[boterock]

Some months ago I got FreeBSD running in a Macbook Air, and surprisingly the UEFI boot worked out of the box. I say surprisingly because when I tried, the Linux efiboot didn't work, the only way to boot linux was through GRUB.

I had almost everything working (Audio, suspend on close, i3 or gnome) but never got the wifi to work, I even tethered from my android phone to the Macbook and it worked very good. But in the end it was to annoying to do often. If only FreeBSD supported that wireless chip, I'd be writing this on FreeBSD. When the wayland and updated intel drivers come to FreeBSD maybe i'll try it again, but wifi is a deal breaker.

I always wondered why there isn't wifi drivers for this macbook in FreeBSD if Fedora had them (and AFAIK Fedora only ships open drivers)

[floatboth]

No one ported the broadcom wifi drivers. New Intel cards (7260, 8260) are supported.

Also, you can build the updated graphics drivers from https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics

[0xcde4c3db]

Which FreeBSD version did you try? I'm just skimming things, but it looks like Adrian Chadd might have updated the relevant driver back in May/June, in time for FreeBSD 11.

[mveety]

If its for the broadcom cards that's probably still a negative. I was running 11-CURRENT up until the release freeze and it never started working. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me if Adrian has it working by now.

[gonzo]

Adrian has done a lot of recent work on 11ac in -HEAD, but not anything on BRCM of late.

[BorisMelnik]

ever considered using a supported wifi usb?

[boterock]

I didn't like the idea of permanently losing 1 of the only 2 usb ports, although when connecting android tethering I lost one still. I wanted a solution that would allow me to have internet and also be able to connect a mouse and a usb drive.

[Macuyiko]

That's what I ended up doing for a lot of my laptops as well. These things have become so small you barely see them taking up a USB port.

[duaneb]

I believe audio over hdmi is also unfinished for recent MacBook pros, which is a deal breaker for me.

[cyberpunk]

I use an oldish (maybe last years or the one before?) retina mbp to drive the two screens in my home office which I run FreeBSD on (still 10.x, not had time to upgrade it) -- and I run the audio via one of the monitors no prob:

$ cat /dev/sndstat | grep default pcm2: <NVIDIA (0x0042) (HDMI/DP 8ch)> (play) default

I almost never turn it off as I have to do some weird kind of dance to close the lid and type startx blind so that I don't end up with three screens in X, but I don't really care enough to fix it when I only have to do it every few weeks/months...

I use a thunderbolt Ethernet dongle thingy which does 1gbit since it doesn't ever leave the desk I've not really tried the wifi..

I use a USB DAC when I've got the cans on though because they sound much better (also works, an audioquest thing)...

I won't buy another macbook tho, XPS+Linux is going to replace my luggable very soon.

Mac/OSX stayed out of my way for a few years and was my justification for using it; who's got time to have to deal with the usual linux desktop problems when you just need a machine to do email ssh and a browser, right? I'm not sure really when, but Mac+OSX stopped being the best solution some while ago (for me at least). It's just a constant source of annoyance now (honestly, let an email password expire and see how many times it grabs focus from your editor, I get at least two full on kernel panics a week, distnoted randomly eats a core all day, I have an alias called something like "fsckoff" which does a kill on coreaudiod for when airplay stops working, I'm increasingly nervous about running prop stuff, yadda yadda). The macbook is a pretty cute little machine though, super skinny.

As for BSD? I don't think I'd bother using a BSD on a lappy that you are actually planning on lugging around, makes a nice workhorse in the home office though if you don't want to have to mess with it too much!

[rangibaby]

at least for Ubuntu on a 2013 MBP I had to install non-free wifi, everything else Just Worked (tm)

[nimrody]

How much battery life do you get from this configuration? macOS is optimized for power. FreeBSD not so much, I believe.

[xutopia]

I don’t think I ever had my laptop battery run out on me. To me it’s just not an issue. I’m plugged in 85% of the time.

How do people use their laptops? For me it's almost always at a desk and if not there is always a plug nearby.

[Touche]

I sit on my sofa. Not the best thing for my back, but that's what I do.

[floatboth]

FreeBSD battery life is generally good, especially with https://github.com/lonkamikaze/powerdxx

[boterock]

Never got to try how much this Macbook did in macOS (I bought it used just to tinker with Linux/FreeBSD, but the time I used it, battery on FreeBSD was on par with Linux, if not slightly better.

[rangibaby]

A few hours less than OS X I think. I haven't done exhaustive testing (that year of Macs were a massive improvement in terms of battery life)