FreeBSD-friendly laptop recommendations

dbdemon said:
Incidentally, I have come across a refurbished Thinkpad X250 for approx. GBP 170, but it says it has max 8GB RAM only. I'm unsure if it's what I want or not. So many considerations, it makes my head spin!
Click to expand...

It takes 16 GB. My x220 is running with 16, too.

I disagree that HP is a safe bet. For example my 11th gen Intel HP has (naturally) Tiger Lake sound. That has no FreeBSD way to access the microphone.
 
dbdemon said:
Incidentally, I have come across a refurbished Thinkpad X250 for approx. GBP 170, but it says it has max 8GB RAM only. I'm unsure if it's what I want or not. So many considerations, it makes my head spin!
Click to expand...
Don't buy it. Is not worth. That model can use max 16 GB of ram, the downside is that has only one memory slot and is single channel.
 
cracauer@ said:
LOL

Anyway, X220 Thinkpad is the only real laptop on the market. No wakey upey, though.
Click to expand...
I would go with the X220 too. Or if you think you can live with 8GB, the X201 is a nice little box, and very cheap. If you get either of these, remember to consider getting the docking station ("ultrabase") too; they tend to be pretty cheap and can add significant functionality, like a second hard drive.

There is one other possibility although I hesitate to call it a laptop because it's so huge(!), but it deserves a mention: the W520, you can see Vermaden's description of running freebsd on it here:-

vermaden.wordpress.com

FreeBSD 13.1 on ThinkPad W520

I created whole FreeBSD Desktop series … but I never created an article describing how I run FreeBSD on my own daily driver – the Lenovo ThinkPad W520 from 2011 – the last one wit…
vermaden.wordpress.com vermaden.wordpress.com

Lenovo calls it a "workstation class" thinkpad, hence the "W". You can put a max of 32 GB RAM in that thing :) I actually had one of those at work years ago, it's a good machine. Don't underestimate how physically large it is though!

In fact Mr Vermaden has done some really great articles on thinkpads if you have a look around his site. His "epitaph to laptops" describes some of the reasons why people prefer these older machines:-
vermaden.wordpress.com

Epitaph to Laptops

This article was in my ‘TODO’ list since almost start of this blog several years ago. Usually I try to focus on positive side of things but this article is one way highway quite the opp…
vermaden.wordpress.com vermaden.wordpress.com
 
I can recommend Thinkpad x270 bought in 2018. I upgraded it along the way to 32 GB memory and replaced the NVMe to 2 TB. It’s attached to a docking station with two 24 “ screens attached. Wifi is stable, if I remember correctly there had been two times where I had to connect by cable. Fan noise picks up when I watch youtube in fullscreen, aside from that it feels like almost noiseless. Got it running since 2018 in 24/7 on FreeBSD, rock solid.

The only downside you can’t attach a 3rd external screen as only 3 screens are supported and the laptop screen can’t be deactivated in the BIOS.

Can’t tell about suspend/resume as I don’t use it/ need it.
 
It's weird to me that some people don't use or care about suspend/resume. I use it all the time on Linux, and at this point I simply can't imagine bothering with a laptop that couldn't suspend/resume.

But I suppose people are different, and if you never used some feature X and you feel fine without X, then you also won't be missing X.
 
dbdemon said:
It's weird to me that some people don't use or care about suspend/resume. I use it all the time on Linux, and at this point I simply can't imagine bothering with a laptop that couldn't suspend/resume.
Click to expand...
These days, FreeBSD tends to boot up from scratch in a comparable time than Windows does to resume and get past the finnicky lock screen. So really I think suspend/resume is more of a compulsion than anything useful to my own workflow. If I used heavy desktop environments or pre-ssd hard disk, then things might be different.

In many ways I also like the machine to be in a fresh state when I use it again.
 
There is a really good series of videos here on setting up a thinkpad X201, she goes into all the details about the hardware, including the ultrabase and keyboard replacement. She actually uses linux in the videos, but you can just as well use freebsd on that laptop. BTW, suspend and resume does work on the X201 with freebsd, at least in 13.x and 14.0, at least, I've had it working on my X201 here!. :) Much of what she says applies to other thinkpads from that period, too.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG1Dhfupk8g

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVa9Vevs0o8

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zmOs0LARis
 
dbdemon said:
It's weird to me that some people don't use or care about suspend/resume. I use it all the time on Linux, and at this point I simply can't imagine bothering with a laptop that couldn't suspend/resume.

But I suppose people are different, and if you never used some feature X and you feel fine without X, then you also won't be missing X.
Click to expand...

I don't feel fine without suspend/resume, butI have been unable to acquire a laptop that would do it for FreeBSD. Not even my X220.
 
dbdemon said:
It's weird to me that some people don't use or care about suspend/resume. I use it all the time on Linux, and at this point I simply can't imagine bothering with a laptop that couldn't suspend/resume.

But I suppose people are different, and if you never used some feature X and you feel fine without X, then you also won't be missing X.
Click to expand...

Perhaps for clarification, I don't use my laptop as a mobile device, however if I have to I'm provided with the opportunity. In that case, I always power the laptop down to ensure my disk encryption protects me from loss and/or theft.

In addition to that, I keep the important stuff running remotely, so I can always reconnect later, no need there for suspend/resume either.

So in a nutshell I just like the convenience of availability meaning no powering up and/or powering down, just locking the session, switching off the screens and the light and call it a day. :cool:
 
Attached configuration files from my X201 with working suspend/resume:-
$ uname -a
FreeBSD blah 14.0-RELEASE-p3 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p3 #0: Mon Dec 11 04:56:01 UTC 2023 root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/sys/GENERIC amd64

Both closing the lid and keyboard Fn-F4 causes suspend.
Open the lid and hitting the Fn key alone causes resume.
Suspend and resume both takes about 5 seconds and ends with a loud beep!

I also have a devd hook to signal xidle on resume to lock the screen, but suspend/resume should work without that.

Bios version:-
# dmidecode -s bios-version
6QET70WW (1.40 )

Interesting that there are a couple of error messages relating to the ACPI power state in the system log, however, it works reliably. Maybe I'll investigate those some time.
 

Attachments

cracauer@ said:
I don't feel fine without suspend/resume, butI have been unable to acquire a laptop that would do it for FreeBSD. Not even my X220.
Click to expand...

I'm bemused by this, since not having heard of a T or X series Thinkpad that won't resume.

My T430s wouldn't until I'd found the correct i915kms video driver (then on 12.3-4), or I'd have abandoned it, so important is S/R for me.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops/Thinkpad_X220
says it does, or did then

Also pointing to (albeit Linux):
https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X220

I think if you opened a specific thread, maybe "Thinkpad X220 suspend/resume failure" with details of symptoms, general setup, video drivers, relevant sysctls (vt switching?), BIOS settings (e.g. TPM?) etc, we collectively would get to the bottom of your issue - because it is highly unusual.
 
blackbird9 said:
Interesting that there are a couple of error messages relating to the ACPI power state in the system log, however, it works reliably. Maybe I'll investigate those some time.
Click to expand...

Jan 31 14:34:21 blah kernel: pci1: failed to set ACPI power state D3 on \_SB_.PCI0.VID_: AE_BAD_PARAMETER
Jan 31 14:34:21 blah kernel: pcib1: failed to set ACPI power state D2 on \_SB_.PCI0: AE_BAD_PARAMETER
Click to expand...

I get those too. You can ignore them, it's about to kill power to video anyway, for which there's no low power mode here.

If you really want to see what goes on through a suspend / resume cycle: boot verbose, then S/R, then reboot again to save that far more detailed log.
 
smithi said:
I get those too. You can ignore them, it's about to kill power to video anyway, for which there's no low power mode here.

If you really want to see what goes on through a suspend / resume cycle: boot verbose, then S/R, then reboot again to save that far more detailed log.
Click to expand...
I really just added that trace to show that it is working ;-)
 
I am very happy with my (still relatively) new Framework 16.

64GB RAM, graphics adapter supported by drm-kmod. You need to replace the built in WIFI with an AX201 (you can buy that for little money from Framework and as with all the other components easily replace it yourself AFAIK) as the default WIFI is not supported or alternatively use a USB Wifi dongle (what I am lazily doing right now as the notebook has more than enough ports).

Have not managed to get suspend working yet though (but also did not spend a lot of time on it).
 
jbo@ said:
I was under the impression that suspend usually works out of the box.
It's the resume that is the challenging part :D
Click to expand...
True. Even though I think last time I tried it, nothing happened.

But I will try again now and see what will now happe
 
I would check ThinkPad. They cheap, they durable`ish , huge community and loads of info and parts . On ebay you can grab really cheap ones specially if u are from UK or USA.
dbdemon said:
Suspend & resume must work reliably
Click to expand...
This one i can not guarantee. Ive never managed to make it work properly on my ones
dbdemon said:
Low fan noise, at least with small workloads or when idle
Click to expand...
Comparing modified T480 without nVidia gpu and T61/W520/P71 with or without nVidia gpu is like a day and night - im not listening to fan noises and i dont hear them most of the time but i did heard my fan kicked in when i was watching movie on second monitor but it was not loud. P.s. sometimes is enough to take apart laptopt, clean fan put some sewing machine oil and noise gets lower.
dbdemon said:
Decent battery life (as good as can be expected for the price)
Click to expand...
dbdemon said:
Economical use of power i.e. able to scale with workload
Click to expand...

Some of TP`s have 2 batteries. With my work loads ( no movies , just text editor and multiple terminals and FF tabs ) i can last 8-10h for sure.
Workloads ? Deppends on whats your workloads ...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top