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  <articleinfo>
    <title>FreeBSD on Laptops</title>

    <abstract>
      <para>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.</para>
    </abstract>

    <legalnotice id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
      &tm-attrib.freebsd;
      &tm-attrib.linux;
      &tm-attrib.microsoft;
      &tm-attrib.general;
    </legalnotice>

    <pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>

    <releaseinfo>$FreeBSD$</releaseinfo>
  </articleinfo>

    <para>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.  Several people have also documented their experiences
      with &os; on specific laptop models on webpages which are not
      part of the &os; documentation.  You might very well find some
      information if you type the name of your laptop model and the
      word <quote>&os;</quote> into a search engine of your
      choice.  Additionally there is a &os;-specific online database
      which aims to give information on hardware issues with laptops,
      <ulink url="http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/">The &os;
      Laptop Compatibility List</ulink>.</para>

    <para>If you want to communicate with other &os; laptop users,
      check out the &a.mobile.name; list.  You can also get additional
      information about using Laptops on &os; at
      <ulink url="http://tuxmobil.org/mobile_bsd.html"></ulink>.</para>

  <sect1 id="xorg">
    <title>&xorg;</title>

    <para>Recent versions of <application>&xorg;</application> work with most display adapters
      available on laptops these days.  Acceleration may not be
      supported, but a generic SVGA configuration should work.</para>

    <para>Check your laptop documentation for which card you have,
      and check in the <application>&xorg;</application> documentation
      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).  You can try your luck
      with the command <userinput>Xorg -configure</userinput>
      which auto-detects a lot of configurations.</para>

    <para>The problem often is configuring the monitor.  Common
      resources for <application>&xorg;</application> 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 <literal>HorizSync</literal> and <literal>VertRefresh</literal> 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 <application>&xorg;</application>) and copy a modeline posted by someone for similar
      hardware.</para>

    <para>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</para>

    <programlisting>
      Option "Emulate3Buttons"
    </programlisting>

    <para>in the <filename>xorg.conf</filename> file in the <literal>InputDevice</literal>
      section.</para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="modems">
    <title>Modems</title>
    <para>
      Laptops usually come with internal (on-board) modems.
      Unfortunately, this almost always means they are
      <quote>winmodems</quote> 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; for example, if your modem has a Lucent LT chipset it might be supported by the <filename role="package">comms/ltmdm</filename> port).  If that is the case, 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.
    </para>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="pcmcia">
    <title>PCMCIA (PC Card) devices</title>

    <para> Most laptops come with PCMCIA (also called PC Card)
      slots; these are supported fine under FreeBSD.  Look through
      your boot-up messages (using &man.dmesg.8;) and see whether these were
      detected correctly (they should appear as
      <devicename>pccard0</devicename>,
      <devicename>pccard1</devicename> etc on devices like
      <devicename>pcic0</devicename>).</para>

    <para>&os;&nbsp;4.X supports 16-bit PCMCIA cards, and
      &os;&nbsp;5.X supports both 16-bit and
      32-bit (<quote>CardBus</quote>) cards.   A database of supported
      cards is in the file <filename>/etc/defaults/pccard.conf</filename>.
      Look through it, and preferably buy cards listed there.  Cards not
      listed may also work as <quote>generic</quote> 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 <filename>pccard.conf</filename> 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.</para>

    <para>Some parts of <filename>pccard.conf</filename> 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 manual page &man.pccardc.8;).
    </para>

    <para>If it is not running already, start the &man.pccardd.8; daemon.
      (To enable it at boot time, add
      <programlisting>pccard_enable="YES"</programlisting> to
      <filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>.)  Now your cards should be
      detected when you insert and remove them, and you should get
      log messages about new devices being enabled.</para>

    <para>There have been major changes to the pccard code
      (including ISA routing of interrupts, for machines where
      &os; is not able to use the PCI BIOS) before the &os;&nbsp;4.4
      release.  If you have problems, try upgrading your system.</para>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="power-management">

    <title>Power management</title>

    <para>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.</para>

    <para>To make things a little more complex, there are two existing
      standards for power management: APM and ACPI, the latter
      superseding the former and including more features, but also
      introducing more problems.</para>

    <para>Some laptops support both APM and ACPI (to a certain
      degree), others just support one of them, so chances are that
      you have to experiment with both of them to have reliable power
      management on your laptop.</para>

    <note>
      <para>You cannot have APM and ACPI enabled at the same time,
	even if your laptop has support for both of them.</para>
    </note>

    <sect2>
      <title>APM</title>

      <para>The APM (Advanced Power Management) BIOS provides support
	for various power management features like standby, suspend,
	hibernation, CPU clock slow down etc. and is available
	under &os;&nbsp;4.X and &os;&nbsp;5.X.</para>

      <para>To enable APM support, you can compile a kernel with power
	management support (<literal>device apm0</literal> on
	&os;&nbsp;4.X and <literal>device apm</literal> on
	&os;&nbsp;5.X).  A kernel module for APM is available under
	&os;&nbsp;5.X, to simply load the APM kernel module at boot
	add the line <literal>apm_load="YES"</literal> to
	<filename>/boot/loader.conf</filename>.</para>

      <para>On &os;&nbsp;5.X, you also have to set
	<literal>hint.apm.0.disabled="0"</literal> in
	<filename>/boot/device.hints</filename>.</para>

      <para>You can start APM at boot time by having
	<literal>apm_enable="YES"</literal> in
	<filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>.  You may also want start
	the &man.apmd.8; daemon by adding
	<literal>apmd_enable="YES"</literal> to
	<filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>, which takes care of
	various APM events that are posted to the BIOS, so you can
	have your laptop suspend/resume by pressing some function
	key on the keyboard or by closing/opening the lid.</para>

      <para>The APM commands are listed in the &man.apm.8; manual page.
	For instance, <command>apm -b</command> gives you battery
	status (or 255 if not supported), <command>apm -Z</command>
	puts the laptop on standby, <command>apm -z</command> (or
	<command>zzz</command>) suspends it.  To shutdown and power
	off the machine, use <command>shutdown -p</command>.  Again,
	some or all of these functions may not work very well or at
	all.</para>

      <para>You may find that laptop suspension/standby works in
	console mode but not under X (that is, the screen does not
	come on again); if you are running &os;&nbsp;5.X, one solution
	for this might be to put <literal>options
	SC_NO_SUSPEND_VTYSWITCH</literal>
	in your kernel configuration file and recompile your kernel.
	Another workaround is to switch to a virtual console (using
        <keycombo
	action="simul"><keycap>Ctrl</keycap><keycap>Alt</keycap><keycap>F1</keycap></keycombo>
	or another function key) and then execute &man.apm.8;.
	You can automate this with &man.vidcontrol.1;, if you are
	running &man.apmd.8;.  Simply edit
	<filename>/etc/apmd.conf</filename> and change it to
	this:</para>

      <programlisting>apm_event SUSPENDREQ {
 exec "vidcontrol -s 1 &lt; /dev/console";
 exec "/etc/rc.suspend";
}

apm_event USERSUSPENDREQ {
 exec "vidcontrol -s 1 &lt; /dev/console";
 exec "sync &amp;&amp; sync &amp;&amp; sync";
 exec "sleep 1";
 exec "apm -z";
}

apm_event NORMRESUME, STANDBYRESUME {
 exec "/etc/rc.resume";
 exec "vidcontrol -s 9 &lt; /dev/console";
}</programlisting>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>ACPI</title>

      <para>ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Management
	Interface) provides not only power management but also
	platform hardware discovery (superseding PnP and PCI BIOS).
	ACPI is only available under &os;&nbsp;5.X and is enabled by
	default, so you do not have to do anything special to get it
	running.  You can control ACPI behaviour with
	&man.acpiconf.8;.</para>

      <para>Unfortunately, vendors often ship their laptops with
	broken ACPI implementations, thus having ACPI enabled
	sometimes causes more problems than being useful, up to the
	point that you cannot even boot &os; on some machines with
	ACPI enabled.</para>

      <para>If ACPI is causing problems, you might check if your
	laptop vendor has released a new BIOS version that fixes some
	bugs.  Since the &os; ACPI implementation is still very
	evolving code, you might also want to upgrade your system;
	chances are that your problems are fixed.</para>

      <para>If you want to disable ACPI simply add
	<literal>hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"</literal> to
	<filename>/boot/device.hints</filename>.  You can disable
	ACPI temporarily at the boot loader prompt by issuing
	<literal>unset acpi_load</literal> if you are having problems
	booting an ACPI enabled machine.  &os;&nbsp;5.1-RELEASE and
	later come with a boot-time menu that controls how &os; is
	booted.  One of the proposed options is to turn off ACPI.  So
	to disable ACPI just select <guimenuitem>2. Boot &os; with ACPI
	disabled</guimenuitem> in the menu.</para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Display Power Management</title>

    <para>The X window system (<application>&xorg;</application>) also includes display power
      management (look at the &man.xset.1; manual page, and search for
      <quote>dpms</quote> 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.</para>
    </sect2>

  </sect1>
</article>