4 ms·

Does anyone have a good recommendation for a lightweight laptop (ideally 11", but 13" is OK I guess) that would run a BSD system out of the box (as much as poss

by GuiA 13y ago

Does anyone have a good recommendation for a lightweight laptop (ideally 11", but 13" is OK I guess) that would run a BSD system out of the box (as much as possible)? Trying to slowly start a switch from OS X for basic stuff (internet, writing LaTeX, writing some elementary code, etc.), something to replace my Macbook Air would be awesome.

microcolonel 13y ago
Not sure if FreeBSD has power management worth a rectal excretion, you probably wouldn't want to run it on a laptop. Try GNU/Linux, really.
- i_are_crd 13y ago
  Or OpenBSD. That runs really well on most laptops.
  - wolf550e 13y ago
    As long as they're connected to a wall socket. Otherwise, citation needed. Power Management in hard. Who does the myriad of hardware quirks for OpenBSD?
    - adamrt 13y ago
      If you are referring to suspend/resume, then OpenBSD has great support[1]. Its one of the very few ACPI stacks not derived from Intel's ACPICA reference code. [1] http://www.openbsd.org/papers/zzz.pdf http://www.openbsd.org/papers/zzz.pdf (older, 2011)
      - microcolonel 13y ago
        Suspend and resume are basic features, by power management I mean idle and active power management, optimizing the race to zero, reclocking...
        dman 13y ago
        Working suspend and resume is not a basic feature as far as linuxen go.
        microcolonel 13y ago
        Would you like to explain that, and maybe cite some references? Suspend and resume have been stable for me as long as I've had a computer capable of supporting them. And I'm not aware of any way to make them fail without doing something obviously intended to disable them.
        msbarnett 13y ago
        Reference: Every time I've tried Linux on a laptop, Suspend, Resume, or Both has been broken in whatever $FLAVOR_OF_THE_MONTH distro/package/kernel the community insists is the next big thing. The BSDs tend to implement these things later but far more reliably.
        microcolonel 13y ago
        Never been broken on Arch, Fedora, Debian... or any of the upstream distributions I've used, when I've used them. Your personal exacerbation of whatever imaginary and nonspecific issues you're talking about is not relevant to a conversation about people other than you. The world doesn't need your BSD FUD. "The BSDs" is also absolutely silly as ideas go, there are BSDs which have never supported suspend/resume.
        sbuk 13y ago
        What the world doesn't need is this continuing holy war from a particularly small but sadly vocal minority of the Linux community. You really don't help the cause. I find it particularly irononic of you to accuse someone of spreading "BSD FUD" on a thread about FreeBSD. I'll 'cite' you an example of real 'FUD'; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839565
        13y ago
- emaste 13y ago
  My Thinkpad X220 usually has a wall socket nearby, but I have been able to work on a flight from Toronto to San Francisco (a bit over 5 hours) without running out of battery. "acpiconf -i0" tells me my battery has a design capacity of just over 93Wh, and it's using just over 14W while idle.
kunai 13y ago
BSD is great, but if you're on a laptop, I have to say I can't recommend anything other than GNU+Linux. That is the only Unix-like system besides OS X I've run on my MacBook Air that has good power management. Everything works out of the box. Xubuntu is an excellent choice; the 13.04 release works flawlessly with all hardware and I easily get about 6+ hours of battery life out of a 1.5-year old Air. I've tried OpenBSD on the same machine, and got decent power management with it. It's not as ubiquitous nor as supported in terms of a software perspective as FreeBSD (e.g., can't run some Linux binaries, etc.) but it's still a good choice if you want to stay away from GNU and the GPL. Personally, I can't live without the GNU tools, so I've never switched.
- GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
  FreeBSD works fine on my laptops, m610 and studio 1555. The 1555 is a win 7 dual boot. I did have to replace the crappy wifi nic in it though to something better and something FBSD would recognize. > Personally, I can't live without the GNU tools, so I've never switched. Do you mean a GNU userland or toolchain? FreeBSD definitely has GNU toolchain although the ones in base are being deprecated. Still available in ports though. And I'd take the BSD userland over the clusterF GNU's is any day.
  - kunai 13y ago
    I meant both userland and toolchain. I like the BSD userland for its simplicity, but the GNU userland has a lot of features that BSD doesn't have. It's bigger, and some may say more bloated, but it works well and is fully-featured.
    - GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
      > GNU userland has a lot of features that BSD doesn't have. Do you have an example of this or a lot of them? > some may say more bloated I'm not worried about "bloat". What I am worried about it lack of functionality. If BSD is lacking in that area, it should be easy to identify.
    - deleted 13y ago
emaste 13y ago
FreeBSD works well enough for me on my Thinkpad X220, with the notable current exception of suspend and resume. If you can live with that for now I believe it will serve you well for your use case.
- GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
  There have been reports that removing VESA from the kernel allowed suspend/resume to work fully for the KMS stuff. Not sure if that's applicable to your setup.
bifrost 13y ago
I've had good luck with FreeBSD on Lenovos. Its run on every one I've had since my T42 (so T42, R60, T500, T510, T520). Power management works "fine", I usually get 5-6 hours of battery life out of my battery, but I never bothered to monkey with suspend/resume since my laptop boots so fast anyways. Frankly the Air is one of the best laptop formfactors I've seen in a while, just load a virtualization system on it (VBox is free) and run FreeBSD in that.

by GuiA 13y ago

microcolonel 13y ago

Not sure if FreeBSD has power management worth a rectal excretion, you probably wouldn't want to run it on a laptop. Try GNU/Linux, really.

i_are_crd 13y ago
Or OpenBSD. That runs really well on most laptops.
- wolf550e 13y ago
  As long as they're connected to a wall socket. Otherwise, citation needed. Power Management in hard. Who does the myriad of hardware quirks for OpenBSD?
  - adamrt 13y ago
    If you are referring to suspend/resume, then OpenBSD has great support[1]. Its one of the very few ACPI stacks not derived from Intel's ACPICA reference code. [1] http://www.openbsd.org/papers/zzz.pdf http://www.openbsd.org/papers/zzz.pdf (older, 2011)
    - microcolonel 13y ago
      Suspend and resume are basic features, by power management I mean idle and active power management, optimizing the race to zero, reclocking...
      - dman 13y ago
        Working suspend and resume is not a basic feature as far as linuxen go.
        microcolonel 13y ago
        Would you like to explain that, and maybe cite some references? Suspend and resume have been stable for me as long as I've had a computer capable of supporting them. And I'm not aware of any way to make them fail without doing something obviously intended to disable them.
        msbarnett 13y ago
        Reference: Every time I've tried Linux on a laptop, Suspend, Resume, or Both has been broken in whatever $FLAVOR_OF_THE_MONTH distro/package/kernel the community insists is the next big thing. The BSDs tend to implement these things later but far more reliably.
        microcolonel 13y ago
        Never been broken on Arch, Fedora, Debian... or any of the upstream distributions I've used, when I've used them. Your personal exacerbation of whatever imaginary and nonspecific issues you're talking about is not relevant to a conversation about people other than you. The world doesn't need your BSD FUD. "The BSDs" is also absolutely silly as ideas go, there are BSDs which have never supported suspend/resume.
        sbuk 13y ago
        What the world doesn't need is this continuing holy war from a particularly small but sadly vocal minority of the Linux community. You really don't help the cause. I find it particularly irononic of you to accuse someone of spreading "BSD FUD" on a thread about FreeBSD. I'll 'cite' you an example of real 'FUD'; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839565
        13y ago
emaste 13y ago
My Thinkpad X220 usually has a wall socket nearby, but I have been able to work on a flight from Toronto to San Francisco (a bit over 5 hours) without running out of battery. "acpiconf -i0" tells me my battery has a design capacity of just over 93Wh, and it's using just over 14W while idle.

kunai 13y ago

BSD is great, but if you're on a laptop, I have to say I can't recommend anything other than GNU+Linux. That is the only Unix-like system besides OS X I've run on my MacBook Air that has good power management. Everything works out of the box. Xubuntu is an excellent choice; the 13.04 release works flawlessly with all hardware and I easily get about 6+ hours of battery life out of a 1.5-year old Air. I've tried OpenBSD on the same machine, and got decent power management with it. It's not as ubiquitous nor as supported in terms of a software perspective as FreeBSD (e.g., can't run some Linux binaries, etc.) but it's still a good choice if you want to stay away from GNU and the GPL. Personally, I can't live without the GNU tools, so I've never switched.

GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
FreeBSD works fine on my laptops, m610 and studio 1555. The 1555 is a win 7 dual boot. I did have to replace the crappy wifi nic in it though to something better and something FBSD would recognize. > Personally, I can't live without the GNU tools, so I've never switched. Do you mean a GNU userland or toolchain? FreeBSD definitely has GNU toolchain although the ones in base are being deprecated. Still available in ports though. And I'd take the BSD userland over the clusterF GNU's is any day.
- kunai 13y ago
  I meant both userland and toolchain. I like the BSD userland for its simplicity, but the GNU userland has a lot of features that BSD doesn't have. It's bigger, and some may say more bloated, but it works well and is fully-featured.
  - GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
    > GNU userland has a lot of features that BSD doesn't have. Do you have an example of this or a lot of them? > some may say more bloated I'm not worried about "bloat". What I am worried about it lack of functionality. If BSD is lacking in that area, it should be easy to identify.
  - deleted 13y ago

emaste 13y ago

FreeBSD works well enough for me on my Thinkpad X220, with the notable current exception of suspend and resume. If you can live with that for now I believe it will serve you well for your use case.

GalacticDomin8r 13y ago
There have been reports that removing VESA from the kernel allowed suspend/resume to work fully for the KMS stuff. Not sure if that's applicable to your setup.

bifrost 13y ago

I've had good luck with FreeBSD on Lenovos. Its run on every one I've had since my T42 (so T42, R60, T500, T510, T520). Power management works "fine", I usually get 5-6 hours of battery life out of my battery, but I never bothered to monkey with suspend/resume since my laptop boots so fast anyways. Frankly the Air is one of the best laptop formfactors I've seen in a while, just load a virtualization system on it (VBox is free) and run FreeBSD in that.