6 ms·

Do you actually get working wifi, suspend/resume and acceptable battery life under BSD? Last time I tried (open)BSD, none of those things worked acceptably. T

by na85 6y ago

Do you actually get working wifi, suspend/resume and acceptable battery life under BSD? Last time I tried (open)BSD, none of those things worked acceptably. The recommended way to connect to wifi was to manually edit wpa_supplicant.conf and battery life was a solid hour less than under linux. I feel like BSD is a great "laptop OS" if you're the kind of user that leaves their thinkpad plugged in all the time, essentially using it as a small-form factor desktop. Maybe it's better nowadays.

2trill2spill 6y ago
Suspend and Resume was the hard one, battery life is solid, although I haven't done a direct comparison with Linux. Wifi was easy but not as easy as Linux to setup. On Linux wifi worked out of the box but I would lose wifi a couple times a day. While on FreeBSD I had to edit a few config files to get wifi working but I dont lose wifi every day. To get the Suspend and Resume to work I had to use the drm-next-kmod port.
laumars 6y ago
BSD isn’t like Linux where it’s the roughly the same kernel and user land but a different distribution of packages. OpenBSD and FreeBSD are entirely different operating systems albeit with a shared lineage.
0ld 6y ago
> Last time I tried (open)BSD Sorry, but OpenBSD and FreeBSD are very different operating systems, it's not just "different distros" like in the Linux world Whatever you tried in OpenBSD has most likely no relation to FreeBSD Speaking of the things you mentioned, I personally would expect suspend/resume to just work out of the box in the latest OpenBSD, but not necessary in FreeBSD (it was never a priority for the developers). You also don't need wpa_supplicant in OpenBSD (unlike FreeBSD), ifconfig should be enough in most cases. For the battery life, you certainly gonna need some tuning, as it's not a config priority by default, but generally (on mainstream hardware) you should be able to reach at least 80%-sh battery life comparing to Linux in OpenBSD, and comparable to Linux in FreeBSD
- na85 6y ago
  >For the battery life, you certainly gonna need some tuning, as it's not a config priority by default, but generally (on mainstream hardware) you should be able to reach at least 80%-sh battery life comparing to Linux in OpenBSD, and comparable to Linux in FreeBSD Yeah, see, that's unacceptable to me in a laptop. I have a small pcengines apu2 running openbsd but I don't enjoy tinkering with it. I find it cumbersome and unwieldy. The documentation seems to be mostly "complete" but it's definitely geared at someone who already has an in-depth understanding of openbsd, and lots of fundamentals are left unsaid, which makes it difficult to learn what the "proper" way to do something is. I end up with a patchwork of hacks and it's very unsatisfying. It took me quite a long time to figure out how to get wireguard working on that box, for instance, whereas on linux and mac it "just works" pretty much out of the box.
  - loeg 6y ago
    > Yeah, see, that's unacceptable to me in a laptop. I think you missed the last clause here: > > comparable to Linux in FreeBSD
    - na85 6y ago
      No, I didn't. Linux battery life is pretty darn close to windows on my hardware, out of the box. Getting freebsd to the level of Linux only after significant tinkering just isn't a good ux. For my personal machine that's unacceptable.
      - 2trill2spill 6y ago
        You said above you were using OpenBSD not FreeBSD, they are completely different operating systems. Also getting the battery to last long on FreeBSD was a super simple config change, that took less than a minute to do.
  - anthk 6y ago
    >and lots of fundamentals are left unsaid, which makes it difficult to learn what the "proper" way to do something is man afterboot
andoriyu 6y ago
This is my life with FreeBSD: > wifi WiFI is working, but not `802.11n/ac`, so you're limited to `802.11g` which sucks, but I use it with ucb-c dongle, so not much of an issue for me. I don't use any GUIs for WiFi because I use the same 3 networks. > suspend/resume Yeah, just like linux it doesn't support fancy states that windows does, but suspend to ram works. Works perfect with laptop lid, but you do need to change a sysctl thingy. > Battery life I can go entire work day on a single charge for my x1 carbon (gen 6). I know that because I forgot to plug it in multiple times. I'm sure OpenBSD has it worse tho.
tedunangst 6y ago
I've never edited or even had a wpa_supplicant.conf file under openbsd.
anthk 6y ago
OpenBSD handles WPA2 thru ifconfig just fine. ifconfig $IFACE join $ESSID wpakey $PASS

by na85 6y ago

2trill2spill 6y ago

Suspend and Resume was the hard one, battery life is solid, although I haven't done a direct comparison with Linux. Wifi was easy but not as easy as Linux to setup. On Linux wifi worked out of the box but I would lose wifi a couple times a day. While on FreeBSD I had to edit a few config files to get wifi working but I dont lose wifi every day. To get the Suspend and Resume to work I had to use the drm-next-kmod port.

laumars 6y ago

BSD isn’t like Linux where it’s the roughly the same kernel and user land but a different distribution of packages. OpenBSD and FreeBSD are entirely different operating systems albeit with a shared lineage.

0ld 6y ago

> Last time I tried (open)BSD Sorry, but OpenBSD and FreeBSD are very different operating systems, it's not just "different distros" like in the Linux world Whatever you tried in OpenBSD has most likely no relation to FreeBSD Speaking of the things you mentioned, I personally would expect suspend/resume to just work out of the box in the latest OpenBSD, but not necessary in FreeBSD (it was never a priority for the developers). You also don't need wpa_supplicant in OpenBSD (unlike FreeBSD), ifconfig should be enough in most cases. For the battery life, you certainly gonna need some tuning, as it's not a config priority by default, but generally (on mainstream hardware) you should be able to reach at least 80%-sh battery life comparing to Linux in OpenBSD, and comparable to Linux in FreeBSD

na85 6y ago
>For the battery life, you certainly gonna need some tuning, as it's not a config priority by default, but generally (on mainstream hardware) you should be able to reach at least 80%-sh battery life comparing to Linux in OpenBSD, and comparable to Linux in FreeBSD Yeah, see, that's unacceptable to me in a laptop. I have a small pcengines apu2 running openbsd but I don't enjoy tinkering with it. I find it cumbersome and unwieldy. The documentation seems to be mostly "complete" but it's definitely geared at someone who already has an in-depth understanding of openbsd, and lots of fundamentals are left unsaid, which makes it difficult to learn what the "proper" way to do something is. I end up with a patchwork of hacks and it's very unsatisfying. It took me quite a long time to figure out how to get wireguard working on that box, for instance, whereas on linux and mac it "just works" pretty much out of the box.
- loeg 6y ago
  > Yeah, see, that's unacceptable to me in a laptop. I think you missed the last clause here: > > comparable to Linux in FreeBSD
  - na85 6y ago
    No, I didn't. Linux battery life is pretty darn close to windows on my hardware, out of the box. Getting freebsd to the level of Linux only after significant tinkering just isn't a good ux. For my personal machine that's unacceptable.
    - 2trill2spill 6y ago
      You said above you were using OpenBSD not FreeBSD, they are completely different operating systems. Also getting the battery to last long on FreeBSD was a super simple config change, that took less than a minute to do.
- anthk 6y ago
  >and lots of fundamentals are left unsaid, which makes it difficult to learn what the "proper" way to do something is man afterboot

andoriyu 6y ago

This is my life with FreeBSD: > wifi WiFI is working, but not `802.11n/ac`, so you're limited to `802.11g` which sucks, but I use it with ucb-c dongle, so not much of an issue for me. I don't use any GUIs for WiFi because I use the same 3 networks. > suspend/resume Yeah, just like linux it doesn't support fancy states that windows does, but suspend to ram works. Works perfect with laptop lid, but you do need to change a sysctl thingy. > Battery life I can go entire work day on a single charge for my x1 carbon (gen 6). I know that because I forgot to plug it in multiple times. I'm sure OpenBSD has it worse tho.

tedunangst 6y ago

I've never edited or even had a wpa_supplicant.conf file under openbsd.

anthk 6y ago

OpenBSD handles WPA2 thru ifconfig just fine. ifconfig $IFACE join $ESSID wpakey $PASS