FreeBSD Laptop Compatibility: Top Laptops to Use with FreeBSD

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.

	▲	stackghost 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>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? 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is that it has got some niche use cases, I suspect lots of its developers don't even dogfood it, and is otherwise superceded by Linux in nearly every meaningful way.

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PunchyHamster an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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

	▲	fullstop 7 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It seems like the best way to get WiFi working in FreeBSD is to run Linux in bhyve and tunnel your connections through there.
	▲	whalesalad an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It’s fine bro you don’t need audio or suspend or Bluetooth or WiFi or multi touch. All you need is a serial cable and emacs to actually have a good computer experience. Please bro just try BSD. It has the ports system.

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mmsc an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

	▲	whalesalad an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Probably not T2 MacBooks though.

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bluGill an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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)

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irusensei 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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spooneybarger an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's a very small list.

	▲	guenthert 9 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	badgersnake 28 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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)))

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skydhash an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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shevy-java 25 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	jmclnx 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.