ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by jhallenworld » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

paulcarroty wrote: post #221

jhallenworld wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want something cheap: For Linux 18.04 / Windows 10 dual boot, I just bought an HP 15-cs2073cl: $450 refurb from Microcenter. Everything works and I think the price is pretty good for a Core-i7 / 16 GB / 1920 / 1TB laptop. Here's a link, but I see the price already gone up a little: https://www.microcenter.com/product/612786/hp-pavilion-15-cs... It has a slot for an M.2 card that does not interfere with the rot…

> NVIDIA GeForce MX250 NVidia, no way to working fine on Linux: you will wait for new drivers after each kernel update and tons of another issues.

You are not wrong, this is what I've found:

As installed: 18.04 works, but long delay when you login because nouveau driver is having problems (a bunch of timeouts from it in dmesg). But it does seem to work (I didn't understand the reason for the delay at first).

Install Nvidia closed-source "435" driver: the above problem is fixed, but now it does not recover from suspend.

Force it to use the Intel GPU with "nvidia-settings". Now all is good. Intel driver is supposed to be lower power anyway.

It's interesting that the there are two GPUs that can share the same video port.

There is also something going with the WIFI driver:

     iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: FW already configured (0) - re-configuring
     iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: BIOS contains WGDS but no WRDS

But it does work.

I've found that installing a 1 TB M.2 EVO 860 SSD works, and you can also have the mechanical hard drive at the same time. However, the BIOS is stupid: it always wants to boot from the 2.5" drive, so you need to install grub on it. I used a Samsung migration tool to move Windows 10 to the SSD, but Windows itself is stupid- it's random whether it boots the new SSD partition or the old 2.5" partition.

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

#242

Post by favadi » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #94

xxpor wrote: post #2

>Ethernet and WiFi work, although WiFi is a bit slow (only up to 802.11a?) compared to 802.11n/802.11ac capable OSes. And stuff like this is why I've never stuck with FreeBSD when I've tried it. I screw around with debugging issues all day at work. Why would I want to try to figure out why something as fundamental as wifi isn't working in my spare time?

They almost certainly mean 802.11g or n, not the archaic a. FreeBSD has generally good 802.11n support. It lacks 802.11ac. Yes, if you absolutely need 802.11ac wifi in particular, FreeBSD isn't a great choice. But many modern 802.11n NICs (and 802.11ac NICs, in 802.11n mode) "just work" out of the box, including the 'iwm' devices mentioned in the article, on more recent versions of FreeBSD. FreeBSD 12.0 dates to 2018…

Fedora 29 works great with T480 though.

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

#243

Post by sien » Tue, Feb 11, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #186

sien wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be really interesting to know the proportion of Linux users who are now running under a VM for their desktop Linux use. I have Linux on the three machines I use. But on each it's via a VM. I run Windows and MacOS on the machines. Where I work this is common as well. It's surely pretty prevalent. The other way a lot of people work on Linux where I work is on a VM on AWS.

I keep hearing this, and I don't understand it. Windows is just so... messy . At my last job I kept a Windows VM for Skype (S4B) and the odd non-portable app, but I wouldn't want that on bare metal. I don't have experience with Darwin; maybe the experience is better there.

You sort of answered about understanding the question with your comment about Skype.

Lots of work places are Windows / Office effectively only. Many places have a SOE that is windows only. At home I play games sometimes. Again, that drives Windows.

Also drivers, power issues and various other issues still crop up on Linux more than Windows or MacOS.

Also, working on a VM is nice in a way because it means if it gets stuffed up, just start again quickly.

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

#244

Post by nh2 » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 4:51 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #216

nh2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stardate 2020. There is a mainstream OS with great driver support and the best gaming performance, that everybody uses (Linux). There are two other OSs battling for survival: One run by open source fanatics that release open source editors, browsers and programming languages and which frantically tries to emulate the mainstream OS (WSL), and one where stuff constantly breaks on upgrades, fundamental hardware like ke…

Linux has the best gaming performance?

Check out some of the recent Phoronix benchmarks.

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

#245

Post by utxaa » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

slacka wrote: post #68

xxpor wrote: post #2

>Ethernet and WiFi work, although WiFi is a bit slow (only up to 802.11a?) compared to 802.11n/802.11ac capable OSes. And stuff like this is why I've never stuck with FreeBSD when I've tried it. I screw around with debugging issues all day at work. Why would I want to try to figure out why something as fundamental as wifi isn't working in my spare time?

I have a T430 at home that runs FreeBSD that acts as a spare PC/browser/home media server. I never have to screw around with anything. FreeBSD has come a long, long way. If I gave you a new Mac or PC, you could spend hours "screwing around" with it tweaking and customizing it, Linux even more so. If you absolutely need 802.11ac, then FreeBSD is not the right OS for T480s. But how many people actually require that spe…

i am really glad to read this. it is great that freeBSD continues to improve this way. we all win.