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FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

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Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#71

Post by kefka »

lorenzfx wrote: post #50
lorenzfx wrote: post #49

I'm using FreeBSD on Lenovo X220, and while it's obviously no MacBook, everything important to me (wifi, suspend-to-ram, graphic support, long battery usage, HDMI out) just worked out of the box (apart from the initial install, which wasn't FreeBSD's but Lenovo's fault and is since being worked around in recent FreeBSD installers). I can really recommend it if you want to give FreeBSD a try on a Laptop.

ps: make sure you get a wifi card that is supported by FreeBSD. While you can put in a supported one, the X220 won't boot because Lenovo put a Wifi card whitelist into the BIOS and you need to install a patched BIOS from a dubious source.

Why in Richard Stallman's name would you buy a Lenovo?

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#72

Post by synthmeat »

mpasternacki wrote: post #67

I’m author of that gist (just noticed I have some comments there I need to reply to), still running the setup, now with FreeBSD 12-CURRENT. Tl;dr it generally works, still no wi-fi support. X works fine (running with drm-next-4.7 patches to get external thunderbolt display to work; vanilla kernel works fine with built-in and DVI display, gets confused by Thunderbolt display only). Gave up on pkg because I want to con…

Give https://github.com/jrmarino/synth a whirl.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#74

Post by floatboth »

eth0up wrote: post #58
floatboth wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's odd. Are you using HDMI or the serial console? My Raspberry Pi 2 runs FreeBSD very well. Currently running OpenNTPD + Monit + Postgres + Node-RED + go-carbon + graphite-api + Grafana + Syncthing + Transmission — all of this with only 249 MB of RAM used. FreeBSD's memory management is excellent. RPi 3 (native AArch64 mode) support is in progress https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/rpi3 for now it runs only on one CP…

>Are you using HDMI I was using HDMI. As mentioned, I've since returned to Raspbian, where I continue to use HDMI and all works generally well. I was initially thrilled after installing FreeBSD, but for whatever reason, things changed. I remember compiling vim for a whole day before cancelling it. I could type an entire sentence or paragraph before any input would show. Bad luck perhaps. My primary use for the Pi is…

HDMI works fine for me, it's really, really weird that it didn't for you.

Compiling anything on ARM is horribly slow, cross-compiling from amd64 is a much better idea.

But you don't need to compile vim, there are binary packages for ARM! http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:12:armv6/latest/ pkg should just work.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#75

Post by andai »

cgvgffyv wrote: post #52
95014_refugee wrote: post #10

"using a custom [FreeBSD] kernel seems tricky in a VMWare/VirtualBox VM" This flipped a set-once bit, making the rest of the article essentially unreadable due to zero confidence in the writer's technical skill. Also, the lack of "late 2011" in the title makes it pretty misleading.

Couldn't you just have said, "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about", like a normal person? That was hard to parse.

No.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#76

Post by gkop »

mpasternacki wrote: post #67

I’m author of that gist (just noticed I have some comments there I need to reply to), still running the setup, now with FreeBSD 12-CURRENT. Tl;dr it generally works, still no wi-fi support. X works fine (running with drm-next-4.7 patches to get external thunderbolt display to work; vanilla kernel works fine with built-in and DVI display, gets confused by Thunderbolt display only). Gave up on pkg because I want to con…

So to be clear, no Thunderbolt display working yet?

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#77

Post by BoorishBears »

duaneb wrote: post #62
BoorishBears wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for me is OSX still takes less maintenance than Linux and provides a higher quality experience than Linux. I have complaints about the UI changes in OS X sometimes but it's still not as bad as half the Linux applications I'd use in place of OS X ones like Tower And every time I try Linux i still have issues like the "sleep of death" and NVIDIA Optimus support being in poorly documented limbo (your dedicat…

I'm surprised git UIs have lock-in power. Of all my development constraints, git is the last place I would have expected to find resistance switching OSs. But then again, I could never do things in tower as fast as I could on the command line, so I dropped it fairly fast. It's not super useful replacement without an interactive rebase. Nice for viewing history, though.

Who said Git UIs have lock in power?

Are you intentionally ignoring the context in which I mentioned Tower?

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#78

Post by Touche »

xutopia wrote: post #65
nimrody wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much battery life do you get from this configuration? macOS is optimized for power. FreeBSD not so much, I believe.

I don’t think I ever had my laptop battery run out on me. To me it’s just not an issue. I’m plugged in 85% of the time. How do people use their laptops? For me it's almost always at a desk and if not there is always a plug nearby.

I sit on my sofa. Not the best thing for my back, but that's what I do.

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#79

Post by astrange »

cgvgffyv wrote: post #52
95014_refugee wrote: post #10

"using a custom [FreeBSD] kernel seems tricky in a VMWare/VirtualBox VM" This flipped a set-once bit, making the rest of the article essentially unreadable due to zero confidence in the writer's technical skill. Also, the lack of "late 2011" in the title makes it pretty misleading.

Couldn't you just have said, "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about", like a normal person? That was hard to parse.

This is what I think whenever anyone says "an order of magnitude" instead of "very".

Re: FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

#80

Post by duaneb »

BoorishBears wrote: post #77
duaneb wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised git UIs have lock-in power. Of all my development constraints, git is the last place I would have expected to find resistance switching OSs. But then again, I could never do things in tower as fast as I could on the command line, so I dropped it fairly fast. It's not super useful replacement without an interactive rebase. Nice for viewing history, though.

Who said Git UIs have lock in power? Are you intentionally ignoring the context in which I mentioned Tower?

Not to my reading!

The alternative app to tower on FreeBSD would be git itself, which had a superset of features, would it not?

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