Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

freebsdfoundation.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 206 posts

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#171

Post by broken-kebab »

vehemenz wrote: post #67
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.

I don't get what they have been ironically saying. Direct reading suggests it's that Linux is like Windows in 2000 but it doesn't make sense to me, I never heard a comparison like that.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#172

Post by broken-kebab »

autoexec wrote: post #166
vermaden wrote: post #100

I own these and they also work great with FreeBSD: ThinkPads: - W520/W530/T520/T530/X220/X230/T420s - T480 - T14 GEN1 (Intel) - T14 GEN1 (AMD) I needed to replace MediaTek WiFi card on T14 (AMD) into some Intel WiFi one. Hope that helps. Regards, vermaden

Buying a thinkpad means using a device made by Lenovo, a company which has repeatedly shipped devices infected with malware and backdoors (sometimes for profit) see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security_and_privacy_in...

He apparently wipes all of that when installing FreeBSD though.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#173

Post by bigyabai »

autoexec wrote: post #166
vermaden wrote: post #100

I own these and they also work great with FreeBSD: ThinkPads: - W520/W530/T520/T530/X220/X230/T420s - T480 - T14 GEN1 (Intel) - T14 GEN1 (AMD) I needed to replace MediaTek WiFi card on T14 (AMD) into some Intel WiFi one. Hope that helps. Regards, vermaden

Buying a thinkpad means using a device made by Lenovo, a company which has repeatedly shipped devices infected with malware and backdoors (sometimes for profit) see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security_and_privacy_in...

I hope it pays well, those Windows users are subsidizing some great hardware.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#174

Post by MisterTea »

vehemenz wrote: post #67
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.

You need to take into account all the anti-competitive shenanigans MS pulled.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#175

Post by MisterTea »

vermaden wrote: post #100

I own these and they also work great with FreeBSD: ThinkPads: - W520/W530/T520/T530/X220/X230/T420s - T480 - T14 GEN1 (Intel) - T14 GEN1 (AMD) I needed to replace MediaTek WiFi card on T14 (AMD) into some Intel WiFi one. Hope that helps. Regards, vermaden

Love the Thinkpad line. It's kinda the hackers laptop of choice.

> X220/X230

These are pretty solid with dual batteries. Also popular for OpenBSD and 9front, the latter of which I run on an x230 (it stopped charging the removable battery :-/) You can get about 2 hours off the internal and 6~8 with a big fat removable battery, maybe more if the OS and drivers can properly throttle hardware power settings.

I have an X1 carbon 5th gen and it's quite light but not useful for 9front without some Ethernet driver tweaking (likely some phy bits need twiddling.) Instead I tossed Debian on it and run 9front in a VM if I need a local CPU. So far it just seems to work including Ethernet (via a dongle) and WiFi.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#176

Post by LeFantome »

whalesalad wrote: post #7
mmsc wrote: post #6

FreeBSD works perfectly on intel MacBooks if you've got one laying around: https://joshua.hu/FreeBSD-on-MacbookPro-114-A1398

Probably not T2 MacBooks though.

Those barely work with Linux.

And I have found the WiFi to be incompatible with some networks.

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#177

Post by groundzeros2015 »

stackghost wrote: post #157
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OpenBSD zealots claiming it's 110% secure because trust me bro Or possibly because it has a good track record. If you'd like to point at actual vulnerabilities go ahead.

>Or possibly because it has a good track record. "Only two remote code execution vulns in the default install" isn't saying much, because the default install has essentially no functionality. Similarly, RCE is not the only kind of vuln. Let's just say it is not the mainstream consensus that OpenBSD is meaningfully more secure than an up-to-date linux. This may have been true in 1995, but it's generally acknowledged b…

Ok here is one. Pledge is really good and works by default. Unlike cgroups?

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#178

Post by emptybits »

bxparks wrote: post #26
mmsc wrote: post #6

FreeBSD works perfectly on intel MacBooks if you've got one laying around: https://joshua.hu/FreeBSD-on-MacbookPro-114-A1398

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…

I assume this is what is meant:

                       | Works Perfectly | Mostly Works | Has Lots Of Bugs
    -------------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
    Default Install    |                 |              |
    -------------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
    With Add-Ons       |       X         |              |
    -------------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
    Major Config Work  |                 |              |
i.e. Declare its working quality after the install is done. The install may take multiple steps. (In this case, copying some files over, apparently.)

Re: Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

#180

Post by opan »

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.

I always saw Broadcom as evil, and saw Raspberry Pi as just reusing cheap parts from set top boxes or similar, with all the proprietary stuff that that comes with.
Post reply on HN