Thinkpad x220 with freebsd

Knightron · 02-13-2012, 02:19 AM

Hello guys, for long, i've admired freebsd from afar. I downloaded the iso for 8 ages ago and tried to install but was to inexperienced to manage it right. I've used Linux for about a year now, jumping from distro to distro, staying mainly with Slackware and Debian, but now i've built the motivation to give freebsd another go. I've limited bandwidth so decided to test my old dvd before jumping in and committing to the new version. My laptop (the computer to be installed on) is a Lenovo Thinkpad x220. My dvd is freebsd 8.2, 32bit.
The Thinkpad has no cd drive and i use a usb external cd drive for installs. I tried installing tonight, and it booted to the first boot screen but on trying to boot sysutil it fails. I found people whom encountered the same issue on google, and they seemed to manage to get it up and running eventually, but it wasn't clear on how. Something about an external keyboard.
Could somebody please help me.

alex__ · 02-13-2012, 02:53 AM

1. Try 9.0
2. Disable UEFI in your BIOS. That may help.

P.S. If you are just interested to learn about *BSD systems, OpenBSD works on X220 and has an excellent and straightforward documentation.

Knightron · 02-13-2012, 03:26 AM

Hi alex, and thanks for the tip. If i disable UEFI, how can i boot the install media?

I haven't considered openbsd, mainly because i freebsd seems to be the most popular one, and for this reason, got my attention most. I will consider it, but because i've already jumped in head first, i already own the soft cover books of the freebsd handbook, so would preferably rather get freebsd working.

TroN-0074 · 02-13-2012, 11:03 AM

Yo! Alex.
FreeBSD is good. Like you I am a Linux user but I like learning and I installed FreeBSD 8.2 just few weeks before they released 9.0 which was just couple of month ago I think.
So 8.2 is still covered with support from the FreeBSD team. But the one project I wanted to mention is the PC-BSD distribution which is freeBSD with a graphical installer so it is easy to set it up.

So basically PC-BSD is freeBSD under the hood but delivered friendly for the masses.

Here is the link for you to check it out http://pcbsd.org/

I dont know what could be causing the problem with your install disk. However I know the CD is a minimal install and if you want everything you need to use a DVD.