>Ethernet and WiFi work, although WiFi is a bit slow (only up to 802.11a?) compared to 802.11n/802.11ac capable OSes.
And stuff like this is why I've never stuck with FreeBSD when I've tried it. I screw around with debugging issues all day at work. Why would I want to try to figure out why something as fundamental as wifi isn't working in my spare time?
They almost certainly mean 802.11g or n, not the archaic a. FreeBSD has generally good 802.11n support. It lacks 802.11ac.
Yes, if you absolutely need 802.11ac wifi in particular, FreeBSD isn't a great choice. But many modern 802.11n NICs (and 802.11ac NICs, in 802.11n mode) "just work" out of the box, including the 'iwm' devices mentioned in the article, on more recent versions of FreeBSD.
FreeBSD 12.0 dates to 2018 — this is like installing Fedora 29 in 2020.
I have a T430 at home that runs FreeBSD that acts as a spare PC/browser/home media server. I never have to screw around with anything. FreeBSD has come a long, long way.
If I gave you a new Mac or PC, you could spend hours "screwing around" with it tweaking and customizing it, Linux even more so. If you absolutely need 802.11ac, then FreeBSD is not the right OS for T480s. But how many people actually require that speed?
FreeBSD developers and people who use FreeBSD on a daily basis need laptops too. There are not many options out there unless they opt for ancient hardware.
Totally. This is the virtue signaling of the workstation world.
The mere fact that you’re running a computer with *nix, and you get to tell everyone about it, outweighs the fact that 50% of your day is spent figuring out how to get common tasks working on it.
Would love to read a piece akin to “I’ve been running Ubuntu on a ThinkPad for two years without issue” which is a standard the other main OSes have established
I also use a T480 as my main laptop and love it. Here are my notes & dotfiles for running Arch Linux: https://github.com/vesche/t480
One big item (which you'll see at the bottom of my install notes) is that intel chips in these thinkpads have a throttling issue. There's a nice python program to fix that, I run it as a systemd service on boot: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled
Awesome, thanks for sharing. I have my own notes as well for running under Ubuntu that I really should get around to polishing up and publishing as well. I second that throttled fix. I boosted single core performance by 34% and multi-core by 63%! (https://twitter.com/xan_nick/status/1199821047840817153)
I switched to a Thinkpad from Macbook and I'm really, really enjoying the keyboard. Easily the best typing experience I've had on a laptop. Nearly as good as the cherry red switches on my desktop keyboard.
I have a T490 and also run Arch, I believe for me there was a fix for the intel throttling in a firmware (BIOS) update. I don’t know if it was the same issue as the 480 but believe I saw it in the release notes for supported laptops.
FWIW, you can similarly fiddle with Intel HWP / performance <-> efficiency tradeoff on FreeBSD with the `dev.hwpstate_intel.0.epp=<0-100>` sysctl/tunable knob. We expose fewer of those other knobs, though.
Checking in with a Lenovo Carbon X1 gen1 running FreeBSD flawlessly.
Everything works including suspend/resume, the only things I never tried to use are the camera and fingerprint reader but I guess I'll check out of curiosity.
Battery life is better than Windows. The touchpad is a little less pleasant to use (hard to click on a small target while using the laptop on the couch, the pointer always moves a little bit when taking the finger off). It definitely works better after some 30 minutes of usage but I have no idea why.
I use one of those too and made the switch rather recently from a MBPr. I used Linux Mint on it.
It's speedy, video calling works fine, can compile lots of code quickly, and it's refurbished and saved from the dumpster.
I hope to never buy a new computer again instead relying on refurbishing old ones as we go along. I keep all of my configurations and projects synced up so that booting up a new computer into my dev environment is straight forward. If I lose the device or it gets totaled it's a couple hundred bucks instead of $4k going out the door to get a new one in a few hours.
Two-year-old ThinkPads (the real ones like the T and X series) are great deals. I did buy my T480 new (I wanted features like the best screen that are hard to find used), but my wife and mom are both using T470 units that we bought off of eBay. My mom's unit turned out to have a charging issue, but we discovered that it was still under a three-year extended warranty, which is tied to the machine rather than the purchaser; Lenovo replaced the motherboard on it with little fuss.
This is exactly what I've done for the last 5 years or so. I'm currently running a T460 I picked up almost two years ago for under $500 and is now running Xubuntu 18.04. My wife's running an X1 Yoga gen 2 that I picked up for around $400.
I've come to the same conclusion that it's generally not worth the premium cost to buy a new laptop when good hardware is so readily available in my neck of the woods.
I’ve been eying FreeBSD for my next project once feature parity is finalized and I begin to lock down the build chain for long term storage. I think one nice thing about FreeBSD is how the entire ecosystem is maintained by the same team of core developers vs. Linux which focuses on the kernel and has a wider more heterogeneous ecosystem. I want something stable, that has great console mode, and has great Ethernet support, and is absolutely rock solid. Does FreeBSD fit the bill there?
Probably fits your requirements. One interesting thing to remember about FreeBSD is that a lot of commercial users of it use it as a base for enterprise appliances (think storage arrays, proxies, DPI boxes, etc). This means that the project as a whole is fairly beholden to these users, who provide a nice chunk of the project's funding and many of its professional committers.
As a result, the project is less focused on desktop use cases and free software/security at any cost ideology than on a) not breaking all the complicated crap built on top of it and b) providing drop-in perf and stability enhancements.
So, yeah, if you want a performant network stack and a consolidated kernel/userland that values stability (both in the "years of uptime" and the no "hey guys, we're jumping to systemd!" senses of the word) FreeBSD is a good option. As a bonus, FreeBSD's manpages are really really nice and give you basically everything you need to get down and do some serious systems programming or box-tuning. Go check out `man 7 tuning`.
Anecdotally, during my years as a sysadmin I ran a bunch of FreeBSD boxes alongside a bunch of Linux boxes - similar hardware, similar tasks. The FreeBSD boxes would routinely run for literal years without a hiccup, while we never got a similar level of stability from any other OS.
I dropped FreeBSD as my main laptop about four years ago (and have invested a fair bit of time on dockerising my experience on ubuntu so going back is hard)
But what I wanted then (and dreamed of having a million or so to make it real) was a FreeBSD reference laptop - basically a distribution of FreeBSD that worked in this laptop series - you bought the laptop and a years support and basically three hackers just kept on producing patches and co-ordinating drivers and making simple tools and simple videos on how to keep your base running.
I work on top of my laptop. I would prefer to just take the barest plain vanilla, and not have to work on my laptop unless I choose to.
> basically a distribution of FreeBSD that worked in this laptop series - you bought the laptop and a years support and basically three hackers just kept on producing patches and co-ordinating drivers and making simple tools and simple videos on how to keep your base running.
This is basically the business model of Apple Computers
I paid twice as much for mine when it was the latest model (I got few upgrades, though). I'm pretty happy with the T480 overall, but if Lenovo releases another T-series with a significantly better CPU then I'll probably get it. I didn't think that I needed the dedicated graphics card, but now I think that having the additional cooling would help.
I also have a t480, mines running Ubuntu but unfortunately I’m giving it up for a new MacBook Air. The touchpads on the thinkpads are beyond horrible after using macs for many years, it’s finally too annoying for me to keep going :(
If you want to stick with Linux, I can vouch for Dell's XPS range. I've been running Ubuntu and Arch on various generations of XPS 13 for about 8 years now with minimal issues. Honestly, my work-issued Macbooks have been more problematic than my XPS laptops. It definitely helps that Dell actively support Ubuntu and provide kernel patches.
Huh... I have the exact opposite feeling. I've used a MBPr for work the last two years, and I absolutely hate it. I've pushed to get a good solid Lenovo, but that's been repeatedly rejected as they like the convenience of the whole office using OSX and Apple hardware.
I've felt the touchpad wasn't sensitive enough and the click action was way too feeble. Combined with the mushy feeling of the keyboard and the atrocious user experience of the OS, I can barely stand using it each day.
in the non-mac world, ThinkPads have some of the best touchpads, too.
The closest to a mac touchpad I have seen so far has been the Dell XPS touchpad, which imo is hands-down the best touchpad experience on a non-mac machine.
If we don't count the keyboard issues, no laptop on the market is as nice to use as an MBP. If I had one with a physical escape key, I could probably make the statement without even that reservation.
But if you prefer Ubuntu to macOS for whatever reason, I've found the Dell XPS line to be good enough to be tolerable.
Mac user here. Still use a desktop Mac mini daily, but have replaced my 13" Macbook Pro for a 14" Thinkpad running Ubuntu.
So far so good. Haven't had nearly the amount of hardware issues reported in this thread. Only the fingerprint scanner does not work, despite best efforts to install its drivers.
The hardest thing for me so far has been customising it to behave like macOS. The muscle memory of keyboard shortcuts is too hard to shake. But I've changed most of them.
Another thing to point out. The display scaling sucks. I have found anything between 100% and 200% unstable.
Edit: mine is a budget L380 model. Pretty good value for under $500 (current clearance price).
I run Ubuntu MATE 18 on three different Thinkpads and they all work perfectly with zero tinkering. The only issue is they chew through the battery in no time, but since I’m almost always plugged in I’ve not bothered to investigate a fix.
I've been running 1.3x fake scaling for years by just tweaking fonts. In previous Ubuntu versions with Unity that was just a standard setting. Now I need to set the font scaling in the tweak tool and in the firefox about:config. After that everything just looks fine.
The other good development with Thinkpads is the introduction of AMD processors in their mainstream offerings (T495, T495s, X395, etc.). Unfortunately their screens suck though.
The screens are actually the very reason I choose a thinkpad over a mac. Gloss screens are pretty much impossible to work on if you prefer dark colorschemes, and at least the thinkpads give you the matte option.
While not for most people, it is realtively easy to replace the screen with a higher quality panel. I have a T495, and replaced the panel with a higher quality one. No screws, just sticky stuff, I was concerned about this at first, as I didn't know of the sticky substance would remain viable after swaping thescreen, but it is working great. Since I am not changing panels everyday, it isn't an issue.
I use a T495s with the 400-nit low power display and it is by far the best screen I've ever seen on a laptop. I have no idea what you're talking about; of course, if you go with the 1366x768 screen that Lenovo seems to continue to offer inexplicably, you're shafted, but the 1920x1080 400-nit screen is incredible. It's matte, thin, extremely low power (powertop tells me it's under 1W right now at 30% brightness, which is already too bright for a well-lit root), and is easily replaceable. And it's not touch either, which is an advantage in my book.
I have a T495. I highly recommend it. Be warned, the keyboard is a chiclet keyboard, not the traditional Thinkpad keyboard. But having an AMD GPU and an AMD CPU automatically makes this my choice after having dealt with the horrors of NVIDIA on Linux.
I use a Thinkpad T490s and it works great with Ubuntu out of the box. Only thing that doesn't work is clicking the touchpad for right click, but since the Thinkpad comes with physical left and right buttons that was a non-issue.
On my T480 I can use two fingers to trigger a right-click. The only issue I ran into with the mouse was where both right-click and two finger scrolling don't work after I have resume the laptop from sleep. To workaround this issue I just reload the mouse driver. It doesn't really bother my workflow much, but if it does then I'll run this rmouse command in the terminal. (I probably should script this to run on resume automatically, but I'm lazy :-) )
alias rmouse="sudo modprobe -r psmouse && sudo modprobe psmouse"
The T480s has so much better build quality. Its all metal vs T480 which is plasticity and soft touch. Not sure why you would choose T480 unless you REALLY need > 24gb ram or giant extended battery.
Even the inside is better built. The plastic front clips of the T480 backplate break super easily, whereas the T480s has replaceable clips.
I have a T480 and I've definitely needed >24GB of ram before when running some VMs. It has come in handy. Don't forget too that the T480 has hot-swappable batteries, which is really nice on extended coding sessions where I'm not plugged in or if I'm traveling. Also, I love the rubbery feel of it. It feels solid in my hand and doesn't slip at all. Admittedly that is subjective though. :-)
Similarly, I can vouch for the T495s' sturdiness. The whole thing genuinely feels like a slab of solid rock (but is still lightweight); I can't quantify how robust this thing is, but Lenovo guarantees that every T495s has been through some sort of military testing where it sits in different environments for several hours (sandstorm, scorching heat, freezing cold, humidity).
Have been running Linux on Lenovo laptops forever. A T500, then a T440p, now an X1E Gen2 (can't remember what I used before the T500).
While I still am not able to buy a Lenovo laptop without Windows preinstalled, at least Lenovo is open enough for other OSs (FreeBSD, Linux, etc) to run relatively flawlessly on them.
I hate the trackpad/nubbins on those things. At least for Win10. the response/behavior isn't really consistent between it seeming to want a swipe, a tap, right or left buttons and whatnot.
That is one of few pieces of him that is comfortable to read. No feeling of an angry old man shouting at you. Quite a statesman like talking his way of life in fact. Enjoyable read.
And good to hear it is just keyboard causing his hand problem. Feel sorry when a hacker have pain in using keyboard. Good article.
Have you worked on external monitors with this setup? The last time I've tried, it had been a pain. The monitors were detected fine, but the scaling was completely off.
Funnily enough, I had wanted to purchase my Dell XPS 9570 (15") without dgpu, but they only offered it for their 13" model.
Until several months after release, support for the nvidia card was spotty on Ubuntu/Fedora so it would suck up power without it being used. It's better now, but my workflow doesn't really need a dgpu, and the igpu is enough to watch 1080p videos (probably not 4K, though).
I have the T495, that has the Vega 10 amdgpu.
While it is builtin with the cpu, It performs pretty decently. After proper configuration, I was able to get 20FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, at max settings, on Linux.
That processor sure has the potential. A few modifications to the cooling system and some undervolting can get it running at 30+ Watt TDP indefinitely.
I've been running Ubuntu and Kali on a Dell machine for a few years and the trackpad has always been unusuable and the power switch is always power-down (instead of sleep, standby).
Yes, I've messed with the xorg settings for the trackpad and the ACPI settings for the button, but gave up.
Slightly related: I'm running Ubuntu on a Thinkpad and the trackpad is pretty painful to use (after using macOS for years). I went out and bought a mouse a few days ago for this reason.
If it's for funsies okay but pushing to use something wildly boutique is a major red flag for me at work. I have one guy who works for me who runs linux on the desktop and he's pretty much always having a problem of some sort. I put up with it because he's staff level, but it doesn't impress.
xxpor|6 years ago
And stuff like this is why I've never stuck with FreeBSD when I've tried it. I screw around with debugging issues all day at work. Why would I want to try to figure out why something as fundamental as wifi isn't working in my spare time?
loeg|6 years ago
Yes, if you absolutely need 802.11ac wifi in particular, FreeBSD isn't a great choice. But many modern 802.11n NICs (and 802.11ac NICs, in 802.11n mode) "just work" out of the box, including the 'iwm' devices mentioned in the article, on more recent versions of FreeBSD.
FreeBSD 12.0 dates to 2018 — this is like installing Fedora 29 in 2020.
PrimeDirective|6 years ago
slacka|6 years ago
If I gave you a new Mac or PC, you could spend hours "screwing around" with it tweaking and customizing it, Linux even more so. If you absolutely need 802.11ac, then FreeBSD is not the right OS for T480s. But how many people actually require that speed?
na85|6 years ago
Don't forget this, which translated means suspend/resume doesn't work.
namirez|6 years ago
mvkel|6 years ago
The mere fact that you’re running a computer with *nix, and you get to tell everyone about it, outweighs the fact that 50% of your day is spent figuring out how to get common tasks working on it.
Would love to read a piece akin to “I’ve been running Ubuntu on a ThinkPad for two years without issue” which is a standard the other main OSes have established
tedunangst|6 years ago
JudasGoat|6 years ago
vesche|6 years ago
One big item (which you'll see at the bottom of my install notes) is that intel chips in these thinkpads have a throttling issue. There's a nice python program to fix that, I run it as a systemd service on boot: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled
ahnick|6 years ago
spaceman_2020|6 years ago
nerdwaller|6 years ago
loeg|6 years ago
nextos|6 years ago
Sadly fan speed is not adjustable by the user in the last few generations.
I'm also curious about their new AMD offerings.
gruturo|6 years ago
Battery life is better than Windows. The touchpad is a little less pleasant to use (hard to click on a small target while using the laptop on the couch, the pointer always moves a little bit when taking the finger off). It definitely works better after some 30 minutes of usage but I have no idea why.
agentultra|6 years ago
It's speedy, video calling works fine, can compile lots of code quickly, and it's refurbished and saved from the dumpster.
I hope to never buy a new computer again instead relying on refurbishing old ones as we go along. I keep all of my configurations and projects synced up so that booting up a new computer into my dev environment is straight forward. If I lose the device or it gets totaled it's a couple hundred bucks instead of $4k going out the door to get a new one in a few hours.
organsnyder|6 years ago
ajford|6 years ago
I've come to the same conclusion that it's generally not worth the premium cost to buy a new laptop when good hardware is so readily available in my neck of the woods.
yingw787|6 years ago
livueta|6 years ago
As a result, the project is less focused on desktop use cases and free software/security at any cost ideology than on a) not breaking all the complicated crap built on top of it and b) providing drop-in perf and stability enhancements.
So, yeah, if you want a performant network stack and a consolidated kernel/userland that values stability (both in the "years of uptime" and the no "hey guys, we're jumping to systemd!" senses of the word) FreeBSD is a good option. As a bonus, FreeBSD's manpages are really really nice and give you basically everything you need to get down and do some serious systems programming or box-tuning. Go check out `man 7 tuning`.
Anecdotally, during my years as a sysadmin I ran a bunch of FreeBSD boxes alongside a bunch of Linux boxes - similar hardware, similar tasks. The FreeBSD boxes would routinely run for literal years without a hiccup, while we never got a similar level of stability from any other OS.
lifeisstillgood|6 years ago
But what I wanted then (and dreamed of having a million or so to make it real) was a FreeBSD reference laptop - basically a distribution of FreeBSD that worked in this laptop series - you bought the laptop and a years support and basically three hackers just kept on producing patches and co-ordinating drivers and making simple tools and simple videos on how to keep your base running.
I work on top of my laptop. I would prefer to just take the barest plain vanilla, and not have to work on my laptop unless I choose to.
zelly|6 years ago
This is basically the business model of Apple Computers
chx|6 years ago
hnruss|6 years ago
revicon|6 years ago
wldlyinaccurate|6 years ago
ajford|6 years ago
I've felt the touchpad wasn't sensitive enough and the click action was way too feeble. Combined with the mushy feeling of the keyboard and the atrocious user experience of the OS, I can barely stand using it each day.
Aperocky|6 years ago
If I were in your shoe, I'd wait for a longer traveling version of the keyboard that's not butterfly.
holtalanm|6 years ago
The closest to a mac touchpad I have seen so far has been the Dell XPS touchpad, which imo is hands-down the best touchpad experience on a non-mac machine.
bayindirh|6 years ago
Yes, it lacks many gestures but, KDE has ample replacements for these gestures I think.
umanwizard|6 years ago
But if you prefer Ubuntu to macOS for whatever reason, I've found the Dell XPS line to be good enough to be tolerable.
rbanffy|6 years ago
But, then, the newer T490's can have up to 64 gigs of RAM, SATA and an M2 ssd
protanopia|6 years ago
ptcampbell|6 years ago
So far so good. Haven't had nearly the amount of hardware issues reported in this thread. Only the fingerprint scanner does not work, despite best efforts to install its drivers.
The hardest thing for me so far has been customising it to behave like macOS. The muscle memory of keyboard shortcuts is too hard to shake. But I've changed most of them.
Another thing to point out. The display scaling sucks. I have found anything between 100% and 200% unstable.
Edit: mine is a budget L380 model. Pretty good value for under $500 (current clearance price).
city41|6 years ago
pedrocr|6 years ago
rhabarba|6 years ago
rv-de|6 years ago
castratikron|6 years ago
https://blog.habets.se/2013/11/TPM-chip-protecting-SSH-keys-...
zelly|6 years ago
namirez|6 years ago
funklute|6 years ago
ntw1103|6 years ago
adtac|6 years ago
jszymborski|6 years ago
zelly|6 years ago
temptemptemp111|6 years ago
[deleted]
orisho|6 years ago
ahnick|6 years ago
alias rmouse="sudo modprobe -r psmouse && sudo modprobe psmouse"
moneromoney|6 years ago
9th Gen Intel® Core™ i9-9880H (16 Threads, 16 MB Cache)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 Max-Q 4GB
64 GB RAM
4K OLED display (better colors than Mac)
Great keyboard
Infrared Camera
Fingerprint Sensor
DOULBY Sound System
Water-Spoil-Protection
...
The first generation had some cooling issues, but it is solved now in the second generation.
gzu|6 years ago
Even the inside is better built. The plastic front clips of the T480 backplate break super easily, whereas the T480s has replaceable clips.
ahnick|6 years ago
adtac|6 years ago
leppr|6 years ago
floatboth|6 years ago
Holy shit, Lenovo finally switched from that non-standard Realtek thingy (https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=204521) to something that exposes SDHCI over PCIe?
linuxhansl|6 years ago
While I still am not able to buy a Lenovo laptop without Windows preinstalled, at least Lenovo is open enough for other OSs (FreeBSD, Linux, etc) to run relatively flawlessly on them.
867-5309|6 years ago
caycep|6 years ago
enjoyyourlife|6 years ago
https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
ngcc_hk|6 years ago
And good to hear it is just keyboard causing his hand problem. Feel sorry when a hacker have pain in using keyboard. Good article.
unknown|6 years ago
[deleted]
vharish|6 years ago
devgoth|6 years ago
2ion|6 years ago
jtreminio|6 years ago
Until several months after release, support for the nvidia card was spotty on Ubuntu/Fedora so it would suck up power without it being used. It's better now, but my workflow doesn't really need a dgpu, and the igpu is enough to watch 1080p videos (probably not 4K, though).
ntw1103|6 years ago
fmakunbound|6 years ago
jotm|6 years ago
That processor sure has the potential. A few modifications to the cooling system and some undervolting can get it running at 30+ Watt TDP indefinitely.
jotm|6 years ago
0xff00ffee|6 years ago
I've been running Ubuntu and Kali on a Dell machine for a few years and the trackpad has always been unusuable and the power switch is always power-down (instead of sleep, standby).
Yes, I've messed with the xorg settings for the trackpad and the ACPI settings for the button, but gave up.
allochthon|6 years ago
whatsmyusername|6 years ago
Why?
If it's for funsies okay but pushing to use something wildly boutique is a major red flag for me at work. I have one guy who works for me who runs linux on the desktop and he's pretty much always having a problem of some sort. I put up with it because he's staff level, but it doesn't impress.