*BSD and thinkpads. reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- panfletos · 2015-09-24 23:18 Hello, I've been meaning to try a *BSD 'distro', but I was wondering how will it behave with my T430, specially regarding the battery life, if it gets ~3hs, I'll be happy. By the way, how good is the support for wifi, beacuse I've been using ubuntu for a while, and surprisingly it isn't that great :/ And finally, does anybody here have experience with using *BSD with a thinkpad? I'm eager to know. Cheers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhabarba · 2015-09-24 23:41 OpenBSD works perfectly on my oldish T41. FreeBSD had WiFi issues. However, you'll probably need to have the current `wpi_firmware` file ready during or after the installation as OpenBSD does not have it in its base image due to licensing things. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- alrs · 2015-09-24 23:44 My experience: OpenBSD is supporting Thinkpads really well right now. FreeBSD isn't, likely because FreeBSD people are all running OS X on the desktop. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2tfhsr/a_users_experience_with _openbsd_as_a_desktop/cnymc78?context=3 OpenBSD has announced a hypervisor since then, so once that happens OpenBSD over FreeBSD on a laptop will be a no-brainer. Unless, of course, FreeBSD starts supporting laptops well again. I shared this same sentiment on Twitter and got lightly flamed, though the person who took umbrage with my statement that FreeBSD sucks on laptops right now did acknowledge that "some people" have made fixing the laptop situation their "focus." https://twitter.com/alrs/status/611961091287977984 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TweetsInCommentsBot · 2015-09-24 23:44 [**@alrs**](https://twitter.com/alrs/) > [2015-06-19 18:17 UTC](https://twitter.com/alrs/status/611961091287977984) > @strlen @freebsdgirl @darkuncle FreeBSD gave up on decent laptop support, OpenBSD stil tries. On a Thinkpad X200. ---- ^This ^message ^was ^created ^by ^a ^bot [^[Contact ^creator]](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=jasie3k &subject=TweetsInCommentsBot)[^[Source ^code]](https://github.com/janpetryk/reddit-bot) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- panfletos · 2015-09-25 00:07 /u/rhabarba, /u/alrs, Thank you both for your answers, I'll look up on how to instal OpenBSD and give it a try! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhabarba · 2015-09-25 00:11 Welcome! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tidux · 2015-09-25 04:00 OpenBSD will work great on pretty much any Thinkpad. I ran OpenBSD on an x120e for a while and it was great. Add `apmd_flags="-C"` to /etc/rc.conf.local to make sure you're using dynamic power management and you'll get pretty close to Linux battery life. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zmyrgel · 2015-09-25 04:17 That doesn't work anymore. The -C flag was removed from apmd when they tweaked it. Now just start plain apmd daemon and set the hw.perfpolicy=auto sysctl and your good to go. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nanthiel · 2015-09-25 06:44 What about the -A flag? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phessler · 2015-09-25 06:47 These days, -C is an alias for -A, but they both mean what -C used to mean. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zmyrgel · 2015-09-25 06:50 Hmm, gotta admit I'm not sure if the -A flag is needed with the hw.perfpolicy. Quickly looking apmd man page didn't help in that regard. There was some info on mailing lists about them but I don't remember the details. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phessler · 2015-09-25 07:45 The vast majority of OpenBSD developers use various Thinkpads as their primary laptop. A huge amount of work has been put into making laptops (not just Thinkpads) work great. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eleitl · 2015-09-25 09:22 I have problems with OpenBSD video on an R60. Tried the suggested fixes with no result -- but then didn't spend a lot of time on it. Text mode is fine. I think it's a case of a strange Radeon chipset, since only Ubuntu 12.04 LTS can handle it out of the box, but not 14.04 LTS, nor can Debian. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- finnomenon · 2015-09-25 12:22 I've never been able to get my temperature problems fixed on my X220 (core i7). OpenBSD and FreeBSD both had it and I've tried all suggested flags and solutions. Idle temperature was already 20 - 25C higher than when running Linux and under even slight use it'd easily go up above 80C, often to 95C. I would love to run a BSD on my Thinkpad, but by now I've give up trying :( I know the X220 works great for many many BSD users, but there are a few out there that are in the same situation as I am and also never got it fixed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- can-of-bees · 2015-09-25 13:22 While I haven't done it, these replies are making me consider giving OpenBSD a whirl on my ThinkPads. I'm using PC-BSD (so, FreeBSD) on a T430s and vanilla FreeBSD on an X61. Wifi is a bit crumbly on the X61, but I'm not sure if that's a driver issue or a hardware issue (the X61 has, uh, had some "accidents"). I think that I get around 2.5-3 hours of battery life on the T430s when I switch (in BIOS) to integrated graphics and use Johannes Meixner's [turn_off_gpu.sh](http://xmj.me/freebsd/turn_off_gpu.sh) to power off the Nvidia chip. I think I have adaptive set somewhere, but I'm not really paying too much attention to it. Battery life on the X61 is better - roughly 5.5 hours - but it's not exactly doing build world or anything like that. My impression is that there are some FreeBSD devs dogfooding on ThinkPads, but not nearly as many as the OpenBSD devs. Thanks all for the good OpenBSD info. Cheers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- farhaven · 2015-09-25 15:40 > FreeBSD had WiFi issues Same here. I have an Intel Wifi Link 5100 which couldn't keep up a connection for more than 10 seconds with FreeBSD but works nicely with OpenBSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TreeFitThee · 2015-09-25 20:08 I'll echo your sentiments. I've gone between OpenBSD and FreeBSD on my x61 a few times over the last year. Both have their quirks but OpenBSD JustWorked^tm more fully out of the box than did FreeBSD. I experienced > 3h of battery life with both but FreeBSD beats out OpenBSD. ~~My wireless on FreeBSD is flaky but rock solid on OpenBSD (ipw) and there's significantly more out of the box configuration required to have a useable desktop on FreeBSD than with OpenBSD (lots of rc.conf and loader.conf additions to get trivial things working).~~ Apparently I didn't know what I was talking about. The wifi flakyness was a result of weird AP configs at my office, it is rock solid when connected to single AP wireless networks such as a home network. Additionally, I reviewed my config notes from OpenBSD and realized there wasn't all that much less to configure to get X working well. Maybe I just applied more configuration tweaks this time or something. Overall, however, there's not enough downside to FreeBSD to outweigh the benefits at the moment. ~~(Though I do with I could stabilize my wifi conmection. Having to netif restart ever 15-30 minutes gets old.)~~ There is a really weird bug right now related to moused (I think) that requires moused be restarted after resuming from suspend. Restarting moused by hand fixes it but you can't automate a workaround at the moment unless you have a Thinkpad that also has a trackpad (then there is a bios fix). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nanthiel · 2015-09-25 23:50 Because the thing is, I seem to get equal battery performance with apm -A and apm -H. :| I'll try if the sysctl way changes anything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- niggerpussynigger · 2015-09-26 03:26 just use Linux lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- panfletos · 2015-09-26 14:09 no fam ---------------------------------------------------------------------- William-Bonney · 2015-09-27 01:27 T420 here, works perfectly. I just needed the iwn firmware to get wireless working with the centrino chipset (and uvideo if you give a shit about the camera). ~5hrs battery life. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- avj · 2015-09-27 17:04 Not sure about the last time you tried OpenBSD, but there was some significant C-state work done recently that seems to have translated to ~10 C drop in idle states for some users. http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20150809165912 Try a -current snapshot and have a look. You may be pleasantly surprised. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- seriouslybr0 · 2015-09-28 14:56 Openbsd runs like a champ on my thinkpad x201. It was surprisingly smooth and simple to get working. I would imagine that your t430 shouldn't be too bad. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- strngsvlmstng96 · 2015-10-05 23:00 That's great to hear. I have an X201and was thinking of installing OpenBSD on it! How's the battery life? I am in college so being away from the plug is pretty important for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- seriouslybr0 · 2015-10-06 00:40 uh haha that's a good question. My x201 is pretty homebound actually so I never had to really pay attention. From my experience it was decent. It's a little hard for me to judge because I have old batteries. My t420 is shitty with power management but x201 has seemed decent in openbsd and really good with arch and some tweaks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamelteto · 2015-10-12 00:51 Not an endorsement or anything, just some geeky input: slightly older ThinkPads are great for anything GUN/Linux/*nix. The hardware is supported usually right out of the box (OpenBSD recognized everything on my x201, including wireless), it is easy to replace parts (like adding an extra HD in a converter tray to the CD drive bay), and you can get used machines for cheap on eBay. As far as battery life goes, it is also cheap and easy to get replacement and/or extended batteries. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamelteto · 2015-10-12 00:53 > making me consider giving OpenBSD a whirl on my ThinkPads Just do it. You know you want to! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamelteto · 2015-10-12 00:59 True, true... Nothing against FreeBSD/PC-BSD specifically, but for some reason OpenBSD and Debian (I know it is GNU/Linux, but still part of my choices of FLOSS GNU/Linux/*nix family...) have worked best for me on ThinkPads right out of the box.