On Sunday 09 August 2009 14:19:11 Ali M. wrote: > Greetings, > > I will (hope) to buy a new laptop in a couple of months, how to make > sure that the one I pick will work under OpenBSD. > I understand that there is a list of supported hardware at: > http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html > > So should I check the laptop detailed specs and make sure everything > in on that list! > Is this how everyone does it, is there another way? > > How up to date is that list, the laptop I get will be new (again I > hope ;), what if I don't find its component on that list? > > Any tips like > is there specific brands (Asus, Dell, etc ... ) that are known to be > more OpenBSD friendly than others! > is there brands I should avoid, components and specs that should be > warning signs, I read for example on the OpenBSD site that I should > avoid Nvidia etc .... > > It would be helpful, if you bought a laptop recently that run Openbsd > smoothly to tell me the model > As i see that > http://www.openbsd.org/i386-laptop.html > is now dead > > Regards, > Ali
Thinkpads rock. I was worried when Lenovo took over, but the W500 I am using right now is great. I've been using OpenBSD exclusively on Thinkpads since 1999. Obviously, you need to look at all the hardware on a proposed system first. If you can look at a unit in a store, ask them if you can boot up a OpeBSD-current CD, so you can look at the dmesg data, and put it on a USB stick for others to look at. If the store won't let you do that walk away from them. The single most important thing to make sure of (or most aggravating) is the video card. If they use NVIDIA, walk away. ATI works pretty well. As far as I know nearly all laptops made today use one or the other so thtat pretty easy to determine. Ethernet cards and wireless cards have great support here, but your laptop might not see one of them. In my case the W500's ethernet card was part of the IHC9 chipset, and it didn't work. About six weeks after I got the laptop support was added. Wireless supprt is likely there, and in the case of Thinkpads the wifi card is a mini-PCI card so it can be swapped out if need be, or, you can use a USB substitute. Hopefully the laptop will use an Intel HD audio chip, as the sound is great. azaila(4) has gotten very very good. Not sure what other laptops are using these days. Things like the disk and USB should "just work"--I'd be surprised if they didn't. Looking at the hardware list at http://cvs.openbsd.org/i386.html will show you what hardware is supported. There is also the amd64 page to look at. It can be stressful trying to figure this out, but I did it last November and am happy with what I got. If you can post a dmesg from a -current CD which always has the best hardware support. --STeve Andre'
