Is FreeBSD suitable for my thinkpad T61 ?

[fdu.xiaojf at gmail.com]

Jerry McAllister wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 08:50:36PM +0800, fdu.xiaojf at gmail.com wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I brought a new ThinkPad T61 for work, the hardware is as follows:
>>
>> T7300(2GHz), 2GB RAM, 120GB 5400rpm HD, 15.4in 1680x1050 LCD, 128MB nVIDIA 
>> Quadro NVS 140M, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11agn(n-disabled), Bluetooth, Modem, 
>> 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Intel Turbo, 9c Li-Ion,
>>
>> My current working involves scientific calculation and programming. I'm 
>> from a linux background(redhat, debian, ubuntu), but after some googling 
>> and comparison, I found FreeBSD more stable and I want to try FreeBSD.  I 
>> am tired of a dual-boot system, so I want to just install FreeBSD or 
>> another linux distribution(maybe ubuntu) on my notebook.
>>
>> My questions are:
>> 1) Can FreeBSD work well with my hardware? The display card, CDRW/DVDRW, 
>> wireless, Ethernet and battery managment are the most important.
>>
>> 2) I have read the FreeBSD Handbook. According to Chapter 10: Linux Binary 
>> Compatibility, it seems that FreeBSD lacks support of many commercial 
>> softwares such as MATLAB, Oracle, Mathematica. Is the linux binary 
>> compatibility stable enough for work ?
> 
> It should run FreeBSD just fine.   Check the hardware compatibility
> lists to check for specific peripherals.
> 
> The Linux compatibility layer worked well.  Should be no problem.
> 
> ////jerry
> 
>> Thanks a lot.

Thank you guys.

I will try to install FreeBSD on a second hard disk to have a test.

Is FreeBSD going to enhance himself on the desktop ? It seems that FreeBSD 
focuses mainly on server, while Linux has improved a lot in the past a few 
years both on server and desktop. But I'm still eager to try FreeBSD on my 
notebook :P