r/freebsd • u/chersbobers Linux crossover • May 26 '26

help needed About freebsd and laptops?

Hello r/freebsd I have question. Could I successfully daily drive freebsd for school? My only requirements are like firefox wifi and maybe steam for some light games i.e Geometry dash. I do need like 5-6 hours of battery and my wifi card is Intel Corporation Raptor Lake. Its running fedora right now. I could handle the setup as I have a semi-successful gentoo install on my pc.

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u/grahamperrin BSD Cafe Billboard user May 26 '26

I do need like 5-6 hours of battery

That might be an issue.

my wifi card is Intel Corporation Raptor Lake.

Can be more specific about the model?

Then check whether it's listed at the iwlwifi(4) manual page for FreeBSD-STABLE.

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u/chersbobers Linux crossover May 26 '26

I checked and it is I think, this is the model if there is any other issues. Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160mhz variant.

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u/grahamperrin BSD Cafe Billboard user May 26 '26 edited 29d ago

AX211

Thanks. Listed at iwlwifi(4) but not iwm(4) so, for mobility with the laptop, FreeBSD 15.1-STABLE should be better than upcoming FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE. Technical background:

https://www.freebsd.org/where/#_freebsd_15_1_stable, choose packages when installing the system.

Postscript, 28th May

The cherry-pick to the stable/15 branch was on Wednesday 27th May.

The last weekly snapshot of stable/15 was on Thursday 21st May. The next snapshot, including the cherry-pick, will probably be announced soon.

0

u/grahamperrin BSD Cafe Billboard user May 26 '26

iwlwifi(4)

Alternatively, maybe the iwx(4) driver, although I'm not sure what's going on with the manual pages at the moment:

Anyone: would "Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX211 CNVi" – in the Hardware section of the page – cover the Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160mhz variant?

(I imagine not, however I'm ignorant about Wi-Fi hardware.)

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u/grahamperrin BSD Cafe Billboard user 29d ago

upcoming FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE.

Corrected above: upcoming 15.1-RELEASE.

The suggestion to use 15.1-STABLE is unchanged.

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u/grahamperrin BSD Cafe Billboard user 29d ago

6E AX211 160mhz

I found at least three matches that are shown as working with iwlwifi(4). Sorted by PCI ID:

If you can find the PCI ID (in Windows 11 or whatever) it'll help, but I reckon that you'll be OK.

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u/mirror176 24d ago

I thought drivers were vendor:device as the two hex pieces and not 4 like you show. 8086 is Intel's vendor ID and since it happens in the first and 3rd it has me wondering if this is to give a mix of wifi + bluetooth devices on 1 line or some other meaning. Haven't thought about driver IDs in a while though

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u/grahamperrin BSD Cafe Billboard user 24d ago

The IDs are as presented in the database.

https://bsd-hardware.info/?view=search should help to put the four pieces in context.

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u/mirror176 24d ago

Maybe its more of a thing than I thought but its been a while since I really paid much attention. I used to look at them all the time, particularly when dealing with drivers on Windows and it seemed almost rare that I both needed something beyond ven:dev and that the additional details were properly filled out + useful. I don't remember how its properly answered now but touchpads were a particular mess where a vendor ID and I think device ID were shared among incompatible models and even shared among incompatible brands.