laptops

[Pete Wright]

On 2/16/21 10:42 AM, LuMiWa via freebsd-questions wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I did search FreeBSD Wiki/laptops but I didn't find the answer. I like
> to buy Thinkpad W541 or W550s (prefer W541) but I am not sure if will
> work on FreeBSD. I want it to connect external monitor which going
> through Nvidia graphics card which Optimus driver supposed it works on
> FreeBSD 13. I found that installation works on W520 and 530.
I have a different Thinkpad with Optimus graphics - a P43s.  It mostly 
works, but have been pretty underwhelmed by the hybrid graphics of 
Optimus systems.  Not just with FreeBSD, but from what I gather its 
suboptimal on Linux as well.

To get it working on FreeBSD there is an open PR* that gets things 
working, and I can drive specific apps with the Nvidia GPU (via the 
"optirun" binary).  But there is a bit of level of effort getting it to 
work until we can get this PR over the finish line since I maintain a 
branch of the ports tree to just support the diffs in this PR.

One other issue I have is with the overall design of the Optimus design, 
the GPU is used to offload processing but the display is still driven by 
the Intel i915 GPU.  Depending on your use-case this may lead to reduced 
performance.  All in all I am very happy with this thinkpad, but if I 
had a choice I would have chosen a system with dedicated Nvidia or i915 
GPU's rather than this hybrid approach.


Cheers,
-pete

*https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=192617

-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
@nomadlogicLA