Ian's OpenBSD Laptop Status

Here are some of the laptops I have used with OpenBSD over the years, in alphabetical order. As of now, you can expect that most modern-but-not-bleeding-edge laptops will work at least reasonably well with current versions of OpenBSD.

Laptop	Notes
Acer Aspire One A150 (1GB/160GB model)	OpenBSD 4.6-current - pretty much everything works (Sept, 2009). ACPI. Does not suspend/resume. During install, some bsd.rd kernels may spam message like "pckbcintr: no dev for slot 1" making it hard to type, but the live kernel does not give these. You should run with GENERIC.MP; the Atom 270 CPU is "dual threaded" and appears as a dual-core CPU. X works out of the box with no config file (Intel 82945GME Video, 1024x600). As of July 2009, X starts at e.g., 800x600 if you have an external projector plugged in, because the LCD is limited to 600 high. Then switch using xrandr/krandr/lxrandr to 1024x768, the external works at that res but the LCD goes black. Touchpad and both buttons work. Fn+F7 disables touchpad for use with USB mouse, as indicated on keytop. Built-in "SuYin Acer Crystal Eye webcam" works fine but as long as you use YUV format; e.g., luvcview -f yuv ... (Arguably luvcview should be smart enough to auto-detect...). Wired networking works. Wireless does not; recognized as ath0 but does not connect, strange initialization errors: ath0: unable to reset hardware; hal status 1 ath0: unable to reset hardware; hal status 0 Advice: Buy an Intel 4965AN or 5300 Mini-PCIe wireless card. Instructions here for swapping the cards. I installed an Intel 5300 which connects as iwn and works fine, even down to the "laptop power switch" working. "Storage Extension" a.k.a. "left hand SD card slot" works fine. "Card reader" a.k.a. "right hand SD card slot" is actually multi-function, also reading other formats, but only SD works on OpenBSD, and only if you have a card in at boot time (or disable ACPI). See detailed write-up at undeadly.org dmesg
Acer Aspire One (A250)	Pretty similar to A150 above. Note: 32-bit CPU so must use i386 install.
Apple Macbook Pro (2012) (model MacbookPro9,2)	OpenBSD 6.8-current works fine (amd64) ACPI suspend/resume works The SD card slot works (though they often develop hardware problems; mine is finnicky) dmesg
Compaq Presario R4035	OpenBSD 4.x-current (Jun 2009) works in both i386 and amd64 mode. CardBus works if you update the BIOS or change PCIBIOS to "flags 1" using boot -c or using a custom kernel X works out of the box. Wireless card works as bwi(4), but starts interrupt storm after minutes, so not really usable. Get a cheap USB wireless. Sound works, sort of: the chipset seems to be stuck at 48KHz whereas most software expects to be able to set it to 44.1 KHz (so sound comes out at slightly wrong speed). The SD card (sdhc(4)/sdmmc(4)) memory slot does not work. dmesg
Dell Lattitude LMP-133ST	Note this was incredibly ancient: the CPU was a Pentium at 133MHz. Generic kernel works. APM mostly works. XFree86 v3 worked fine (8 bit only). XF4.0 works with several problems, a band of pixels shifted down and unreadability of the alternate virtual consoles (the latter apparently fixed in current XF4).
Dell Lattitude E6500	Did not have this machine long enough to test, but just got a dmesg. dmesg
Dell Studio 15 (model 1558)	OpenBSD 4.8-current (Dec 2010) works fine (amd64 mode tested) Be sure to order with the Intel Wireless; the Broadcom is not yet supported ACPI suspend/resume works At least one of the SD card slot works See detailed write-up at undeadly.org dmesg
Framework Laptop	7.0 works (some users have issues with suspend/resume) Intel Core i5, 16GB Ram, 1TB NVME SSD. AX210 wireless card not supported (as of Nov 2021); using AX201 instead Mine is from the "first batch" See detailed write-up on I Tried That. dmesg
HP EliteBook 8460p	OpenBSD 6.9 works fine (amd64) ACPI suspend/resume works SD card slot works, if you can find it. Docking station works incl serial, parallel printer ports, ethernet, VGA, power. dmesg