On 10 Dec 2017, at 11:48, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
On Sat, 09 Dec 2017 21:29:43 -0600
Mark Schofield wrote:
Hi All
I am looking to buy a new Dell laptop and wanted to put FreeBSD on
it, but was unsure which one is supported. I am looking at a non
touchscreen version that to put on it with 8gb ram. Link below
http://pilot.search.dell.com/Linux
Will FreeBSD install on one of these.
FreeBSD will install. But - Intel Graphics for newer chipsets (like
those used with 7th generation Intel Core cpus) will very likely not
work out of the box. Also, some of the hardware inside the laptop
might be unsupported (no FreeBSD driver), for example the wireless
(there has been lots of progress here lately, with both iwn and iwm
drivers, so it might work).
I tried to buy a Dell XPS for FreeBSD a year or two ago. It was a
beautiful machine with a really nice screen, but after going down the
wireless rabbit hole and looking at NDIS wrapping support, I decided
that life is too short and that my local Best Buy has a great return
policy. :) These days it looks like Dell is using Atheros devices from a
company called "Killer", and that chipset may not be supported in
FreeBSD yet:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/63080/
There have been reports that people have got Intel Graphics working
with the drm-next-kmod[1] port, but I haven't tried this, so YMMV.
The graphics stuff has really been coming along (at least with my
hardware, which is — admittedly — a bit out-of-date). I think that,
on Dell hardware, wireless support might be a bigger blocker.
Also watch out for notebooks with touchpads that run over i2c instead of
USB:
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-mobile/2016-March/013370.html
Such devices apparently work in some contexts with the ig4 driver:
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D3068
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D3351
However, YMMV. :)
In general, buying a new laptop to use a FreeBSD desktop machine today
is difficult, both because the vendors / shops seldoms lists all
technical specifications - you have to do all research yourself, and
because
many "Linux-supported" products from well known vendors like Dell and
others use proprietary drivers in Linux to be able to claim Linux
support.
Practically speaking, I think there are two approaches to buying a
FreeBSD notebook:
1. copy somebody else's machine specs exactly (tends to lead to lots of
people using the same slightly-stale ThinkPad, but it works), or
2. buy locally from a store with a good return policy, try it with a
live USB environment, return, repeat.
I followed the second approach with my most recent FreeBSD notebook
purchase (a year or two ago) and I'm fairly pleased with the third
notebook I found (an HP Spectre x360). The Intel wireless works (no
802.11ac support yet, but the card does work with iwm7265Dfw), the Intel
graphics work with drm-next, the touchscreen did work at least once
(though not at the moment) and the SD card support is... hahahahaha, one
doesn't expect such luxuries to work with FreeBSD. :) However, I did
have to go through the buy/test/return cycle more time than was really
convenient.
Jon
--
Jonathan Anderson
jonat...@freebsd.org
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