FreeBSD on a Dell Latitude D600

Graphics

Since I want to play with accelerated OpenGL, this is where I expected trouble, with having to download separate binary-only drivers and what not. But to my surprise, I just started up X11, and had working DRI before even trying.

This is how it should work, and how it does work with FreeBSD and Xorg.

Sound and removable media

The sound driver didn’t load by default, but adding the line snd_ich_load="YES" to the file /boot/loader.conf took care of that.

Playing and reading audio and data CD:s just works, as well as playing DVD movies (using xine).

Mounting my umass mp3 player also just works, but to allow myself to mount it as myself (rather than having to su), I add vfs.usermount=1 to /etc/sysctl.conf. To make the mounting more convenient, so I just have to type mount /mnt/pod rather than a full set of options, I also add a line to /etc/fstab:

/dev/da0s1	/mnt/pod	msdos	rw,noauto	0	0

Notice the noauto option! Since the drive needs to be explicitly unmounted before I remove it, I don’t want it to mount itself automatically at any time.

ACPI / Battery status

The ACPI reporting of battery status also just works, as well as the gnome panel applet for reporting it. There is also an applet for lowering CPU frequency (for longer battery time) that just works.