Comment by olivierestsage
13 hours ago
It's crazy how much negativity there is in comment threads like this. I would get it if FreeBSD was a product you paid for, or someone was evangelizing about how you're missing out if you don't get the FreeBSD laptop experience, or something.
As someone who liked FreeBSD in the past and curious to check it out again, I'm glad to have this handy list.
What is sad is that even though Linux now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows, we've exchanged one problem with another, because nowadays most of the hardware I see is only supported on Linux and nothing else.
Even on PCs, latest generation AMD graphics cards (already >1yr old) are not supported in _anything_ other than Linux (and Windows). This is just sad.
> now has hardware support that is miles ahead of Windows
[X] doubt.
Windows is cleaning up a lot of legacy drivers. A bunch of printers (+ scanners) that predate updates to the printer driver framework in recent versions of windows just don't have functioning drivers anymore, despite being perfectly functional.
All these devices work out of the box on linux, more or less.
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There is only one area where windows excels: recent PC-based hardware. For everything else, primarily including anything that is not PC, and anything that is from more than a decade and a half or so ago, Linux is miles ahead, and there's no discussion possible.
Whether this is any helpful to us is another story.
FreeBSD uses a compatibility layer to run the Linux graphics drivers, though it lags behind Linux. So if FreeBSD currently does not support the graphics cards, it will soon. It looks like they are currently porting over 6.11: https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/41
It is the _only_ OSS operating system that supports AMD cards from this decade, and it does so by having to emulate the Linux kernel API, and yet _still_ it lags years behind Linux itself. I've chosen this example for a reason -- this is exactly what I'm sad about.
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Why do you think so?
It's sad because it removes choice from users over what OS to run. People that only use windows are going and throwing their old computers away.
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I am not negative about it at all. I love it.
It's not as polished as linux obviously, especially for desktop usage but the maintainers are very much on the ball (and they do a lot of work to get things to compile and work, there's a lot of linuxisms they have to work around).
Why is that “obviously “? I find Linux to be a broken mess.
FWIW I use them both, FreeBSD and Arch , but let’s not pretend the layers of crap tacked onto the Linux kernel is some pinnacle of computing.
While I like the simplicity from FreeBSD, this simplicity also comes specifically because there's less contributions.
I doubt anything can get the scale of Linux and not have some mess.
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>It's crazy how much negativity there is in comment threads like this
I think it's because this chart continues a trend I've noticed with BSD zealots. Namely, there's some sort of reality distortion effect at play.
Consider that there are obvious bullshit scores on TFA, like giving a laptop 9/10 when the fucking wifi doesn't work. In reality, this should be 5/10 or arguably 0/10. After all, what use is a laptop without wifi? If my laptop's wifi didn't work I wouldn't just buy a usb-ethernet adapter and never bring it anywhere; I would get a new laptop because a laptop without WiFi is useless.
On top of that there was a while here where every BSD thread had:
- a comment about how BSD powers the PlayStation, Netflix, and other FAANGs, except those corps don't contribute enough back because of the license so won't you please subsidize these giant corps by donating to BSD?
- people who argue BSD is superior because it's "more cohesive" and "feels cleaner" or similar
- OpenBSD zealots claiming it's 110% secure because trust me bro
Mostly I'm just tired of people claiming BSD is this amazing new thing with no flaws, when reality is that it has got some niche use cases, I suspect lots of its developers don't even dogfood it, and is otherwise superceded by Linux in nearly every meaningful way.
I have no problem with BSD, and I have two boxes in my basement running freeBSD right now, but I'm not delusional about BSD's limitations.
> Mostly I'm just tired of people claiming BSD is this amazing new thing
I don't think I've heard anybody claim BSD is new.
> Netflix, and other FAANGs, except those corps don't contribute enough back because of the license
I believe Netflix has upstreamed a lot to FreeBSD. They don't do it because the license compels them, they do it because upstreaming your changes makes maintenance easier.
> If my laptop's wifi didn't work I wouldn't just buy a usb-ethernet adapter and never bring it anywhere
I'm going to guess with this rant that you weren't using Linux in the olden days, because that's what it was like. The workaround isn't using wired ethernet by the way..you can get a USB wifi adapter or you can buy an m.2 wifi card. On on one of my machines I got a cheap m.2 Intel ax200 (just checked, about $15 on eBay) because it runs faster on FreeBSD than the one that shipped with my laptop.
>I'm going to guess with this rant that you weren't using Linux in the olden days, because that's what it was like.
I've been using Linux and BSD in one form or another since 2003, and I definitely used wpa_supplicant on the command line to connect my Thinkpad to WiFi. And you're right, it did suck. It was not a 9/10 experience by a long shot.
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If you look the table you will realize 9/10 means 9 of 10 included HW devices run. Is not a scale from 0 to 10. Is not a "out of ten" in usability scale. Just count the devices that work, vs. the ones included in the HW.
> I would get a new laptop because a laptop without WiFi is useless.
You can run Linux in a VM and PCI passthrough your WiFi Adapter. Linux drivers will be able to connect to your wifi card and you can then supply internet to FreeBSD.
Doing this manually is complicated but the whole process has been automated on FreeBSD by "Wifibox"
https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/journal/browser-based...
I tried it myself and it worked pretty well for a wifi card not supported by FreeBSD.
So, no need to get a new laptop :-)
is there a similar thing for GPUs? I want to build a workstation and have it work on freebsd but would prefer to use an intel arc card which has no information about freebsd compatibility online
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> I would get a new laptop because a laptop without WiFi is useless.
Why would you not just replace the wifi card or use a USB one? You're greatly overemphasizing how much this matters.
Replacing the wifi card isn't necessarily easy. I'd rather not buy and use a USB dongle for it if I can just get it out of the box.
I remember doing those kind of things nearly two decades ago now, I don't expect to have to do that in 2026. If people want to, that's fine, but the parent comment is right here: giving it 9/10 without working wifi is ridiculous.
Fun fact: My old Lenovo Y50 only supports like 3 specific WiFi cards else it doesn't even POST. And I think none of them work with upstream Linux drivers (I think, have only 2 different ones and neither worked ages ago and I changed laptops a while ago and haven't retested). Actually I think one didn't have bluetooth work (the non-standard one) and the other needed the broadcom-wl package.
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I prefer not to live that dongle life.
WiFi on a laptop is table stakes. I'd rather use an operating system that works without dongulation.
Seriously. I'd rip the wifi hardware out of the laptop with a spoon if it somehow got me a laptop that handles sleep mode properly. I can't even imagine what that would be like with a Unix (aside from a Mac).
I think what you're seeing is partly a consequence of how capable Linux has become. Linux is in a weird phase where it can still be enjoyed by hobbyists/enthusiasts/eccentric types, which were arguably its original audience, but now you can also Zoom and do work and install Steam on it, which gives it less appeal from the niche/hobby angle. The software ecosystem in Linux is also increasingly homogenizing, which helps with the "practicality" aspect, but also diminishes the niche appeal. BSDs are in a position to snap up that audience that appreciates engineering elegance/design and uses the computer as an end unto itself (not just as a means to an end). This audience isn't necessarily bothered by wonky laptop WiFi, and may even enjoy tinkering with it as a hobby project. Just my take.
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I would argue that much of the mentioned zealotry is a sort of kneejerk response to cult-like behavior from some Linux adherents. It’s mostly defensive; these people want continued variety in the FOSS desktop space and feel that’s threatened by Linux.
I don't understand this. I've been running Linux for decades, and FreeBSD for decades. Love both systems.
> OpenBSD zealots claiming it's 110% secure because trust me bro
Or possibly because it has a good track record. If you'd like to point at actual vulnerabilities go ahead.
It's not so much the vulnerabiltiies as that OpenBSD's mitigations often seem targeted towards imaginary issues.
>Or possibly because it has a good track record.
"Only two remote code execution vulns in the default install" isn't saying much, because the default install has essentially no functionality. Similarly, RCE is not the only kind of vuln.
Let's just say it is not the mainstream consensus that OpenBSD is meaningfully more secure than an up-to-date linux. This may have been true in 1995, but it's generally acknowledged by people who know what they're talking about that OpenBSD's reputation for security is overstated.
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If you don’t care about administrating your computer and just want to use some software on some hardware, the BSDs are not that great. But if you do, the experience is better on the BSD land because cohesiveness reduces cognitive debt.
Also I wouldn’t make hardware support an OS quality metric. Linux get by with NDA and with direct contributions from the vendors. Which is something the BSDs don’t want/don’t benefit from.
>If you don’t care about administrating your computer and just want to use some software on some hardware, the BSDs are not that great.
Yes this is my opinion also. BSD seems more suited to people for whom fiddling with the OS itself is the point, rather than the OS being a tool to get other things done.
I fall firmly into the latter camp. I'd rather chew glass than manually set flags in rc.conf
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