Install FreeBSD 10 on a gaming laptop

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Good morning all (it's about 09:40AM in Italy),
I have a Clevo P150SM (http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo_2.asp?productid=384) custom build configured as follows:
* Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ
* 16GB RAM
* NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 770M with Optimus
* 90GB SSD + 1TB HDD
* Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260

This system works wonderfully with Windows 8.1 64 PRO but I hate it. I'm unable do develop well on Windows so I need a more unix-ish environment; I've treed to run both FreeBSD and openSUSE inside Hyper-V but it was terribly slow. I'd like to keep the ability to play Windows games, do you know if Windows works well in a VM hosted on FreeBSD?

Now:
* I mostly go wired, so the missing drivers for the wireless are not an issue.
* I cannot disable Optimus from the BIOS, integrated graphics works well but discrete does not. <- biggest issue
* I need to know what is the best way to use the SSD as system disk for FreeBSD (any optimization like disable-journaling-on-ext4 but for UFS?); i've seen some guides around but are overly complicated and outdated.

Any help appreciated,
Thanks.
 
The video support is the biggest problem. It's not going to be useful for FreeBSD with X unless you can get the KMS drivers to use one of the built-in GPUs without disabling Optimus. That might be possible, but reports are scarce.

Running Windows in a VM works, but FreeBSD does not support 3D acceleration for the VM. So games which depend on that are probably not going to be usable.

Try running FreeBSD in VirtualBox.

As far as special optimizations for SSDs, the only one I've considered (but not actually done) is mounting filesystems with noatime. However, current SSDs are good for hundreds of terabytes of writes, and I feel the concerns are overstated. SSDs are so cheap now that it's hardly worth spending the time to reduce writes. I do have an article on setting them up for FreeBSD: Using a Solid State Drive with FreeBSD. This mostly emphasizes getting the alignment correct for good performance.
 
Many thanks for your answer, it cleared up some doubts i had.

wblock@ said:
The video support is the biggest problem. It's not going to be useful for FreeBSD with X unless you can get the KMS drivers to use one of the built-in GPUs without disabling Optimus. That might be possible, but reports are scarce.
Click to expand...

I've arrived at the point of being able to start X with the integrated Intel GPU but the discrete one was running at full power without being used... not an ideal situation on a laptop.

wblock@ said:
Running Windows in a VM works, but FreeBSD does not support 3D acceleration for the VM. So games which depend on that are probably not going to be usable.
Click to expand...

That defeats the whole point about emulating Windows, lol.

wblock@ said:
Try running FreeBSD in VirtualBox.
Click to expand...

I think that's the best solution for now.
I've tryed it and it's working well but about two days ago VirtualBox had a regression and was not working at all so it was not a viable solution at the time, bad timing i guess.

wblock@ said:
As far as special optimizations for SSDs, the only one I've considered (but not actually done) is mounting filesystems with noatime. However, current SSDs are good for hundreds of terabytes of writes, and I feel the concerns are overstated. SSDs are so cheap now that it's hardly worth spending the time to reduce writes. I do have an article on setting them up for FreeBSD: Using a Solid State Drive with FreeBSD. This mostly emphasizes getting the alignment correct for good performance.
Click to expand...

Good to know, less headaches for me ;-)
 
What about the Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260, does it work ?
I have this Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 with this WiFi, when booting from USB to install FreeBSD it does not see the card.

Any hints ?
 
Also, I'm willing to get deep into testing the UEFI boot, I need to get with some dev in contact to test things.
I have enabled the legacy support on this laptop but everything is super slow... not sure why.
 
UEFI boot or the traditional BIOS boot have nothing to do with any slowness. Both will simply pass execution to the FreeBSD bootloader and once that's running nothing from UEFI or the BIOS will be used.
 
Is the slowness in the X environment? You might be using the VESA driver for graphics and that can be really slow on some machines.
 
Hi,

SirDice, kpa - the slowness was in the behavior of the installer don't know why, I didn't continue the install because there was no WiFi - the only network card. Will try to check this again maybe it was me.

But how do I do about getting that card to work ? Is there a trick or something ? I found a firmware here but only for Linux:
http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/w ... 034398.htm
 
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