Small correction: the AX211 card in the Framework 12 is able to connect to networks, not just scan. What you're missing is that a bunch of the Wi-Fi firmware blobs were removed from the base system between FreeBSD 14.2 and 14.3, and since 14.3 came out in June 2025 I assume that's what was tested. An upgrade from 14.2 to 14.3 would also have kept working, just not a fresh install of 14.3 or 15.0.
A user needs some other working network connection first. I used my Android phone's USB tethering — all that takes is a quick `dhclient ue0`. Then one can run `fwget` to get the firmware that will make the Wi-Fi work fully: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?fwget%288%29
Source: very happy Framework 12 owner (currently dual-booting Windows 11 Enterprise and FreeBSD 15.0 + Wayland + KDE) :)
I have tried this very same combination - F12 + FreeBSD + KDE on Wayland and WiFi works to me out of the box (even during installation!), but a lot of things doesn’t work for me - suspend and resume doesn’t work at all (even when I blacklist WiFi kernel module - suspend starts working, but resume doesn’t). A lot of apps on KDE also crash for me - every time I try to run Konqueror or Falkon they crash immediately).
This is great. I've been checking on it periodically. I'm using the Framework 13 Ryzen AI 300 and the Framework Desktop so not quite there yet. Interested in taking FreeBSD for a spin when the support is there.
I can't speak to it driving a monitor over USB-C as I don't use one, but I'm currently running 15.0-RELEASE on a refurbished Dell Latitude 7280 that has worked flawlessly out of the box so far.
Somebody else did a nice writeup [0] on their experience with FBSD on the same laptop.
> Improving FreeBSD will make it easier to run BSD on non-apple hardware which will eat into their bottom line.
The number of people who want to run FreeBSD on their laptops probably numbers in the hundreds. Not exactly a threat to Apple's bottom line.
On the other hand, some of those people are FreeBSD developers who create and maintain code that Apple would like to have the option of using. That relationship is worth something to Apple.
>On the other hand, some of those people are FreeBSD developers who create and maintain code that Apple would like to have the option of using. That relationship is worth something to Apple.
It wasn't that long ago that we used to have to endure HN commenters spamming the same copypasta every time BSD was mentioned: "did you know BSD runs your playstation and netflix and <...>. You should donate money!"
Evidently it's not worth more than the cost of assigning engineers to this, otherwise Apple would already be doing it.
There's no GPL in the BSD sources used by Apple or Sony. They are free to release their operating systems as closed source; Sony does this. Apple releases Darwin sources "out of the goodness of their hearts", meaning, back in the 2000s they wanted to capture mindshare amongst the tech community for whom Linux was the strongest contender. Now that the future has refused to change, the year of the Linux desktop never materialized, and macOS has become the default developer's workstation OS, Apple has been much more sparing with Darwin source drops and may cease them altogether.
GPL where applicable. If it's MIT or just "as is" then no, they won't but they definitely publish the sources to what they are required to. Since FreeBSD is "as is" 4.4BSD licensed, they aren't required to publish the sources of Orbis.
> I'm curious why you think Apple making their hardware work with more operating systems does not benefit their bottom line.
Because they sell and advertise MacOS. Not "compatible with a wide range of OSes" (like say raspberry pis).
People buying a laptop due to goodwill and openness does happen (I bought my framework 13 due to that), but that's not a game Apple has played since Woz left - and for the worse, I think.
You can modify the source code, you can commercialize it. You just have to give access to the source code to users that interact with it over a network.
> Anyone who’s fought with CMake or dealt with header file dependencies knows this pain. For a small team trying to move quickly, we didn’t want to waste time debugging build configuration issues.
I find this take a bit hard to believe. There's no way that Zig is some kind of magic bullet that avoids build configuration challenges. Especially not considering you are building a browser on top of V8 in a different programming language.
CMake is quite crufty, but there's toolchains for every system under the Sun and this is what makes it actually less painful in a lot of cases. Glossing over your build files it does not look particularly scalable or portable. Nice that Zig allows you to write build config in Zig though.
I think CMake is cool when it works, but debugging it when it doesn't is hell. I've often spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out why doesn't it pick up library paths.
And although I know Microsoft is uncool, I still want to shill vckpkg as it seems they finally managed to create a usable cross platform package manager for C++
My requirements are: suspend/resume, being able to drive a 5K monitor over USB-C, wifi.
I found https://wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops but I don't know how up-to-date it is.
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