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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project
reactordev wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
Yessssssss!!! I would love to help out in any way I can. Iâm no good
at kernels and stuff but Iâm a Linux/unix man and I know graphics.
I would love to see a FreeBSD Workstation edition akin to like Fedora
or Ubuntu where things just work (mostly).
Wayland took too long. Weâre still stuck on Gtk. KDE Plasma team is
making moves. I just want a nice, BSD, desktop experience without all
the enshitification of copilot or Apple knowing whatâs best for me.
styanax wrote 6 hours 32 min ago:
(random anecdote) My first and last experience with FreeBSD laptop was
trying to use 3.x (!) on a Dell Inspiron 3500 (PII-350 maybe?), no
sound modules were precompiled or included or whatever. Took about 3
days for `make world` to finally finish rebuilding... and then sound
still not work. Red Hat 6.x "just worked" in all regards.
yjftsjthsd-h wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
I mean. Judging by 3.x, that was literally 25-27 years ago. Not sure
what that has to do with the project that exists today?
jimmaswell wrote 4 hours 39 min ago:
I still found it interesting and not worthy of the downvotes.
0x1ch wrote 5 hours 58 min ago:
Let me know when you can get a Dell XPS 13 (2024/25) working with
FreeBSD out of the box without the need to hunt documentation down
for the following.
- audio
- wifi
- biometrics
- GPU drivers that work well.
jandrese wrote 5 hours 30 min ago:
Do the biometrics work on Linux? Last time I had a laptop with a
fingerprint reader the whole thing was controlled by some
Broadcom thing that was hostile to anything not made by
Microsoft. A fingerprint reader is a highly optional feature so
it's not a problem if it is not working.
prmoustache wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
OTOH I don't know of a single person using biometrics even on
windows laptop. Is it a popular feature?
rkomorn wrote 3 hours 56 min ago:
I use biometrics pretty much everywhere they're available.
Currently use my laptop's fingerprint reader under Linux.
yjftsjthsd-h wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
Yeah, I was also thinking of pointing out that I own a Dell XPS
and AFAIK its fingerprint reader has never worked on Linux and
the GPU is... well, it works these days, but Nvidia still isn't
exactly the nicest thing on Linux.
0x1ch wrote 5 hours 13 min ago:
My fingerprint worked out of the box on Linux Mint, as did
NVIDIA Prime with the mobile 3080. Hibernation is
historically (and still is) the main issue in linux land for
me.
* And I believe those hibernation issues are related to
corrupted graphics stacks because Nvidia, ha.
yjftsjthsd-h wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
Unless you're trying to run your XPS on FreeBSD 3.x, I don't see
what that has to do with either comment in this thread. Really
really old OSs had problems. Current OSs also have problems,
including that no OS supports all hardware, but I don't really
see any connection between an anecdote about sound problems
literally last century and missing drivers today.
0x1ch wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
Everything I mentioned many would consider to be essential
parts of their system that should work, and would then fall
under "Support and Usability" initiatives.
I guess I'm pointing out that his experience 20 something years
ago is still relevant today, even if there's a lower barrier to
entry now.
walterbell wrote 6 hours 51 min ago:
FreeBSD status on Apple Silicon,
HTML [1]: https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon
roywashere wrote 6 hours 36 min ago:
The table lists very limited support for M1 and not even lists newer
variants! I guess it was only to be expected, asahi Linux also has
challenges and of course FreeBSD has less eyeballs than Linux
LeFantome wrote 6 hours 8 min ago:
Linux is pretty much good to go on M1 or even M2 now. No joy on
anything newer than that though.
dzogchen wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
So, is there a laptop that has good support for FreeBSD support out of
the box?
My requirements are: suspend/resume, being able to drive a 5K monitor
over USB-C, wifi.
I found [1] but I don't know how up-to-date it is.
HTML [1]: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops
nrp wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
Weâve been working with Ed and team at FreeBSD on this, and have a
document showing what works currently on Framework Laptops:
HTML [1]: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/freebsd-on-framework
Lammy wrote 5 hours 47 min ago:
Small correction: the AX211 card in the Framework 12 is able to
connect to networks, not just scan. What you're missing is that a
bunch of the Wi-Fi firmware blobs were removed from the base system
between FreeBSD 14.2 and 14.3, and since 14.3 came out in June 2025
I assume that's what was tested. An upgrade from 14.2 to 14.3 would
also have kept working, just not a fresh install of 14.3 or 15.0.
A user needs some other working network connection first. I used my
Android phone's USB tethering â all that takes is a quick
`dhclient ue0`. Then one can run `fwget` to get the firmware that
will make the Wi-Fi work fully: [1] Source: very happy Framework 12
owner (currently dual-booting Windows 11 Enterprise and FreeBSD
15.0 + Wayland + KDE) :)
HTML [1]: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?fwget%288%29
jm4 wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
This is great. I've been checking on it periodically. I'm using the
Framework 13 Ryzen AI 300 and the Framework Desktop so not quite
there yet. Interested in taking FreeBSD for a spin when the support
is there.
zeech wrote 6 hours 45 min ago:
I can't speak to it driving a monitor over USB-C as I don't use one,
but I'm currently running 15.0-RELEASE on a refurbished Dell Latitude
7280 that has worked flawlessly out of the box so far.
Somebody else did a nice writeup [0] on their experience with FBSD on
the same laptop.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://adventurist.me/posts/00352
mikece wrote 7 hours 57 min ago:
I'm curious why Apple doesn't support this effort: they have done a lot
of the work and it won't exactly harm their market share.
reactordev wrote 3 hours 38 min ago:
Apple publishes the sources to the GPL BSD code they have to but
thatâs where the support ends.
Apple has no interest in assisting a competing operating system.
jandrese wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
Apple's attitude towards other OSes running on their hardware is less
"supportive" and more "barely tolerates". Also as a general rule
Apple doesn't contribute much to open source outside of some high
profile projects like Swift and Webkit.
wpm wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
Users buying Macs to put BSD on them are less likely to buy things in
the Mac App Store.
xp84 wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
I would expect if anyone even considered it, theyâd immediately
reject the idea, as they clearly believe that Apple retains ownership
of the computers they âsellâ and should control the software you
could run on them.
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote 6 hours 9 min ago:
I still remember when MacOS being based on BSD had the community
excited about the future
ndiddy wrote 4 hours 28 min ago:
Interesting article on the failure of Darwin as an open source
project:
HTML [1]: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/writing/osfail.html
bluGill wrote 4 hours 45 min ago:
MacOS was never based on BSD. Apple developed the USB drivers for
BSP so they could copy it into their OS, but that very different
from based on BSD. (It is likely some other parts are copied as
well)
reactordev wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
MacOS was absolutely derived from BSD through NeXTSTEP.
bluGill wrote 58 min ago:
Large parts have been rewritten: they very different and don't
show any BSD heritage.
E39M5S62 wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
Apple is struggling to make MacOS functional, why would they
contribute engineering time to another OS?
rjsw wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
Apple hasn't done any work that would be useful.
bluGill wrote 4 hours 43 min ago:
Any is a bit too strong. Apple has does (and still does) some
useful work with clang/llvm, and a few other tools that BSDs use.
However this is indirect at best.
Lammy wrote 5 hours 56 min ago:
Weird to see this downvoted, because it's totally true. Apple
imports FreeBSD's userland periodically but not its kernel/drivers,
and thus has nothing to do with how well FreeBSD works on PC
hardware:
HTML [1]: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths#FreeBSD_is_Just_macOS_Witho...
dzogchen wrote 7 hours 19 min ago:
I'm curious why you think Apple would support any effort that does
not benefit their bottom line?
justin66 wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
There's a case for it when it comes to FreeBSD specifically, since
macOS uses some code from FreeBSD.
stackghost wrote 3 hours 26 min ago:
There's zero business case because they want to sell you a laptop
and subscription to iCloud.
Improving FreeBSD will make it easier to run BSD on non-apple
hardware which will eat into their bottom line.
The number of people who will buy a Mac to run BSD is a rounding
error, and those people won't buy iCloud subscriptions anyway.
justin66 wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
> Improving FreeBSD will make it easier to run BSD on non-apple
hardware which will eat into their bottom line.
The number of people who want to run FreeBSD on their laptops
probably numbers in the hundreds. Not exactly a threat to
Apple's bottom line.
On the other hand, some of those people are FreeBSD developers
who create and maintain code that Apple would like to have the
option of using. That relationship is worth something to Apple.
reactordev wrote 3 hours 33 min ago:
NeXTSTEP did but that was in the 90s. When Apple bought NeXTSTEP
(and Jobs returned to the helm of Apple), they used that OS as
the basis for macOS X.
Due to GPL, they release the sources to the BSD code they use.
Everything else is proprietary.
Likewise Sony used BSD for PlayStation OS. They publish the
sources to the changes to BSD they made, the rest is proprietary.
bitwize wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
There's no GPL in the BSD sources used by Apple or Sony. They
are free to release their operating systems as closed source;
Sony does this. Apple releases Darwin sources "out of the
goodness of their hearts", meaning, back in the 2000s they
wanted to capture mindshare amongst the tech community for whom
Linux was the strongest contender. Now that the future has
refused to change, the year of the Linux desktop never
materialized, and macOS has become the default developer's
workstation OS, Apple has been much more sparing with Darwin
source drops and may cease them altogether.
reactordev wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
[1] [2] GPL where applicable. If it's MIT or just "as is"
then no, they won't but they definitely publish the sources
to what they are required to. Since FreeBSD is "as is" 4.4BSD
licensed, they aren't required to publish the sources of
Orbis.
HTML [1]: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/
HTML [2]: https://opensource.apple.com/
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