# The "ultimate" FreeBSD laptop (in 2012)



## yha (May 4, 2012)

I know this question is asked quite often here and elsewhere, but most of the discussions I found are old and reflect the best available hardware AT THE TIME, hence this new thread.

I'm looking for a recent (and preferably high speced) laptop with hardware that is fully compatible with FreeBSD. This includes:


Working CPU (and CPU features)
Working dedicated graphics with hardware acceleration (i.e. desktop 3D effects and video encoding/decoding offloaded to GPU) -- preferably nvidia
Working HDMI/TV-out port (if any)
Working suspend-to-ram/suspend-to-disk/resume
Working BUILT-IN WiFi/Ethernet
Working BUILT-IN Bluetooth (I've read somewhere that FreeBSD supports ALL USB BT 1.1 devices, but then most laptops today ship with BT 2.x+)
Working hardware (software?) buttons, like screen brightness and volume control
Preferably working webcam

Of course, I doubt such a laptop exists (at least not without external peripherals, like a USB BT dongle, for example), but I'm looking for the closest bet. Something that will require minimal parts replacement and/or external peripherals/accessories. Let's assume that price doesn't matter. (Of course it does! but I would like to see what my options are).

Having done some research, it seems to me that ThinkPads work best with FreeBSD (and other UNIX-based/UNIX-like systems). Would anyone (who owns a ThinkPad) give some feedback on this subject?


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## ring_zero (May 17, 2012)

I don't have a ThinkPad, but I do have a Toshiba C655D, and I can tell you that everything that you have listed works with a little tinkering.  Some caveats:  The CPU is an AMD64, so there is no C3 state unless you fiddle with the event timers.  I have done this, but changed back to the default as I saw no noticeable difference.  Graphics Hardware Acceleration is a bit tricky as FreeBSD does not yet have KMS support.  KMS is in the process of being developed for Intel cards, but is incomplete to date as far as I know.  That said, the ATI card in this machine works reasonably well.  No HDMI/TV Out, so I don't know.  Suspend works great, see here.  Built in WiFi is Atheros based, so it works.  No Bluetooth that I am aware of, haven't really bothered to check.  It does have an SD Card reader that works out of the box.  Sorry, but no webcam on this model.  The Screen Brightness key work, but the Volume keys do not, nor do any of the other special keys, i.e suspend, turn off the mouse, switch between VGA/LVDS.  Fn keys like SCROLLLOCK, PAUSE, BREAK, et al, do work.  Price was a steal at ~$399 USD + $50 USD to upgrade to 8 Gb of ram.  Hope this helps.


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## kpedersen (May 17, 2012)

yha,

I have a number of ThinkPads and they all work very well. However, these are not recent models and I believe the more recent ThinkPads have issues with the Intel GFX cards (they can only run with the VESA driver) because of the kernel mode setting support is not yet complete.

I think if you can get a new ThinkPad with an nVidia card, you should at least be OK with the binary blob driver.


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## Beastie (May 17, 2012)

... provided it doesn't have Optimus or has a hardware switch to disable it (unlikely).


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## vermaden (May 17, 2012)

yha said:
			
		

> I'm looking for a recent (and preferably high speced) laptop with hardware that is fully compatible with FreeBSD.



Lenovo ThinkPad T400 or Dell Latitude E6400, both from ... 2009.

T410/T420 and E6410/E6420 are still not supported as GEM/KMS is in the works.


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## bbzz (May 17, 2012)

I've owned various Toshiba Tecra laptops, and everything worked so far (with nVIDIA only).


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## donduq (May 24, 2012)

I can name you none. Sad, really.


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## sim (Jun 25, 2012)

Beastie said:
			
		

> ... provided it doesn't have Optimus or has a hardware switch to disable it (unlikely).



My Thinkpad T510 has nVidia Optimus graphics. If you leave it in Optimus mode (best for Windows 7) then it will crash on boot. However, you can disable Optimus in the BIOS and force it to use nVidia dedicated graphics (bypassing the integrated Intel graphics).  This works absolutely fine with the nvidia proprietary driver, albeit at some cost to power efficiency.

Whilst we're on the subject, with a bit of faffing I have managed to get most things working on the T510, including webcam, Intel 6300 wireless, em LAN, nVidia graphics (see above...) trackpad, nipple, keyboard, buttons, lid switch, LCD brightness, suspend to RAQM, USB drives etc, (crappy) PCI SD card slot, CD/DVD, audio (speakers and headphones). 

The jury is out on the 6300 wireless. It works, but I'm not yet convinced it's entirely solid.

*The following definitely do not work:*
Hibernate, Intel integrated graphics, 

*Not tested but no particular reason to doubt them:*
VGA output, Display Port output, eSATA output, Firewire output, Bluetooth. 

*Not tested and probably don't work:*
Finger reader, Smart card reader

Hope that helps!

sim


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## sim (Jun 25, 2012)

PS admittedly the T510 is not strictly current...


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## chmiels (Jun 26, 2012)

sim said:
			
		

> (crappy) PCI SD card slot



How did you get the SD card slot to work? Mine is L420 and it has:

```
none1@pci0:4:0:0:       class=0xff0000 card=0x21dd17aa chip=0x520910ec rev=0x01 hdr$
    vendor     = 'Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
```


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## sim (Jun 26, 2012)

On the T510 it's a Ricoh PCI-based SD slot (not USB based). This is annoying as it means it's not bootable (no drivers until the OS is booted):


```
sdhci0: <RICOH SD> mem 0xf2100000-0xf21000ff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci13
sdhci0: 1 slot(s) allocated
mmc0: <MMC/SD bus> on sdhci0
mmcsd0: 14GB <SDHC SD16G 8.0 SN 309078213 MFG 10/2011 by 3 SD> at mmc0 50.0MHz/4bit/65535 block
```

In my case it requires the following kernel modules:

sdhci
mmc
mmcsd

Hope that's useful!

sim


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## lele (Sep 13, 2012)

I see that these kind of questions pop up frequently on forums related to open-source operating systems, like this one.

While hardware compatibility lists are available, apparently they are difficult to consult.  They are constructed to answer the question "Is that laptop compatible with this FreeBSD?", whilst the question whose answer many users are interested to is "Which laptops are the most compatible with FreeBSD?"  Hence, a useful improvement would be assigning compatibility scores to each laptop, and publishing a "laptop hit parade" in the homepage of such laptop compatibility list.

Also, but this maybe would require too much work, a live CD to test compatibility would be very useful.  I know that knowledgeable users can install FreeBSD on a stick and use it to test hardware in shops, but less knowledgeable users would find such an approach difficult.


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## freemason (Sep 14, 2012)

Mine will probably be (after I get multimedia keys and backlight control working).


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## lele (Sep 14, 2012)

freemason said:
			
		

> Mine will probably be (after I get multimedia keys and backlight control working).



Hence suspend/resume and hibernation work? Wow!

How is the battery life compared to the original operating system.?


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## freemason (Sep 14, 2012)

lele said:
			
		

> Hence suspend/resume and hibernation work?
> How is the battery life compared to the original operating system.?


Sleep works, hibernation doesn't.
Battery lifetime is still some amount shorter compared to that on Win7. (mainly because of not working backlight control and disk spindown)


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