laptops

[Waitman Gobble]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 3:30 PM Bret Busby <bret at busby.net> wrote:
>
> On 17/2/21 3:00 am, Pete Wright wrote:
> >
> >
> > 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.
> >
>
> I have been running UbuntuMATE Linux on two computers with nVIDIA
> Optimus, for several years, now, without any problems.
>
> One of those, the first, upon which I got it working, is an Acer Aspire
> V3-772G, which has an Intel Haskell i7 CPU, and nVIDIA Optimus.
>
> I think that I bought the computer in 2013, from memory, and it took me
> 18 months to get it working with a non-MS operating system. Only two
> non-MS operating systems, had drivers for the CPU; dragonflyBSD and
> Ubuntu Linux, and, only Ubuntu Linux had the dirver for the nVIDIA
> Optimus system. Up until then, I had been using Debian Linux, but, had
> got fed up with it, had looked at the versions of BSD, and was told that
> there was no way that BSD would be supporting nVIDIA graphics, so, I
> switched to Ubuntu Linux, and, it has worked well enough with the graphics.
>
> I am running external monitors on both laptops, at 1920x1080 resolution,
> without any problems.
>
> Oh, and, the other laptop, is an Acer Aspire 5750G.
>
> I am currently running UbuntuMATE 20.10 on both systems, and, up until
> the last couple of weeks, was running UbuntuMATE 16.04.x LTS on the
> V3-772G; 16.04 is due to come to EOL in a couple of months, so I thought
> I should get used to using the inferior version, before then.
>
> --
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> (UTC+0800)
> ..............
>
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I use a W530 which is a little older than the W541 but looks to me
like it has similar specs. It works if you set GPU to Nvidia only in
BIOS, and probably Intel only, but Opitmus (enables GPU hot-switching
I guess?) doesn't boot on mine. I think somebody mentioned a solution
to that earlier in the thread. Downside to using Nvidia is short
battery time without AC power.

-- 
Waitman Gobble