On 2021-06-16, Thomas Vetere <tomvet...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I was looking to get a laptop to run OpenBSD. The one I am looking at in > particular is the Thinkpad R51e (2005). I like this particular model > because it does not come with any extra hardware that OpenBSD does not > support in the first place (bluetooth, camera, etc.) My main concern is the > longevity that this model would have going forward. I already have a '94 > Thinkpad that cannot run the latest OpenBSD well because hardware support > was gradually dropped during code cleanups, etc (i.e. newer versions of X11 > removed support for my ancient graphics chip because it just wasn't worth > the time to maintain the code). Does anyone know, given the age of that > model, how many years I might get out of it with OpenBSD and its packaged > software before hardware support starts to drop? What is a good rule of > thumb for selecting a machine to run OpenBSD with respect to its age? > > Thank you for your help! >
If you want to run some common packages like chromium or firefox on a current version of OpenBSD: 0 years. (To be honest i386 hasn't really been a great choice for running packages for probably 5+ years now). You *really* want hardware with a CPU that can use an amd64 kernel. Check the cpu model and look it up on intel's spec pages, check for 64-bit support. On some laptop ranges there are both 32-bit-only and 64-bit-capable CPUs in the same range, but none of the CPUs used on R51e are 64-bit. I wouldn't suggest anything older than the X220/T420/T520 generation, and those would be a bit of a push now. By this point they're old enough you might need to do some hardware maintenance; maybe replace things like fans, heatsink compound, etc. By the way, the cameras do usually work, though if you particularly want to avoid a camera there are some models that don't include them. Probably getting hard to find now though, I think "no camera" was usually a configure-to-order option rather than a standard spec. Although OpenBSD doesn't support bluetooth, it doesn't get in the way of anything. On X220 and maybe others if you particularly don't want to have the hardware, you could just remove the daughtercard that runs it (some people do this anyway to gain an additional USB interface); maybe swap the wifi interface too, as some of them are combined wifi+BT.
