Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2014 22:26:02 -0500 From: Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com> To: desktop@freebsd.org, "freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org" <mobile@freebsd.org> Subject: Story of a laptop user Message-ID: <CAF6rxgneG6vB2B0EVJFc1rUCPhGy1-NwW4RnF4LKnQk5TJCTTg@mail.gmail.com>
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[ Meta: I will ask that people please change the subject line if they want to branch about discussing a particular issue or problem. This is a general post and I'm hoping it will generate a lot of discussion about the broader issues as well as specific problems I encountered. ] Hi all, This is a Lenovo Y580 laptop with uname -a: FreeBSD gravity.local 11.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT #8 r261091: Thu Jan 23 21:32:51 EST 2014 eitan@gravity.local:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/EADLER amd64 I've been using FreeBSD on this computer since February 1st, 2013. During this time I've tried to keep notes to myself about what works and what doesn't work so well. I wrote a similar email on February 3rd, 2013 to mobile@ and on November 14, 2013 to desktop@. This laptop comes with a small SSD (16GB) and a large (1TB) HDD. I have the operating system installed to the SSD and my homedir and most other data on the HDD. Both seem to fuction as expected. I use ZFS for all my filesystems including root. However I frequently notice absurdly slow access time to disk. It can take minutes to run ls on an empty directory. Critically, this also affects interactivity. When the disk is being hammered it is not possible to use the shell, browse the web, or perform other simple tasks. The issues with the trackpad losing click events have been resolved. However, since it doesn't register as a synaptic mouse light tapping gets registered as a click making typing difficult. I needed to setup xbindkeys to make the volume and mute work. They are now mapped to "mixer vol". These keys therefore only work when X is running. It would be great if we had a tool "keypressd" which would allow keypresses to be mapped to run arbitrary userland programs from both the console as well as X. The play/stop/rewind/next keys are mapped via xbindkeys to pianobar. Since this mapping is handled by xbindkeys they do not work with mplayer. The sleep key and wireless on/off key do nothing. It would be great to trap them and do something. The "Enable/Disable" screen key works as expected. The "switch screen" key requires xbindkeys support. newcons has solved the 'VT switching problem' mentioned in my previous emails. This seems to be functioning as expected. suspend/resume also functions even from within X. Related to X: I am running WITH_NEW_XORG. This laptop has nvidia optimus. However, it is not possible to use the nvidia card so I am stuck with Intel only at the moment. Linux appears to have some way to make use of the nvidia graphics card. It would be great to have this functionality in FreeBSD as well. The brightness keys on up and down change the ACPI brightness value. However I see no impact on the screen itself. It would be great to have some method of streaming ACPI events in userland (i.e., 'xev' for ACPI). This would make it easier to debug what is actually going on here. At the moment I am unable to get my USB mouse to be recognized at all. The driver has trouble attaching. I have sent multiple emails to usb@ and gotten some feedback and debugging done but no solution yet. Adrian and Cedric have been working on if_iwn support. There is already extensive discussion about this on -wireless. It connects to wireless networks but is very unoptimized. I see speeds of around 150 kB/s on even very fast networks. Other notes mostly copy pasted from my scratch file: /dev/speaker just does not function at all. if_alc does not function on this laptop. the boot method must be set to "legacy" in BIOS in order to boot. - chrome can not open PDFs inline like it can on other platforms. I believe this is a chrome limitation. - chrome segfaults within 5 minutes of use. It is not possible to use chrome as a web browser on a regular basis. - the lxpanel battery monitor is non-functional on FreeBSD. I believe it used to work but a recent update killed it. - xfce4-power-manager doesn't work as expected: the power cord symbol always shown (even when the laptop is running on batterly). In addition xfce4-power-manager can't suspend the laptop: the option appears greyed out. - skype video input appears to function. However, I get an error saying that audio output is non-functional. It isn't possible to hear any output from skype on my speakers. - wireless tethering using an android device just works. However, USB tethering doesn't function. FreeBSD sees android as a 'ugen' device. - Linux requires binary drivers to print to a Cannon "MX 880". However FreeBSD will not recognize such binaries and there is no version for FreeBSD. - Google Hangouts doesn't work on FreeBSD :( - Tethering with android requires an RDNIS driver which we don't have. -- Eitan Adler
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