mini-laptop / netbook for FreeBSD

[doug]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2019, Matthias Apitz wrote:

> El d?a Monday, February 25, 2019 a las 03:10:07PM +0000, Carmel NY escribi?:
>
>> On Mon, 25 Feb 2019 15:38:31 +0100, Matthias Apitz stated:
>> 
>> >Hello,
>> >
>> >I'm using since 2015 an Acer C720 laptop/netbook which works very
>> >nicely with FreeBSD (thanks to the work of Michael, cc'ed). I'm
>> >looking for an successor device with more or less the same technical
>> >specification:
>> >
>> >- 11.6" high res display (1024x768)
>> >- 4 GByte RAM
>> >- 2 CPU, each 1.4 GHz
>> >- 256 GByte SSD
>> >- Wifi (supported in CURRENT)
>> >- Touchpad, USB 3.0, HDMI
>> >
>> >Any ideas or proposals to test? Thanks
>> >
>> >	matthias
>> 
>> Why limit RAM to a measly 4GB? If it is a 64 bit machine, that is like
>> the bare minimum for it to work. ...
>
> Yes, it should be amd64 (thanks for reminder). And No, 4 GByte is really
> enough. Mine has 4 GByte, runs KDE4 as desktop, with libroffice, FF
> 64.0, chromium, ... all fast and fine.
>
> $ dmesg | grep -i memory
> real memory  = 4301258752 (4102 MB)
> avail memory = 1917239296 (1828 MB)
> [drm] Got stolen memory base 0x7ca00000, size 0x2000000
>
> Have you a real proposal to say?

First it's really hard to impossible to say what is the best PC for FreeBSD. 
Just to take the most obvious one, if no wifi support is okay, your universe 
expands greatly Exotic video card could also be an issue although I personally 
have never had a problem there.

Secondly depending on what you are doing maybe 4GB is enough except it is likely 
getting harder to find a 4GB system, unless you build your own. I have a lenovo 
ideapad 700 that I got strictly because 10.3 supported the wifi card. It has 8GB 
and 4 cores.

When I am doing sysadmin stuff, say 10 xterms and email, the system uses less 
than 1.5GB. If I open gimp and libreoffice writer and maybe calc and decide I 
have to read an HTML email this uses 6+GB just sitting there with no real 
graphics work going. Still with no paging. I suspect if you did that with 4GB it 
might still be okay but I suspect you would have paging activity going. Still 
that may not matter if you use AC power all the time. My office workstation is a 
16GB 8 core Dell something or another. I get the same response on the lenovo for 
so for me 8 is enough. But it really all depends on your workload. In general I 
agree get all the memory you can afford. A harder problem is UEFI support. I 
went through two systems I returned because a no option zfs FreeBSD only install 
overwrote something the first two (an HP and the Micro Center brand) needed to 
boot.