I have been using FreeBSD on a Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook for
a while and thought I would share my experience.
S-4572
This a very nice notebook. It weighs just over 1 kg and has 13" display
capable of showing 1024x768 in 24 bit color. It comes with a 10G hard-drive
and the models I have been using has 256MB RAM. It was recently upgraded
with a 40G Seagete Momentus HD. It has CD bay which can also
be used for a second battery or a DVD drive. With two batteries it runs 2,5
to 3 hours under maximum load (make buildworld). The overall finish is nice
and the notebook seems robust. However several of my companys laptops has
had the display exchanged due to heat problems.
Also the jack for headphones tends to get loose over time and fall into the
laptop chassis. This has not happened to mine though - I guess if one is
careful it is not that likely to happen.
I initially installed FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE from CD-ROM. It was later upgraded
to 5.2.1 and resently to 5.3. Installing 5.3 was very easy.
Graphics
The Ati graphics card is recognized by X (4.3 and X.org) and the driver works well.
There is no support for hardware acceleration (DRM).
The vga port on the back does not work with FreeBSD. It is possible to use a
port-replicator to connect an external monitor. This works quite well. It
turns off the laptop lcd-display by default and uses the external monitor.
This behaviour can be configured from the BIOS.
NB! This is a thing that does not work well with Windows 2000.
The graphics chip supports 1280x1024@24 which is quite nice. The quality
however is not on par with my Matrox G400.
Mouse and Keyboard
To get the touchpad working I have added the following to /etc/rc.conf
moused_flags="-m 1=4"
I have not gotten the middle-mouse-button to work.
The keyboard works for most purposes. The Fn special keys works mostly but
through the BIOS or something because they do not really work in X.
The extra keys are not recognized.
Network
The built-in network card is an Intel based card and it works smoothly with
the fxp0 driver. The laptop tends to get hot when using the network card. I
do not know why this is but it happens when using the built-in and when
using the pccard bay.
The card supports PEX booting but I haven't tried it.
The built-in modem is a Lucent win-modem and I don't know if it would work.
I had to disable the IR port to use the pccard bay (wireless nic).
System
ACPI seems to work. It is able to change powerprofile when
unplugging/plugging the power cable. On batteries it runs as a 500MHz
(750MHz PIII CPU). The BIOS support sleep states 3, 4 and 5 but 4 only
results in hangs/crashes. 3 and 5 is sufficient though.
It's possible to get freebsd to go to standby when using state 3 when
shutting the lid. FreeBSD does not yet support hibernation - state 4.
Sound
Sound works after loading the snd_ich module. You can get this done
automatcially by adding the following line to /boot/loader.conf
snd_ich_load="YES"
The built-in
loudspeekers are not of the best quality. The sound lacks bass making your
music sound "flat". Using the headphone connector helps a lot but only with
actual headphones. When connecting a real Hi-Fi amplifier I could clearly
hear background noise. This is the usual problem with soundcards which are
not properly shielded.
Other tweaks
I really don't like the beastie deamon menu that pops up when FreeBSD is
booting. To disable this add the following line to /boot/loader.conf
beastie_disable="YES"
To get the laptop to system to ram when closing the lid I added the
following line to /etc/sysctl.conf
hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3
Software
Running
Gnome is possible but it's a little bit slow and I prefer
fvwm
which responds faster.
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