FreeBSD Vs ThinkPad T40 or R40?

[Tobias Roth]

On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 05:46:49PM +1000, Pisut Tempatarachoke wrote:

> - Does FreeBSD support Centrino technology?

Don't know anything about that.

> - What is the maximum screen resolution FreeBSD supports?  What resolution
> is recommenderd?

SVGA+, 1400x1050 is what the IBM models offer and is what I would recommend.
Don't go for the lower resolution models.

> - Does FreeBSD support USB 2.0?

Partly. From 5.1BETA2 HARDWARE.TXT:
USB 2.0 controllers using the EHCI interface (ehci(4) driver) [are
supported].
However, I do not know how useful that support is yet.

> - What is the maximum memory supported?

>From 5.1BETA2 RELNOTES.TXT:
This allows the use of up to 64GB of RAM in a machine. [of course, if
supported by that machine].

> - What are general hardware-FreeBSD-incompatibility issues I should be aware
> of when making a decision?

The Thinkpad models work pretty swiftly. The only device that I do not
know about is the internal modem. Everything else basically worsk. There
is an unresolved usb bug which prevents the internal bluetooth device
from working (the device itself is supported just fine).
Another problem with the display not turning back on after resume is
easily worked around.
ACPI does not fully work. But it's getting better. APM does, though.

> - I'm planning to have my laptop dual-bootable with Windows XP pro and
> FreeBSD.  Would I be able to access data on my FreeBSD partition from my
> Windows partition, and vice versa?

If you use FAT32 for windows, you can access those partitions (or slices)
just fine from FreeBSD. If you use NTFS, read access should be possible
as well. The other way round, I doubt you have a chance.

> - Are there good books out there that will get me started on FreeBSD? (I do
> have some UNIX background, not very strong though.)

"The complete FreeBSD" by Greg Lehey is a very recommendable book:
http://www.freebsdmall.com/cgi-bin/fm/bsdcomp

> - Any other comments or suggestions on which laptop model I should go for
> are very welcome.

The T30 is what I can recommend. The T40 looks very sweet too, but I do
not know about the centrino, especially the wireless part of it.


Hope that helps, t.