what an inconvenience !

Two truths:

• "Laptops" describes a class of workstation, each with a vast array of components, from many vendors.
• "BSD" refers to a family of Unix-like systems. They have different capabilities and they function differently.

One logical fallacy corrected:

• The experience of one person on one laptop with one BSD does not equate to all persons, all laptops, all BSDs.

3 members found this post helpful.

Posting again to quote cynwulf, regarding the BSD family of operating systems:

dude ... a nice and EASY tuto , screencast, step by step , to install open ?

The OpenBSD FAQ has step-by-step installation instructions. (I know. Reading...ugh! Isn't there a Youtube video?)

While OpenBSD is a small, simple, elegant OS, it isn't for everyone. Many newcomers are astonished to discover the amount of self-sufficiency required is way above their expectations. Such as the amount of detail requested by the Project in problem reports.

Why is self-sufficiency required? There are two key reasons:

1. The project is very small. The number of developers ebbs and flows, as it is a volunteer project, with 133 active developers mentioned in the 6.1 release announcement. They do not have sufficient resources.
2. The OS is written by and for those developers, for their use. We users get to come along for the ride, if we like what they produce.

With that out of the way, start by reading the first two chapters of the OpenBSD FAQ. It's not a terribly huge investment of your time, so you will find out very quickly the answer to the question, "Is OpenBSD possibly the right OS for me?"

• If those chapters are TL;DR for you, you'll know immediately the answer is, "Nope."
• If those chapters are mainly clear and understandable, you'll know the answer is, "Yup."
• If the chapters are mostly confusing to you, you'll know this answer is, "Not quite yet."

One more thing: The FAQ is the only official "how to" for OpenBSD, and the man pages are considered the definitive documentation. So be wary of any third party how to documentation or advice. Much of it is out-of-date and written by justifiably proud newbies.

1 members found this post helpful.

It sounds as if Bruno Maximo e Melo (whoever he is) may have had some hardware compatibility issues.

FreeBSD maintains a hardware compatibility list on their website. It appears that adequate homework may not have been done.

Mac OS X is based on BSD and Apple's core computer business is laptops..

1 members found this post helpful.

Yeah, things have moved on from the original BSD several decades ago. FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonflyBSD are all separate operating systems at this point, having diverged enough from their original forks. Parts are sometimes borrowed between them, but such porting takes a lot of skill and effort, due to the divergence. But actually, the "D" in BSD does still stand for "Distribution", as in Berkeley Software Distribution.

About the general use of the word, "distribution", it refers to a complete set for an operating system including a kernel, supporting libraries and utilities, package managers (these days), and which includes at least some pre-configured defaults. So GhostBSD and TrueOS are distributions, though they are FreeBSD distributions and not Linux distributions. While "distribution" may be often conflated with "Linux distribution" because they are so common, the term applies equally to FreeBSD distributions like GhostBSD and TrueOS.

Also the iOS running on iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, Apple TVs, and even Apple Watches are all running a BSD-based OS.

I have FreeBSD 11 running on my laptop and it works fine. Battery life is particularly good. Backlight control can be a sticking point with some of the cheaper laptops because the fn key combinations are not via hardware, but used in conjunction with some windows based hotkeys service provided by the vendor. Touchpad features often depends on the driver. I can't remember the brand of the touchpad, but it's not a synaptic and it basically works like a mouse in FreeBSD, in OpenBSD on the same hardware I can get edge scrolling, etc.

Proprietary GPU drivers are another red herring. Unless you're playing games, they're essentially not much use. I haven't used them in any *BSD or Linux for years. I expect if you have the latest graphics card you might have to, but in my experience the open source xf86 drivers are far better.

FreeBSD and OpenBSD have ported the KMS/DRM intel and radeon drivers from the Linux kernel. This has been the case for a few years now. The difficult one is nouveau, there is not much interest in this from the OpenBSD project (nvidia graphics are officially not supported) and FreeBSD tends to rely on the blob. I believe NetBSD are working on porting nouveau.

macOS and iOS are based on Darwin in fact which uses the XNU hybrid kernel (which was in turn based on the MACH microkernel and FreeBSD). The OS is based on BSD and is a UNIX, but it's so far diverged that the "BSD family" categorisation doesn't mean a lot nowadays. Darwin is actually the continuation, of a sort, of NeXSTEP itself based on the last of the BSD releases.
And the "distribution" in BSD does not equate to the "distribution" in "Linux distribution".

This is simply not correct. In Linux terms, TrueOS is to FreeBSD what Ubuntu is to Debian. So one could even say that Ubuntu is a "Debian distribution"...

FreeBSD is a complete OS - anything based on FreeBSD is not a "distribution" it's simply based on FreeBSD.

Linux distributions are distributions because historically Linux was source based and to use it, one had to build all components from source, usually from a chroot from another running system. A distribution is when someone puts together a working OS from Linux, glibc, the GNU userland/coreutils, X and other applications, etc and distributes that for others to use (via the WWW).

The definition and evolution of a "Linux distribution" is entirely different to how the few *BSD projects are developed.

Man, if there was ever a case for trying it in a VM, this is it.

Installing any of the BSDs requires knowledge... and they don't make any apology for that, because everything you need to know is documented. If you're looking for an easy answer, this ain't it... The answer here is RTFM, because that's where you'll always find it.

There is some truth in the quote you posted, but from your sig, it looks like you're seeking refuge from the "apparently" inevitable.

"Switch to systemd ? over my dead body ! : )
Broken by design: systemd"

I fully understand where you're coming from. The BSDs sound like Paradise, especially with Lumina, the DE doesn't need any *crapkit.

But you might also consider that the cooler heads from the Debian camp decided to fork the project instead of abandoning it.

So try Devuan, or, better yet, try Slackware.

1 members found this post helpful.

Exactly!
At the moment I'm running OpenBSD 6.1 on two laptops, my Lenovo T410, and my old HP G62. I have also used FreeBSD 11.0 on these laptops. Both laptops run BSDs very well.
OpenBSD provides exceptional documentation. The OpenBSD community expects that you will read the ample material. OpenBSD is designed by developers for developers. OpenBSD will not hold your hand. Unlike other operating systems the OpenBSD crowd does not encourage newcomers to use OpenBSD. OpenBSD is my favourite BSD.
FreeBSD also has exceptional documentation. Everything you need is in the FreeBSD Handbook. The Handbook details how to install FreeBSD, set up networking, firewalls, ntp, etc.

A lot of experienced Linux users gravitate to the BSDs, but not many newbies start with BSD, that's why projects like DesktopBSD didn't survive, they were trying to be Linux.

With BSD, you mainly build up from a basic operating system, adding programs, into what you want your system to be.

Hear, Hear!

I spent like a day or two installing and reinstalling Solaris on a VM, and since it is a commercial product (although available free for personal use) and is maintained by ORACLE you'd think it'd be easy to install. But it's really not, especially if you want to customize the installation to get it just the way you want it! Now I'm trying to install the ORACLE 12c Database and it's even worse! I finally got it almost done, but apparently the shared memory isn't set up right, there must be some stupid line missing in one of the thousands of files!

well ... that is true ! i'm testing and writing from GhostBSD and i can confirm THAT ! !