Free/OpenBSD on a laptop

[Chaotic42]

Hey.

I'm thinking about getting an older laptop (PIII or K6/7) and putting FreeBSD (or OpenBSD) on it. I know zero about laptops, but I do know that there used to be compatability problems with Linux and laptops back in the day.

Is there anything that I need to be worried about or that I need to look for in a laptop that can run BSD?

Thanks!

 

[P0ldy]

Can't answer for *BSD, but Linux on laptops is a lot easier to do now, it seems. Slackware would probably be pretty speedy on it with a less CPU intensive X.

 

[phisrow]

I'm not too sure about FreeBSD; but OpenBSD works fine on my old Thinkpad 570 and, in the recent 3.7 release, has gained some nice wireless drivers. This makes it rather more practical for laptops, and is a nice win for the Free Software community, as all of the said drivers are fully open to the satisfaction of the BSD licence(except that the IPW2100/2200 ones still require closed binary firmware, which rather sucks). Give http://www.openbsd.org/i386-laptop.html a look. http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html provides detailed information about the status of the i386 port, which you would be running. Ideally, you want a laptop with all built in hardware on that list of supported devices. If you have to deviate, do it in the devices you don't much care about(e.g. you might not cry too hard if some silly little SD card slot doesn't work). You may well need to do some digging for real specs on the laptops; but if you get something with relatively normal integrated peripherals, and not too many *NIX/*BSD horror stories, you should be fine.

 

[nweaver]

please don't talk about BSD like it's linux. Penguin's and Devils may look similar, but they aren't

 

[n0cmonkey]

I've never had many issues with OpenBSD on portable hardware. Just try to get one with working APM.

 

[Hyperblaze]

Installed FreeBSD on my laptop. My only problem with it is currently sound (still need to fix that)

 

[Mucman]

I've been running FreeBSD 5-RELEASE on my Dell 600m for 1.5 years without any problems. The wireless actually works better than in Windows (where it randomly drops for some reason). I just got my OpenBSD 3.7 CD's so I am planning on replacing FreeBSD with it so I can have more hands on experience using OpenBSD. My darn firewall has been running solidly with OpenBSD that I never really get to play with it at all.

 

[Red and black]

I run NetBSD on an ancient ThinkPad. It runs just fine.

Most laptops will run NetBSD, though sound recording often doesn't work, and of course winmodems are unlikely to work with any BSD.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: nweaver
please don't talk about BSD like it's linux. Penguin's and Devils may look similar, but they aren't

Yeah, I know, but you can never be too careful.