# Sharing my new(old) laptop experience and stickers



## darkshadow (Jun 8, 2015)

I'm so happy.

I just bought "Dell E6410" laptop from Amazon, it works like a charm with FreeBSD and it only costs 150$ + 100$ (ssd) + 5+ hour battery for 20$.

I'm really happy with my laptop keyboard layout, I bought Lenovo Thinkpad 540p it was really awful not only with FreeBSD but also with Linux. Also the update parts is really costly (battery for about 70$) and the keyboard layout is so useless and not standard.

I don't know why Thinkpad and Dell made their new laptops so awful. Sticking to an old precious laptop is better and could save a lot of money, specially for programmers.

I recommend every one to buy an old Laptop 

I just got stickers also


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## PacketMan (Dec 2, 2015)

darkshadow said:


> I'm so happy.
> I just bought "Dell E6410" laptop from amazon, it works like a charm with FreeBSD......



I have two of these from work that we are trying to turn into iPerf / Wireshark field testing units.  No issue in getting 10.x-RELEASE up and running, but no joy yet in getting Xorg configured to work with the laptop screen.  I can get it to work with an external monitor and x11/nvidia-driver-340 driver, but obviously we won't be taking external monitors in the field. Are you using these with external monitors, or just the internal screen?  If just the internal screen any chance you could post your Xorg related configs?

I've only got a few more days and if I fail someone else will put some flavour of Linux on them.


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## Crivens (Dec 2, 2015)

Doesn't even good old vesa work?


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## PacketMan (Dec 2, 2015)

Crivens said:


> Doesn't even good old vesa work?



I have not been able to get it to work yet. Interestingly two flavors of Ubuntu also didn't work (black screen), but Xubuntu works fine.


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## PacketMan (Dec 2, 2015)

Looks like my xorg.conf.new is not even getting built with the VESA option. I'll try to determine why.


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## wblock@ (Dec 2, 2015)

Please stop trying to generate xorg.conf.new.  Manually create a file and put just the options that need to be changed from the auto-detected ones in it.  See the latest version of the Handbook Xorg Configuration section: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-config.html.


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## PacketMan (Dec 2, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> Please stop trying to generate xorg.conf.new.  Manually create a file and put just the options that need to be changed from the auto-detected ones in it.  See the latest version of the Handbook Xorg Configuration section: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-config.html.



I was following that, and for this Dell E6410 sections 5.4.1 and 5.4.8 does not work. Trying to generate manually, which is step 5.4.8, was my last resort, not first.  I skipped 5.4.6 only because I still don't understand that stuff, but working on it.


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## forquare (Dec 2, 2015)

Love the stickers, where did you pick up the Beastie one from?


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## PacketMan (Dec 2, 2015)

And in case you ask. 

`#xrandr
Can't open display`


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## wblock@ (Dec 2, 2015)

/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver.conf

```
Section "Device"
        Identifier "Card0"
        Driver "intel"
EndSection
```


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## PacketMan (Dec 2, 2015)

Thanks wblock I will give that a try tomorrow, but not sure it will work. I don't remember that the file even produced any other monitor settings. But there is a bigger issue, following that guide doesn't work, at least for newbies like me. For these laptops I have it might be a moot point now.  One has Linux Xubuntu on it and folks are like "why are even bothering with FreeBSD, just stick this disc in and your good to go".  (I wish I had an unbeatable comeback. ) 15 minutes later laptop is ready for use.  After a year or so at this it seems clear to me that the biggest first obstacle to winning the love of newbies is this: finding and getting the video side of a machine working with FreeBSD. I'm not starting the desktop versus server discussion again, just expressing my point of view, from a newbie a year later.

I'll try to find time to study various working files from various sources, muck with them and see what happens.  Thanks again.


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## Crivens (Dec 3, 2015)

PacketMan said:


> "why are even bothering with FreeBSD, just stick this disc in and your good to go"


Maybe "No, I will be good to go where someone wants me to, in a week or a day - just not necessarily where I want or need to go".


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## PacketMan (Dec 3, 2015)

My employer doesn't pay me to take a week or two to try to make something work, when there are other alternatives.  That Intel driver suggestion didn't work, I still get the same EE messages: "No devices detected" and "No screens found". Both machines will be Xubuntu before the day is over. Opportunity lost. I tried guys.


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## Atsuri (Dec 3, 2015)

PacketMan said:


> My employer doesn't pay me to take a week or two to try to make something work, when there are other alternatives.  That Intel driver suggestion didn't work, I still get the same EE messages: "No devices detected" and "No screens found". Both machines will be Xubuntu before the day is over. Opportunity lost. I tried guys.



Don't worry. leave it for now, come back to FreeBSD later and I'm sure you'll overcome your problems . Some things are just a matter of time and learning.


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