On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 10:19:11PM -0600, Michael Paul Zamot wrote: > Hello, my name is Michael Paul Zamot, I'm from Costa Rica. > I'm using OpenBSD since two months ago and I'm in love with it. > > I'm planning buying a laptop, perhaps a screen of 11" or 12" inches. > > I would like to know if you know about a compatible model, under $400. > What should I look before buying one? Any recommendations? > > With recent addition of AMD KMS and Intel KMS I don't think video > would be an issue. > > Thanks!
In my experience, now that video is out of the way, the thing to look out most for is getting a well supported built-in wireless card. That's starting to become difficult when buying new laptops because most drivers are lacking support for newer hardware variants. If the built-in wireless card doesn't work, your options are to replace it with a supported card or get a supported USB-based one. If you shop around for used minipci cards or USB wifi sticks with names matching the ones listed in driver man pages, you should get lucky. Note that some laptops (e.g. Thinkpads) do not allow the built-in cards to be replaced unless the new card matches a whitelist stored in the BIOS. There are various hacks around this, but it's a nuisance. Some card readers in newer laptops might not be supported either, especially if they're realtek ones (these don't look like standard SD host controllers). OpenBSD currently supports one realtek card reader version, the RTS5209. But there are other versions out there, which may also be supported in the future.
