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ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

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Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#191

Post by linker3000 »

scarmig wrote: post #180
na85 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>FWIW, suspend/resume is probably the worst, fiddliest thing about free OSs on a laptop. Sadly I agree. My requirements for a laptop are: 1. Working suspend resume 2. Good touch pad with working palm rejection 3. Good battery life Sadly the only laptop that meets these requirements to my satisfaction is my macbook.

Pixelbook with Crostini has treated me well.

I run Mint (now 19.3) on a T420 Thinkpad, and suspend/Resume has always just worked as expected.

I don't recall having to jump through hoops when I originally setup the machine about 3 years ago.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#192

Post by loeg »

azinman2 wrote: post #113
TallGuyShort wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some BSD userspace only, and with few of the things most BSD people like about BSD.

What’s it missing?

Updates since 2004? It's like they took an old snapshot of BSD userspace and some of the syscall interface, except somewhat broken (see the long saga of broken select/kqueue in OSX). Fundamentally Darwin is a completely different beast based on Mach. It's radically different from the core BSD kernel. Most of their userspace is built on Objective-C, which has 0 overlap with BSDs.

It's cool that the Mac community used some BSD code way back when — that's why we use a permissive license — but they've forked whatever they took; they never work to integrate their changes back upstream. To the extent that they're a BSD, they're a very very divergent fork of a historical BSD. And that's fine, for them. I don't know if that makes them a BSD or not in some ontological sense.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#193

Post by microtonal »

lsiebert wrote: post #163
dmix wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux desktop is great in 2020, especially if you buy the right hardware with solid support, the experience is totally smooth and super-high performance with stuff like ArchLinux. Boots up immediatley, no annoying MacOS updates or having to install XCode while having multiple versions of core unix packages, because it pre-installs a bunch of out-of-date ones you replace immediately with brew. This causes problems, es…

So I used to be a Linux mint/ubuntu/fedora user (I distro hopped a bit), but I really like how homebrew on macs is per user account rather than system wide, and I can just delete the folder to reset it for the most part (minus running programs, some GUI casks, and shortcuts). AFAIK, apt-get and most if not all linux package managers only work system wide, and I can't install something just for a specific user. Maybe…

AFAIK, apt-get and most if not all linux package managers only work system wide, and I can't install something just for a specific user.

Not all. Nix and guix allow you to install packages into your own profile as an unprivileged user. Best of all, packages that are installed by multiple users are shared in the Nix store.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#195

Post by loeg »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #185
criddell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Android still built on Linux?

It uses a (slightly modified) Linux kernel, yes, although its user land is decidedly not GNU or particularly Unix-like.

Doesn't each phone basically ship its own modified Android-Linux with hacked up drivers specific to the model?

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#196

Post by loeg »

zelly wrote: post #71
namirez wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeBSD developers and people who use FreeBSD on a daily basis need laptops too. There are not many options out there unless they opt for ancient hardware.

Most of them use Macs and work on FreeBSD in a VM (I'm not kidding)

Most isn't objectively true. The (admittedly statistically problematic) pseudo-surveys I've seen land Mac contributors at 50% or less.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#197

Post by loeg »

vesche wrote: post #4

I also use a T480 as my main laptop and love it. Here are my notes & dotfiles for running Arch Linux: https://github.com/vesche/t480 One big item (which you'll see at the bottom of my install notes) is that intel chips in these thinkpads have a throttling issue. There's a nice python program to fix that, I run it as a systemd service on boot: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled

FWIW, you can similarly fiddle with Intel HWP / performance efficiency tradeoff on FreeBSD with the `dev.hwpstate_intel.0.epp=` sysctl/tunable knob. We expose fewer of those other knobs, though.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#198

Post by spaceman_2020 »

vesche wrote: post #4

I also use a T480 as my main laptop and love it. Here are my notes & dotfiles for running Arch Linux: https://github.com/vesche/t480 One big item (which you'll see at the bottom of my install notes) is that intel chips in these thinkpads have a throttling issue. There's a nice python program to fix that, I run it as a systemd service on boot: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled

I switched to a Thinkpad from Macbook and I'm really, really enjoying the keyboard. Easily the best typing experience I've had on a laptop. Nearly as good as the cherry red switches on my desktop keyboard.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#199

Post by hdkwowjdj »

funklute wrote: post #103
hdkwowjdj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another of these things I don't get. Matte screens become unreadable with indirect light. I've been a long time ThinkPad user. But dim screens just don't work, no matter if it's matte or not. Bright screen with anti-reflective layer work much better, hate to say that.

I don't think I fully understand what conditions you are talking about. I very rarely put my screen brightness any higher than 50%, and I've never maxed it out. My first thought is that it's not the brightness, but the contrast, that is the cause of your problems? Or perhaps I just have a model with a brighter screen... (currently on a T460, though I don't remember the screen specifics) EDIT: I might add as well, tha…

Let's say you have a lamp behind your screen. The light will be visible on your screen in some way.

With a reflective screen, you'll see a reflection of lamp, bright and clear. I think everybody agrees that this is annoying.

With matte screen, the reflection isn't strong or clear, but a larger portion of the screen is affected, since the matte layer scatters the light.

With a anti-reflective but non-matte screen, you'll see a 1:1 reflection - but only very very dim.

In my experience across the Lenovo matte screens, and comparing it to MacBook screens, I found the latter to work better.

There's a significant difference between the MacBook and cheapo reflective screens.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#200

Post by michaelmrose »

lsiebert wrote: post #163
dmix wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux desktop is great in 2020, especially if you buy the right hardware with solid support, the experience is totally smooth and super-high performance with stuff like ArchLinux. Boots up immediatley, no annoying MacOS updates or having to install XCode while having multiple versions of core unix packages, because it pre-installs a bunch of out-of-date ones you replace immediately with brew. This causes problems, es…

So I used to be a Linux mint/ubuntu/fedora user (I distro hopped a bit), but I really like how homebrew on macs is per user account rather than system wide, and I can just delete the folder to reset it for the most part (minus running programs, some GUI casks, and shortcuts). AFAIK, apt-get and most if not all linux package managers only work system wide, and I can't install something just for a specific user. Maybe…

Per user installs are unnecessary for most users. Firstly most machines are single user. In multi-user machines installing additional software/libraries system-wide has no downsides. If a particular piece of software can't be installed globally without conflicting with other software it probably needs stronger isolation than your user account and you have multiple better options to achieve this.

The sole case that leaves are cases in which your company doesn't allow you the necessary privileges to install software which is an organizational challenge not a technical one.

That said something like nix can allow you to install software per user.

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