Story of a laptop user

[Eitan Adler]

[ Meta: I will ask that people please change the subject line if they
want to branch about discussing a particular issue or problem.  This
is a general post and I'm hoping it will generate a lot of discussion
about the broader issues as well as specific problems I encountered. ]

Hi all,

This is a Lenovo Y580 laptop with uname -a:

FreeBSD gravity.local 11.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT #8 r261091:
Thu Jan 23 21:32:51 EST 2014
eitan at gravity.local:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/EADLER  amd64

I've been using FreeBSD on this computer since February 1st, 2013.
During this time I've tried to keep notes to myself about what works
and what doesn't work so well.  I wrote a similar email on February
3rd, 2013 to mobile@ and on November 14, 2013 to desktop at .

This laptop comes with a small SSD (16GB) and a large (1TB) HDD.  I
have the operating system installed to the SSD and my homedir and most
other data on the HDD.  Both seem to fuction as expected.  I use ZFS
for all my filesystems including root.  However I frequently notice
absurdly slow access time to disk.  It can take minutes to run ls
on an empty directory.  Critically, this also affects interactivity.
When the disk is being hammered it is not possible to use the shell,
browse the web, or perform other simple tasks.

The issues with the trackpad losing click events have been resolved.
However, since it doesn't register as a synaptic mouse light tapping
gets registered as a click making typing difficult.

I needed to setup xbindkeys to make the volume and mute work.  They
are now mapped to "mixer vol".  These keys therefore only work when X
is running.  It would be great if we had a tool "keypressd" which
would allow keypresses to be mapped to run arbitrary userland programs
from both the console as well as X.  The play/stop/rewind/next keys
are mapped via xbindkeys to pianobar.
Since this mapping is handled by xbindkeys they do not work with mplayer.

The sleep key and wireless on/off key do nothing. It would be great to
trap them and do something.

The "Enable/Disable" screen key works as expected.  The "switch
screen" key requires xbindkeys support.

newcons has solved the 'VT switching problem' mentioned in my previous
emails. This seems to be functioning as expected.  suspend/resume also
functions even from within X.

Related to X: I am running WITH_NEW_XORG.  This laptop has nvidia
optimus.  However, it is not possible to use the nvidia card so I am
stuck with Intel only at the moment.  Linux appears to have some way
to make use of the nvidia graphics card.  It would be great to have
this functionality in FreeBSD as well.

The brightness keys on up and down change the ACPI brightness value.
However I see no impact on the screen itself.
It would be great to have some method of streaming ACPI events in
userland (i.e., 'xev' for ACPI).  This would make it easier to debug
what is actually going on here.

At the moment I am unable to get my USB mouse to be recognized at all.
 The driver has trouble attaching.  I have sent multiple emails to
usb@ and gotten some feedback and debugging done but no solution yet.

Adrian and Cedric have been working on if_iwn support.  There is
already extensive discussion about this on -wireless.  It connects to
wireless networks but is very unoptimized.  I see speeds of around 150
kB/s on even very fast networks.

Other notes mostly copy pasted from my scratch file:

/dev/speaker just does not function at all.
if_alc does not function on this laptop.

the boot method must be set to "legacy" in BIOS in order to boot.

- chrome can not open PDFs inline like it can on other platforms.  I
believe this is a chrome limitation.
- chrome segfaults within 5 minutes of use.  It is not possible to use
chrome as a web browser on a regular basis.
- the lxpanel battery monitor is non-functional on FreeBSD.  I believe
it used to work but a recent update killed it.
- xfce4-power-manager doesn't work as expected: the power cord symbol
always shown (even when the laptop is running on batterly). In
addition xfce4-power-manager can't suspend the laptop: the option
appears greyed out.
- skype video input appears to function.  However, I get an error
saying that audio output is non-functional.  It isn't possible to hear
any output from skype on my speakers.
- wireless tethering using an android device just works.  However, USB
tethering doesn't function.  FreeBSD sees android as a 'ugen' device.
- Linux requires binary drivers to print to a Cannon "MX 880".
However FreeBSD will not recognize such binaries and there is no
version for FreeBSD.
- Google Hangouts doesn't work on FreeBSD :(
- Tethering with android requires an RDNIS driver which we don't have.








-- 
Eitan Adler