Re: i915kms for Meteor Lake: realistic timeline sought for support

On 2025-06-02 00:00, Steven Harms (High-Security Mail) wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> TL;DR: After being told my cheap and old laptop wasn’t any good for
> performance-demanding FreeBSD work (e.g. building VSCode), I bought a new 
> laptop.
> But…
> 
> * it uses Meteor Lake chipset
> * thus does not work in 14.2/3
> * is thus only likely to be supported in the near future on 15.0-CURRENT 
> (with
> even an MFC looking fraught)
> * and presently is not working on current HEAD
Hello Steven,
FWIW I felt close to the same when I got my Lenovo ~year ago. But now I'm 
*really*
happy to say everything in it functions pretty darn good. It's a Lenovo 
Ideapad
(Framework 12 laptop) It's sporting:
12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1215U CPU, Alder Lake-UP3 GT1 [UHD Graphics]
and an AX201 wifi as well as Bluetooth (forget which version). Everything
works. I run 3 jails full time for development/ports maintenance. I build
everything on this, including world/kernel and all the ports I use with this.
I have zero problems building rust/go/electron. Which are heavy-hitters (the
laptop gets warm). But completes the tasks in very acceptable time. So I 
guess
I'm saying, if you're looking for something reasonably modern and w/o 
breaking
the bank. This combination would be a pretty good choice. I run 
iwlwifi(intel):
channel 40 (5200 MHz 11a vht/80+) -- 802.11/ac -- while it's not *yet* /ax
it's pretty fast. I'm using the drm-66-(intel) kmod (i915) for graphics. Runs
everything from gtk-(3,4)/gnome and KDE nicely w/o issues.

HTH

--Chris
> 
> I didn’t realize this chip was such a complicator. My research suggests that
> supporting this change is Really Hard (tm). The related issues/branches seem 
> to be
> in a state of high churn, force-push, and inconsistent signal, so I’m not 
> sure how
> to estimate a timeline to leaving a pure-VT experience.* In the most earnest 
> way
> possible and with humility and in full and total reverence for and gratitude
> toward souls whose brilliance lets them write *video drivers*:
> 
> Should I return this computer and wait until 15.0-RELEASE? And how can I 
> know that
> the video hardware will be supported then/when I buy an alternative? My 
> return
> window closes shortly so a decision is pressing.
> 
> *OR*
> 
> Is Meteor Lake support just a moment away and my services as an early 
> adopter
> would be appreciated — FWIW: I’ve run all the experimental code to 
> contribute test
> data.
> 
> Either way, perhaps my experience helps us all see the value of the 
> Foundation’s
> investment in project-laptop — and maybe that’s a good thing to share. My
> experience is what a lot of eager, would-be adopters are running into out of 
> the
> gate, and many of them wouldn’t have the *ahem* decades of Unix use that I 
> have
> under my belt to even reason about what’s going wrong.
> 
> Steven
> 
> (Longer)
> 
> I started out with FreeBSD on a spare laptop I had laying around to see if I 
> liked
> it enough to keep it. I did! Working through the quirks was something I 
> valued
> enough to document for others[0]. But when I tried to build VSCode I was  
> laughed
> out of the building​​ politely informed that my old machine wasn't really 
> feasible
> as a platform[1]. Fair enough. So I bought a new Asus Zenbook. I opted for 
> Intel
> (not NVidia) graphics for ease. I expected the i915kms driver to work[2].
> 
> After struggling to get iwlwifi working (including building a custom usb 
> installer
> with the requisite firmware and module code), I got to a 14.3 system with 
> network.
> Awesome. I then tried to build the drm-kmod module again, as I'd done before 
> [3].
> Obviously, this winds up not working due to firmware and a host of other 
> concerns.
> This drove me to 15.0-CURRENT where I’ve been since in a pure-VT existence.
> 
> I've been tracking the work around drm-kmod[4] in proj-laptop and it seems 
> stalled
> based on drm-kmod[5].The release schedule[6] suggests, as I read it, that I 
> might
> be waiting until December for a stable 15.0 release.
> 
> *: TBH, VT-only is not horrible, as I grew up on x86’s dialing up to a SCO
> terminal and I’ve always had a love for European teletext services and 
> Minitel.
> It’s awesome for focus... But for what I paid, I’d like to be able to load a
> graphical environment, sleep on lid close, or not have to rely on my 
> mouse-less
> tmux-or-die skills just to get through the day.
> 
> [0]: https://stevengharms.com/longform/my-first-freebsd/
> [1]:
> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/vscode-extremely-long-build-builds-linux-on-the-way.97740/
> [2] https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-kmod
> [3]:
> https://stevengharms.com/longform/my-first-freebsd/installation/part-2-power-management/
> [4]: https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/47
> [5]: https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod/pull/332
> 
> [6]: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/schedule/
> 
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