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FreeBSD is the first thing I try to install on a new laptop. Once I play around for an hour I install Linux for the hardware support and move on.

I can't wait until the experience is good enough that I can stay on it.

I could do FreeBSD on my laptop I think. I don't play games, and I've been wanting to play around with kqueue.

Is it sort of like OpenBSD? I liked their manpages and their built in server thing (httpd). or is it completely different...

I'm currently running FreeBSD on a gen3 Intel T14. It's been excellent so far, however one minor annoyance has been S3 suspend/resume. Well, suspend works fine, but resuming triggers a restart. I'm hoping the recent S0ix work might fix that.
I have been how very surprised how well supported FreeBSD has been on my MSI Modern laptop.

zfs and boot encryption make it perfect.

Earlier I used FreeBSD on ThinkPad W520 (because keyboard):

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/freebsd-13-1-on-th...

.. and recently moved to FrankenPad T25 that is based on T480 (because keyboard):

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/06/26/freebsd-14-3-on-fr...

I do everything on FreeBSD including work.

Some of the topics I covered:

- Unlock Laptop with Phone

- Conferencing and Meetings

- Netflix Signal Telegram

- Network Management with network.sh

- FreeBSD Power Management

- FreeBSD Suspend/Resume

- Oldschool Gaming on FreeBSD

- Minecraft Server in FreeBSD Jails Container

- Secure Containerized Browser

- Print on FreeBSD

- Scan on FreeBSD

- Sensible Firefox Setup

- Operate Android Device on FreeBSD

- FreeBSD Alongside Windows

To just name a few ... because I am slowly closing to 200 of these FreeBSD related articles.

    % ls ~/misc/verblog/POSTS | wc -l                   
         175

Regards, vermaden
Seeing modern standby is pretty insane in such a short time; it was one of the most attended talks in the BSD talks at FOSDEM:

https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6390-wake...

Also pretty impressive because Aymeric started as a GSoC contributor and is now sponsored to work on BSD by the foundation.

OpenBSD's had suspend-to-idle (S0i) aka "modern standby" since 7.6 (2024), at least on Intel. 7.8 will have better AMD support.
Does it actually work in a meaningful way on any hardware? In my testing, it still discharges the battery at about the same rate as leaving the OS up and turning the screen off, where Linux is about on par with Windows. But I might have a laptop the devs don't have access to, so I'm just left unsure where (if anywhere) it works as intended.
s0ix is another great example that the world, or a bit more precisely, "general purpose hardware", has been going to absolute fucking shit.

Who the hell needs this crap? S3 used to be just perfect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InstantGo

> [...] a Microsoft specification for Windows 8 (and later) hardware and software that aims to bring smartphone-type power management capabilities to the PC platform [...] allows the operating system to continue performing background tasks, such as updating content from apps, when a device is not being used [...]

We've all needed this like a big fucking kick in the groin. "Modern standby" my ass.

Microsoft has great firmware engineers, but the functionality they design, and then mandate, so that Windows can have its rotten tentacles into the guts of the firmware, is absolutely disgusting. Technically well implemented, but the goal is usually terrible.

Yep. The 's0ix' is bullshit. S3 suspend/resume worked just fine.

... but in the end of the day what more can You do?

I would say 'vote with your wallet' ... but that also does not work anymore.

Take a look at laptop keyboard layouts [1] ... does not matter if MNT, Framework, KDE, ThinkPad, ... whatever - does not matter - NO ONE make 7-row keyboards in laptops anymore ... we are fucked :[

[1] https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/02/07/epitaph-to-laptops...

(comment deleted)
Side note: I wasn't aware that the title here was truncated. Sorry. It should have been:

Laptop Support and Usability (LSU): July 2025 report from the FreeBSD Foundation