Will FreeBSD *EVER* support Hp Pavillion laptops?

[Rainer Duffner]

wrangled wrote:

> Every year I try the latest version of FreeBSD to see if it works on 
> my HP Pavillion 5445, and each year it hangs as soon as the intaller 
> gets to acpi.ko.
>
> Yes, I've tried everything.  No, it still doesn't work.
>
> It's my only machine that cannot run FreeBSD.
> It just seems odd since the machine is fairly mainstream. 



The Pavillion line is their low-end line.
It will be built from whatever parts Solectron or Quanta (or whichever 
sweatshop in Taiwan and Mainland-China is producing them these days) 
have lying around that week.
No guarantees are made about chipsets etc.

This is what makes getting anything else other than XP running on these 
laptops so difficult.

Personally, I don't see that situation improving in the future - it's 
only getting worse.

For people interested in running FreeBSD on a laptop, this basically 
boils down do "don't buy what you couldn't test, even if somebody claims 
to run the same model with Freebsd x.y perfectly".
Because, as pointed out above: "The same model is never the same model".



cheers,
Rainer