from USB-team even bothered to reply
something other than "try to experiment with some quirks".

The final decision to move to Linux was lack of Java support - OpenJDK isn't
that cool as Oracle's twin-mate.

Its not a hate-speeh or a flamewar ignition, it's just my IMHO - FreeBSD is
not a comfortable to have it on a laptop, especially with some proprietary
drivers involved.

------
yellowapple
I can't speak for _Free_ BSD, but for OpenBSD at least, I've had decent
experiences with my Dell Latitude D830. Good hardware support, though
networking and power management were a little iffy (the Intel wireless
required a firmware download, and it was really touchy about hibernation,
though that might have been a configuration issue on my part, seeing as this
was the first of many OpenBSD installs I've done).

I've since been using it for other OS experiments (Haiku for awhile; now I'm
venturing into MINIX), but it handled OpenBSD (and Slackware before it) rather
nicely, and I don't imagine FreeBSD would be any _worse_.

Now, that's not modern at all, but I'm willing to bet that a more modern
enterprise-like Dell would be similar in build but with newer components.

------
b1twise
I'm not exactly on topic, but I hope you can forgive me touting my own
project. I'm trying to raise money to fund the work necessary to get OpenBSD
running on Apple hardware. One can buy an Apple laptop with cash in any mid-
sized mall around the world. Add in what I think is the most privacy oriented
operating system, and you have a great match. Apple only updates hardware a
couple of times a year, and its pretty well built.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/LighthouseProjects/comments/2ukg1u/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/LighthouseProjects/comments/2ukg1u/fund_work_to_add_support_of_apple_laptops_to/)

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contingencies
Yeah, FreeBSD always sucked for hardware. For a random option with bonus
hardcore points, you could consider running the SeL4 microkernel, then both
Linux and FreeBSD as paravirtualized guests, letting Linux do the video. See
[http://sel4.systems/](http://sel4.systems/) and
[http://www.nicta.com.au/pub?pslides=8203](http://www.nicta.com.au/pub?pslides=8203)

------
octix
Does FreeBSD play nice with resolutions higher than 1080? I mean, I know linux
still has issues and I always thought *BSD a re bit behind when it comes to
Desktop experience.

I think you should look for a good linux laptop 1st and check for FreeBSD
compatibility.

~~~
UNIXgod
I've been using FreeBSd since 4.x. I'm assuming your referring to video
drivers and the xwindowing system which is non operating system specific. I
should remind you that this is a subsystem (or extension) and should be viewed
from the point of a view as power users (and engineers) already know where to
find out about chipsets, their relabeling, and of course the ability to set up
their configuration intelligently. More importantly a recommendation like this
shouldn't be considered unless you've spent significant time building and
customizing your OS and graphical layer.

------
TimSchumann
I've been trying to talk myself out of using one of the BSD's as my day to day
OS because I'm afraid all the productive hours in my life will turn into
threads like this.

Mostly just commenting so I remember to check back on this tomorrow :-)

------
sebcat
I use FreeBSD on a Thinkpad x201, I really love it.

Newer thinkpads will probably be a bit problematic, or so I've heard.
Currently on a zenbook w/ Linux because of problems related to UEFI boot.

------
carapace
Same question, for OpenBSD?

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lwh
Get a thinkpad with an NVIDIA card that their FreeBSD driver supports

------
bsg75
Curious (new to *BSD), why FreeBSD and not PC-BSD for a laptop?

~~~
wsha
PC-BSD is built on top of FreeBSD, so there's likely not much difference
between something can run one vs. the other, especially if you want to set up
a desktop environment (basically what PC-BSD provides).

------
basecamp88
Have you considered the 2015 edition of xps 13?

------
neduma
How about Vagrant + FreeBSD in MacBook?

~~~
octix
It could be a shock to you, but not everyone loves Mac OS X. There are
(imagine that) other OSs that have terminals too.

Oh snap! I must've stroke a chord. What did I say? I mean, he asks how to
grill a steak, but some suggest how to cook brats.

~~~
superuser2
OSX is very good at not having hardware compatibility issues, and you don't
need to interact with it very much to open VirtualBox. While this is not the
most performant option (OSX idles with a good chunk of RAM), it is probably
the easiest and most reliable path to not worrying about hardware
compatibility, drivers, etc.

~~~
jrgifford
"OS X is very good at not having hardware compatibility issues" is a really,
really old (and flawed) argument.

The thing that makes OS X so darn "stable" is that they write drivers for a
very limited set of hardware - the reference implementation.

On the Linux reference implementation, everything works properly (See the
ThinkPad T series).

On the Windows reference implementation, everything works properly (See the
Surface).

Simply because something works when it's built for a piece of hardware (think
embedded systems) doesn't mean that it will work when running on something
that it wasn't designed for.

~~~
superuser2
>Simply because something works when it's built for a piece of hardware (think
embedded systems) doesn't mean that it will work when running on something
that it wasn't designed for.

No one is advocating doing that. And no one gives a shit about how hard it was
for the engineers.

You should buy a Macbook precisely because it is a reference implementation
that works as a consumer product. Let OSX deal with laptop-y details like
WiFi, screen brightness, battery/power management, suspend/resume, and device
drivers. Let VirtualBox abstract away those details so FreeBSD behaves like it
does on _its_ reference implementation - server hardware.

~~~
RexRollman
I've been doing that with NetBSD and VMWare Fusion on my 2013 Macbook Air with
8GB RAM. It's nice but I do miss running NetBSD on bare hardware.

OS X does add a lot of overhead and I would love to run NetBSD on a dedicated
hypervisor. In particular I want to try with the free Hyper-V Server because
it has such great hardware/driver support but HVS doesn't support wireless
networking.

