Subject: Re: IBM Thinkpads w/ NetBSD (or other recommendations?)
To: Kevin Lahey <kml@patheticgeek.net>
From: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/15/2001 12:29:49
In message <20010815161741.24557.qmail@patheticgeek.net>, "Kevin Lahey" writes:
>
>I need to buy a laptop for work (my employer is picking up the bill),
>and I'm still trying to figure out what to get. The IBM Thinkpad X
>and T series look pretty good to me, but it isn't clear to me that
>they are completely supported by NetBSD. Will the internal Ethernet
>and/or 802.11 interfaces work under NetBSD? I've about given up on modems,
>but since I haven't used one in five years, I figure that won't bother
>me. What about audio?
I'm mostly happy with my Thinkpad T21. The built-in Ethernet works
with the fxp driver; the modem is, as you guessed, a WinModem, and thus
useless to me. Audio is a bit problematic; there is a driver for it,
but there's something funky about it versus power management. I
recently just excluded it from my config file, since having sound
wasn't worth the crashes at "suspend" time. X works reasonably well,
though I had to use 4.0.3. (But StarOffice crashes the X server -- I
have to try 4.1.) However, I haven't been able to get simultaneous
displays on the laptop and on a VGA projector -- a nuisance when I'm
giving talks.
My machine is too old for a built-in 802.11 interface, so I don't know
if that works.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb