What laptops can run BSD?

frogprince

Hi: I'm typing this on a Dell Latitude E6420 with Ghost. What ruffles my feathers is that I have no control of the trackpad characteristics; the Preferences menu only shows those for a mouse, and those do not affect the actions of the trackpad. I can't do two finger or side scroll, and the speed of moving the cursor is too slow.

So I tried booting a Ghost USB drive with the latest version on a Dell M6800 precision workstation, which is a somewhat newer machine than the E6420. But the BIOS would not recognize the partition on the USB drive, even in legacy mode. That machine runs fine with MX Linux/KDE.

Next I tried booting it on an older Dell Latitude E6410, ca 2010, and that did boot successfully. But I couldn't get the wifi to turn on; clicking on Restart Networking did nothing. And I couldn't tell anything about scrolling, because I couldn't get wifi to work. That machine runs fine with Antix Linux.

So I am moved to ask this august group: are you running Ghost on a laptop that doesn't have these problems? If so, would you please share the make and model? Thanks in advance.

RodMyers

i use the following

Latitude 5540

Latitude 5510

Latitude 7414

edit: all of these were bought used

judd

→ Dell Inspiron 15 3525

→ Asus Vivobook 15

SteveM

Working well on a System76 Lemur Pro 10. I have a "touchpad" tab in the mouse preferences.

frogprince

Rod: are you able to use two finger or edge scrolling with any of these? Are they i5 or i7? Thanks.

vimanuelt

frogprince

The FreeBSD developers have not added gesture support yet. If gestures are important to your workflow, waiting for someone else to implement them may not be the most effective strategy.

In my case, it took less than a week to add gesture support, including testing. The implementation was not particularly large or complex because the necessary input events were already available; the work was primarily integrating them into the desktop environment and validating behavior across common use cases.

One lesson I have learned from using FreeBSD and GhostBSD is that excessive dependence on upstream development can lead to frustration. The projects have limited developer resources and must prioritize work that benefits the broadest set of users. If a feature is important to you, there is often more value in implementing it yourself than waiting for someone else to do it.

The economics of smaller systems are different from those of large commercial platforms. A feature that may sit on a wishlist for years can often be implemented by a motivated user in a matter of days. If you choose to use FreeBSD or GhostBSD, you will probably be happier treating them as systems you can shape rather than products that are obligated to meet your needs.

RodMyers

trackpad works on both, though I use an external trackball

this 5540 = CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1345U (12) @ 4.70 GHz
GPU: Intel Iris Xe Graphics [Integrated]

the 5510= CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10310U (8) @ 4.40 GHz
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics @ 1.15 GHz [Integrated]

frogprince

vimanuelt Thanks to all you gentleman. I'm a retired EE and more of a hardware guy, not a programmer, although I have gained a fair amount of experience editing text files over the years. That leads me to two questions:

1.) Steve M. noted that he has a "Touchpad" tab in his preferences, which I do not on this machine. I did for a while run Ghost on a Lenovo Z500 Idealpad, and the Touchpad tab did appear on that machine, and showed support for both two-finger and edge scrolling. So it appears that Ghost does have support for those functions with some trackpads without further software editing. I had trouble with the networking support on on the Z, which is why I tried to move to the Dell, but that leads me to believe that this is a hardware support problem with the Zakura trackpad on the Dell. I don't need any more elaborate gesture support than scrolling.

2.) So Rod: Very specifically, do any of your Latitudes have the Touchpad tab in Preferences? Do they show support for two finger scrolling? Have you had any difficulty connecting to public wifi in libraries or hotels? I'm happy to procure another used laptop to run Ghost, but I don't want to do so without some assurance that the unit I choose will support the functions I need.

Thanks again, gentlemen.

vimanuelt

frogprince
Sorry, I cannot be much help here. I moved away from vanilla FreeBSD/GhostBSD touchpad support as I got tired of waiting for support and created Awase. Awase's input architecture is designed to solve exactly the class of touchpad-recognition problems you are describing. Unlike the traditional FreeBSD stack, it consumes HID devices directly and includes native multitouch and gesture processing. However, Awase is part of PGSD rather than GhostBSD, so it is not something you can currently install on a stock GhostBSD system as a fix for your Dell. I was considering porting it to GhostBSD after PGSD matures.