Installing FreeBSD 8 (i386) on a ThinkPad T43

Features

FreeBSD is an UNIX operating system for x86 and others compatible architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a team of individuals.

FreeBSD offers advanced networking, performance, security and compatibility features which are still missing in some of the best commercial operating systems.

FreeBSD makes an ideal Internet or Intranet server. It provides robust network services under the heaviest loads and uses memory efficiently to maintain good response times for thousands of simultaneous user processes. But on notebooks it is a very usable operating system with many features for customization, including power management.

With over 21,000 ported libraries and applications for desktop, server, appliance, and embedded environments, there are many applications which were designed specifically for notebooks.

The best is that FreeBSD is free, and the open source BSD license it is distributed under make sure it will continue to be free. Since FreeBSD is open source and a framework has been set up to easily do so, it is possible to build a custom kernel, allowing faster booting and operation since you can remove any features unneeded in your specific operations.

Installation

Installing FreeBSD Verion 8 i386 on an Thinkpad T43 is obsolete because it does not run anymore.

ATTENTION!

Because of the buggy APIC code it is not possible to run FreeBSD 8 on this machine. Whether the code will ever be repaired is not known. This buggy code is responsible for the not working suspend and resume functions of the operating system. The bug is known since years! Therefore it is the best not to install FreeBSD 8 in this machine.

External links

• The FreeBSD Homepage
• The excellent FreeBSD manual: FreeBSD Handbook
• German forums: BSDGroup.de and BSDForen.de
• FreeBSD Laptop List