Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:56:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Ludwig Pummer <ludwigp@bigfoot.com> To: dorian@lara.on.ca Cc: cjclark@home.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD 3.2 Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9908242339020.75417-100000@toy.chip-web.com> In-Reply-To: <199908250445.AAA04624@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
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On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Crist J. Clark wrote: > > When you > > first boot up, what wm is installed by default the first time you login? > > This is not really directly related to FreeBSD, but rather to what > XFree86 uses as a default window manager. It is twm(1). Although sysinstall _does_ have an XDesktop configurator which can install a few different desktops for you, like GNOME or KDE. > > Can you tell me of some laptops you know work with FreeBSD 3.2? > > I would expect just about any Intel-based laptop would 'work' just > fine... However, people often have trouble with the exotic video cards > and have trouble getting X to run. Also, PCMIA cards are a known sore > point, so you might have trouble getting all of your peripherial > devices to work. The freebsd-laptops list had a discussion on this a short while ago. Their discussion should be in the web-accessible archive by now (accessible through the search function on the freebsd.org web site) I _do_ know that the more common chipsets of today work quite well. NeoMagic chipsets are now supported, as is ATI Rage LT Pro. The definitive list of what's supported and what's not is at www.xfree86.org, as FreeBSD runs in text mode just fine on any video card, but XFree86 needs to have support for your video card for you to get X working in anything byt 320x2?0x8bpp or 640x480x4bpp. The PCMCIA card issue goes like this: most PCMCIA controllers are supported. CardBus controllers are supported through PCMCIA compatibility mode. CardBus cards are not supported, but there is a project in progress to fix that. If FreeBSD 3.2-R doesn't support your PCMCIA card out of the box, you can install the PAO patches from http://www.jp.freebsd.org/PAO and see if that makes things work better (it did for me with 2 different laptops). Two other issues are sound chips and integrated modems. Most Crystal Semiconductor or ESS Tech. or other Windows Sound System cards should work pretty well. If it's a PCI sound chip (like mine, the ESS 19-something or other), then you're out of luck. Your integrated modem will only work under FreeBSD if it's not a Winmodem (like the LT WinModem I have *argh*) or another modem with "HSP" or "HCF" in its name. (In case you're wondering why I have the laptop I have, despite its unsupported sound and modem, I have it because 1) the integrated modem is unimportant to me 2) I can wait for FreeBSD to support my PCI sound card 3) I got a _very_good_deal_ on my laptop) --Ludwig Pummer ( ludwigp@bigfoot.com ) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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