My requirements are: suspend/resume, being able to drive a 5K monitor over USB-C, wifi.
I found https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops but I don't know how up-to-date it is.
A user needs some other working network connection first. I used my Android phone's USB tethering — all that takes is a quick `dhclient ue0`. Then one can run `fwget` to get the firmware that will make the Wi-Fi work fully: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?fwget%288%29
Source: very happy Framework 12 owner (currently dual-booting Windows 11 Enterprise and FreeBSD 15.0 + Wayland + KDE) :)
Somebody else did a nice writeup [0] on their experience with FBSD on the same laptop.
I’ve bought a few of this vintage (7490’s specifically) and they are plentiful, cheap, and perfectly useable. I put Ubuntu on them, works great.
Improving FreeBSD will make it easier to run BSD on non-apple hardware which will eat into their bottom line.
The number of people who will buy a Mac to run BSD is a rounding error, and those people won't buy iCloud subscriptions anyway.
The number of people who want to run FreeBSD on their laptops probably numbers in the hundreds. Not exactly a threat to Apple's bottom line.
On the other hand, some of those people are FreeBSD developers who create and maintain code that Apple would like to have the option of using. That relationship is worth something to Apple.
It wasn't that long ago that we used to have to endure HN commenters spamming the same copypasta every time BSD was mentioned: "did you know BSD runs your playstation and netflix and <...>. You should donate money!"
Evidently it's not worth more than the cost of assigning engineers to this, otherwise Apple would already be doing it.
> otherwise Apple would already be doing it.
The gap between what Apple ought to be doing, even if for no other reason than its own good, and what Apple actually does is sometimes pretty wide.
Due to GPL, they release the sources to the BSD code they use. Everything else is proprietary.
Likewise Sony used BSD for PlayStation OS. They publish the sources to the changes to BSD they made, the rest is proprietary.
BSD has a BSD license. It doesn't require source code releases.
GPL where applicable. If it's MIT or just "as is" then no, they won't but they definitely publish the sources to what they are required to. Since FreeBSD is "as is" 4.4BSD licensed, they aren't required to publish the sources of Orbis.
Aside from that the answer is "Corporate Goodwill." That actually is a bottom line number that gets reported.
Because they sell and advertise MacOS. Not "compatible with a wide range of OSes" (like say raspberry pis).
People buying a laptop due to goodwill and openness does happen (I bought my framework 13 due to that), but that's not a game Apple has played since Woz left - and for the worse, I think.
The OS-X (now branded as "macOS") kernel was not, and is not, a derivative of the FreeBSD kernel, or any other BSD, even though macOS/OS-X has a FreeBSD kernel component due to its Mach heritage. The userland tools are however BSD. OS-X's kernel is XNU and from the XNU GitHub repo[0]:
XNU kernel is part of the Darwin operating system for use
in macOS and iOS operating systems. XNU is an acronym for X
is Not Unix. XNU is a hybrid kernel combining the Mach
kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with
components from FreeBSD and a C++ API for writing drivers
called IOKit. XNU runs on x86_64 and ARM64 for both single
processor and multi-processor configurations.
EDIT:
In theory, XNU could simultaneously run the existing FreeBSD subsystem alongside Linux and/or MS-Windows ones. In practice, this would be a herculean effort fraught with difficulty.
See QNX[2] for another example of a micro-kernel OS architecture.
0 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu
1 - https://books.apple.com/us/book/mac-os-x-internals/id4343583...
Exactly.
> Exactly.
Darwin != XNU
userland tools != Darwin
Since you quoted from the provided archive, so shall I.
The fundamental services and primitives of the OS X kernel
are based on Mach 3.0. Apple has modified and extended Mach
to better meet OS X functional and performance goals.[1]
The BSD portion of the OS X kernel is derived primarily
from FreeBSD[2] ...
The OS-X (now branded as "macOS") kernel was not, and is
not, a derivative of the FreeBSD kernel, or any other BSD,
even though macOS/OS-X has a FreeBSD kernel component due
to its Mach heritage.
MacOS was absolutely derived from BSD through NeXTSTEP.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)
1 - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
2 - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
Nothing you said contradicts my point and in fact, corroborates it. So I’m not sure what your point is.
Yes, Darwin is a mix of Mach, xnu, and BSD code. No where did I say macOS is the FreeBSD kernel. No where do I mention kernel. So while you argument for why I’m wrong is lengthy, it still says it was derived from BSD. Which is exactly what I said. There are parts of FreeBSD in macOS kernel. There are parts of XNU and Mach. There are parts OpenBSD and NetBSD. Majority of the base OS (including userland) is BSD.
But hey, Darwin is open source so if someone wants to do go on a provenance archeological dig, it could be done!
Apple has no interest in assisting a competing operating system.
OS-X/macOS runs an entirely different kernel called XNU[0][1], which is why userland tools can be imported whereas FreeBSD kernel and device driver code cannot.
I would love to see a FreeBSD Workstation edition akin to like Fedora or Ubuntu where things just work (mostly).
Wayland took too long. We’re still stuck on Gtk. KDE Plasma team is making moves. I just want a nice, BSD, desktop experience without all the enshitification of copilot or Apple knowing what’s best for me.
I have decided to get back to FreeBSD, I used it as desktop 2002-2009 or so.
Downloaded 15.0, start install, wifi driver works perfectly, out of the box. Promising start, never seen before with FreeBSD.
Installed. Next, lets go to setup, graphics and Wayland. And here we started again, same story, hundred magic params to add, nvidia drivers doesn't work properly, install older version, is incompatible with Wayland etc. Need to go back to Xorg, another set of problems.
Ok, if I spent another 8 hours and asked for help in forums as it was 20+ years ago, I could have probably made it work. Until the next issue showed up.
So I decide to drop it, download CachyOS. Start installer. It detects K1000M, installs old version of Nvidia drivers, KDE, sorts out all compatibility issues, everything just flies, flawlessly. As never before, not even Ubuntu or Fedora.
CachyOS guys, thank you, you made an incredible work on getting it all to this state. Absolutely great.
Now don't get me wrong, I love FreeBSD, used it as my main driver for years in early 2000s, started my career with it and it has sweet spot in my heart, forever. It's just that laptop support is not there, still terrible, as it was 20 years ago. PS last laptop I used it successfully on, was Sony Vaio VGN-FS550 from 2005!
- audio - wifi - biometrics - GPU drivers that work well.
I guess I'm pointing out that his experience 20 something years ago is still relevant today, even if there's a lower barrier to entry now.
Currently use my laptop's fingerprint reader under Linux.
But I think the point of FreeBSD is more to provide something that you wouldn't get otherwise, and justifies going above and beyond to get it properly working.
My own anecdote is running the 4x and then 5x versions on my cobbled parts crappy desktop as a student and getting excelent perfs for how cheap it was, while still having linux level CJK and multi-input support and stellar stability.
I wouldn't do that anymore, but hope it stays an option for those with other specific needs that a BSD OS would help.