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Best Computers for running BSD?

Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2016 6:41 pm
by dualstow
From an old thread, the 'AK-47 of things' one.
KevinW wrote:
Hobbery wrote: Like a Toyota Tacoma, or a Glock, or a good pair of canvas work pants....  It's not flashy.  It's value and long term durability supersedes it's cost.  It's simple and you can count on it.  It's the AK-47 version of EVERYTHING.
I don't know if the OP had software in mind, but I think Emacs and BSD meet these criteria.

Also it's interesting to me that almost everything that's been mentioned has been made predominantly of metal.
I'm sold on emacs, but I'm looking for some flavor of *nix to put on a newer machine. I think it was Kevin W who said to just pick a distro and stick with it, but I've enjoyed looking at different distros on my old machine. LXLE has turned out to be great for that old laptop and if I ever get my hands on a Raspberry Pi, I'll use Debian.

Right now, I have a new hp Stream and while the price is nice, it has turned out not to be linux-friendly the way Dell computers are. In fact, I think I posted elsewhere about putting Linux on the Stream and didn't get a lot of hits. So forget the stream.

I've been looking into BSD and rather than spend my life getting it to work on the Stream, I'd rather find a machine that's already known to run it properly. I googled and found an old thread on a BSD forum with a similar question, but everyone responded seemed to be on an old machine! And almost everyone was on a ThinkPad.

So, do I need to buy an old ThinkPad on eBay if I want to run BSD, or are there some new computers known to run it?

Thanks.

Re: Best Computers for running BSD?

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 9:56 am
by Jack Jones
dualstow wrote: I've been looking into BSD and rather than spend my life getting it to work on the Stream, I'd rather find a machine that's already known to run it properly. I googled and found an old thread on a BSD forum with a similar question, but everyone responded seemed to be on an old machine! And almost everyone was on a ThinkPad.

So, do I need to buy an old ThinkPad on eBay if I want to run BSD, or are there some new computers known to run it?
Heh, I was going to suggest this:

http://content.etilize.com/650/10203281.jpg

I've had one for years now and still love it. OpenBSD supports the hardware well.

I don't have any recommendations for new computers that will run a BSD. If you buy a random laptop off the shelf, the usual issues are either wireless or display drivers.

OpenBSD has good manual pages so if you wanted to see if the current version supports a particular Radeon video card, you could check:

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/ ... deon&sec=4

Re: Best Computers for running BSD?

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 10:33 am
by dualstow
Maybe I can't buy a new machine, but I can pick up an X40 for cheap.

Thank you, Jack, and sorry for the flood of emacs PMs in the past.  :D

Re: Best Computers for running BSD?

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 12:44 pm
by Jack Jones
dualstow wrote: Maybe I can't buy a new machine, but I can pick up an X40 for cheap.

Thank you, Jack, and sorry for the flood of emacs PMs in the past.  :D
No need to apologize! I'm always game for geeking out about Emacs!

Re: Best Computers for running BSD?

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 12:59 pm
by Pointedstick