$FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/laptop/article.sgml,v 1.5 2002/02/14 23:57:13 keramida Exp $ FreeBSD works fine on most laptops, with a few caveats. Some issues specific to running FreeBSD on laptops, relating to different hardware requirements from desktops, are discussed below. FreeBSD is often thought of as a server operating system, but it works just fine on the desktop, and if you want to use it on your laptop you can enjoy all the usual benefits: systematic layout, easy administration and upgrading, the ports/packages system for adding software, and so on. (Its other benefits, such as stability, network performance, and performance under a heavy load, may not be obvious on a laptop, of course.) However, installing it on laptops often involves problems which are not encountered on desktop machines and are not commonly discussed (laptops, even more than desktops, are fine-tuned for Microsoft Windows). This article aims to discuss some of these issues. Recent versions of XFree86 work with most display adapters available on laptops these days. Acceleration may not be supported, but a generic SVGA configuration should work. Check your laptop documentation for which card you have, and check in the XFree86 documentation (or setup program) to see whether it is specifically supported. If it is not, use a generic device (do not go for a name which just looks similar). In XFree86 version 4, you can try your luck with the command XFree86 -configure which auto-detects a lot of configurations. The problem often is configuring the monitor. Common resources for XFree86 focus on CRT monitors; getting a suitable modeline for an LCD display may be tricky. You may be lucky and not need to specify a modeline, or just need to specify suitable HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges. If that does not work, the best option is to check web resources devoted to configuring X on laptops (these are often linux-oriented sites but it does not matter because both systems use XFree86) and copy a modeline posted by someone for similar hardware. Most laptops come with two buttons on their pointing devices, which is rather problematic in X (since the middle button is commonly used to paste text); you can map a simultaneous left-right click in your X configuration to a middle button click with the line Option "Emulate3Buttons" in the XF86Config file in the InputDevice section (for XFree86 version 4; for version 3, put just the line Emulate3Buttons, without the quotes, in the Pointer section.) Laptops usually come with internal (on-board) modems. Unfortunately, this almost always means they are winmodems whose functionality is implemented in software, for which only windows drivers are normally available (though a few drivers are beginning to show up for other operating systems). Otherwise, you need to buy an external modem: the most compact option is probably a PC-Card (PCMCIA) modem, discussed below, but serial or USB modems may be cheaper. Generally, regular modems (non-winmodems) should work fine. Most laptops come with PCMCIA (also called PC-card) slots; these are supported fine under FreeBSD. Look through your boot-up messages (using dmesg) and see whether these were detected correctly (they should appear as pccard0, pccard1 etc on devices like pcic0). FreeBSD currently supports 16-bit PCMCIA cards, but not 32-bit (CardBus) cards. A database of supported cards is in the file /etc/defaults/pccard.conf. Look through it, and preferably buy cards listed there. Cards not listed may also work as generic devices: in particular most modems (16-bit) should work fine, provided they are not winmodems (these do exist even as PC-cards, so watch out). If your card is recognised as a generic modem, note that the default pccard.conf file specifies a delay time of 10 seconds (to avoid freezes on certain modems); this may well be over-cautious for your modem, so you may want to play with it, reducing it or removing it totally. Some parts of pccard.conf may need editing. Check the irq line, and be sure to remove any number already being used: in particular, if you have an on board sound card, remove irq 5 (otherwise you may experience hangs when you insert a card). Check also the available memory slots; if your card is not being detected, try changing it to one of the other allowed values (listed in the man page &man.pccardc.8;). If it is not running already, start the pccardd daemon. (To enable it at boot time, add pccard_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf). Now your cards should be detected when you insert and remove them, and you should get log messages about new devices being enabled. There have been major changes to the pccard code (including ISA routing of interrupts, for machines whose PCIBIOS FreeBSD can not seem to use) before the FreeBSD 4.4 release. If you have problems, try upgrading your system. Unfortunately, this is not very reliably supported under FreeBSD. If you are lucky, some functions may work reliably; or they may not work at all. To enable this, you may need to compile a kernel with power management support (device apm0) or add the option enable apm0 to /boot/loader.conf, and also enable the apm daemon at boot time (line apm_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf). The apm commands are listed in the &man.apm.8; manpage. For instance, apm -b gives you battery status (or 255 if not supported), apm -Z puts the laptop on standby, apm -z (or zzz) suspends it. To shutdown and power off the machine, use shutdown -p. Again, some or all of these functions may not work very well or at all. You may find that laptop suspension/standby works in console mode but not under X (that is, the screen does not come on again; in that case, switch to a virtual console (using Ctrl-Alt-F1 or another function key) and then execute the apm command. The X window system (XFree86) also includes display power management (look at the &man.xset.1; man page, and search for dpms there). You may want to investigate this. However, this, too, works inconsistently on laptops: it often turns off the display but does not turn off the backlight.