Re: FreeBSD Foundation Laptop Support target hardware and desktop environments
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2025 18:01:44 UTC
On Tue, 2025-02-11 at 09:44 -0500, Ed Maste wrote: > The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Improvements > project is choosing a small list of laptops I'd argue the list is too small and that major vendors with a track record of supporting non-Windows operating systems, AKA Linux, should be included at the earliest possible opportunity. Perhaps that's the plan. That said there's no disagreement from me with limiting scope for first steps. Dell business class laptops enjoy broad Linux support and many models could be bought with Linux pre-installed. These have long been known as XPS, Latitude, and Precision lines but will soon be rebranded as Dell Plus, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max, respectively. Lenovo Thinkpads... same. There are many Thinkpads running FreeBSD. On a related topic; firmware matters and firmware changes. Please consider including within the LDWG project support for installing firmware via fwupd.org, the Linux Vendor Firmware Service. Or at least look at it enough to size up the work effort to build support later down the road. Why is it important? I've not had to boot Windows to update any Dell or Lenovo device I've purchased for my office or home for quite some time now. Speaking to why you'd want the LDWG project to support certain vendors over others, Dell is the largest contributor to the LVFS with more than 6,000 files currently available. Lenovo is second. Framework has but 10 files. https://fwupd.org/lvfs/search?value=framework Asus and some other makers have zero files; if nothing else, fwupd.org can be used to identify vendors who have an interest in supporting *nix users. While the .org is labelled "Linux Vendor" the firmware service may prove to be be easy to integrate into FreeBSD. The fwupd process checks the registry for applicable fw updates based on hardware ids and stages the updates for a UEFI boot process to install the firmware update(s). > For the desktop environment we'll start with KDE, as it is popular > and has an active development team. > https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/blob/main/supported/desktop-environment.md While that makes perfect sense from a FreeBSD-centric viewpoint, KDE isn't the most popular desktop environment in the *nix world, GNOME is, by far. GNOME has always been the most popular desktop environment on *nix desktops. https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=gnome-panel%2Cgnome-shell%2Ckde-runtime%2Cxfce4-panel%2Clxpanel%2Ckde-plasma-desktop&show_installed=on&want_legend=on&from_date=2000-01-01&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 Some will argue that GNOME is too systemd-centric to be a good fit for FreeBSD; I'd argue that I've used it on systemd-free Linux distributions for years, and also suggest that active support on non- systemd Linux platforms, and non-Linux platforms, can only help to avoid systemd lock-in from becoming a future reality. Current GNOME 47 ships on a variety of non-systemd Linux distributions including Alpine and Chimera Linux; on Void Linux (also non-systemd) they tend to skip one GNOME release a year. GNOME on FreeBSD (GNOME 42 originally released on 2022-03-23) will soon be 2-3 years behind GNOME current; v42.5 was last updated on FreeBSD in April 2023. GNOME 47 is current; 48 will be out March 15. Would a "reinvigorate GNOME support on FreeBSD and they will come" moment will ever happen, who can say, but being so far out of step with that ecosystem cannot be a positive for desktop users of all sorts. Major Linux distributions have been shipping GNOME on Wayland for several releases now; there are arguably more GNOME-Wayland desktops today than any other desktop environment. I'm not selling GNOME for my own wants; I prefer and use River on FreeBSD and Linux. I do believe letting GNOME languish in ports is problematic. Perhaps a scoping effort for what it would take to bring GNOME up to date could at least be considered at some point by this project. > We're targeting Wayland as it's important for long-term viability, > although in the short term KDE on X11 is the usable approach. I applaud targetting Wayland.