"Short time"? Look, I appreciate that you mean the development time for the feature to be added, but S0+network was introduced over a decade ago. Early versions were in Windows 8. It shipped in Windows 8.1 in 2013. Your link is from 2025 where they're talking about S3 support no longer existing at the hardware level.
I'm really happy BSD is getting support, but they literally waited until hardware for the deprecated standard to cease to exist before implementing the new support.
Even on Windows, the S0 era of sleep has been horrible. Regular stories about laptops coming to life in the night: fully draining the battery and/or cooking themselves in a bag.
If this is what Microsoft called "connected standby" it's worth noting that the early implementation of this even on Surface hardware with Windows 8 was hot garbage. It liked to wake itself up in your bag and completely drain the battery while cooking the computer from lack of ventilation. I made a point of always turning the Surface the whole way off any time I packed it up because it was so unreliable. Best case the battery drained like 5% per hour.
Hopefully the initial BSD implementation is better than Windows did.
I keep waiting for the mythical day I can walk into a random computer store, and pick a laptop on display with either FreeBSD, or most common Linux distros, already pre-installed and 100% supported hardware.
Last time I was able to do that was with netbooks, and even those were mostly OEM specific distros without updates, if we wanted to actually have 100% supported hardware.
If you just want a browser and notepad - then ANY system would do - even Android on X86 PC.
If you want a powerful development/work environment - and you do like what and how Linux provides here - use Linux - but as I was not satisfied with what/how Linux provided I looked somewhere else and I landed in FreeBSD.
Here are some of the reasons and conclusions I came to after using FreeBSD (and also Linux/AIX/HP-UX/Solaris in various jobs) for about 20 years.
None. If you have a particular fondness for FreeBSD and its particular set of behaviors: great. Then use it. If you really like jails, and for some reason need them on a laptop, and really don't like Linux containers, then, great.
The browser and desktop and terminal you'll inevitably want to use aren't any more part of that "complete" OS than they are on Linux (and in many ways FreeBSD Ports is more immature / less well-integrated than Linux packages).
While You can spend some hours installing Linux with ZFSBootMenu and LUKS encrypted Root on ZFS - there are ZERO Linux distributions that allow ZFS Boot Environments out of the box.
That is the reason 'why' Linux is not the first class ZFS citizen.
That's not my experience at all. Macs are great on battery, but BSDs are not, they are by far the worst. Linux usually does ok, often better than windows, at least once properly set up. I only run BSD on my "never leave home/stay tethered" laptops because they only get 3-4 hours where Linux will get 8-12.
It seems like the 6.16 and 6.17 kernels should allow for some pretty good improvements on battery and sleep mgt across more hardware from what I understand.
Traditionally, most FreeBSD developers would actually run OS X on their laptops, whereas most OpenBSD developers would still use OpenBSD even on laptops.
This was especially notable at BSD-wide events like BSDCan, AsiaBSDCon, EuroBSDCon etc.
OpenBSD supports suspend to disk, whereas FreeBSD does not. (Is this being changed as part of this laptop project?)
OpenBSD has always supported graphics, sound and other desktop things in the default kernel, without having to tinker with kernel config or loadable kernel modules. FreeBSD? http://cr.yp.to/unix/feedme.html
Also, on OpenBSD, the basic X is part of the base system, in the xenocara repository, and it basically just works, straight from the default installer:
OpenBSD actually does NOT support loadable kernel modules at all, and you're strongly discouraged from running a customer kernel, too. This has a side effect that both graphics and sound works out of the box, since deviation from defaults is discouraged, and if it didn't work by default, it'd not be recommended in the first place.
On FreeBSD, even the most basic X stuff is part of the Ports tree, which basically implies that most installations wouldn't have it, and it's often far less integrated, and requires way more tinkering, than xenocara on OpenBSD. For example, when you know most of your installations wouldn't have X, would you have graphics and sound support in the default kernel, or would that require further tinkering of the kernel config and/or LKM?
(On both systems, you still install KDE and GNOME from ports/packages, if needed, it's only the lightweight basic X and WM stuff that's part of OpenBSD base xenocara.)
So, even though FreeBSD is faster and more popular in many ways, to most people's surprise, OpenBSD actually has better laptop support.
For example, I installed FreeBSD on an old laptop and had to fiddle with building Xorg to get a GUI. Same laptop on OpenBSD just worked after running the installer.
Yup, that's because X is part of OpenBSD base system, called xenocara, whereas in FreeBSD, you have to use the Ports tree to install Xorg.
Ports tree in general is a great way to install third-party software, but not necessarily for Xorg.
You still install KDE or GNOME through ports/packages on both systems, but X being more tightly integrated with the base system has benefits in reducing complexity for the rest of the components.
Man pages are close enough to OpenBSD. Httpd is there, but renamed to obhttpd.
There are some differences between PF and relayd for example, but not too difficult to switch.
I'm currently running FreeBSD on a gen3 Intel T14. It's been excellent so far, however one minor annoyance has been S3 suspend/resume. Well, suspend works fine, but resuming triggers a restart. I'm hoping the recent S0ix work might fix that.
Seeing modern standby is pretty insane in such a short time; it was one of the most attended talks in the BSD talks at FOSDEM:
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6390-wake...
Also pretty impressive because Aymeric started as a GSoC contributor and is now sponsored to work on BSD by the foundation.
"Short time"? Look, I appreciate that you mean the development time for the feature to be added, but S0+network was introduced over a decade ago. Early versions were in Windows 8. It shipped in Windows 8.1 in 2013. Your link is from 2025 where they're talking about S3 support no longer existing at the hardware level.
I'm really happy BSD is getting support, but they literally waited until hardware for the deprecated standard to cease to exist before implementing the new support.
That's not a short amount of time.
Even on Windows, the S0 era of sleep has been horrible. Regular stories about laptops coming to life in the night: fully draining the battery and/or cooking themselves in a bag.
If this is what Microsoft called "connected standby" it's worth noting that the early implementation of this even on Surface hardware with Windows 8 was hot garbage. It liked to wake itself up in your bag and completely drain the battery while cooking the computer from lack of ventilation. I made a point of always turning the Surface the whole way off any time I packed it up because it was so unreliable. Best case the battery drained like 5% per hour.
Hopefully the initial BSD implementation is better than Windows did.
FreeBSD is the first thing I try to install on a new laptop. Once I play around for an hour I install Linux for the hardware support and move on.
I can't wait until the experience is good enough that I can stay on it.
I keep waiting for the mythical day I can walk into a random computer store, and pick a laptop on display with either FreeBSD, or most common Linux distros, already pre-installed and 100% supported hardware.
Last time I was able to do that was with netbooks, and even those were mostly OEM specific distros without updates, if we wanted to actually have 100% supported hardware.
Not exactly a new laptop, but a few days ago I spent a similar period (around an hour) toying with FreeBSD on an HP EliteBook 660 16" (G11).
Very rough notes – things were rushed (squeezing as much as possible into the end of a Friday afternoon):
https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1mey64f/hp_elitebo...
What advantages does FreeBSD bring on a laptop versus Linux?
If you just want a browser and notepad - then ANY system would do - even Android on X86 PC.
If you want a powerful development/work environment - and you do like what and how Linux provides here - use Linux - but as I was not satisfied with what/how Linux provided I looked somewhere else and I landed in FreeBSD.
Here are some of the reasons and conclusions I came to after using FreeBSD (and also Linux/AIX/HP-UX/Solaris in various jobs) for about 20 years.
Here:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/
None. If you have a particular fondness for FreeBSD and its particular set of behaviors: great. Then use it. If you really like jails, and for some reason need them on a laptop, and really don't like Linux containers, then, great.
Not OP, but off the top of my head, it's a complete OS, kernel and user land are released as a whole.
I last ran it about two decades ago, so it's been a while.
The browser and desktop and terminal you'll inevitably want to use aren't any more part of that "complete" OS than they are on Linux (and in many ways FreeBSD Ports is more immature / less well-integrated than Linux packages).
First-class ZFS support is pretty compelling for any usecase.
Kubuntu 25.04 here, root on OpenZFS thanks to the installer for Ubuntu.
How is OpenZFS second class on Linux?
<https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/> is not perceptibly FreeBSD-first.
Root on ZFS is not a problem.
While You can spend some hours installing Linux with ZFSBootMenu and LUKS encrypted Root on ZFS - there are ZERO Linux distributions that allow ZFS Boot Environments out of the box.
That is the reason 'why' Linux is not the first class ZFS citizen.
LUKS-encrypted root on ZFS does not take hours. I chose encryption when I installed the OS.
Cool, one of the best features of ZFS on FreeBSD is to boot into a snapshot. ZFS boot environments are really cool.
You can get that with ZFS Boot Menu on Linux too. It was inspired by the FreeBSD boot loader.
Anecdotally speaking, in terms of battery life, BSDs (+macOS) > Windows > Linux.
Linux does not play nice with batteries.
That's not my experience at all. Macs are great on battery, but BSDs are not, they are by far the worst. Linux usually does ok, often better than windows, at least once properly set up. I only run BSD on my "never leave home/stay tethered" laptops because they only get 3-4 hours where Linux will get 8-12.
I suspect it has improved. I'm getting 8 hours out of my 5 year old T480s and I recall getting 4 hours or so when I bought it.
With which battery? Cause on my T480 with FreeBSD I can ramp it to about 14 hours.
Why could that be? Maybe the Linux distro you choose was too bloated and caused battery drain?
Because of no proper battery management, which was only recently merged.
It seems like the 6.16 and 6.17 kernels should allow for some pretty good improvements on battery and sleep mgt across more hardware from what I understand.
"CURRENT" is scheduled become 15.0 by the end of the year:
* https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/schedule/
* https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/
Technically it's already 15.0, but 15.0-CURRENT is scheduled to branch off 15.0-STABLE, which then branches off 15.0-RELEASE.
Earlier I used FreeBSD on ThinkPad W520 (because keyboard):
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/freebsd-13-1-on-th...
.. and recently moved to FrankenPad T25 that is based on T480 (because keyboard):
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/06/26/freebsd-14-3-on-fr...
I do everything on FreeBSD including work.
Some of the topics I covered:
- Unlock Laptop with Phone
- Conferencing and Meetings
- Netflix Signal Telegram
- Network Management with network.sh
- FreeBSD Power Management
- FreeBSD Suspend/Resume
- Oldschool Gaming on FreeBSD
- Minecraft Server in FreeBSD Jails Container
- Secure Containerized Browser
- Print on FreeBSD
- Scan on FreeBSD
- Sensible Firefox Setup
- Operate Android Device on FreeBSD
- FreeBSD Alongside Windows
To just name a few ... because I am slowly closing to 200 of these FreeBSD related articles.
Regards, vermaden> Operate Android Device on FreeBSD
Can you clarify by what this means? Does that mean running Android in an emulator or something else? Thanks
Your blog was super helpful getting my machine set up, thanks!
Does anyone know if there's been any efforts towards running freeBSD on arm64 laptops?
On Linux there's been some effort:
https://www.linaro.org/blog/linux-on-snapdragon-x-elite/
Ed: hn discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699393
https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/software-bill-of-material...
I have been how very surprised how well supported FreeBSD has been on my MSI Modern laptop.
zfs and boot encryption make it perfect.
I could do FreeBSD on my laptop I think. I don't play games, and I've been wanting to play around with kqueue.
Is it sort of like OpenBSD? I liked their manpages and their built in server thing (httpd). or is it completely different...
Traditionally, most FreeBSD developers would actually run OS X on their laptops, whereas most OpenBSD developers would still use OpenBSD even on laptops.
This was especially notable at BSD-wide events like BSDCan, AsiaBSDCon, EuroBSDCon etc.
OpenBSD supports suspend to disk, whereas FreeBSD does not. (Is this being changed as part of this laptop project?)
OpenBSD has always supported graphics, sound and other desktop things in the default kernel, without having to tinker with kernel config or loadable kernel modules. FreeBSD? http://cr.yp.to/unix/feedme.html
Also, on OpenBSD, the basic X is part of the base system, in the xenocara repository, and it basically just works, straight from the default installer:
https://xenocara.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenocara
OpenBSD actually does NOT support loadable kernel modules at all, and you're strongly discouraged from running a customer kernel, too. This has a side effect that both graphics and sound works out of the box, since deviation from defaults is discouraged, and if it didn't work by default, it'd not be recommended in the first place.
On FreeBSD, even the most basic X stuff is part of the Ports tree, which basically implies that most installations wouldn't have it, and it's often far less integrated, and requires way more tinkering, than xenocara on OpenBSD. For example, when you know most of your installations wouldn't have X, would you have graphics and sound support in the default kernel, or would that require further tinkering of the kernel config and/or LKM?
(On both systems, you still install KDE and GNOME from ports/packages, if needed, it's only the lightweight basic X and WM stuff that's part of OpenBSD base xenocara.)
So, even though FreeBSD is faster and more popular in many ways, to most people's surprise, OpenBSD actually has better laptop support.
This is very helpful information, thank you!
One big difference is OpenBSD is easier.
For example, I installed FreeBSD on an old laptop and had to fiddle with building Xorg to get a GUI. Same laptop on OpenBSD just worked after running the installer.
Yup, that's because X is part of OpenBSD base system, called xenocara, whereas in FreeBSD, you have to use the Ports tree to install Xorg.
Ports tree in general is a great way to install third-party software, but not necessarily for Xorg.
You still install KDE or GNOME through ports/packages on both systems, but X being more tightly integrated with the base system has benefits in reducing complexity for the rest of the components.
Man pages are close enough to OpenBSD. Httpd is there, but renamed to obhttpd. There are some differences between PF and relayd for example, but not too difficult to switch.
I'm currently running FreeBSD on a gen3 Intel T14. It's been excellent so far, however one minor annoyance has been S3 suspend/resume. Well, suspend works fine, but resuming triggers a restart. I'm hoping the recent S0ix work might fix that.
Which version of FreeBSD, exactly?
freebsd-version -kru ; uname -aKU
pkg repos -el | sort -f
pkg repos -e | grep url
I'm not familiar with the meaning of T14, sorry.
Does the Wi-Fi hardware use iwlwifi(4)?
A kernel panic when waking from sleep might relate to the graphics driver.