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Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

freebsdfoundation.github.io

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Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#61

Post by stackghost »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #34
stackghost wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's crazy how much negativity there is in comment threads like this I think it's because this chart continues a trend I've noticed with BSD zealots. Namely, there's some sort of reality distortion effect at play. Consider that there are obvious bullshit scores on TFA, like giving a laptop 9/10 when the fucking wifi doesn't work. In reality, this should be 5/10 or arguably 0/10. After all, what use is a laptop witho…

> I would get a new laptop because a laptop without WiFi is useless. Why would you not just replace the wifi card or use a USB one? You're greatly overemphasizing how much this matters.

I prefer not to live that dongle life.

WiFi on a laptop is table stakes. I'd rather use an operating system that works without dongulation.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#62

Post by AshamedCaptain »

olivierestsage wrote: post #12

It's crazy how much negativity there is in comment threads like this. I would get it if FreeBSD was a product you paid for, or someone was evangelizing about how you're missing out if you don't get the FreeBSD laptop experience, or something. As someone who liked FreeBSD in the past and curious to check it out again, I'm glad to have this handy list.

What is sad is that even though Linux now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows, we've exchanged one problem with another, because nowadays most of the hardware I see is only supported on Linux and nothing else.

Even on PCs, latest generation AMD graphics cards (already >1yr old) are not supported in _anything_ other than Linux (and Windows). This is just sad.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#63

Post by atmosx »

kombine wrote: post #56
sunshine-o wrote: post #44

I personally feel like the race to support a vast array of hardware is very costly for such a small team and might be a waste of their precious resources. Of course I love FreeBSD and want it to be supported on my desktop or laptop but at what cost? Here is the question I have always wanted to ask: Why not make the ultimate compromise and say: you will be able to run FreeBSD on almost all laptops but it is gonna be t…

I agree. Linux has a wealth of hardware drivers and the time would be better spent on a translation layer or do it via running a VM or even using LLMs to port the drivers over to FreeBSD en masse. That way BSD team can focus on their unique strengths.

My guess is that *BSDs will see a huge boosts in HW support in the following years, primarily due to LLMs.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#64

Post by skydhash »

stackghost wrote: post #60
skydhash wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t care about administrating your computer and just want to use some software on some hardware, the BSDs are not that great. But if you do, the experience is better on the BSD land because cohesiveness reduces cognitive debt. Also I wouldn’t make hardware support an OS quality metric. Linux get by with NDA and with direct contributions from the vendors. Which is something the BSDs don’t want/don’t benefit f…

>If you don’t care about administrating your computer and just want to use some software on some hardware, the BSDs are not that great. Yes this is my opinion also. BSD seems more suited to people for whom fiddling with the OS itself is the point, rather than the OS being a tool to get other things done. I fall firmly into the latter camp. I'd rather chew glass than manually set flags in rc.conf

I like the word tune rather than fiddle. The BSD are very stable. You adjust some configuration, and then updates without having to change your tools or your config with every release. The config are not provided out of the box but the manuals can be very informative.

A lot of current GNU/Linux complexity have no benefits for most users and may be an hindrance when they want to slightly alter their use cases.

  sudo -> doas
  systemd -> rcctl
  nftable -> pf
  iproute2|netplan -> ifconfig|route
  alsa|pulseaudio|pipewire -> sndiod
  cgroups|podman|lxc -> jails(freebsd)*
The first column may have valid use cases, but I strongly doubt those cases include casual usage. Simple tools that work well is better than complex tools that solves everything.

* Openbsd does not like containers or being a vm host

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#65

Post by supliminal »

Yeah you run into this head on trying to use BSD. It’s too much glue and compat work. By the end of it you no longer have a coherent system, you’re back to Linux.

I use FBSD on an old-ish Lenovo W540 without too many hiccups. No, it’s not for everyone and never was. I wouldn’t suggest to anyone to run a BSD as a daily driver, or at all, unless they have a good reason to. Once you cross that line you need to know what and why.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#66

Post by Gud »

wolvoleo wrote: post #25
olivierestsage wrote: post #12

It's crazy how much negativity there is in comment threads like this. I would get it if FreeBSD was a product you paid for, or someone was evangelizing about how you're missing out if you don't get the FreeBSD laptop experience, or something. As someone who liked FreeBSD in the past and curious to check it out again, I'm glad to have this handy list.

I am not negative about it at all. I love it. It's not as polished as linux obviously, especially for desktop usage but the maintainers are very much on the ball (and they do a lot of work to get things to compile and work, there's a lot of linuxisms they have to work around).

Why is that “obviously “? I find Linux to be a broken mess.

FWIW I use them both, FreeBSD and Arch , but let’s not pretend the layers of crap tacked onto the Linux kernel is some pinnacle of computing.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#67

Post by vehemenz »

wolvoleo wrote: post #23

Interesting. I use FreeBSD on my desktop too but it's really a desktop so I don't have to bother with WiFi or bluetooth. I generally dislike laptops for ergonomic reasons, and I never bring my computers anywhere anyway so I just buy NUCs. Not having to buy for a display, keyboard, trackpad, battery helps keep the price down. I like it for several reasons. It's a holistic system which means it's much easier to underst…

> FreeBSD is a bit like Linux was in the early 2000s, it mostly works but you often have to dive into a shell for some magic.

Which, ironically, is what Linux users have been saying for ages with respect to Windows, but the market share speaks for itself.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#68

Post by dizhn »

stackghost wrote: post #58
asveikau wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mostly I'm just tired of people claiming BSD is this amazing new thing I don't think I've heard anybody claim BSD is new. > Netflix, and other FAANGs, except those corps don't contribute enough back because of the license I believe Netflix has upstreamed a lot to FreeBSD. They don't do it because the license compels them, they do it because upstreaming your changes makes maintenance easier. > If my laptop's wifi di…

>I'm going to guess with this rant that you weren't using Linux in the olden days, because that's what it was like. I've been using Linux and BSD in one form or another since 2003, and I definitely used wpa_supplicant on the command line to connect my Thinkpad to WiFi. And you're right, it did suck. It was not a 9/10 experience by a long shot.

Regarding your wifi example. I did have to replace it with an intel one on my Lenovo because wifi would not work with something connected to Bluetooth (might have been USB . I don't recall). This is on Windows by the way. I just replaced it instead of fighting it. Same reason people prefer AMD on linux but this is changing with better Nvidia support.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#69

Post by bityard »

wolvoleo wrote: post #36
bxparks wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link: "Note: The inbuilt WiFi chip is not natively supported by FreeBSD, so you will need to (temporarily) use a USB WiFi or Ethernet dongle, or (as I will explain) copy some files from a different system to the Macbook. You could also just transplant a different chip into the system." You say "works perfectly". I do not think it means what you think it means. To be fair, Linux also has trouble with the Broa…

> Broadcom Here's the real problem. It's sad how a company that spawned the raspberry pi in earlier times got so evil so quickly.

Broadcom (and to a lesser extent, Realtek) devices had always been anywhere between hit-or-miss and completely unworkable on Linux, LONG before Raspberry Pi came around.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#70

Post by craftkiller »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #62
olivierestsage wrote: post #12

It's crazy how much negativity there is in comment threads like this. I would get it if FreeBSD was a product you paid for, or someone was evangelizing about how you're missing out if you don't get the FreeBSD laptop experience, or something. As someone who liked FreeBSD in the past and curious to check it out again, I'm glad to have this handy list.

What is sad is that even though Linux now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows, we've exchanged one problem with another, because nowadays most of the hardware I see is only supported on Linux and nothing else. Even on PCs, latest generation AMD graphics cards (already >1yr old) are not supported in _anything_ other than Linux (and Windows). This is just sad.

FreeBSD uses a compatibility layer to run the Linux graphics drivers, though it lags behind Linux. So if FreeBSD currently does not support the graphics cards, it will soon. It looks like they are currently porting over 6.11: https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/41
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