FreeBSD Vs ThinkPad T40 or R40?

[Kevin Oberman]

> From: "Pisut Tempatarachoke" <pxt at ph.adfa.edu.au>
> Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 17:46:49 +1000
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm new to this mailing group and have just started to learn about FreeBSD
> on a laptop.  I'm looking at getting an IBM laptop (either T40 or R40) but
> have no idea how much of its hardware will be supported by FreeBSD.  Does
> anyone have an experience with using FreeBSD on either one of these models?
> If possible, could anyone please answer my questions below:
> 
> - Does FreeBSD support Centrino technology?
Intel marketing does not provide much detail on exactly what this means,
unfortunately. FreeBSD supports CPU speed management (SpeedStep) with
ACPI, but most IBM BIOS seems a bit less than perfect. On my T30,
everything works EXCEPT suspend. APM works quite well, but the power
control is based on BIOS setup which must be done with Windows or
stand-alone ps2 program.

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

Go for 1400x1050 if you have the $$$. 1280x1024 is OK. Support comes
from XFree86, not FreeBSD.

> - Does FreeBSD support USB 2.0?

5.1 should have support for 2.0. I have heard that it works.

> - What is the maximum memory supported?

FreeBSD will support whatever the hardware can support.

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

The internal modem is the newer ICH version of the Lucent WinModem. To
this point I know of no support for it under FreeBSD. The wireless card
can be either an Intel or a Cisco. I know that the Cisco is supported,
but I don't believe the latest Intel is. It uses the Broadcom 440. I
believe that support for this chip is in the works, but I don't know
just when it will happen.

> - 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?

FreeBSD has full read/write access to FAT partitions. It provides read
access and limited write access to NTFS partitions. I use a FAT
partition for shared file space, but FAT capabilities are very limits in
regard to file protection.

> - 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 Lehey is probably the favorite, but I have seen
several others recently at the local B&N. READ THE FREEBSD HANDBOOK at
the FreeBSD web-site:
(http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/)

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

I have been very happy with my T30. It has its quirks, but I have gotten
used to them and they really don't limit me in any way. (They do
occasionally annoy me, though.)

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634