# T430 vs T440 for FreeBSD 9.2



## afton (Jan 11, 2014)

Has anyone installed 9.2 on a T430 or T440? Any difficulty? I want to get a reliable laptop and seems that Thinkpad T440 is a good choice: http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptop ... t440s.aspx

Will install GNOME or LXDE on it, purpose of laptop is to play with FreeBSD.


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## CanOfBees (Jan 15, 2014)

Hi @afton, 

I'm using a T430s with PC-BSD (currently 9.2-RELEASE). I know that's a slightly different model, but I think the hardware is pretty close. There are some caveats:

the Intel 4000 HD and Nvidia 5200M use Optimus which doesn't work in FreeBSD yet, but there's a switch in the BIOS to disable the Nvidia card.
I haven't been able to get suspend/resume working; I've done nonexhaustive testing with FreeBSD 9.2 and 10.0-RCs, and PC-BSD 9.2 and 10.0-RCs. I chalk it up to the Ivy Bridge pieces, but I'm not sure.
Screen brightness controls don't work via acpi_ibm so I'm relying on acpi_call, or setting screen brightness during the boot process.
Battery life is so-so; I think I can probably get about 3 hours of light use before the 4 cell battery is depleted, but I haven't done *any* configuration work for power management. With some tweaking I could maybe get another hour out of it.

There are some other pieces I haven't tried to use; e.g. the webcam and DVD drive. Let me know if you have any questions & I'll do my best to help.
Hope that's helpful.


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## JWJones (Jan 15, 2014)

The ThinkWiki may be helpful for specifics, although it's geared towards Linux:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T430
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T440


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## SDNick484 (Oct 9, 2014)

CanOfBees said:
			
		

> Hi @afton,
> 
> I'm using a T430s with PC-BSD (currently 9.2-RELEASE). I know that's a slightly different model, but I think the hardware is pretty close. There are some caveats:
> 
> ...



Sorry to dredge up an old topic, but I was wondering if you've continue with this hardware and if so, have any of the issues mentioned been resolved?  I'm currently running Gentoo on a T430s and everything basically works, but if Gentoo makes the switch to systemd, I plan to jump ship to FreeBSD.  I would intend to run either the latest 10 release or 11 if its out when I make the switch.


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## CanOfBees (Oct 9, 2014)

SDNick484 said:
			
		

> (...snip...)
> Sorry to dredge up an old topic, but I was wondering if you've continue with this hardware and if so, have any of the issues mentioned been resolved?  I'm currently running Gentoo on a T430s and everything basically works, but if Gentoo makes the switch to systemd, I plan to jump ship to FreeBSD.  I would intend to run either the latest 10 release or 11 if its out when I make the switch.



Hi @SDNick484,

I'm still using the T430s. I guess it would be fair to say that none of the issues have been resolved *as far as I know*. I've upgraded to PC-BSD 10-RELEASE but I haven't done any testing with regards to suspend/resume or screen brightness. The Optimus switching is still a "problem" but it isn't one that is affecting my ability to get work done on the hardware. I still haven't had a need to use the webcam or DVD drive so I can't report on those.

As I understand conversations from the mailing lists, there's more work being done on Ivy Bridge/Haswell GPUs that might make it in to 11. 
I hope that helps. 
Cheers,
CoB


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## SDNick484 (Oct 9, 2014)

CoB,

Thanks for the feedback.  The lack of a DVD player is not a problem at all as I will likely be swapping out the ultrabay anyway.  I do occasionally use the web cam with Google Hangouts for some school work, but I can live with using my wife's Mac for that if it doesn't work.  Even though I have a NVidia Optimus, I can live without using it and just stick to Intel however the lack of Suspend/Resume is a real issue for me.

I haven't used FreeBSD in almost a decade (my last usage was in the 5.x era), and I'm having a little trouble finding info on future release plans.  Is there a roadmap/timeline available for when 11 is targeted?  Is there a live USB or DVD of 11.0-CURRENT available?  I don't mind breakage (I've ran the unstable branch of Gentoo pretty much the entire time), and I am happy to contribue bug reports.

~Nick


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## BSDBernd (Oct 10, 2014)

SDNick484 said:
			
		

> CoB,
> ....
> Is there a live USB or DVD of 11.0-CURRENT available?
> ...



Indeed it is. I booted it successfully on my Macbook  (only one thing wasn't recognized it seems: my wireless card, which is a Broadcom card) and could perform a test which is proposed here:

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops

There you also can find the link to the 11.0-CURRENT live USB image. If you wish, you can do that test too, the FreeBSD wireless group would be thankful for that I guess.


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## SDNick484 (Oct 10, 2014)

Very cool, when I have time I'll give the live USB a go.  My wifi card is Intel however (I find they tend to have better open source support, especially compared to Broadcom) so I won't be much help there.


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## laufdi (Aug 26, 2015)

CanOfBees said:


> Screen brightness controls don't work via acpi_ibm so I'm relying on acpi_call, or setting screen brightness during the boot process.


Could you let us know how to use sysutils/acpi_call to set the screen brightness?
Also I would be interested in your xorg.conf, as I don't really succeed in running Xorg (Intel only T430), mouse and keyboard don't work.
And when I switch back to console the screen goes off.


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## laufdi (Aug 27, 2015)

Ok, with devd(8), dbus(1), hald(8) and moused(8) it works without xorg.conf!
And brightness buttons work, too.


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## cracauer@ (Sep 24, 2015)

My T440 has never seen FreeBSD (maybe test booted, dunno), because it sucks. The trackpad is unusable, the keyboard not thinkpad worthy, there is only one RAM slot so you max out at 8 GB and the CPU is soldered on.  The GbE on the right is also annoying.

The base display has the narrowest viewing angle I have ever seen, and I mean vertically, so you cannot move your head up or down or back and forth at all.

You can buy mine  It's like new. I can send dmesg under FreeBSD.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 24, 2015)

Does any notebook not have its cpu soldered on?


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## cracauer@ (Sep 24, 2015)

Yeah, plenty. You can tell by who can upgrade, there are the MSI barebones, the system76/sager things etc. Pretty sure it's about 50/50.


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