[PMX:#]

[jared forrester]

On January 5, 2004 06:32 pm, John Maclean wrote:
> Sirs,
>
> I have read our site http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/index.html as I am
> interested in learning C on a UNIX type platform. Could you tell me please
> if  FreeBsd would run on a Athlon Xp based laptop?
>
> Regards,
>
> John Maclean
>
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Well, the short answer would be perhaps.  The long answer is that it rely 
depends on what hardware exactly makes up the laptop and how much of it you 
need to work.  You should start by making an inventory of everything it 
contains (what type of IDE controller?, sound card type, etc) as well as your 
IRQ settings (probably not necessary but it can't hurt).

Next you should read the freebsd handbook located at:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html

It details what hardware is supported etc.  As far as laptops go, you will 
have some trouble with cardbus (it's supported in the 5.x series but not in 
4.x last I checked).  

It's unlikely that FreeBSD will not run at all, but if anything some of your 
hardware will not work 100%.  I used to run FreeBSD 4.8 on a compaq armada 
7400 but it did not support the triflex ide controller (though the generic 
driver did work just without udma-33), the usb controller (not at all), nor 
the cardbus slots (though they did work as 16 bit pcmcia slots and I could 
use a linksys 10/100 nic).  However freeBSD did still run.

I hope that helps

Jared.