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Sure.

2011:

- W520/T520 (maximum resolution: 1920x1080)

- T420s (maximum resolution: 1600x900)

- X220 (maximum resolution: 1366x768)

2012:

- W530/T530 (maximum resolution: 1920x1080)

- T430s (maximum resolution: 1600x900)

- X230 (maximum resolution: 1366x768)

2018:

- T480 (maximum resolution: 1920x1080 or more)

2020:

- T14 GEN1 (Intel) (maximum resolution: 1920x1080 or more)

- T14 GEN1 (AMD) (maximum resolution: 1920x1080 or more)

Newer models also work like the light ThinkPad X1 Carbon GEN5/GEN6/GEN7/GEN8/... for example.


I own these and they also work great with FreeBSD:

ThinkPads:

- W520/W530/T520/T530/X220/X230/T420s

- T480

- T14 GEN1 (Intel)

- T14 GEN1 (AMD)

I needed to replace MediaTek WiFi card on T14 (AMD) into some Intel WiFi one.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

vermaden


Buying a thinkpad means using a device made by Lenovo, a company which has repeatedly shipped devices infected with malware and backdoors (sometimes for profit) see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security_and_privacy_in...


I hope it pays well, those Windows users are subsidizing some great hardware.


He apparently wipes all of that when installing FreeBSD though.


I wouldn't trust their firmware/hardware anymore than I would their software. I wouldn't encourage them as a company either.


Trust is undef unless assessed within a context. We have zero reasons to trust more or less any vendor's firmware/hardware because they are unauditable. But from experience we can say it works most of the time and there's no discernible difference between Lenovo, Dell, or Apple


I just went through T14 Gen 1 hell. I tried to replace a broken LCD and the system just wouldn't boot. I fussed with it so much, the flimsy case cracked and broke in several places. I gave up and decided to use it as a clamshell, but had to keep the broken screen connected to boot.

But I couldn't get it to see the external monitor. I fought this for hours. I finally reached my patience threshold and tore the fucking LCD off the case. It hurt the hands a bit but was cathartic. Amazingly, it booted and saw the monitor, magically. I was astonished. With or without the broken screen, it wouldn't boot. But going psycho on it fixed it. Proof in the wholesomeness of violence, maybe not. But...

it's not running BSD. It's now my mom's desktop, and it's running Void. Works great, and I love the Ryzen 4700, with 16gb ram and atheros wifi chip. Delicate, but capable of some extremes :)


Love the Thinkpad line. It's kinda the hackers laptop of choice.

> X220/X230

These are pretty solid with dual batteries. Also popular for OpenBSD and 9front, the latter of which I run on an x230 (it stopped charging the removable battery :-/) You can get about 2 hours off the internal and 6~8 with a big fat removable battery, maybe more if the OS and drivers can properly throttle hardware power settings.

I have an X1 carbon 5th gen and it's quite light but not useful for 9front without some Ethernet driver tweaking (likely some phy bits need twiddling.) Instead I tossed Debian on it and run 9front in a VM if I need a local CPU. So far it just seems to work including Ethernet (via a dongle) and WiFi.


That's quite helpful. I'm potentially switching my x220t and t530 to a BSD this year, might also get a gen 1 t14.


The good thing about T530 (and T520) is that You can put there the same Quad Core CPU that W520/W530 has :)


Update the matrix on the source site?


No one prevents You from installing Linux in a Bhyve VM and running Docker there.

Overhead of FreeBSD Bhyve Hypervisor is about 0.5% (measured in benchmarks) so You loose nothing.

Here You have easy and complete jumpstart into Bhyve in FreeBSD:

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2023/08/18/freebsd-bhyve-virt...

Regards, vermaden


Isn't that no longer necessary? Doesn't linuxulator + podman suffice?


> Doesn't linuxulator + podman suffice?

No it is not reliable enough. Some syscalls not implemented, there are edge case issues with procfs etc. Best to execute in a Linux VM.


it’s exceedingly rare that programs dont work with linuxulator, i use vivado daily and you can play games through linux steam and proton that way.


Unfortunately podman on freebsd is pretty early stage. I was only able to get very simple containers to run.


By the way - does 32bit packages 'problem' for WINE has been resolved on 15.x series?

On 14.x and older versions WINE brings `/usr/local/share/wine/pkg32.sh` to keep 32bit packages for WINE32 ... but 15.x does not build 32bit packages anymore ...


For the record - just tested it on 15.x and `/usr/local/share/wine/pkg32.sh` works well.


I also regret that change.

Big downgrade after moving to Linux:

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2024/04/20/truenas-core-versu...


Manufacturer/vendor did not provided open source driver with real freedom license (BSD/MIT/...) or documentation on which the driver could be written ... this is the result ... and its still better to overcome a problem in any way then to NOT overcome it at all ... and this driver is just a code - people can look at it and improve it.


> Manufacturer/vendor did not provided open source driver with real freedom license (BSD/MIT/...)

Article says,

> Brcmfmac is a Linux driver (ISC licence) for set of FullMAC chips from Broadcom

I don't feel like looking to see where the Linux driver came from, but someone provided a permissively-licensed driver.


> I don't feel like looking to see where the Linux driver came from

It's originally from Broadcom themselves. A lot of Broadcom hardware runs linux natively (i.e. mobile and embedded CPUs), and a ton more of it ships in linux-adjacent devices (routers, android devices, etc)


    > (are those different?)
Its the same thing - just different naming.

    > I'm running FreeBSD because I prefer it over Linux.
Me too but there are things that will not be ported (at least soon) anyway ... that is where Linux Compat Layer helps. Even simple watching movies with DRM bullshit (Widevine) or using a Brave browser that is not in the FreeBSD Ports ... or running Linux games ... or CUDA workaround ... and no NopeVidia will not provide official CUDA support anytime soon.

Also please remember that entire The Matrix (1999) movie was rendered [1] on FreeBSD machines in Linux Compat Layer because the software used to do that was not natively available on FreeBSD an yet it sill run faster on FreeBSD in Linux Compat Layer then natively on Linux. Let that sink in.

Even today [2] playing Linux games in Linux Compat Layer is faster then natively on Linux - with more FPS and more 'stable' gameplay.

Hope that helps.

[1] https://freebsd.org/press/press-rel-1/

[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK6eRbz9DkM


In the reference video you posted he literally states that the FreeBSD version was less stable than Linux, that he experienced repeated game crashes in FreeBSD, that frame rates would drop 50% without explanation and that the overall experience was better on Linux than FreeBSD or Windows.

It should also be noted that it’s also not native on Linux either as he’s using Wine on both Linux and FreeBSD


Maybe with games from 2004 and the like, the ones built to run with a single thread. With ntsync (and previously, esync/fsync) that's not true anymore with games designed for multiple cores.


Why are you using a scam crypto browser?


Brave does fall under crypto, yeah, but I don't know about it being a scam. You don't need to engage with the crypto/web3 and all of those can be disabled.


Me too brother, me too.


Next pressure point to install Linux: UniFi controller becomes huge container for Docker, not Java application which can be run anywhere.


I modified the article to copy the keytab using scp(1) instead.


I hope I was clear enough that credit for the solution goes to Christian Hofstede-Kuhn (Larvitz).

I treat my blog also as a place where I keep and maintain my FreeBSD documentation/information.

So there are several motivations for this:

- Keep and maintain personal version with more code snippets that I can copy/paste fast.

- More detailed commands and outputs.

- Some additional improvements that may be useful – like local console login.

Hope that helps.


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