Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

https://freebsdfoundation.github.io/freebsd-laptop-testing/

by fork-bomber • 3 months ago

333 193 3 months ago

freebsdfoundation.github.io

That's a very small list.

It’s a subset of a subset. The sets being (FreeBSD users (with laptops (who can be bothered to write about them on an obscure wiki)))

guenthert• 3 months ago

Yeah, compare to https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops it is.

Years ago, there was a project combining Debian with the kernel from FreeBSD. That never made sense to me and the project seems to have died meanwhile. More sensible, IMHO, might be to bolt the FreeBSD user space unto the Linux kernel. That way one would get fairly broad and current hardware support and could still enjoy a classic Unix look&feel and stable ABI.

theragra• 3 months ago

Moreover, many laptops working on Linux perfectly, are not Ubuntu certified. Lenovo Legion series generally works well, but it is not in the Ubuntu list. Id we'd make a list of all 8/10 or more compatible laptops, it would be huge.

skydhash7• 3 months ago

More sensible, IMHO, might be to bolt the FreeBSD user space unto the Linux kernel.

A lot of BSD utilities that are not POSIX has really close interaction with the kernel. OpenBSD’s *ctl binaries are often the user-facing part of some OS subsystem. Linux subsystem often expose a very complex internal that you need to use some other project to tame down

yjftsjthsd-h7• 3 months ago

IMHO the biggest advantage that Debian/kFreeBSD would have had would be first-class ZFS support. You can use ZFS with Debian today, but the license problem means it only gets supported through DKMS, which is a pain; a FreeBSD-based Debian could ship binary packages for ZFS that just worked out of the box.

tbe• 3 months ago

More sensible, IMHO, might be to bolt the FreeBSD user space unto the Linux kernel.

Chimera Linux is doing something like this, although without aiming for the full BSD experience, just utilising its core userland [1]. The project is in an alpha stage.

1: https://chimera-linux.org/about#alternative-userland

bluGill• 3 months ago

That is cool in ways, but many manufactures change the internals without changing the model number and so I'm not sure how much I can trust it. There is a recycled computers place near me that will sell me some of those cheap, but how can I be sure the one I'm buying is the same as the one tested (if indeed I can find any of those model numbers at all - which is a factor of what companies near me are recycling this month)

skydhash7• 3 months ago

I have the latitude 7490 and it worked great with Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The only issue is some hardware design issue where lifting it with one hand will cause it to freeze (possibly some stress causing a shock or a displacement).

The best resource to check support is https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/dmesgd

shrubble3• 3 months ago

This happened exactly to me also, I suspect some flexing in the motherboard or other component; right now it is complaining about the RAM and reseating hasn’t fixed it. Great laptop otherwise however!

gentile• 3 months ago

Consider balling up some electrical tape underneath the Ram stick. This solved this very specific issue with my laptop that was flexing too much and crashing.

shrubble3• 3 months ago

Between the RAM and the motherboard? Interesting, will try it.

PunchyHamster3• 3 months ago

9/10
half of networking doesnt work, and it's the more important one for laptop(wifi)

I think they need to revise the scoring

fullstop2• 3 months ago

It seems like the best way to get WiFi working in FreeBSD is to run Linux in bhyve and tunnel your connections through there.

whalesalad2• 3 months ago

the fact that this is a widely accepted/encouraged practice is genuinely unhinged

wolvoleo7• 3 months ago

FreeBSD 15 has done a lot for WiFi apparently.

I'm not sure how good it is as I don't use wifi but it's supposed to be much better.

yabones• 3 months ago

That kind of seems crazy to me, considering OpenBSD has worked perfectly fine with every wifi capable device I've tested it on. Granted, most of them were older machines.

Is this just an artifact of FreeBSD primarily focusing on server hardware rather than consumer/end-user stuff?

PunchyHamster3• 3 months ago

It seems the best way to get WiFi working is to run Linux and FreeBSD in a VM..

cperciva• 3 months ago

I agree that 9/10 is a bit of a strange score there, but it's not all that bad: You can get a $15 wifi dongle and use that instead. It occupies a USB port and looks a bit ugly, but it's still a fairly easy workaround.

bluedino• 3 months ago

Is there a cheap, common USB wifi dongle that works?

In the old days I kept a couple Realtek USB adapters around that would almost always work out of the box or with ndiswrapper

sidkshatriya3• 3 months ago

No need to get a USB dongle. You can use PCI passthrough to a Linux VM that has the Wifi driver.

See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704816

guzfip• 3 months ago

FreeBSD WiFi is certainly fun.

Some years ago, I was workig with FreeBSD on an old laptop. The laptop had a wireless adapter that ostensible should be supported, but was not.

After some digging, I realized the driver was just missing some PCIe device identifiers. I added them to driver and bam my WiFi is working without issue.

I tried to submit a bug report and patch, and it got positive feedback at first any changes even got committed. But then I learned why it’s better to not even try.

Apparently this was a known issue, but only in the heads of the FreeBSD wireless developers. They had their reasons for not adding the device, but the reasons did not appear to be documented in mailing lists or docs until my thread. At that point I realized it’s not worth it to try and contribute to such large projects as I just lack the decades of institutional knowledge of the system.

Anyway, I’m not sure it ever got released. I believe there’s an umbrella bug somewhere left after the version my patch supported went out of support.

mmsc2• 3 months ago

FreeBSD works perfectly on intel MacBooks if you've got one laying around: https://joshua.hu/FreeBSD-on-MacbookPro-114-A1398

whalesalad2• 3 months ago

Probably not T2 MacBooks though.

LeFantome• 3 months ago

Those barely work with Linux.

And I have found the WiFi to be incompatible with some networks.

bxparks2• 3 months ago

From the link: "Note: The inbuilt WiFi chip is not natively supported by FreeBSD, so you will need to (temporarily) use a USB WiFi or Ethernet dongle, or (as I will explain) copy some files from a different system to the Macbook. You could also just transplant a different chip into the system."

You say "works perfectly". I do not think it means what you think it means.

To be fair, Linux also has trouble with the Broadcom chip, the driver needs to be installed as a separate step on most distros.

skydhash7• 3 months ago

I think the intersection between BSD users and people who will buy a dongle or use Ethernet is a perfect circle.

wolvoleo7• 3 months ago

Broadcom

Here's the real problem.

It's sad how a company that spawned the raspberry pi in earlier times got so evil so quickly.

mmsc2• 3 months ago

You say "works perfectly". I do not think it means what you think it means.

Copying some files from a different machine is not that burdensome. The point is, it works.

emptybits• 3 months ago

I assume this is what is meant:

                       | Works Perfectly | Mostly Works | Has Lots Of Bugs
    -------------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
    Default Install    |                 |              |
    -------------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
    With Add-Ons       |       X         |              |
    -------------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
    Major Config Work  |                 |              |

i.e. Declare its working quality after the install is done. The install may take multiple steps. (In this case, copying some files over, apparently.)

irusensei• 3 months ago

In my opinion pre alder lake intel is the sweet spot for FreeBSD. Not sure about AMD but anything before 2020 should work just fine. Just avoid CPUs with heterogenous core configurations for now.

shevy-java• 3 months ago

Good old FreeBSD - always trying to catch up to Linux.

jmclnx• 3 months ago

Glad to see this list, will keep an eye on it !

Now to be fair, in a few ways I think it is ahead. Now if you said "catch up to Linux in hardware support" I would fully agree.

Last I heard, its VM (swap/memory) processes is still better, but seems many Linux people avoid swap space these days. FWIW, I always have swap on any system that allows it.

And Jails, IMO nothing on Linux comes close to how good FreeBSD Jails is.

bionsystem• 3 months ago

Incus is pretty damn good to be fair. You can mix and match VMs and containers, the terraform provider "just works", the setup is fast and easy, it plays well with ZFS. Now I wouldn't be surprised if it still lags jails (or Illumos Zones) in robustness or some capabilities but I'm a happy user of them now.

wolvoleo7• 3 months ago

Not really, it's just different. Not trying to be the same, which catching up implies.

unethical_ban2• 3 months ago

This isn't a holy war, and freeBSD does well for itself where it's good. It's definitely oriented to servers.

olivierestsage2• 3 months ago

It's crazy how much negativity there is in comment threads like this. I would get it if FreeBSD was a product you paid for, or someone was evangelizing about how you're missing out if you don't get the FreeBSD laptop experience, or something.

As someone who liked FreeBSD in the past and curious to check it out again, I'm glad to have this handy list.

stackghost5• 3 months ago

It's crazy how much negativity there is in comment threads like this

I think it's because this chart continues a trend I've noticed with BSD zealots. Namely, there's some sort of reality distortion effect at play.

Consider that there are obvious bullshit scores on TFA, like giving a laptop 9/10 when the fucking wifi doesn't work. In reality, this should be 5/10 or arguably 0/10. After all, what use is a laptop without wifi? If my laptop's wifi didn't work I wouldn't just buy a usb-ethernet adapter and never bring it anywhere; I would get a new laptop because a laptop without WiFi is useless.

On top of that there was a while here where every BSD thread had:

- a comment about how BSD powers the PlayStation, Netflix, and other FAANGs, except those corps don't contribute enough back because of the license so won't you please subsidize these giant corps by donating to BSD?

- people who argue BSD is superior because it's "more cohesive" and "feels cleaner" or similar

- OpenBSD zealots claiming it's 110% secure because trust me bro

Mostly I'm just tired of people claiming BSD is this amazing new thing with no flaws, when reality is that it has got some niche use cases, I suspect lots of its developers don't even dogfood it, and is otherwise superceded by Linux in nearly every meaningful way.

I have no problem with BSD, and I have two boxes in my basement running freeBSD right now, but I'm not delusional about BSD's limitations.

asveikau2• 3 months ago

Mostly I'm just tired of people claiming BSD is this amazing new thing

I don't think I've heard anybody claim BSD is new.

Netflix, and other FAANGs, except those corps don't contribute enough back because of the license

I believe Netflix has upstreamed a lot to FreeBSD. They don't do it because the license compels them, they do it because upstreaming your changes makes maintenance easier.

If my laptop's wifi didn't work I wouldn't just buy a usb-ethernet adapter and never bring it anywhere

I'm going to guess with this rant that you weren't using Linux in the olden days, because that's what it was like. The workaround isn't using wired ethernet by the way..you can get a USB wifi adapter or you can buy an m.2 wifi card. On on one of my machines I got a cheap m.2 Intel ax200 (just checked, about $15 on eBay) because it runs faster on FreeBSD than the one that shipped with my laptop.

olivierestsage2• 3 months ago

I think what you're seeing is partly a consequence of how capable Linux has become. Linux is in a weird phase where it can still be enjoyed by hobbyists/enthusiasts/eccentric types, which were arguably its original audience, but now you can also Zoom and do work and install Steam on it, which gives it less appeal from the niche/hobby angle. The software ecosystem in Linux is also increasingly homogenizing, which helps with the "practicality" aspect, but also diminishes the niche appeal. BSDs are in a position to snap up that audience that appreciates engineering elegance/design and uses the computer as an end unto itself (not just as a means to an end). This audience isn't necessarily bothered by wonky laptop WiFi, and may even enjoy tinkering with it as a hobby project. Just my take.

skydhash7• 3 months ago

If you don’t care about administrating your computer and just want to use some software on some hardware, the BSDs are not that great. But if you do, the experience is better on the BSD land because cohesiveness reduces cognitive debt.

Also I wouldn’t make hardware support an OS quality metric. Linux get by with NDA and with direct contributions from the vendors. Which is something the BSDs don’t want/don’t benefit from.

throwaway274482• 3 months ago

I would get a new laptop because a laptop without WiFi is useless.

Why would you not just replace the wifi card or use a USB one? You're greatly overemphasizing how much this matters.

sidkshatriya3• 3 months ago

I would get a new laptop because a laptop without WiFi is useless.

You can run Linux in a VM and PCI passthrough your WiFi Adapter. Linux drivers will be able to connect to your wifi card and you can then supply internet to FreeBSD.

Doing this manually is complicated but the whole process has been automated on FreeBSD by "Wifibox"

https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/journal/browser-based...

I tried it myself and it worked pretty well for a wifi card not supported by FreeBSD.

So, no need to get a new laptop :-)

cosmic_cheese• 3 months ago

I would argue that much of the mentioned zealotry is a sort of kneejerk response to cult-like behavior from some Linux adherents. It’s mostly defensive; these people want continued variety in the FOSS desktop space and feel that’s threatened by Linux.

yjftsjthsd-h7• 3 months ago

OpenBSD zealots claiming it's 110% secure because trust me bro

Or possibly because it has a good track record. If you'd like to point at actual vulnerabilities go ahead.

f1shy• 3 months ago

If you look the table you will realize 9/10 means 9 of 10 included HW devices run. Is not a scale from 0 to 10. Is not a "out of ten" in usability scale. Just count the devices that work, vs. the ones included in the HW.

wolvoleo7• 3 months ago

I am not negative about it at all. I love it.

It's not as polished as linux obviously, especially for desktop usage but the maintainers are very much on the ball (and they do a lot of work to get things to compile and work, there's a lot of linuxisms they have to work around).

Gud4• 3 months ago

Why is that “obviously “? I find Linux to be a broken mess.

FWIW I use them both, FreeBSD and Arch , but let’s not pretend the layers of crap tacked onto the Linux kernel is some pinnacle of computing.

AshamedCaptain5• 3 months ago

What is sad is that even though Linux now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows, we've exchanged one problem with another, because nowadays most of the hardware I see is only supported on Linux and nothing else.

Even on PCs, latest generation AMD graphics cards (already >1yr old) are not supported in _anything_ other than Linux (and Windows). This is just sad.

craftkiller3• 3 months ago

FreeBSD uses a compatibility layer to run the Linux graphics drivers, though it lags behind Linux. So if FreeBSD currently does not support the graphics cards, it will soon. It looks like they are currently porting over 6.11: https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/41

delta_p_delta_x• 3 months ago

now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows

[X] doubt.

ux2664786• 3 months ago

Why do you think so?

nesarkvechnep• 3 months ago

A few years back I attended a talk by one of the Netflix developers who contributed kTLS. It was very informative as he pointed the reasons why Netflix went with FreeBSD. The first question afterwards was “why not Linux”… Didn’t you listen to the talk, man…

wolvoleo7• 3 months ago

Interesting. I use FreeBSD on my desktop too but it's really a desktop so I don't have to bother with WiFi or bluetooth. I generally dislike laptops for ergonomic reasons, and I never bring my computers anywhere anyway so I just buy NUCs. Not having to buy for a display, keyboard, trackpad, battery helps keep the price down.

I like it for several reasons. It's a holistic system which means it's much easier to understand, not a collection of random parts thrown together. There is only really one (big) distro so documentation is easy to come by and consistent. I love the way the updates of the system are uncoupled from the userland software so you can have rolling packages but a stable OS.

Also the ports collection is great (being able to manually compile every package with different flags where needed). And jails. And ZFS first-class citizen. Also I like the attitude. Less involvement from big tech, less strive to change for change's sake. It feels a lot more stable, every new version there's only a few things changed. It's not that with every major update I have to learn everything anew again because someone wanted to include their new init system (like systemd), configuration tools (like ifconfig -> ip), packaging system (like snap) etc. Things that work fine are just left alone.

It has some really good ideas also, like boot environments. But it's not linux. It's not meant to be.

But yeah if you want everything all figured out for you, don't use FreeBSD. Just take a commercial linux like ubuntu. You'll need to tinker a bit, which I like because it helps me understand my system. FreeBSD is a bit like Linux was in the early 2000s, it mostly works but you often have to dive into a shell for some magic. The good thing is having ZFS snapshots as a safety net though. Never really get caught out that way.

vehemenz• 3 months ago

FreeBSD is a bit like Linux was in the early 2000s, it mostly works but you often have to dive into a shell for some magic.

Which, ironically, is what Linux users have been saying for ages with respect to Windows, but the market share speaks for itself.

broken-kebab3• 3 months ago

I don't get what they have been ironically saying. Direct reading suggests it's that Linux is like Windows in 2000 but it doesn't make sense to me, I never heard a comparison like that.

MisterTea2• 3 months ago

You need to take into account all the anti-competitive shenanigans MS pulled.

meitham• 3 months ago

I’m sorry to hijack this thread but can you run Ai agents like Claude or Cursor on BSD? I’m considering making a switch for development environment

rick_dalton• 3 months ago

Claude and opencode aren’t natively supported but there’s a Claude code package in the FreeBSD repos. For cursor, I have no idea.

sroerick• 3 months ago

There's an axiom here which is that the better your overall user experience is, the less hardware support you are going to have.

The more accessible software becomes the more infra is required to support it, and the more complex and convoluted the software will be

Jotalea• 3 months ago

I'd say Juana Manso laptops are usable with FreeBSD. sure, you lose brightness control, you can't see how much battery remains, (I didn't try wifi but the 9650AC chip seems to be supported), but it is usable. audio works, USB works, video works when you load the Intel drivers.

sunshine-o• 3 months ago

I personally feel like the race to support a vast array of hardware is very costly for such a small team and might be a waste of their precious resources.

Of course I love FreeBSD and want it to be supported on my desktop or laptop but at what cost?

Here is the question I have always wanted to ask: Why not make the ultimate compromise and say: you will be able to run FreeBSD on almost all laptops but it is gonna be through let say an Alpine Linux hypervisor and we are gonna ship it with all the glue you need to have a great experience.

About every CPU has great visualization capabilities nowadays and the perf are amazing.

Now some might start screaming at the idea but you already run your favorite operating system through a stack of software you do not trust or control: UEFI, CPU microcode, etc.

I believe we need OS diversity and if so much of the energy of project is spent on working on an infinite hardware support, how much is left for the real innovation?

kombine• 3 months ago

I agree. Linux has a wealth of hardware drivers and the time would be better spent on a translation layer or do it via running a VM or even using LLMs to port the drivers over to FreeBSD en masse. That way BSD team can focus on their unique strengths.

atmosx• 3 months ago

My guess is that *BSDs will see a huge boosts in HW support in the following years, primarily due to LLMs.

assimpleaspossi3• 3 months ago

It's already done through the linuxalator. You run Linux applications through that. Or you can run Linux through bhyve.

supliminal2• 3 months ago

Yeah you run into this head on trying to use BSD. It’s too much glue and compat work. By the end of it you no longer have a coherent system, you’re back to Linux.

I use FBSD on an old-ish Lenovo W540 without too many hiccups. No, it’s not for everyone and never was. I wouldn’t suggest to anyone to run a BSD as a daily driver, or at all, unless they have a good reason to. Once you cross that line you need to know what and why.

Xmd5a• 3 months ago

Once you cross that line you need to know what and why.

This is counterbalanced by the fact there is often one straightforward solution to every problem you run into, and those have been abundantly discussed online. Written as someone who just gave it a try.

supliminal2• 3 months ago

It’s also that so many real-world use cases of BSDs entirely avoid these issues. If they were dominant concerns they would be addressed in a very professional manner, like the rest of the system. But the target market for these things just doesn’t overlap. Maybe there is a market for a BSD-esque approach to solving these things, but honestly? Meh.

assimpleaspossi3• 3 months ago

So you use FreeBSD on your laptop. You think people with reason should run it. You agree with others who have said you need to know the system to use it, and you do. So why does your response sound like you don't like it? I think you do cause you do.

One of the guys on the FreeBSD forums said, "FreeBSD is for professionals and serious computer enthusiasts." and I don't see anything wrong with that.

vermaden3• 3 months ago

I own these and they also work great with FreeBSD:

ThinkPads:

- W520/W530/T520/T530/X220/X230/T420s

- T480

- T14 GEN1 (Intel)

- T14 GEN1 (AMD)

I needed to replace MediaTek WiFi card on T14 (AMD) into some Intel WiFi one.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

vermaden

ggm• 3 months ago

Update the matrix on the source site?

nosioptar• 3 months ago

That's quite helpful. I'm potentially switching my x220t and t530 to a BSD this year, might also get a gen 1 t14.

vermaden3• 3 months ago

The good thing about T530 (and T520) is that You can put there the same Quad Core CPU that W520/W530 has :)

autoexec2• 3 months ago

Buying a thinkpad means using a device made by Lenovo, a company which has repeatedly shipped devices infected with malware and backdoors (sometimes for profit) see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security_and_privacy_in...

broken-kebab3• 3 months ago

He apparently wipes all of that when installing FreeBSD though.

bigyabai• 3 months ago

I hope it pays well, those Windows users are subsidizing some great hardware.

MisterTea2• 3 months ago

Love the Thinkpad line. It's kinda the hackers laptop of choice.

X220/X230

These are pretty solid with dual batteries. Also popular for OpenBSD and 9front, the latter of which I run on an x230 (it stopped charging the removable battery :-/) You can get about 2 hours off the internal and 6~8 with a big fat removable battery, maybe more if the OS and drivers can properly throttle hardware power settings.

I have an X1 carbon 5th gen and it's quite light but not useful for 9front without some Ethernet driver tweaking (likely some phy bits need twiddling.) Instead I tossed Debian on it and run 9front in a VM if I need a local CPU. So far it just seems to work including Ethernet (via a dongle) and WiFi.

eth0up• 3 months ago

I just went through T14 Gen 1 hell. I tried to replace a broken LCD and the system just wouldn't boot. I fussed with it so much, the flimsy case cracked and broke in several places. I gave up and decided to use it as a clamshell, but had to keep the broken screen connected to boot.

But I couldn't get it to see the external monitor. I fought this for hours. I finally reached my patience threshold and tore the fucking LCD off the case. It hurt the hands a bit but was cathartic. Amazingly, it booted and saw the monitor, magically. I was astonished. With or without the broken screen, it wouldn't boot. But going psycho on it fixed it. Proof in the wholesomeness of violence, maybe not. But...

it's not running BSD. It's now my mom's desktop, and it's running Void. Works great, and I love the Ryzen 4700, with 16gb ram and atheros wifi chip. Delicate, but capable of some extremes :)

fl4regun2• 3 months ago

So can anyone give me a short explanation on why someone would use freeBSD over linux? I do run it technically, on my router (OPNSense), but that's not a personal computer, like a desktop or laptop. What are the advantages to running FreeBSD?

eugenekay• 3 months ago

FreeBSD will never switch to systemd. :-)

It is an old-school UNIX experience, not great for desktops but excellent for long-lived “pet servers” where long-term stability over decades of service is valued. I treasure it for running small Web servers and shell hosts, instead of Debian/Ubuntu.

icedchai• 3 months ago

Same. I've been running it on a "pet" server since the mid 90's, for shell, web, email, etc. I started on FreeBSD 2.x and has been through many upgrades and migrations! I also worked at an early ISP and FreeBSD was our go-to for email, NNTP, and DNS.

mghackerlady2• 3 months ago

it's just a good unix experience, some people like that

sausagefeet3• 3 months ago

I have a few reasons:

1. I subjectively just like it better. Things like dtrace, jails, the init system, just click for me.

2. I think it's good to not support a Linux mono-culture. Yes, there is Windows and macOS, but in terms of open source OS's, I think it's good to have more than one choice and so for any rough edges in FreeBSD, I'm willing to deal with them to support that goal.

3. I don't think you'll find any actual, hard, technical reason to want to prefer FreeBSD over Linux on a desktop. Anything you can do in FreeBSD you can do in Linux. Heck, FreeBSD is probably even running the Linux version (for example video drivers).

But really, which Linux do you mean? Nix? Gentoo? Red Hat?

jmspring4• 3 months ago

CUDA gets into an area that I wouldn't use it for. My local LLM machine is running Void linux.

fl4regun2• 3 months ago

I use arch, but I don't see the distro as mattering that much. For the most part it just feels like picking your poison on which init system, what package manager you want to use, etc, but the end experience isn't too different once everything is set up. I can run steam on each one, they all have gcc, they all have support for the same set of desktop environments, they all have chrome/ff/whatever browser you want. At this point I'm just using what I have set up because the setup is what takes most of the effort, once that's done, it's smooth sailing.

kev009• 3 months ago

For the average joe there it's just an option and personal taste, and it comes with its own tradeoffs and learning curve. Well integrated ZFS would probably be the main thing for average joe.

For developers, it is interesting to think of as a self contained toolkit. If you are building firmware, platform images for bare metal or cloud, it creates a much better demarcation than any attempts Linux can put forth. This is related to why you might like OPNSense. But if you are just a consumer it only indirectly matters to you.. consistency of build and product, quality of subset of network drivers and subsystems like pf to support your mission, ability go in and quickly and correctly fix the right problem at the right level etc.

herecomesthepre2• 3 months ago

If you want ZFS use Solaris not an ersatz system that imported OpenZFS code.

jmspring4• 3 months ago

Stability and security. It's a great server OS and I've been using it for decades.

herecomesthepre2• 3 months ago

It's arguably the best non-Apple/non-Windows system to use to order an Apple or Windows laptop to replace it.

You might have to use an Ethernet connection though, as the Wi-Fi may not be supported.

unethical_ban2• 3 months ago

It's different than Linux, and mainstream enough to be actively developed and used in production. For a hobbyist, that is useful in itself.

It's a pretty rock-solid system, from my memory of the 2000s.

BSDs in general are tightly integrated between kernel and userland tools. FreeBSD has a lot of modern concepts built in that Linux also has, such as Jails and bhyve VM hosting.

FreeBSD has ZFS has a first-class citizen and in my sysadmin opinion, ZFS is one of the best filesystems ever created. While others dunk on BSD for "catching up to Linux" on certain features, BSD equivalents seem to be really well architected. ZFS is one place where Linux (btrfs) is only beginning to catch up. I just learned about bectl (Boot Environment Ctl) that makes snapshotting and rolling back the system partition of installs really easy, and ZFS-on-root is critical to that tool.

For many, having the simple RC init system is a boon over systemd. Services that need started up at boot are defined in /etc/rc.conf, as well as networking and other core services. Editing rc.conf can be done manually or with the sysrc tool.

assimpleaspossi3• 3 months ago

Use Google and you will find your same question has been asked 1000x1000 times every day for 30 years.

sellmesoap2• 3 months ago

Some may call me a devil's advocate (I love FreeBSD as my first alternate OS, it's more sensible as a whole, and less chaotic then linux) it provided the network stack for Microsoft and a base for darwin (OSX) Maybe it's just the low brow art, maybe it's the root of evil and the label is on the tin, how cute!

EngineerUSA• 3 months ago

Anyone with a framework? I am considering it, but it is more expensive than my mac... which says something

sausagefeet3• 3 months ago

I am using it on a 12th Gen Intel (so a few years old), and it works great. I'm sure I have naturally acclimated and subconsciously work around things that I don't realize but suspend/resume works (I rebooted for the first time in like 3 months today). All the apps, yadda. For me, it's great.

grigio• 3 months ago

Too many issues with Wifi and suspend, a part that the usage an performance are quite similar to Linux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZk6LTfqW30

trelane2• 3 months ago

Yeah. The reason is that a lot (almost all?) consumer hardware is broken, but in ways that either minimally impact Windows or which are worked around in drivers.

unixhero• 3 months ago

Ooh! I have lne of those T490 laptops. Except my wife had 1 liter of liquid detergent into it after putting a single bagged carton of it into my suitcase to bring on vacay. Great fun. The screen flickers.

ectospheno• 3 months ago

I use a Dell Latitude 3550 on OpenBSD. Never tried the camera but I’ve used everything else without incident.

sharts• 3 months ago

The funny thing is the BSDs would likely have better support if most folks complaining here actually used BSD for their infra.

No, you don’t need linux to run your python webapp that you actually tested on your macbook.

jmspring4• 3 months ago

But docker!

I've been using jails/etc and the pattern with way I setup and configure my FreeBSD servers hasn't significantly changed in 20 years.

evanjrowley5• 3 months ago

But docker

Maybe one day! One of the things that has changed in the past 20 years with FreeBSD is the addition of bhyve. Virtualization on FreeBSD was not great prior to bhyve. Because FreeBSD waited to implement it, they ended up with an arguably more modern hypervisor versus what Linux had at the time. Maybe history will repeat when it comes to application containers / docker images. Podman came 5 years after Docker and the result was better. It could happen with FreeBSD too.

muppetman• 3 months ago

I was surprised clicking on the link didn't lead to a blank page!

sandreas• 3 months ago

Thank you for the listing. However I'd really appreciate two more columns:

  Release Year/CPU gen
  Display Options

To see what tech of a laptop I'm buying in regards of performance and if it has a > 1920x1200 Option.

What I'm missing in the list is the

  LG Gram lineup and the 
  Dell 5530

(which is a steal when buying used here in Germany)

vermaden3• 3 months ago

Sure.

2011:

- W520/T520 (maximum resolution: 1920x1080)

- T420s (maximum resolution: 1600x900)

- X220 (maximum resolution: 1366x768)

2012:

- W530/T530 (maximum resolution: 1920x1080)

- T430s (maximum resolution: 1600x900)

- X230 (maximum resolution: 1366x768)

2018:

- T480 (maximum resolution: 1920x1080 or more)

2020:

- T14 GEN1 (Intel) (maximum resolution: 1920x1080 or more)

- T14 GEN1 (AMD) (maximum resolution: 1920x1080 or more)

Newer models also work like the light ThinkPad X1 Carbon GEN5/GEN6/GEN7/GEN8/... for example.

Top laptops to use with FreeBSD

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