I think, at this stage, I am finally convinced that FreeBSD is not ready for all desktop users.

Suspend/resume and power management have always been difficult to get right, requiring support from every driver and every piece of hardware. Windows NT had nothing. Windows 9x barely supported even the simple APM standard. Even on modern Windows it can be somewhat spotty. NVidia cards can't always do it, IIRC they had a list of supported motherboards. Suspend/resume in Linux works on my laptop, somewhat: about ~10% of the time when I get a blank screen on resume and have to power cycle.

One of the best things Microsoft did to improve suspend/resume recently, perhaps unintentionally, is to make the "Shut down" option in Windows actually suspend instead of shutting down. That must have put enormous pressure on hardware manufacturers to get suspend/resume working perfectly, as failure to suspend/resume is immediately obvious to users no matter how they turn off, making it a top priority. I wonder how much this improved suspend/resume support in open-source operating systems though.
 
I don't even know where to start with that. I haven't found much documentation or recent work on that part of base. The lack of ACPI/GUI integration frustrates me too.
 
Heck my work Macbook doesn't "resume" properly sometimes. I blame the oodles of corporate crapware on it, but I have noticed that having to give the Vulcan pinch to my personal and family Macbooks has become more common.
 
One of my keys died on my rMBP keyboard, did all of that above, still no cigar. I can replace the keyboard on my T480 anytime; I can't do that on a rMBP from 2015.

Thanks Apple. It just works, huh?
 
It is perfectly possible to replace keyboards on MBPs. It's not easy, because you have to dig through everything (batteries, disks, fans, motherboard ...) until you get there. I've replaced the trackpad on a 2008 MBP, and most of the guts on a 2014 MB Air.
 
I reached a tipping point. Looking forward to receiving a new HP notebook that FreeBSD can not boot. I can not make a business case for FreeBSD-compatible hardware.

I don't enjoy pain. Imagine … a world of desktop computing where everyday things become more user-friendly with Windows 10.

I do plan to continue use of FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT – in VirtualBox.
 
diizzy said:
In my experience Hyper-V works better …
Click to expand...

Thanks, I do already have some installations of FreeBSD in Hyper-V but they were not accessed locally. They were through a combination of Citrix + RDP, which (for me) isn't great; if I'm not careful, keyboard shortcuts have annoying unwanted consequences. There, I switched from Hyper-V to VirtualBox.

I'll retry Hyper-V when I get the new computer.
 
grahamperrin said:
I don't enjoy pain. Imagine … a world of desktop computing where everyday things become more user-friendly with Windows 10.
Click to expand...
Distracting "popups" everywhere! Visual overload and for absolutely no real gain. Looking forward to it ;)

Btw, I rarely suggest proprietary alternatives but since you are stuck with Windows anyway, I do recommend VMware. It has such a handy vmware-kvm tool that emulates a KVM switch.

You can basically tap the "pause" key (by default) and instantly toggle between Windows and the VM. If you put a shortcut for it in your shell:startup folder, you honestly won't even remember you are running windows (until you press "pause").

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2057914

Hyper-V is actually pretty good too, however it is not really meant for desktop usage. No USB passthrough and no good virtualized graphics drivers for native resolution. Instead it is *obsessed* with using RDP to solve all of these problems which is a kludge. You will be better off with Windows 7 and VirtualPC 2004.
 
Beastie7 said:
You must enjoy pain.
Click to expand...
Fortunate for all of us which do not enjoy pain but still want to get that stuff fixed there are third party repair shops around. Of course these are not endorsed or authorized by Apple Inc., but still most of them are doing a great job and repairing stuff where Apple just tells you "replace the logic board" and wants to sell you a new machine for a faction of that price. Some of them even do offer nationwide mail-in service.

So if you want to extend the lifetime of your machine instead getting a new one, these are a viable option and way to go.

Or if you are feeling more adventurous, you can watch the myriads of repair videos done by Louis Rossmann on Youtube, where he also has a couple of replacing keyboards, and try to do that by yourself. But be aware that first you really need to spend some money on special repair tools most likely. There are myriads of self repair videos featuring Apple products being available on Youtube. Problem normally is to get schematics and spare parts.
 
Beastie7 said:
You must enjoy pain.
Click to expand...
He's a real computer guy.

Decades ago, the manager of a radio station I worked at wanted to have a printer for his Radio Shack TRS-80. I don't recall but there was no such thing at the time. I wrote some assembly, burned an EEPROM by hand, breadboarded with wire a hardware interface and dug into the internals of the computer to hardwire it in to make it all work.

Even today I can't believe I did that.
 
hardworkingnewbie said:
Fortunate for all of us which do not enjoy pain but still want to get that stuff fixed there are third party repair shops around.
Click to expand...

They're still sealed, and non-user serviceable. That's my whole complaint. It's like taking onions out of a melted cheeseburger before eating it. Ain't nobody got time for that nonsense.
 
Beastie7 said:
They're still sealed, and non-user serviceable. That's my whole complaint. It's like taking onions out of a melted cheeseburger before eating it. Ain't nobody got time for that nonsense.
Click to expand...
Well nobody forces you to buy Apple products, right? And if you should buy Apple most exactly do know which mess you are getting yourself into.

I do agree this stuff should be serviceable, but well - it's not, like a whole myriad of other todays' products as well.
 
hardworkingnewbie said:
Well nobody forces you to buy Apple products, right? And if you should buy Apple most exactly do know which mess you are getting yourself into.

I do agree this stuff should be serviceable, but well - it's not, like a whole myriad of other todays' products as well.
Click to expand...

There should be an extra tax added to un-reparable goods like this. That money should then go to all these environmental charities that us little peasants are being convinced to give our little bits of money to.

Each time my council or government tells me that it is my usage of a kettle or a slightly older car that is causing environmental harm rather than all of this landfill crap that Apple churns out, I declare a little bit less on my tax return each year.
 
hardworkingnewbie said:
Well nobody forces you to buy Apple products, right? And if you should buy Apple most exactly do know which mess you are getting yourself into.
Click to expand...

macOS is literally the only other option of two major platforms for production apps. So I'm bound to the lesser of two evils. Get out of here with that rubbish. I shouldn't have to wrestle through an ass-ton of adhesive just to replace my keyboard. My T480 is a breeze with it's lego-like design.
 
This depends of course also on which production apps you do need for your daily work, so your mileage might vary for other people.

For most people nowadays a Chromebook with the right webapps is enough to do their daily work. Of course then again you've got to deal with the cloud and all of its implications...
 
Windows 10

kpedersen said:
Distracting "popups" everywhere! Visual overload and for absolutely no real gain. Looking forward to it ;)
Click to expand...

On the plus side:
I'd prefer a Mac, but (as with FreeBSD-compatible computers) I can not make a business case for it.

Virtualisation

kpedersen said:
Hyper-V is actually pretty good too, however it is not really meant for desktop usage. No USB passthrough
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's probably a show-stopper for me.

kpedersen said:
and no good virtualized graphics drivers for native resolution. Instead it is *obsessed* with using RDP to solve all of these problems which is a kludge.
Click to expand...

Windows 7

kpedersen said:
You will be better off with Windows 7 and …
Click to expand...

No. I was involved in a project to cease use of unsupported versions of Windows.
 
grahamperrin said:
  • it boots, on the given hardware; FreeBSD can not
Click to expand...
Heh, not on my machines it can't, it throws a fit at the slightly older GMA chip. FreeBSD really does have much wider hardware support.

grahamperrin said:
I'd prefer a Mac, but (as with FreeBSD-compatible computers) I can not make a business case for it.
Click to expand...
ThinkPads are very well supported by FreeBSD. Especially those a year or so old. They are also very easy to make a business case for because to the casual user, they are rarely seen as "desirable" unlike Apple's nonsense.

Just chuck this (7th Gen) into the next IT procurement request ;)

https://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/productinfo/laptops-and-notebooks/0009225023

grahamperrin said:
No. I was involved in a project to cease use of unsupported versions of Windows.
Click to expand...
I tend to believe that Microsoft is unfit to support any version of Windows. So take your pick!
 
One needs to remember that manufacturing, distribution, marketing and packaging all come into play when building a product. While many of us would like our products to be serviceable, doing so might make such products larger, more expensive, and not what we are looking for. An example would be an iPad. Would it be larger or heavier to allow serviceability? Does it also affect reliability cause you now have, say, screws that can come loose or parts that, instead of being soldered down, are now removable?
 
kpedersen said:
I tend to believe that Microsoft is unfit to support any version of Windows. So take your pick!
Click to expand...
This is funny. :)
A little thing MS could do is better notification when something goes EOL. Win 10, the update process is OK since it mostly works, but I have a laptop that I installed Win10 on (because Win7 went EOL) and the specific build went EOL. Just got "feature update not ready for this device yet", never went to "here's new feature", the build (1841 I think) went EOL but no message ever about "This build is EOL" just red "we can't update this device". Took a weekend of scrambling to figure out the standalone win 10 updater to put latest on the thing.

All they needed to do in the update thing was:
We can't update your device because your build/blah is End Of Life.
Here is a link to the standalone installer and information on how to update it to the latest.
 
kpedersen said:
… They are also very easy to make a business case for …
Click to expand...

It's not so easy. Windows 10 is a requirement, and the hardware that's normally given (most often: HP ProBook 400 440 G7) runs Windows 10 very well.

I can't make a case for alternative hardware based on a personal preference for something other than Windows.
 
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drhowarddrfine said:
One needs to remember that manufacturing, distribution, marketing and packaging all come into play when building a product. While many of us would like our products to be serviceable, doing so might make such products larger, more expensive, and not what we are looking for. An example would be an iPad. Would it be larger or heavier to allow serviceability? Does it also affect reliability cause you now have, say, screws that can come loose or parts that, instead of being soldered down, are now removable?
Click to expand...
One needs to remember that forced obsolescence is massively profitable. iPads aren't non-serviceable to make them weigh less. That's why Apple goes to court to stop people repairing their stuff.
 
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