FreeBSD on laptops

[Ian Smith]

On Fri, 3 Oct 2008, Vladimir Grebenschikov wrote:
 > On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 10:45 -0700, Frank Mayhar wrote:
 > > On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 16:21 +0200, Reg Me Please wrote:
 > > > Hi all.
 > > > 
 > > > I'm considering to move from Linux to FreeBSD on my main laptop.
 > > > I don't have enough time resources for the "test and try" process
 > > > I'd like to know from the community what is the status for:
 > > > 0. Core2 Duo CPUs
 > > 
 > > Full support, of course.
 > ..
 > > > 2. support for power management (mostly ACPI and CPU clock freq. ) on laptops
 > > 
 > > Generally good support, with some exceptions (mostly having to do with
 > > buggy ACPI, from what I understand).
 > 
 > I believe two items above is badly compatible with each other from
 > suspend/resume point of view.
 > 
 > I have T60 ans still can't to resume system after suspend. There was
 > some messages in list about success to resume of SMP IBM's system (like
 > T60, T61) but I've failed to reproduce any of these.
 > 
 > Probably somebody dig dipper in that field already ?

The original message about SMP suspend/resume support with a patch to 
8-CURRENT was on 13 May 08 by Takanori Watanabe <takawata at init-main.com> 
in freebsd-acpi, which worked on his ThinkPad X61.  See the thread at:

 http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-acpi/2008-May/thread.html

I don't recall having seen any mention of progress since, despite having 
felt at the time that it seemed important for FreeBSD ongoing that this 
should work, especially in light of the general movement to more mobile 
platforms and the fast increasing predominance of multi-core laptops.

That said, my fastest laptop is a Thinkpad T23 that suspends & resumes 
reliably, so I'm not even in a position to help test the code, let alone 
suggest that 'somebody should do something about it' :)

There was also mention of a GSoC project for suspend-to-disk (hibernate) 
in -acpi on 03 Apr 08 but I've not heard if anything has come of it.

cheers, Ian