
My New FreeBSD Laptop: Dell Latitude 7390 - cperciva
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2020-05-22-my-new-FreeBSD-laptop-Dell-7390.html
======
znpy
I've been given this laptop at work, I use it with Ubuntu.

It's an amazing machine. Perfect under every aspect. Way better than the
XPS13.

It's really, really remarkable. It's thin yet it has ALL the ports you might
wish for in a modern laptop, 2xUSB type A, USB-c/Thunderbolt, HDMI, Ethernet,
regular power plug, audio jack, sim card, micro-sd.

I'm glad it only has the intel integrated video card so I don't have to deal
with proprietary drivers. The only downside is that the fingerprint reader
isn't recognized and doesn't seem to be supported under gnu/linux.

Otherwise it would be 100% supported.

Wifi, bluetooth and camera all work out of the box. There's an IR camera, but
I haven't tested it.

Had it had the trackpoint, I would have declared the TinkPad definitively dead
and would have switched my personal laptop to this exact dell model (I
currently use a ThinkPad T440 for personal stuff).

Mine came with a 4c/8t i7, 16 gb ram and a 512gb nvme disk.

It's really, really a remarkable small but capable machine.

~~~
earthscienceman
It sounds to me like you just described the t480s, I'm having a hard time
imagining why I would choose the Dell over the Thinkpad. How is the screen on
the dell? The T480s is still a killer daily driver. Is the Dell as serviceable
as a thinkpad? Easy disassembly?

~~~
nojito
I don't understand how anyone can support Lenovo after the spyware incident.

~~~
OJFord
Perhaps ignorance - link?

~~~
oliveshell
_“Alert (TA15-051A)- Lenovo Superfish Adware Vulnerable to HTTPS Spoofing”:_

[https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA15-051A](https://www.us-
cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA15-051A)

------
kees99
OP writes:

> my System76 Galago Pro had its second experience with a dead/swelling
> battery.

I used to have a Dell laptop which had exactly the same problem with my first
battery. Running laptop plugged into AC adapter 99% of the time was one reason
for that happening, I imagine.

Fix was ridiculously simple - I bought a new battery (original) + a knock-off
power adapter (a more expensive one - hoping it's built well enough so it
wouldn't burn my house down - and as luck had it, it didn't). Knock-off
adapter doesn't speak magic Dell charging protocol, so laptop runs off of it,
but refuses to charge.

I kept original AC adapter for (infrequent) travel only, all the other time
powering from a knock-off. Worked a charm - second battery held something like
90% of charge 3 years later, with no signs of swell whatsoever. Compare that
to first battery, that lived on constant top-up charge (original adapter), and
after less than a year swell up to the point it wouldn't clip in anymore.

~~~
icefo
You can tell your Dell laptop to not charge the battery to 100% in bios now.
Since mine is often plugged in I enabled this setting and the capacity seems
to stay stable (I've had it for two years now)

~~~
kevinkeller
Have you measured the loss in battery capacity (battery wear), to quantify the
stability?

ThinkPad and some Asus laptops also have the feature. In fact, my Asus laptop
stops charging at 60%. Not sure if that's significantly better than stopping
at 80%.

------
todd8
I am always impressed by the serviceability of Dell computers, including this
laptop. Servers, for example, can be opened and services without tools. Blue
plastic levers and knobs are for parts that can be removed with the power off;
red plastic is for parts like internal cooling fans that can be hot swapped
while the server is running.

I wish Apple hadn’t completely given up on the market that includes most of
the computer purchases I want to make: software development, a few network
servers, NAS, content creation, home automation, gaming.

~~~
ggm
I have no major beef with the rackables, despite having just had ALL 8 2.5"SAS
drives RMA. They do understand 'no screw' replace issues in cramped locations.
(iDrac is crap. just sayin)

But I got burned on the laptops, and the company got burned on the laptops,
and repeatedly the worldwide warranty experience was poor, compared to what
was IBM and is now Lenovo. We moved to ThinkPad and apart from a cooked batch
of R- series with faulty ethernet, never regretted it.

I am glad Dell is maybe back on form in Laptop land. I probably won't be
trying yet.

~~~
todd8
Eight drives! That's bad. I always order my Dell machines with the minimum
cost single drive option so that I can buy my own drives.

------
autocorr
I got this model refurbished or resold (not sure) from Newegg for 500USD and
it's worked perfect under Debian out of the box[1]. For those wondering about
using Linux, you don't need fancy mac hardware. You don't need the retina
display and multi-gesture touchpad and you don't miss them when they're gone.
This things got a battery that lasts forever, all kinds of ports, lightweight,
and a nice keyboard. But most importantly, everything just works and was
trivial to setup if it required it: UEFI secureboot, full disk encryption with
luks, suspend and lid close, WiFi, sound, function keys. My model is the one
without the finger print reader, so as far I know, everything is supported.
"The Law of Linux Threads" states that every anecdote will replied with an
equal and opposite anecdote, but this was a night and day experience from the
old 2012 MacBook Air that I ran and a suite of weird Asus 200-300USD range
laptops that were always sketchily supported at best.

[1] Using the firmware ISO image instead of the regular one so that the intel-
wifi package would be in the image at install time.

~~~
criddell
> You don't need the retina display and multi-gesture touchpad

I may not _need_ those things, but I definitely _want_ them.

When you work with text all day, a high dpi screen is wonderful. I'd like to
see it get to the point where it's comparable to a page out of a laser
printer.

~~~
aeronaute
I agree.

I've tried using various distros on a Lenovo T480 recently. The laptop itself
is decent though the screen is a little small for my tastes. Regardless, no
matter what combination of OS and hardware that I've tried, nothing holds a
candle to a Macbook. I'd really like to be able to use Linux on whatever piece
of hardware I want, though things like the retina display and trackpad (among
other things) keep me from leaving. Macbooks are such a joy to use, which I
can't say about most other hardware/software unfortunately.

~~~
leotaku
What does "Retina" mean to you? I use a ThinkPad T480S with the WQHD display
option and have never been able to spot individual pixels.

~~~
Joeri
Apple defines retina as 220 dpi for laptops. WQHD at 14 inch is 210 dpi, so
basically retina. FHD at 14 inch, the most common resolution these days, is
157 dpi, and quite clearly not retina.

Another big difference is aspect ratio. Lenovo ships 16:9 displays. WQHD gives
an effective vertical resolution of 720px at 2x. FHD at 1.5x is also an
effective vertical resolution of 720px, or 864px at 1.25x. Apple on the other
hand ships 16:10 displays with an effective vertical resolution of 900 px at
2x. That means a 13 inch macbook pro fits more lines of code on the screen
than a 14 inch FHD or WQHD thinkpad.

~~~
zelphirkalt
LInes of code on the screen … How small do you make your font size? I mean, it
must be pretty small, so that you cannot read it with one display but can read
it with a so called retina display.

Not sure that's practical at all and thus whether it makes any difference.

~~~
aeronaute
I feel you may be looking at this through too narrow of a lens since it's not
just about lines of code, though that's one part of it. I think the point is
that a 13 inch Retina screen can fit more "stuff" than a 14 inch non-Retina
FHD/WQHD screen.

------
dddddaviddddd
I also have the Intel 8265 chipset in my T480. Currently only 802.11g speeds
are supported in FreeBSD, but good news is that work is starting on bringing
AC support to the relevant driver:
[https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
wireless/2020-Ap...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
wireless/2020-April/009055.html)

I've tried doing PCI passthrough to get full wireless speeds but never figured
out how to make it all work with suspend/resume
[https://www.davidschlachter.com/misc/t480-bhyve-wifi-pci-
pas...](https://www.davidschlachter.com/misc/t480-bhyve-wifi-pci-passthrough)

Other than frustrations with WiFi, using FreeBSD as my main OS has been an
interesting learning experience.

~~~
floatboth
> PCI passthrough to get full wireless speeds

Wow! I've been thinking about this (for unsupported Broadcrap etc. cards) ages
ago, very nice to see that someone actually did it :)

------
wolf550e
Why is sendmail even an option? And worse, a default?

Why qmail? Is it really original qmail, or qmail with freebsd patches, or
notqmail, or what?

(In light of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23247196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23247196))

Why not postfix?

~~~
erk__
As far as I can tell it is pretty much up to the user, in the port [0] there
is 16 config options for what you want to have, it also seems that the above
referenced bug got fixed only a few hours ago in the commit history.

[0]:
[https://www.freshports.org/mail/qmail/](https://www.freshports.org/mail/qmail/)

------
ornornor
Considering replacing my t410. Is this a good contender for Linux? I’m reading
the fan is loud, speakers subpar (quiet), and the keyboard isn’t great with
very low travel.

~~~
cperciva
The fan on my laptop is quiet unless I'm doing something very power-intensive
like an 8-way parallel compile. It will probably depend on the CPU model you
get though.

The speakers and keyboard feel fine to me, but that's very subjective.
Speaking of subjective, this feels like the most solidly constructed laptop
I've ever used.

~~~
ornornor
Thanks for the info. So yours isn't the so-called "2 in 1", right? It cannot
be flipped over as some kind of tablet, and doesn't have the touchscreen.

~~~
cperciva
Correct. No touchscreen, lid opens ~180 degrees but not 360 degrees.

I wish Dell wouldn't use the same model number for different models. :-/

------
twic
How come some config goes in /etc/sysctl.conf, and some goes in
/boot/loader.conf?

Is there a systematic way to know what config goes in a syctl-style file, and
what goes in a rc-style file (via sysrc)?

I have never used FreeBSD, but i am excited to see that there are only four
(?) config interfaces used in these instructions!

~~~
loeg
> How come some config goes in /etc/sysctl.conf, and some goes in
> /boot/loader.conf?

As cperciva notes, sysctl.conf is read by userland during rc(8) "multiuser"
boot. loader.conf is used by the bootloader to set tunables (knobs that can
only be changed at boot time), load kernel modules early, and configure other
bootloader settings.

Some sysctls are also tunables; for backwards compatibility or in case it is
useful for the value to be set during boot before userspace runs.

> Is there a systematic way to know what config goes in a syctl-style file,
> and what goes in a rc-style file (via sysrc)?

Sure:

loader.conf:
[https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=loader.conf](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=loader.conf)

rc.conf:
[https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=rc.conf](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=rc.conf)

sysctl.conf:
[https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysctl.conf](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysctl.conf)

------
bluedino
These are really nice machines, compatible with Linux and upgrade able. Almost
as nice as a thinkpad.

But the work at home rush on laptops made them hard to find. You could get
them for $100-200 less than a similar spec T-series.

------
robocat
Isn’t there an XPS 13 model 7390 too?

I know that when I bought my XPS15 Dell didn’t officially support Linux on it.
I think I was told I could order the more expensive equivalent latitude model.
However the XPS15 has been well supported, with plenty of Linux specific BIOS
fixes (auto updated on Ubuntu).

Aside to author: your page breaks mobile Safari _hard_ on an iPad! Looks like
a Safari bug (unless author is being tricky!). Anyone else wanting to read on
iPad, use reader view.

~~~
cperciva
_Aside to author: your page breaks mobile Safari hard on an iPad!_

That's very weird. I haven't changed the CSS on that site since... uhh... some
time around 2006, actually.

~~~
robocat
Mobile Safari gets into a bistable loop - I’m guessing due to an interaction
between widths and font reflow (maybe font or weight is dependent on something
in CSS).

I’ve seen it before with mouse :hover changing to bold, causing reflow due to
increased text width, causing element to shift from under mouse, causing
not(:hover), causing normal font (start loop again, repeat forever).

Some browsers are better at detecting looping reflow problems and halting
them.

~~~
cperciva
Is it still having issues? I manually wrapped a <pre> tag which was causing
issues for some people.

------
blfr
It the casing plastic?

------
johnchristopher
I love my Dell Latitude 7280 that I got for €300 (second hand). Almost brand
new. I shelled out €150 for the `official` dell dock later (second hand) and
then €150 later to upgrade the nvme drive from 256gb to 1tb and the RAM from
8gb to 16gb.

Only thing I miss and somehow can feel is the lack of dual channel. I'd trade
one 16gb dd4 for two ddr3 slots any day.

edit: forgot why I wrote it down: it runs linux fine ^^ (kubuntu 18.04)

~~~
javitury
> the 'official' dell dock

Do you use Linux? One of the reasons why I chose a thinkpad is having a
docking station that reliably works on linux. Any past experience with
thinkpad docks? How do they compare?

~~~
johnchristopher
It's my first dock so I can't compare but so far everything's working fine.
Only one screen plugged in, mirror and extended mode works fine though.

I sometimes have hiccups (black screen, needs to plug it back in and out) when
unplugging from the dock but I think it only shows up after a kernel upgrade.

It's the wd15.

------
epistasis
It looks like Dell no longer sells this model. What other Dell models would
have similar hardware compatibilities?

~~~
neogodless
If you're still interested in this specific one, consider the Dell outlet:

[https://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/InventorySe...](https://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb&brandid=2801&sign=PXhcOSHtr1T4IOw%2fPR7UdRDYjlDOgwPJI5xBFJifDmCyALZuG8V7%2fdLWv466H3WmF4UjIb%2bUC3tggwGwrdBI1vDBj%2fiPCXLwAI03d88T%2fmN6I3id2fD4uZWGo%2bD89Cr5fXEctCHMnAfN34BmqKMq6Sku21GdR9%2b%2fF6izHbQY3DM1AVU5qQiHUT48k3I%2fqPiLm2i5Xh9TenwHjjkc2JXfLLBNmnVuH1xMA4J0Szlap5aMEXVHQD%2bbJUQ0nCtORRRURBoo2FduuS8%3d)

------
8K832d7tNmiQ
Do people have a problem opening the site?

It keeps resizing the font for every second on my iPad.

~~~
timc3
Totally fine on my iPad

------
fouc
Can anyone tell me what the 15" equivalent of this laptop would be?

------
beervirus
What a nightmare.

------
znpy
This has already been posted, so I'll paste my comment on that post:

I've been given this laptop at work, I use it with Ubuntu.

It's an amazing machine. Perfect under every aspect. Way better than the
XPS13.

It's really, really remarkable. It's thin yet it has ALL the ports you might
wish for in a modern laptop, 2xUSB type A, USB-c/Thunderbolt, HDMI, Ethernet,
regular power plug, audio jack, sim card, micro-sd.

I'm glad it only has the intel integrated video card so I don't have to deal
with proprietary drivers. The only downside is that the fingerprint reader
isn't recognized and doesn't seem to be supported under gnu/linux.

Otherwise it would be 100% supported.

Wifi, bluetooth and camera all work out of the box. There's an IR camera, but
I haven't tested it.

Had it had the trackpoint, I would have declared the TinkPad definitively dead
and would have switched my personal laptop to this exact dell model (I
currently use a ThinkPad T440 for personal stuff).

Mine came with a 4c/8t i7, 16 gb ram and a 512gb nvme disk.

It's really, really a remarkable small but capable machine.

~~~
dang
Please don't copy/paste comments on HN. It lowers the signal/noise ratio and
makes for pain when we go to merge duplicate threads. I've consolidated all
the replies to your comment under the other one
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23269802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23269802)).

If you want to refer to something you posted elsewhere, please use a link.
Better still, when you see a split discussion, email hn@ycombinator.com so we
can merge them. We'll make sure your comment ends up in the winning thread.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20merge&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
znpy
well duplicate posting lowers the signal/noise ratio too.

how about, maybe, deleting the duplicate posting instead of bothering people
that contributes with genuine personal opinions based on first-hand
experience?

~~~
dang
HN's software deliberately allows reposts as a way of giving good submissions
multiple cracks at the bat. We want to mitigate the randomness of what gets
noticed on the /newest page, which can be something of a lottery. When there
are duplicate threads, we resolve the signal/noise issue by merging them:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20moved%20comments&sort=byDate&type=comment).
That's one reason we ask people not to copy/paste their comments, as I
mentioned.

