Notebook / Laptop compatibility list

lme@ said:
If you use FreeBSD on your notebook or want to use it, please take a look at

http://laptop.bsdgroup.de

It has a extensive list of Notebooks / Laptops / Netbooks and can tell you if FreeBSD is compatible with it or not.

Please add your device to this list to help other people making a decision what Notebook to buy or describe what you needed to do to get your device up and running.

Thank you in advance!
Click to expand...



It appears this website is dead. Does anybody have a 2014 updated list and/or URL?

Thanks,
 
Αcer Aspire 3810T (My previous laptop) as far as I remember everything was working

Lenovo p400 touchscreen (My laptop now)

Worked:
Full resolution graphics card
Sound
usb / usb 3
Fn keys for brightness with hack. I don't know for sound
Ethernet
hdmi
camera

I don't know / not tested:

Wifi (I think that see it but didn't try to make it work)
sd card
touchscreen
bluetooth

Big problem that I removed it was the power management. On my Laptop from fully charged to battery 10% was in 1 hour!
Now it runs Manjaro Linux with xfce4 Desktop Environment
 
This is what one reads on the page I quoted above:

To improve FreeBSD support for various laptops, please share your experience with particular laptop model you use daily or have occasional access to. This information can help users to decide if some model they want is worth buying to install FreeBSD and help interested developers to improve hardware support.

If you see a nice laptop in some electronic shop or at your friend's, try to boot ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snaps ... AGES/11.0/ to perform some simple tests and collect basic technical information. Assuming you're booting off USB flash drive, enter LiveCD mode and do the following at least:

Code: 
# mount -u -o rw /
# dmesg > /dmesg.out
# pciconf -lv > /pciconf.out
# devinfo -v > /devinfo.out
# acpidump -dt > /acpidump.out
# mount -u -o ro / ; sync
# zzz

The last command will send laptop to sleep (suspend, S3). Try to resume it and see what happens. Don't forget to report it here and attach those gathered files. ;-)

Other things worth looking into: LCD brightness and multimedia keys behavior, expected battery life per acpiconf -i0, CPU scaling and fan control, correct shutdown -p now, to name a few.
Click to expand...

I have two potential candidates for that test :)...
 
AlbyVA said:
Any chance getting a MacBook to run FreeBSD?
Click to expand...

If you want to install FreeBSD besides Mac OSX (at least on a Macbook Air mid 2011), then the answer is >>Yes<< :) !! I have just succeeded in doing that (about 40 minutes ago). I thought that the install was complicated.
But it was not that complicated at all because FreeBSD does the partitioning for you in this case, and if you ask: Where the hell can I get a boot manager or whatever to manage the two OSes? Well, you just have to install rEFInd: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ .
I have installed besides Mac OSX Mavericks the newest version of FreeBSD 11.0 CURRENT for further testing. I bet FreeBSD 10.1 (<- EFI install is possible with this if I remember correctly) will install in a similar and easy way.

What I did:

1) I installed rEFInd
2) I created a bootable USB stick with the latest version of FreeBSD 11.0 CURRENT on it.
3) Using the Mac OSX disk utility, I freed 15 Gb for the OSX install, i.e. made OSX 15 Gb shorter.
4) I booted successfully the image (to boot the image: at startup hold the ALT-key, then you see a menu with your USB stick in it, choose the USB stick)
5) I chose >>install<< in the menu that turned up.
6) After the boring part of the installation came the partitioning part (this is risky if you don't understand what you do, especially if you could loose a lot that you have on your Macbook)
So I got frightened and went back to my OSX and had an extensive look into the FreeBSD handbook and came back again :), after making sure that the most important data I have are saved on external hard drives or the cloud I use. Now I chose the guided partitioning,
chose the disk on which I wanted to install the OS, and of course there was only one, the one with my data and OSX and everything on it.
Most importantly: I chose the >>Partition<< option and not (!!) to use the >>Entire Disk<< option. FreeBSD will then use the unused disk space to create an EFI partition scheme besides the OSX scheme for your install if you let it.
7) I proceeded with the installation and restarted. And voila, in the boot menu rEFInd you have now two OSes to choose from, one being OSX and the other one FreeBSD.
8) Now I have to set up the network and other stuff and get a FreeBSD icon for the rEFInd boot icon :).

Edit: O.k., the problem at the moment is the wireless driver support. Apple uses Broadcom and that seems to be not too well supported at the moment. I look into that.
Edit2: Unless that driver will be written or ported, one must use LAN or just buy another wifi card (they are quite cheep) and plug it in (there are simple instruction videos or manuals on this topic)
 
For what it is worth, I have an ASUS k55n, and it works right out of the box :) . Wi-Fi puts error messages on your screen, but it doesn't cause real problems.

*EDIT, X11 does not work out of the box due to the KMS driver. However, desktops like KDE and Gnome2 which have display managers can be loaded still, but they only really have 2D acceleration.
 
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I have a notebook Asus A4000. FreeBSD 10.0 works very well with it. But FreeBSD 10.1 does not supports its hardware. It seems, some problems with its BIOS. I’ll try with Dell Inspiron 5545-9095.
 
I'm running 10.1 Release on an old Compaq Presario V3000 - Intel Core Duo T2300 (1.66-GHz)
Everything (including WiFi) works like a charm!
 
ThinkPad SL510

Almost everything important works under FreeBSD 10.1. This includes suspend with the following settings in /etc/sysctl.conf:
Code: 
hw.usb.no_suspend_wait=1
hw.pci.do_power_suspend=0
hw.pci.do_power_resume=1
hw.pci.do_power_nodriver=3
hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3
Not working:
  • Brightness control, however can be done in a hacky way using sysutils/acpi_call: acpi_call -p '\VBRC' -i $i where $i is a value between 0 and 15.
  • SD card reader
  • Some keys like e.g. Volume Up/Down, ThinkVantage, ...
Untested:
  • Webcam (I unplugged mine, so can't test)
  • Express Card slot
 
tobik said:
  • Brightness control, however can be done in a hacky way using sysutils/acpi_call: acpi_call -p '\VBRC' -i $i where $i is a value between 0 and 15.
  • SD card reader
  • Some keys like e.g. Volume Up/Down, ThinkVantage, ...
Click to expand...
Have you tried loading acpi_ibm() and configure it as described in the manpage?
 
lme@ said:
Have you tried loading acpi_ibm() and configure it as described in the manpage?
Click to expand...
I've just tried. And the keys are now recognized with the same event codes as the ThinkPad T41p example in the man page. :)
However brightness control using the dev.acpi_ibm.0.lcd_brightness sysctl is broken. I can't set the brightness level as high or as low as in e.g. Linux or with acpi_call, but it at least somewhat works.

I guess I need to setup devd now. I will post the devd conf here when I am done.
 
tobik said:
I've hacked together a simple kernel module that exposes a new sysctl for controlling the LCD brightness on my ThinkPad SL510 based on the acpi_call hack and built a devd config for it. Both are available here if anyone cares: https://github.com/t6/acpi_sl510
Click to expand...
That's a nice approach! :)
And maybe only a stopgap until you upgrade to HEAD or maybe even 10-STABLE. The brightness control should already work there. But now you don't have an urgent reason to upgrade.
 
By the way, is there a reason you created a new kmod? Maybe you can add it to apci_ibm?
 
lme@ said:
By the way, is there a reason you created a new kmod? Maybe you can add it to apci_ibm?
Click to expand...
The reason is inexperience ;) I looked at acpi_ibm and was pretty intimidated, so it was easier for me to just create a new kmod first. This is also my first kmod ever. I'm only in Chapter 5 of the FreeBSD Device Drivers book, so I knew just enough to do this. :)

Maybe I will try modifying acpi_ibm as an exercise if I have some time.
 
Impressive. :)

Can you also please try a recent HEAD and see if the brightness keys work out of the box and without loading apci_ibm and acpi_video? If you use ZFS you can snapshot your system and rollback later if HEAD doesn't fit your needs.
 
Are the images from ftp://ftp.de.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/snapshots/ISO-IMAGES/11.0/ recent enough? Assuming that it is ok to just boot one of them instead?

EDIT: I just booted FreeBSD-11.0-CURRENT-amd64-20150201-r278031-mini-memstick.img and the brightness keys do not work out of the box + vt does not switch to a high resolution anymore (I've loaded i915.ko at the loader prompt). I've attached the output of dmesg.
 

Attachments

Yes, the images are new enough. Thank you for testing this!
 
I have a Fujitsu Lifebook E751. Except webcam everything working just great with 11-CURRENT out of the box. Even suspend/resume/hibernate works flawlessy.
Code: 
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579V Gigabit Network Connection (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
0a:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
0b:00.1 SD Host controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5209 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
 
This isn't really a laptop specific issue in general, it all boils down to available drivers. That said, as long as you have 3+ old laptop with non dual graphics it'll do fine in general apart from wifi (depending on chipset). You may run to issue that your fn-keys might not work but that's pretty much it really.
//Danne
 
lme@ said:
Can you also please try a recent HEAD and see if the brightness keys work out of the box and without loading apci_ibm and acpi_video?
Click to expand...
I've tried again with the most recent 11.0-CURRENT snapshot. Brightness control works now on my ThinkPad SL510 after loading acpi_video :)
 
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