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Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

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Re: Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

#21

Post by octix »

superuser2 wrote: post #11
octix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I personally hate it, but my wife loves it. We don't argue and I just don't use it.

That said, you just cannot compare an OS running natively (is that a word?) with a VM.

Re: Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

#22

Post by pekk »

superuser2 wrote: post #11
octix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

While we're changing the subject, why not Windows and VirtualBox? By the time we've proposed OS X instead of *BSD, we've proposed everything.

Re: Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

#23

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

#25

Post by xxxyy »

aselzer wrote: post #17
octix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

how about MacBook + Linux + QEMU/Virtualbox? which works great for me BTW

Virtualization = huge power consumption and low performance. Not good for laptops, although quite reasonable for desktops.

Re: Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

#26

Post by biot »

octix wrote: post #21
superuser2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I personally hate it, but my wife loves it. We don't argue and I just don't use it. That said, you just cannot compare an OS running natively (is that a word?) with a VM.

The typical phrase is "on bare metal".

Re: Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

#28

Post by octix »

thmzlt wrote: post #27

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

Thanks for posting. I'm waiting for a x230t and was thinking about trying Centos 7 and FreeBSD too at some point.

Re: Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

#29

Post by yellowapple »

I can't speak for FreeBSD, 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.

Re: Ask HN: Laptop for FreeBSD?

#30

Post by aselzer »

octix wrote: post #19
aselzer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about MacBook + Linux + QEMU/Virtualbox? which works great for me BTW

Can you elaborate please? Linux running inside a VM?

FreeBSD running in a VM on Linux on a Macbook.

I argued that you can install Linux on the MacBook, which gives you the advantage of good hardware support and a non-Apple and open-source OS, on which you can in turn run FreeBSD using a VM. And since MacBooks support Intel's VT-x which Linux KVM uses, virtualization actually works very well with this setup.

Obviously, when possible, buying a laptop with good FreeBSD driver support is the superior choice.

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