31 ms·

FreeBSD on the Lenovo Thinkpad

170 points by dddddaviddddd 7y ago

gen3 7y ago
Would this be considered the standard amount of things someone would need to work out to get a bsd laptop up and useable?(or are there more preconfigured images?) Are Thinkpads best for support?
- simcop2387 7y ago
  Can't say anything about support, but the x11 settings for hidpi and all that are all because of his choice of window manager. i3 is a very hands off, only manages windows kind of thing. Using a full desktop environment will make forgoing all the editing of files. The rest seems to be normal bsd setup stuff, but I know little of that beyond setting up a few virtual machines to test things
  - gen3 7y ago
    Ah thanks. I’ve been reading around, but most posts I see are from 2017 or earlier. I’ve been thinking of giving it a go on my xps, but wasn’t sure about driver support. Looks like support is there.
- tiew9Vii 7y ago
  There was this post recently about OpenBSD on the Lenovo X1 Carbon https://jcs.org/2019/08/14/x1c7 https://jcs.org/2019/08/14/x1c7 . From what I read OpenBSD can be better supported than FreeBSD on laptops, especially the Thinkpads as that's what a lot of OpenBSD devs used.
  - messe 7y ago
    OpenBSD tends to have nicer defaults. On laptops the volume and brightness keys work everywhere out of the box, including on the console, without needing to be configured, unlike on FreeBSD, NetBSD, (and Linux, where they only work on X11) FreeBSD has a couple more drivers for wireless cards than OpenBSD, and has some GPL drivers that you can optionally compile in for even wider support (bwn has optional GPL components for example). But for most hardware, the support will be very similar (aside from bluetooth, which OpenBSD got rid of because their code was poor and unmaintained—nobody's gotten around to writing another bluetooth stack yet) I prefer OpenBSD, but FreeBSD has a lot going for it too with Jails, ZFS, support for NVIDIA cards, Wayland.
    - Xylakant 7y ago
      > (and Linux, where they only work on X11 Volume and Brightness keys have always worked fine on my fedora even after they defaulted to wayland.
      - cosarara 7y ago
        I think he was referring to the TTYs, without wayland in mind.
        messe 7y ago
        Yep. I need to get out of the habit of referring to any graphical environment on a Unix as X11.
      - messe 7y ago
        You're right, I should have said "on X11/Wayland DEs".
    - floatboth 7y ago
      On ThinkPads specifically, brightness on FreeBSD works in the virtual console just fine. ThinkPads handle it via the EC I think.
- zenlot 7y ago
  I've been using FreeBSD since version 4.3 on and off. Most of the time I've used it with variants of ThinkPads, recent ones were T530i and E480. The longest period I've spent as my main OS was long time ago on Sony Vaio VGN-FS550. In a sense it has improved a lot, but also managed to remain complicated for someone who just want to test things without prior knowledge. But yes, this is typical amount of things you need to undergo when starting with FreeBSD. And it remained pretty much the same for the past 19 years. I've switched to Linux as my main OS, just because I wanted things to work out of the box.
  - toyg 7y ago
    > I've switched to Linux as my main OS, just because I wanted things to work out of the box. As an old geek, statements like this still feel weird, in a very good way. Remember winmodems and XFree86? Eh.
    - hollerith 7y ago
      Hasn't it always been the case that Linux is more likely to work out of the box than FreeBSD is on a laptop not specifically chosen for FreeBSD support?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - mhd 7y ago
        Sure, but "more likely" still meant "unlikely" not too long ago. Unless on a laptop specifically chosen for Linux support.
    - zenlot 7y ago
      Laziness kicks in with years ;)
  - nimmen 7y ago
    I used new thinkpad x220 back in the day, the only annoying thing was that lan required some driver download from vendor(realtek, if remember correctly), did not work out of the box. Don't think I've messed much with other things, so they worked ok for me out of the box(but my requirements might be different). Been user since 6.0
- pushpop 7y ago
  Not really. At least not in the way that blog post has been presented. Normally you’ll be told as you install things if there is any manual amendments to configure files required. So it’s all quite discoverable. That said, if you’re used to Linux and Windows where you can just start services then daemons on FreeBSD might catch you out because you need to (or rather, get “told” to) manually edit the rc.conf file for any services you want. It only takes a few seconds to do but I can see why some people might find it an annoyance if they’re not used to manually editing system files (personally I don’t mind but I’ve been using UNIX for decades).
- lars_francke 7y ago
  As someone who's just (last week) started to get Arch Linux up and running on a T490 I would assume that: Yes, this is _at least_ the amount of things you need to do but if my experience is any indication this is only like 10% of it. Most of the things in Thinkpads work but not all (notably the latest WWAN LTE Modems don't have support). I could write up my experience if there's interest.
  - faizshah 7y ago
    I just set up a new laptop with fedora because I figured Arch would be too much effort. Is it really that easy to get running? I figured with arch when you run into an issue it must be much harder to fix than fedora or ubuntu. I just want to open up an ide, terminal, and a browser but arch seems to be a whole hobby in itself.
    - kart23 7y ago
      Stick with ubuntu. Arch has benefits, but most new users will do just fine without it, and arch can be a big pain to get running.
      - PPAqualifier 7y ago
        Until you figure that Ubuntu is full of shit. Snap packages are a piece of shit, and, whenever you need any kind of unmastobatory software packages you'll need to add PPAs. Ubuntu has gone to hell since the Snap ordeal. Arch is the only way to go.
        kart23 7y ago
        I use arch exactly for that reason, but I could not imagine getting started with arch as my first linux experience. You should at least learn the basics on ubuntu first. I think there's a good natural progression with linux, and that you can and should switch to arch once you outgrow ubuntu.
    - i_dursun 7y ago
- sureaboutthis 7y ago
  FreeBSD is a complete operating system but it is not like Linux distros where everything is pre-packaged for you (but then requiring distro hopping to find what you really want). I can install what I want for a complete desktop system in about 20 minutes on FreeBSD.
philliphaydon 7y ago
So I could put this on my X1 Extreme? I wonder if it would improve battery life.
- sabarasaba 7y ago
  no
- input_sh 7y ago
  > I wonder if it would improve battery life. Compared to what? If Windows, then absolutely. Any Linux- or FreeBSD-based operating system will make your laptop seem like it's brand new in comparison.
  - highesttide 7y ago
    In my experience with recent thinkpads, my battery life never really beats the w10 install it comes with. Not sure if there are some very clever windows-only optimizations or what, but that's what I've noticed.
    - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
      When my X270 was new I could get about >20 hours of battery life out of it on Linux with programming and light web browsing (e.g. Hacker News, etc.) It's a bit less now that the batteries have worn a bit, but the other day I accidentaly forgot to turn on the power socket while working all day and I didn't even notice until the next day. I never tried Windows 10 (although I'm kind of curious now), but I think this is pretty impressive, and at these kind of levels a bit extra battery life is still nice, but hardly critical.
- LeonM 7y ago
  Only if you are willing to invest lots of time to get it somewhat usable, and if you don't use too many peripherals. I can't even get Ubuntu to run properly on my X1E, the 4K display completely breaks grub and the dual GPU situation causes loads of problems when connecting an external display though thunderbolt. Battery life is worse compared to Windows (3h vs 5h).
gchokov 7y ago
Things like these are still the reason I am not switching away from Mac OS
- emersion 7y ago
  Side note: FreeBSD, i3 and X11 aren't the easiest pieces of software to use if you don't want to spend time dealing with configuration files. There are better macOS alternatives for your use-case!
- namirez 7y ago
  I think the target audience here are the FreeBSD users, not the all Unix users. Mind you, installing Linux on Thinkpads is usually hassel-free, but again it's only useful for someone who wants Linux.
- interfixus 7y ago
  I bring you jolly tidings. You can put an image of, say, Manjaro Linux on a stick, boot it up, answer a few questions about language and keyboard, and have a fully working install on your ThinkPad inside of ten minutes. Am writing this from such a setup on my TP.
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  It used to be that Mac had better hardware support but after going through all the shit I did with Vega 20 MBP and my USBC LG 5k monitor - forcing me to switch to a beta branch to get support. And the keyboard issues. Mac OS is far from panacea.
- kbumsik 7y ago
  Congrats, now you literally can't switch away from macOS! Thanks for the new T2 chip you can't use native Linux/BSD (anything other than Windows and macOS.) UEFI is fine booting a third party OS when SecureBoot is disabled BUT the T2 chip blocks accessing the internal storage from those OSs [1][2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/a4thsc/the_actual_full_story_about_apples_t2_chip_from/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/a4thsc/the_actual_fu... [2] https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1067232394934083584 https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1067232394934083584
gaspoweredcat 7y ago
may have a crack at this, ive been meaning to look into desktop freeBSD for a while and i suspect these tweaks should be similar for the X1C6
draw_down 7y ago
Wow, I wonder how someone is supposed to figure out all this stuff on their own.
floatboth 7y ago
Please stop cargo culting all the loader tunables and sysctls you've seen :) You need approximately zero i915 related ones because they're enabled by default just like on Linux. You especially don't need both drm.i915 and compat.linuxkpi copies. (The former is for older drivers, the latter is for new ones) Also moused is not a great way to use a touchpad. At least on 12-stable (idk if it made it into a 12.x-release) EVDEV_SUPPORT is enabled out of the box, so you can just set kern.evdev.rcpt_mask=12 and get proper evdev events, separately for the trackpoint and touchpad, with full gesture support on the touchpad. And since you like i3, might want to try Sway – HiDPI is much better supported on Wayland ;)
- tony 7y ago
  It'd be nice to diff a gist of an updated sysctl/rc.conf for this / whatever you use updated to 12.x.
- dreich 7y ago
  > At least on 12-stable (idk if it made it into a 12.x-release) EVDEV_SUPPORT is enabled out of the box The GENERIC kernel configuration for FreeBSD-12.x-release does not support EVDEV out of the box. It is there however for both 12 stable and of course head.
  - floatboth 7y ago
    Yeah, not in 12.0. it will in 12.1, I just didn't know if it might be out already. I don't follow releases, CURRENT all the things :)
- jcelerier 7y ago
  > And since you like i3, might want to try Sway – HiDPI is much better supported on Wayland ;) I don't understand why people say that ; I had my first hidpi screen in 2014 and it worked fine from day 1 on X - to the extent apps & toolkits themselves supported it; the only two that took their time were chrome and firefox but even today they work fine ; the last remaining bastion is TCL/Tk but this does not even work natively on wayland anyways. here's how it looks for me today on X11 : https://i.imgur.com/VfWisJ7.png https://i.imgur.com/VfWisJ7.png I would gladly make a comparative sway screenshot but it is unbearably slow on my machine (maybe due to nvidia drivers), the keymap is incorrect, and half the programs I want to use don't even launch
peterkelly 7y ago
And this is why I still use a mac
- whynotminot 7y ago
  Haha, right? I understand if someone genuinely enjoys configuration. But gosh I just need my machine to get up and going so I can make some money and then go back to living.
  - 8draco8 7y ago
    FreeBSD is for people that like to thinker with OS. Same as Arch on Linux side. I'm using Ubuntu for pretty much everything for over 10 years now and everything is just easy and fast. My current installation of Ubuntu Mate has been done 3.5 years ago as 16.04. Since then I went trough 4 distro upgrades, 16.04 > 16.10 > 17.04 > 17.10 > 18.04LTS and since in 18.04 they introduced snaps I decided to stick to LTS releases with my apps like JetBrains apps installed via snaps for latest updates. Somewhere in that update cycle I upgraded my machine and just pulled SSD from old machine and plugged it in into the new one and it just worked. The system is also being backed up into Synology NAS so when in meantime I bought small laptop for travel I basically "restored" my main PC into that laptop so I didn't have to manually setup everything. It's pretty simple. Unfortunately it doesn't move applications like TimeMachine does, only the settings so I had to install apps like SublimeText myself but settings was already in there. If your workflow can be moved outside of MacOS ecosystem then it's worth to checkout Linux especially Ubuntu (and all it flavors) as an alternative.
    - whynotminot 7y ago
      I actually do use Ubuntu every day for development. I also use macOS every day. They both get the job done relatively painlessly. I enjoy macOS more in general, but I like using Ubuntu in a VM because I can snapshot and restore.
  - mruts 7y ago
    I’ve found the long-term productivity gains far outpace the short-term cost of using Linux/BSD. For example, I’ve found focus-follows-mouse WMs a huge boon to my productivity, a feature that OSX absolutely refuses to implement. The ability for a window to grab input without being raised is highly underrated.
PPAqualifier 7y ago
If you're a faggot who can't use a system then you only deserve windows 11. The rest of us invest the minutes it takes to learn sn actual system.
PPAqualifier 7y ago
Manjaro is for fsggots. Only arch linux is an operating system
PPAqualifier 7y ago
That's because you are a Windows 11 faggot. If you can use Linux you use arch.
PPAqualifier 7y ago
Arch Linux is the only Linux. It's so easy to learn and use. Arch Linux is the only operating system. It takes 20 minutes to learn arch if you know Linux and Unix.
- hans1729 7y ago
  I mean, we wouldn't have this without arch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngwv_r-zzI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngwv_r-zzI0 (George Hotz livestreaming himself installing arch, just for the sake of it) Watched it while having half a bottle of merlot, _easily_ the best content I've seen to date.
- enriquto 7y ago
  arch feels to me like an over-engineered mess. For a truer unix experience I'd rather suggest void or slack.
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    It's not perfect, but I find it's in a good intersection between "simple" but still "fairly mainstream", which has its advantages.
  - mruts 7y ago
    I used to run Slackware, and the user experience is pretty terrible compared to Arch or OpenBSD. The absence of a package manager that tracks dependencies is not a “truer” Unix experience. All the BSDs provide a more Unixy experience than Linux and they all track dependencies. If Slackware was updated more often, the system would work better. The dynamic libs are always way out of date, and god help you if you want to install a newer version.
    - enriquto 7y ago
      this depends on your point of view. For me, being able to install a package even when some dependences are not met is a fundamental feature. Regarding the versions, slackware-current is a very up-to-date rolling distro (e.g. much more so than ubuntu).
pcr910303 7y ago
The comments about using macOS instead of Linux or {Free,Open}BSD are getting downvoted in somewhat obscure reasons. It's not that Linux isn't usable with minimal tweaking, I'm pretty sure macOS users also do a fair amount of tweaking (with, e.g. mapping keys with Karabiner (swapping Control & Caps Lock doesn't need third-party apps BTW), making the TouchBar useful again with HapticKey, etc...). The problem is that Linux doesn't get fundamental things (in a user-perspective) right. It's a few months ago, so I'm not sure if the bug still remains, but the latest version of Ubuntu still has HiDPI problems (at least in VMware Fusion - and VMs are pretty standard to test OSes, right?) related to mouse pointer size, sleep doesn't work without configuring with systemd for a few hours about one-third of all of my Linux laptops, WPA2 Enterprise Wi-Fi connecting is an hassle, configuring input-systems for CJK languages require making a systemd service manually(!), installing packages are needed to use exFAT USB (I've heard that the Linux Kernel has now gained exFAT support by Microsoft, but it's still months later for the user), adding apt repository hangs when done with aptitude so the user has to touch /etc/, and the list goes on... Are these issues really 'configurable' issues? They aren't, but everyone kinda says, 'Fiddle with {systemd and you will get manageable {battery life,Wi-Fi connection,HiDPI support, etc...}' And that's the reason why people just use macOS instead.
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  I don't go around macOS stories with "macOS sucks, this is why I use Linux". It's off-topic noise at best, and just pointless caring about what systems other people run at worst. So yeah, -1 from me to all of those posts, and also the Arch Linux one (I'm typing this from an Arch machine). I don't think the reasons are that obscure: it's off-topic and doesn't contribute. Your post at least has some depth to it, but on the other hand, it's the same discussion ... every time.
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    If someone posted a story called "Driving on Water", and it was all about how you could modify your car to get it to drive on a lake... sure, it's interesting... but it would certainly be worth pointing out that boats exist, and that boats are perhaps much easier at doing what you're trying to do, which is transportation on water. Maybe there's some reason the original posters aren't using boats, and they can share that information. We don't know until we start communicating about it.
gfiorav 7y ago
It's such a risk you take by getting a WQHD screen on Linux. I've had trouble to get things to scale, setting for the workable (albeit far from perfect) option to scale fonts. I wonder how well this setup works with different UIs, system icons, etc.
- dddddaviddddd 7y ago
  Lots of things are not quite right (e.g. save dialogs never seem to be sized logically), most things are okay though. What I use most (terminal, browser) are great.
JeremyMorgan 7y ago
I am trying to think of valid reasons why someone would use FreeBSD in this day and age as a desktop. I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. I used FreeBSD a TON from around 1998-2004 or so. I did it because I could configure an environment to develop in that ran fast on the hardware. At some point the type of development I do (Web) really took off on Linux and OSX so I drifted that way. I'm going to spin up a VM of FreeBSD just to check it out, but why are folks using it as a Desktop these days?
- crististm 7y ago
  Speculating, I think the reasons are the same as 20 years ago when people were installing Linux instead of Windows.
  - tmalsburg2 7y ago
    Namely?
    - sfifs 7y ago
      Not GP but in my experience - Curiosity and to gain a certain techy reputation among nerdy circles. About 15-20 years ago when I was in engineering school, my seniors used to ask me to install Linux on their PCs back when installing it was a bit more hairy than today (text based installer that asked you lots of questions) so they could pretend to themselves they were keeping up with the cutting edge if tech :-)
      - JeremyMorgan 7y ago
        Kind of a simplistic view in my opinion. I installed Linux and BSD out of pure curiosity and enjoyed the configurability and newness of it all. I was in a rural area, wasn't in college yet and didn't have anyone to brag to about it at the time. I used it because I wanted to. I know there are many like me.
- asveikau 7y ago
  I think the reason to use it over desktop Linux is pretty similar to the time range you talk about. It has a different feel and some people are more comfortable with the *BSD way. The difference in personality has widened a bit as Linux comes up with things like systemd. If you just want a light Unix workstation that isn't trying to imitate Windows or Mac, the BSDs will get in your way less. That or a very conservative Linux distro.

170 points by dddddaviddddd 7y ago

gen3 7y ago

Would this be considered the standard amount of things someone would need to work out to get a bsd laptop up and useable?(or are there more preconfigured images?) Are Thinkpads best for support?

simcop2387 7y ago
Can't say anything about support, but the x11 settings for hidpi and all that are all because of his choice of window manager. i3 is a very hands off, only manages windows kind of thing. Using a full desktop environment will make forgoing all the editing of files. The rest seems to be normal bsd setup stuff, but I know little of that beyond setting up a few virtual machines to test things
- gen3 7y ago
  Ah thanks. I’ve been reading around, but most posts I see are from 2017 or earlier. I’ve been thinking of giving it a go on my xps, but wasn’t sure about driver support. Looks like support is there.
tiew9Vii 7y ago
There was this post recently about OpenBSD on the Lenovo X1 Carbon https://jcs.org/2019/08/14/x1c7 https://jcs.org/2019/08/14/x1c7 . From what I read OpenBSD can be better supported than FreeBSD on laptops, especially the Thinkpads as that's what a lot of OpenBSD devs used.
- messe 7y ago
  OpenBSD tends to have nicer defaults. On laptops the volume and brightness keys work everywhere out of the box, including on the console, without needing to be configured, unlike on FreeBSD, NetBSD, (and Linux, where they only work on X11) FreeBSD has a couple more drivers for wireless cards than OpenBSD, and has some GPL drivers that you can optionally compile in for even wider support (bwn has optional GPL components for example). But for most hardware, the support will be very similar (aside from bluetooth, which OpenBSD got rid of because their code was poor and unmaintained—nobody's gotten around to writing another bluetooth stack yet) I prefer OpenBSD, but FreeBSD has a lot going for it too with Jails, ZFS, support for NVIDIA cards, Wayland.
  - Xylakant 7y ago
    > (and Linux, where they only work on X11 Volume and Brightness keys have always worked fine on my fedora even after they defaulted to wayland.
    - cosarara 7y ago
      I think he was referring to the TTYs, without wayland in mind.
      - messe 7y ago
        Yep. I need to get out of the habit of referring to any graphical environment on a Unix as X11.
    - messe 7y ago
      You're right, I should have said "on X11/Wayland DEs".
  - floatboth 7y ago
    On ThinkPads specifically, brightness on FreeBSD works in the virtual console just fine. ThinkPads handle it via the EC I think.
zenlot 7y ago
I've been using FreeBSD since version 4.3 on and off. Most of the time I've used it with variants of ThinkPads, recent ones were T530i and E480. The longest period I've spent as my main OS was long time ago on Sony Vaio VGN-FS550. In a sense it has improved a lot, but also managed to remain complicated for someone who just want to test things without prior knowledge. But yes, this is typical amount of things you need to undergo when starting with FreeBSD. And it remained pretty much the same for the past 19 years. I've switched to Linux as my main OS, just because I wanted things to work out of the box.
- toyg 7y ago
  > I've switched to Linux as my main OS, just because I wanted things to work out of the box. As an old geek, statements like this still feel weird, in a very good way. Remember winmodems and XFree86? Eh.
  - hollerith 7y ago
    Hasn't it always been the case that Linux is more likely to work out of the box than FreeBSD is on a laptop not specifically chosen for FreeBSD support?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mhd 7y ago
      Sure, but "more likely" still meant "unlikely" not too long ago. Unless on a laptop specifically chosen for Linux support.
  - zenlot 7y ago
    Laziness kicks in with years ;)
- nimmen 7y ago
  I used new thinkpad x220 back in the day, the only annoying thing was that lan required some driver download from vendor(realtek, if remember correctly), did not work out of the box. Don't think I've messed much with other things, so they worked ok for me out of the box(but my requirements might be different). Been user since 6.0
pushpop 7y ago
Not really. At least not in the way that blog post has been presented. Normally you’ll be told as you install things if there is any manual amendments to configure files required. So it’s all quite discoverable. That said, if you’re used to Linux and Windows where you can just start services then daemons on FreeBSD might catch you out because you need to (or rather, get “told” to) manually edit the rc.conf file for any services you want. It only takes a few seconds to do but I can see why some people might find it an annoyance if they’re not used to manually editing system files (personally I don’t mind but I’ve been using UNIX for decades).
lars_francke 7y ago
As someone who's just (last week) started to get Arch Linux up and running on a T490 I would assume that: Yes, this is _at least_ the amount of things you need to do but if my experience is any indication this is only like 10% of it. Most of the things in Thinkpads work but not all (notably the latest WWAN LTE Modems don't have support). I could write up my experience if there's interest.
- faizshah 7y ago
  I just set up a new laptop with fedora because I figured Arch would be too much effort. Is it really that easy to get running? I figured with arch when you run into an issue it must be much harder to fix than fedora or ubuntu. I just want to open up an ide, terminal, and a browser but arch seems to be a whole hobby in itself.
  - kart23 7y ago
    Stick with ubuntu. Arch has benefits, but most new users will do just fine without it, and arch can be a big pain to get running.
    - PPAqualifier 7y ago
      Until you figure that Ubuntu is full of shit. Snap packages are a piece of shit, and, whenever you need any kind of unmastobatory software packages you'll need to add PPAs. Ubuntu has gone to hell since the Snap ordeal. Arch is the only way to go.
      - kart23 7y ago
        I use arch exactly for that reason, but I could not imagine getting started with arch as my first linux experience. You should at least learn the basics on ubuntu first. I think there's a good natural progression with linux, and that you can and should switch to arch once you outgrow ubuntu.
  - i_dursun 7y ago
sureaboutthis 7y ago
FreeBSD is a complete operating system but it is not like Linux distros where everything is pre-packaged for you (but then requiring distro hopping to find what you really want). I can install what I want for a complete desktop system in about 20 minutes on FreeBSD.

philliphaydon 7y ago

So I could put this on my X1 Extreme? I wonder if it would improve battery life.

sabarasaba 7y ago
no
input_sh 7y ago
> I wonder if it would improve battery life. Compared to what? If Windows, then absolutely. Any Linux- or FreeBSD-based operating system will make your laptop seem like it's brand new in comparison.
- highesttide 7y ago
  In my experience with recent thinkpads, my battery life never really beats the w10 install it comes with. Not sure if there are some very clever windows-only optimizations or what, but that's what I've noticed.
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    When my X270 was new I could get about >20 hours of battery life out of it on Linux with programming and light web browsing (e.g. Hacker News, etc.) It's a bit less now that the batteries have worn a bit, but the other day I accidentaly forgot to turn on the power socket while working all day and I didn't even notice until the next day. I never tried Windows 10 (although I'm kind of curious now), but I think this is pretty impressive, and at these kind of levels a bit extra battery life is still nice, but hardly critical.
LeonM 7y ago
Only if you are willing to invest lots of time to get it somewhat usable, and if you don't use too many peripherals. I can't even get Ubuntu to run properly on my X1E, the 4K display completely breaks grub and the dual GPU situation causes loads of problems when connecting an external display though thunderbolt. Battery life is worse compared to Windows (3h vs 5h).

gchokov 7y ago

Things like these are still the reason I am not switching away from Mac OS

emersion 7y ago
Side note: FreeBSD, i3 and X11 aren't the easiest pieces of software to use if you don't want to spend time dealing with configuration files. There are better macOS alternatives for your use-case!
namirez 7y ago
I think the target audience here are the FreeBSD users, not the all Unix users. Mind you, installing Linux on Thinkpads is usually hassel-free, but again it's only useful for someone who wants Linux.
interfixus 7y ago
I bring you jolly tidings. You can put an image of, say, Manjaro Linux on a stick, boot it up, answer a few questions about language and keyboard, and have a fully working install on your ThinkPad inside of ten minutes. Am writing this from such a setup on my TP.
rubber_duck 7y ago
It used to be that Mac had better hardware support but after going through all the shit I did with Vega 20 MBP and my USBC LG 5k monitor - forcing me to switch to a beta branch to get support. And the keyboard issues. Mac OS is far from panacea.
kbumsik 7y ago
Congrats, now you literally can't switch away from macOS! Thanks for the new T2 chip you can't use native Linux/BSD (anything other than Windows and macOS.) UEFI is fine booting a third party OS when SecureBoot is disabled BUT the T2 chip blocks accessing the internal storage from those OSs [1][2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/a4thsc/the_actual_full_story_about_apples_t2_chip_from/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/a4thsc/the_actual_fu... [2] https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1067232394934083584 https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1067232394934083584

gaspoweredcat 7y ago

may have a crack at this, ive been meaning to look into desktop freeBSD for a while and i suspect these tweaks should be similar for the X1C6

draw_down 7y ago

Wow, I wonder how someone is supposed to figure out all this stuff on their own.

floatboth 7y ago

Please stop cargo culting all the loader tunables and sysctls you've seen :) You need approximately zero i915 related ones because they're enabled by default just like on Linux. You especially don't need both drm.i915 and compat.linuxkpi copies. (The former is for older drivers, the latter is for new ones) Also moused is not a great way to use a touchpad. At least on 12-stable (idk if it made it into a 12.x-release) EVDEV_SUPPORT is enabled out of the box, so you can just set kern.evdev.rcpt_mask=12 and get proper evdev events, separately for the trackpoint and touchpad, with full gesture support on the touchpad. And since you like i3, might want to try Sway – HiDPI is much better supported on Wayland ;)

tony 7y ago
It'd be nice to diff a gist of an updated sysctl/rc.conf for this / whatever you use updated to 12.x.
dreich 7y ago
> At least on 12-stable (idk if it made it into a 12.x-release) EVDEV_SUPPORT is enabled out of the box The GENERIC kernel configuration for FreeBSD-12.x-release does not support EVDEV out of the box. It is there however for both 12 stable and of course head.
- floatboth 7y ago
  Yeah, not in 12.0. it will in 12.1, I just didn't know if it might be out already. I don't follow releases, CURRENT all the things :)
jcelerier 7y ago
> And since you like i3, might want to try Sway – HiDPI is much better supported on Wayland ;) I don't understand why people say that ; I had my first hidpi screen in 2014 and it worked fine from day 1 on X - to the extent apps & toolkits themselves supported it; the only two that took their time were chrome and firefox but even today they work fine ; the last remaining bastion is TCL/Tk but this does not even work natively on wayland anyways. here's how it looks for me today on X11 : https://i.imgur.com/VfWisJ7.png https://i.imgur.com/VfWisJ7.png I would gladly make a comparative sway screenshot but it is unbearably slow on my machine (maybe due to nvidia drivers), the keymap is incorrect, and half the programs I want to use don't even launch

peterkelly 7y ago

And this is why I still use a mac

whynotminot 7y ago
Haha, right? I understand if someone genuinely enjoys configuration. But gosh I just need my machine to get up and going so I can make some money and then go back to living.
- 8draco8 7y ago
  FreeBSD is for people that like to thinker with OS. Same as Arch on Linux side. I'm using Ubuntu for pretty much everything for over 10 years now and everything is just easy and fast. My current installation of Ubuntu Mate has been done 3.5 years ago as 16.04. Since then I went trough 4 distro upgrades, 16.04 > 16.10 > 17.04 > 17.10 > 18.04LTS and since in 18.04 they introduced snaps I decided to stick to LTS releases with my apps like JetBrains apps installed via snaps for latest updates. Somewhere in that update cycle I upgraded my machine and just pulled SSD from old machine and plugged it in into the new one and it just worked. The system is also being backed up into Synology NAS so when in meantime I bought small laptop for travel I basically "restored" my main PC into that laptop so I didn't have to manually setup everything. It's pretty simple. Unfortunately it doesn't move applications like TimeMachine does, only the settings so I had to install apps like SublimeText myself but settings was already in there. If your workflow can be moved outside of MacOS ecosystem then it's worth to checkout Linux especially Ubuntu (and all it flavors) as an alternative.
  - whynotminot 7y ago
    I actually do use Ubuntu every day for development. I also use macOS every day. They both get the job done relatively painlessly. I enjoy macOS more in general, but I like using Ubuntu in a VM because I can snapshot and restore.
- mruts 7y ago
  I’ve found the long-term productivity gains far outpace the short-term cost of using Linux/BSD. For example, I’ve found focus-follows-mouse WMs a huge boon to my productivity, a feature that OSX absolutely refuses to implement. The ability for a window to grab input without being raised is highly underrated.

PPAqualifier 7y ago

If you're a faggot who can't use a system then you only deserve windows 11. The rest of us invest the minutes it takes to learn sn actual system.

PPAqualifier 7y ago

Manjaro is for fsggots. Only arch linux is an operating system

PPAqualifier 7y ago

That's because you are a Windows 11 faggot. If you can use Linux you use arch.

PPAqualifier 7y ago

Arch Linux is the only Linux. It's so easy to learn and use. Arch Linux is the only operating system. It takes 20 minutes to learn arch if you know Linux and Unix.

hans1729 7y ago
I mean, we wouldn't have this without arch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngwv_r-zzI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngwv_r-zzI0 (George Hotz livestreaming himself installing arch, just for the sake of it) Watched it while having half a bottle of merlot, _easily_ the best content I've seen to date.
enriquto 7y ago
arch feels to me like an over-engineered mess. For a truer unix experience I'd rather suggest void or slack.
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  It's not perfect, but I find it's in a good intersection between "simple" but still "fairly mainstream", which has its advantages.
- mruts 7y ago
  I used to run Slackware, and the user experience is pretty terrible compared to Arch or OpenBSD. The absence of a package manager that tracks dependencies is not a “truer” Unix experience. All the BSDs provide a more Unixy experience than Linux and they all track dependencies. If Slackware was updated more often, the system would work better. The dynamic libs are always way out of date, and god help you if you want to install a newer version.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    this depends on your point of view. For me, being able to install a package even when some dependences are not met is a fundamental feature. Regarding the versions, slackware-current is a very up-to-date rolling distro (e.g. much more so than ubuntu).

pcr910303 7y ago

The comments about using macOS instead of Linux or {Free,Open}BSD are getting downvoted in somewhat obscure reasons. It's not that Linux isn't usable with minimal tweaking, I'm pretty sure macOS users also do a fair amount of tweaking (with, e.g. mapping keys with Karabiner (swapping Control & Caps Lock doesn't need third-party apps BTW), making the TouchBar useful again with HapticKey, etc...). The problem is that Linux doesn't get fundamental things (in a user-perspective) right. It's a few months ago, so I'm not sure if the bug still remains, but the latest version of Ubuntu still has HiDPI problems (at least in VMware Fusion - and VMs are pretty standard to test OSes, right?) related to mouse pointer size, sleep doesn't work without configuring with systemd for a few hours about one-third of all of my Linux laptops, WPA2 Enterprise Wi-Fi connecting is an hassle, configuring input-systems for CJK languages require making a systemd service manually(!), installing packages are needed to use exFAT USB (I've heard that the Linux Kernel has now gained exFAT support by Microsoft, but it's still months later for the user), adding apt repository hangs when done with aptitude so the user has to touch /etc/, and the list goes on... Are these issues really 'configurable' issues? They aren't, but everyone kinda says, 'Fiddle with {systemd and you will get manageable {battery life,Wi-Fi connection,HiDPI support, etc...}' And that's the reason why people just use macOS instead.

Carpetsmoker 7y ago
I don't go around macOS stories with "macOS sucks, this is why I use Linux". It's off-topic noise at best, and just pointless caring about what systems other people run at worst. So yeah, -1 from me to all of those posts, and also the Arch Linux one (I'm typing this from an Arch machine). I don't think the reasons are that obscure: it's off-topic and doesn't contribute. Your post at least has some depth to it, but on the other hand, it's the same discussion ... every time.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  If someone posted a story called "Driving on Water", and it was all about how you could modify your car to get it to drive on a lake... sure, it's interesting... but it would certainly be worth pointing out that boats exist, and that boats are perhaps much easier at doing what you're trying to do, which is transportation on water. Maybe there's some reason the original posters aren't using boats, and they can share that information. We don't know until we start communicating about it.

gfiorav 7y ago

It's such a risk you take by getting a WQHD screen on Linux. I've had trouble to get things to scale, setting for the workable (albeit far from perfect) option to scale fonts. I wonder how well this setup works with different UIs, system icons, etc.

dddddaviddddd 7y ago
Lots of things are not quite right (e.g. save dialogs never seem to be sized logically), most things are okay though. What I use most (terminal, browser) are great.

JeremyMorgan 7y ago

I am trying to think of valid reasons why someone would use FreeBSD in this day and age as a desktop. I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. I used FreeBSD a TON from around 1998-2004 or so. I did it because I could configure an environment to develop in that ran fast on the hardware. At some point the type of development I do (Web) really took off on Linux and OSX so I drifted that way. I'm going to spin up a VM of FreeBSD just to check it out, but why are folks using it as a Desktop these days?

crististm 7y ago
Speculating, I think the reasons are the same as 20 years ago when people were installing Linux instead of Windows.
- tmalsburg2 7y ago
  Namely?
  - sfifs 7y ago
    Not GP but in my experience - Curiosity and to gain a certain techy reputation among nerdy circles. About 15-20 years ago when I was in engineering school, my seniors used to ask me to install Linux on their PCs back when installing it was a bit more hairy than today (text based installer that asked you lots of questions) so they could pretend to themselves they were keeping up with the cutting edge if tech :-)
    - JeremyMorgan 7y ago
      Kind of a simplistic view in my opinion. I installed Linux and BSD out of pure curiosity and enjoyed the configurability and newness of it all. I was in a rural area, wasn't in college yet and didn't have anyone to brag to about it at the time. I used it because I wanted to. I know there are many like me.
asveikau 7y ago
I think the reason to use it over desktop Linux is pretty similar to the time range you talk about. It has a different feel and some people are more comfortable with the *BSD way. The difference in personality has widened a bit as Linux comes up with things like systemd. If you just want a light Unix workstation that isn't trying to imitate Windows or Mac, the BSDs will get in your way less. That or a very conservative Linux distro.