Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 09:54:20 -0800 (PST) From: Anthony Jenkins <scoobi_doo@yahoo.com> To: Xn Nooby <xnooby@gmail.com>, "freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org" <freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Best $1000 Freebsd laptop? Message-ID: <1320774860.10580.YahooMailNeo@web39302.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <CAMVJ978_DSV-_p7Rd%2BmJfTjw_Jed%2BXzRPQo_yUTUZvDt5%2BkMuA@mail.gmail.com>
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----- Original Message ----- > From: Xn Nooby <xnooby@gmail.com> > To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org > Cc: > Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2011 8:20 AM > Subject: Best $1000 Freebsd laptop? > > I bought a laptop that has an unsupported video card, so now it is my > "windows laptop". I am thinking of getting another to be my > "freebsd > laptop", so I want to make sure it really works with FreebSD. I could > probably spend <$1000 (USD) on one. I like the look of the Lenovos > but I am unfamiliar with all the different models, and have never > bought anything from their webstore. I normally buy from Dell or > Amazon, and I never buy used or refurbished (unless its a car!). > > My main requirements are having long battery life, opengl graphics, > vtx suppoort (virtualization). A decent drive (500+GB) and ram (6GB+) > would be nice. I can't believe ZFS needs 6GB+ ram, and I am not sure > I would want to get a lot of ram, just so I could use ZFS. On the > other hand, I read that UFS is getting old. I would rather use RAM > for running virtual machines. > > I'm scared to death of getting another machine that has an unsupported > video card (like nvidia optimus), or no VTX. I want a long lasting > machine that I can travel with, take to work, and not be limited by. > My windows laptop is an i3 with VTX, and is a little under-powered, so > I am thinking of an i5+. I don't do a lot of number-crunching, but I > don't want it to be slow, either. > > Any suggestions? I'm running a fairly old 9.0-CURRENT (9.0-CURRENT #7: Wed Aug 17 09:34:34 EDT 2011) on a cheap Acer Aspire 5552-7803 (~$400 USD) with an AMD Phenom II X4 CPU & the max 8GB RAM installed. On-board Atheros wi-fi and suspend/resume work fine, I run VirtualBox VMs and I believe accelerated X stuff works... Well maybe not - I'm running KDE4 and just tried pulling up OpenGL info dialog which crashed my X session. Other minor problems are the box seems to become less stable the more times I suspend/resume without an intervening reboot, but I consider that a minor annoyance. I also added code to /etc/rc.resume to restart the wireless network because the suggested 'wpa_cli reassociate' was hit-or-miss. I haven't done any ZFS tuning to limit the amount of memory ZFS uses, might do that soon. I have a ZFS-on-root system. Anthony Jenkins
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