Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Aggelidis Nikos]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Jeremy Chadwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> "I'm buying a new computer, what should I buy?"
>
> Buy whatever suits your needs, and feels comfortable for you.

>
> With regards to OS compatibility, this is a difficult one.  Googling to
> see what other people have experienced is pretty much the only option,
> or you get to find out yourself.

But this is the reason Frank asks which computer to buy. I don't think
he is expecting to be told about the weight of a laptop; he can figure
this himself. But how can you figure OS compatibility from 20minutes
test drive? That's why you ask for other persons experiences.
Personally if i were to buy a laptop right now, i would buy one  that
would be fully compatible with bsd or linux even if this meant paying
a few more euros or getting something heavier... Unfortunately this
kind of info {OS-- compatibility} isn't advertised, or written in
specs.

>From my perspective freebsd should "advertise"(*)  the laptops that
work with it, out of the box, so that new users {like me} know what to
buy; and large corporations have a benefit for promoting OS
compatibility other than Windows(tm).


-best regards
nikos

(*) when i say advertise , i mean make this info publicly available
and easily accessible from the website
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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 01:36:37PM +0300, Aggelidis Nikos wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Jeremy Chadwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > "I'm buying a new computer, what should I buy?"
> >
> > Buy whatever suits your needs, and feels comfortable for you.
> 
> >
> > With regards to OS compatibility, this is a difficult one.  Googling to
> > see what other people have experienced is pretty much the only option,
> > or you get to find out yourself.
> 
> But this is the reason Frank asks which computer to buy. I don't think
> he is expecting to be told about the weight of a laptop; he can figure
> this himself. But how can you figure OS compatibility from 20minutes
> test drive? That's why you ask for other persons experiences.
> Personally if i were to buy a laptop right now, i would buy one  that
> would be fully compatible with bsd or linux even if this meant paying
> a few more euros or getting something heavier... Unfortunately this
> kind of info {OS-- compatibility} isn't advertised, or written in
> specs.
> 
> >From my perspective freebsd should "advertise"(*)  the laptops that
> work with it, out of the box, so that new users {like me} know what to
> buy; and large corporations have a benefit for promoting OS
> compatibility other than Windows(tm).
> 
> 
> -best regards
> nikos
> 
> (*) when i say advertise , i mean make this info publicly available
> and easily accessible from the website

You really have no idea to what granularity/extreme laptop vendors make
changes to their laptops.  Do not, even for a moment, think that any
time they make a hardware modification that they change a model number
or increase a version number: they don't.  Hell, it's hard enough
getting ASIC manufacturers to do this (Realtek I'm looking at you).

Here's a real example: do you know how many actual hardware
revisions/models of the T60p there are, just in the United States?
Let's look:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/homeLenovo.do?country=us

Select "Notebooks and Handhelds" from the pulldown.
For Family, select "ThinkPad T60p".
Now look at how many entries there are under Type.  Choose one.
Now look at how many entries there are under Model.

Now do you still feel what you want is reasonable?  :-)

I understand where it is you're coming from -- you essentially want the
same thing Microsoft totes with their "Certified for " logos on
hardware -- which as I'm sure you also know amounts to nothing more than
marketing schmooze.

User X would report that FreeBSD works on their laptop, but then 3
months later, user Y would report  feature doesn't work on their
laptop, which then amounts to "is laptop really compatible with
FreeBSD?"  Etc. etc...

I'm sure you see where I'm coming from.

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| Parodius Networking   http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2008-Jul-25 13:36:37 +0300, Aggelidis Nikos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>From my perspective freebsd should "advertise"(*)  the laptops that
>work with it, out of the box, so that new users {like me} know what to
>buy;

Who do you suggest is going to do this?  Buying one of every type of
laptop, installing (or working out how to install) FreeBSD and
checking which bits of the laptop do/don't work with which version of
FreeBSD is an expensive exercise in both time and effort.  The best
that exists at present is http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/ - but it
suffers from the problem that by the time someone has bought a laptop
and checked it out, that model is obsolete.  In my case, I bought my
laptop because I knew someone who had the identical model.

> and large corporations have a benefit for promoting OS
>compatibility other than Windows(tm).

The vendors don't seem interested in doing this - I suspect that they
are pressured not to support anything other than Winbloze (you might
notice that two very high profile Linux-only laptops have recently
grown Winbloze variants).  Successive generations of laptops have
become less and less free-OS-friendly.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
Please excuse any delays as the result of my ISP's inability to implement
an MTA that is either RFC2821-compliant or matches their claimed behaviour.


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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Joerg Sonnenberger]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 11:00:38PM +1000, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> Successive generations of laptops have become less and less
> free-OS-friendly.

This is simply wrong. Most laptops ship either with Ati or Intel
chipset. Both tend to be well supported. With a bit care, you will get
wpi as wireless chipset (e.g. avoid draft n). I found ACPI compliance to
have improved a lot over the recent time and in fact the number of ACPI
bugs that can't be worked around in general ways has become very low.

Joerg
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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Robert Watson]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:

And if you go with Lenovo, be aware that their T60/T60p/T61/T61p series (and 
possibly the X-series) are known to sport very high temperatures. Some 
people have reported temperatures of nearly 90C on their GPU (when idling), 
which has a direct effect on the overall temperature of the CPU (due to 
close proximity) and so on.  This requires the fan to be on at almost all 
times (usually low-speed mode).  Others have it worse (the laptop literally 
shutting off in the middle of operation):


Likewise, I've had difficulty with the z60t, which has suspend issues (it 
doesn't), and occasional atheros flakiness that I have been meaning to bug Sam 
about but haven't had time to do so as yet.  Sadly, the battery failed quite 
quickly once the warranty expired, so I barely use it anymore, which is 
something of a shame but left me with a bad impression.


Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge



http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/stable/2008-06/msg00020.html

Many of these laptops emit a strange high-pitch electrical noise which
fluxuates in frequency and amplitude; of course, a lot of people can't
hear it, which is good for them.  This was tracked down to some power
saving features listed in the BIOS (of both the CPU and the chipset),
which you can disable:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_high_pitch_noises

Be sure to look at http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T60p,
specifically the very bottom of the page.  You'll notice a very large
number of problem entries.  A lot of them have no real response from
Lenovo.

Draw your own conclusions.

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| Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking   http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Razmig K]

How about Dell models which come with Ubuntu preinstalled? (Inspiron 
1525N and 1420N, XPS M1330). Don't they have higher chances of running 
FreeBSD smoothly? A quick glance over the hardware notes of 7.0-RELEASE 
and some googling around show that wireless, video and audio are supported.



//rk
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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Razmig K <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> How about Dell models which come with Ubuntu preinstalled? (Inspiron 1525N
> and 1420N, XPS M1330). Don't they have higher chances of running FreeBSD
> smoothly? A quick glance over the hardware notes of 7.0-RELEASE and some
> googling around show that wireless, video and audio are supported.
>

One problem with most of the Dell offerings is that they use the NVidia
video chipset.  Now this is a plus if you're into playing a few games, but
it sucks if you're running FreeBSD.  One of the original requests was for
>4G RAM.  The NVidia binary driver only works on IA32, not AMD64 (and the
opensource driver sucks at even 2D), so your RAM is practically limited to
around 3.5G (depending on a few things).  I also havn't seen very many
laptops advertising >4G yet (4G, but not more than 4G).

Personally, I have the XPS-1730.  Largely I tolerate the slow binary driver
for AMD64.  I use IA32 when I need wine, but my use of ZFS (the 1730 has an
option for 2 hard drives) seems to eat up kernel memory until wine can't
start pretty quickly.  The opensource driver does work and supports nice
things like DPMS  it's just that the 2D acceleration feels very lacking
and it also can't do things like scale a movie at full frame rate.  This
means that I tend to reboot into windoze for entertainment ... since I can't
generally use IA32 mode productively anyways.

Other than the video and the fact that I've never seen a Dell suspend
successfully under FreeBSD, The laptop is well supported.  The PCI express
slots and their contents (USB or PCI) show up fine.  Even the EVDO broadband
modem is fairly easy to suppport.  I think the only feature without any
support is the SD card reader.
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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 08:35:44PM +0300, Razmig K wrote:
> How about Dell models which come with Ubuntu preinstalled? (Inspiron  
> 1525N and 1420N, XPS M1330). Don't they have higher chances of running  
> FreeBSD smoothly? A quick glance over the hardware notes of 7.0-RELEASE  
> and some googling around show that wireless, video and audio are 
> supported.

A co-worker of mine has a Dell (I forget which model; I'll ask him this
coming week), running Kubuntu.  The overall compatibility is quite good,
and I haven't heard any complaints from him.

-- 
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| Parodius Networking   http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Razmig K]

Zaphod Beeblebrox a écrit :
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Razmig K <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote:


How about Dell models which come with Ubuntu preinstalled? (Inspiron
1525N and 1420N, XPS M1330). Don't they have higher chances of
running FreeBSD smoothly? A quick glance over the hardware notes of
7.0-RELEASE and some googling around show that wireless, video and
audio are supported.


One problem with most of the Dell offerings is that they use the NVidia 
video chipset.  Now this is a plus if you're into playing a few games, 
but it sucks if you're running FreeBSD.  One of the original requests 
was for >4G RAM.  The NVidia binary driver only works on IA32, not AMD64 
(and the opensource driver sucks at even 2D), so your RAM is practically 
limited to around 3.5G (depending on a few things).  
[...]
 it's just that the 2D 
acceleration feels very lacking and it also can't do things like scale a 
movie at full frame rate.  
The aforementioned Dell models offer the Intel graphics accelerator 
X3100 as an option, which appears to be supported pretty well on both 32 
and 64 bit architectures. A fairly recent thread at PC-BSD forums 
reports successful use of Compiz Fusion (albeit on Ubuntu Gutsy) with 
this accelerator:

http://forums.pcbsd.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=10936&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a


//rk
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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Chuck Robey]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Razmig K <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>> How about Dell models which come with Ubuntu preinstalled? (Inspiron 1525N
>> and 1420N, XPS M1330). Don't they have higher chances of running FreeBSD
>> smoothly? A quick glance over the hardware notes of 7.0-RELEASE and some
>> googling around show that wireless, video and audio are supported.
>>
> 
> One problem with most of the Dell offerings is that they use the NVidia
> video chipset.  Now this is a plus if you're into playing a few games, but
> it sucks if you're running FreeBSD.

There is a problem is you're running the AMD64 chipsets, but I'm running a quad
core processor here, and my Nvidia card (8600GTS) with it's compiled Nvidia
driver works just fine.

  One of the original requests was for
>> 4G RAM.  The NVidia binary driver only works on IA32, not AMD64 (and the
> opensource driver sucks at even 2D), so your RAM is practically limited to
> around 3.5G (depending on a few things).  I also havn't seen very many
> laptops advertising >4G yet (4G, but not more than 4G).
> 
> Personally, I have the XPS-1730.  Largely I tolerate the slow binary driver
> for AMD64.  I use IA32 when I need wine, but my use of ZFS (the 1730 has an
> option for 2 hard drives) seems to eat up kernel memory until wine can't
> start pretty quickly.  The opensource driver does work and supports nice
> things like DPMS  it's just that the 2D acceleration feels very lacking
> and it also can't do things like scale a movie at full frame rate.  This
> means that I tend to reboot into windoze for entertainment ... since I can't
> generally use IA32 mode productively anyways.
> 
> Other than the video and the fact that I've never seen a Dell suspend
> successfully under FreeBSD, The laptop is well supported.  The PCI express
> slots and their contents (USB or PCI) show up fine.  Even the EVDO broadband
> modem is fairly easy to suppport.  I think the only feature without any
> support is the SD card reader.
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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[John Nielsen]

On Thursday 24 July 2008, Frank Mayhar wrote:
> My old Dell Inspiron 5160 has developed problems that I can't fix, sigh,
> so it's time to replace it.  I'm hoping for some good suggestions from
> this list (cc'd to hackers for the exposure, I know everyone doesn't
> read -mobile).

I haven't played with one hands-on, but the laptop I was going to buy until 
$work supplied a different one was a Fujitsu Lifebook E8410. It has a few 
customization options if you get it from Fujitsu directly. Among these are 
Intel graphics and Atheros wireless, 2 of the main things I was looking for 
for good FreeBSD hw support.

> My criteria:
>   * 3D acceleration.
check ought to work w/ intel(4x) driver on i386 or amd64
>   * MiniPCI wireless (don't care which card, I'll replace it
> anyway).
AFAIK. I was planning to select the Atheros option and leave it..
>   * At least 15" screen.
15.4 Wide with WSXGA+ option
>   * Decent power consumption.
Unknown, but available 8-cell main and 6-cell modular batteries.
>   * Plays well with FreeBSD 7-stable.
AFAIK.

> Nice to have:
>   * Dual core.
check.
>   * >4GB memory.
=4GB avail. (can you get more on a laptop yet?)
>   * Working suspend/hibernate mode (and no, I'm not holding my
> breath).
unknown. has any progress been made WRT suspend/resume + SMP on FreeBSD in 
general?
>
> So, suggestions?  BTW, if I get a decent response I'll summarize it for
> the list, along with the one I chose and my experience after
> ordering/installing it.

Best of luck and do post your experiences.

JN
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Intel Q35 works (patch attached)

[Ted Faber]

Some recent work in the AGP drivers seems to have combined to make
FreeBSD support the Intel Q35 in my Intel Optiplex 755.  Attached is a
one-line patch to enable detection of the chipset (really moving a
comment character).  It would be great if someone would commit it.

If no one notices this mail, I'll file a pr.

Thanks!

-- 
Ted Faber
http://www.isi.edu/~faber   PGP: http://www.isi.edu/~faber/pubkeys.asc
Unexpected attachment on this mail? See http://www.isi.edu/~faber/FAQ.html#SIG
--- dev/agp/agp_i810.c.orig 2008-06-20 15:23:41.0 -0700
+++ dev/agp/agp_i810.c  2008-07-25 14:12:05.0 -0700
@@ -156,9 +156,9 @@
"Intel Q965 SVGA controller"},
{0x29a28086, CHIP_I965, 0x0002,
"Intel G965 SVGA controller"},
-/*
{0x29b28086, CHIP_G33, 0x0002,
"Intel Q35 SVGA controller"},
+/*
{0x29c28086, CHIP_G33, 0x0002,
"Intel G33 SVGA controller"},
{0x29d28086, CHIP_G33, 0x0002,


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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Jeremy Messenger]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:34:32 -0500, Frank Mayhar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


My old Dell Inspiron 5160 has developed problems that I can't fix, sigh,
so it's time to replace it.  I'm hoping for some good suggestions from
this list (cc'd to hackers for the exposure, I know everyone doesn't
read -mobile).

My criteria:
  * 3D acceleration.
  * MiniPCI wireless (don't care which card, I'll replace it
anyway).
  * At least 15" screen.
  * Decent power consumption.
  * Plays well with FreeBSD 7-stable.

Nice to have:
  * Dual core.
  * >4GB memory.
  * Working suspend/hibernate mode (and no, I'm not holding my
breath).

So, suggestions?  BTW, if I get a decent response I'll summarize it for
the list, along with the one I chose and my experience after
ordering/installing it.


Maybe you can wait for this:

http://www.ixsystems.com/products/bsd-laptop.html

I didn't compare your requirements in there, thought.

Cheers,
Mezz


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Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Outback Dingo]

IBM Z series, my Z60M Titanium, runs great and still actually looks brand
new being 2+ years old
the X, T and Z series laptops are all decent, i cant say on quality, im
still using the one i got almost
three years ago with no issues. 1680x1050 on a 15'4 wide wcreen is nice
also. I also have an Asus
that i really havent had any issues with quite honestly. And can also say
from field experience Fujitsus
got some decent models available. Though take note, I dont abuse my mobile
equiptment. Another way you
might want to consider is a UMPC known to run FreeBSD. there are some
sub-size and UMPC systems out there
that will run FreeBSD nicely, ASUS makes one, and well personally im waiting
on the HTC Shift to be
delivered and hacked

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 5:23 AM, Jeremy Messenger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:34:32 -0500, Frank Mayhar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>  My old Dell Inspiron 5160 has developed problems that I can't fix, sigh,
>> so it's time to replace it.  I'm hoping for some good suggestions from
>> this list (cc'd to hackers for the exposure, I know everyone doesn't
>> read -mobile).
>>
>> My criteria:
>>  * 3D acceleration.
>>  * MiniPCI wireless (don't care which card, I'll replace it
>>anyway).
>>  * At least 15" screen.
>>  * Decent power consumption.
>>  * Plays well with FreeBSD 7-stable.
>>
>> Nice to have:
>>  * Dual core.
>>  * >4GB memory.
>>  * Working suspend/hibernate mode (and no, I'm not holding my
>>breath).
>>
>> So, suggestions?  BTW, if I get a decent response I'll summarize it for
>> the list, along with the one I chose and my experience after
>> ordering/installing it.
>>
>
> Maybe you can wait for this:
>
> http://www.ixsystems.com/products/bsd-laptop.html
>
> I didn't compare your requirements in there, thought.
>
> Cheers,
> Mezz
>
>
> --
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