With FreeBSD having worked on improving its laptop support over the past two years with some big changes and ongoing efforts for making a nice KDE desktop experience on FreeBSD, FreeBSD Foundation's Executive Director has been trying to daily drive FreeBSD on laptops.
Similar to the Linux Foundation Executive Director at least in the past being seen at conferences running Apple macOS, it turns out FreeBSD Executive Director Deb Goodkin until recently hasn't been running FreeBSD as the daily OS on her laptop/desktop hardware. Deb Goodkin presented at last week's Open Source Summit hosted by the Linux Foundation in Minneapolis on her experience trying out FreeBSD on modern laptop hardware.
As the Executive Director of the FreeBSD Foundation since 2005, she noted in the past every time she tried running FreeBSD on laptops "it felt like a mountain" and ultimately getting stuck and it being time consuming. Using a Framework Laptop, she tried FreeBSD as a daily driver for at least 10 minutes a day.
With the Framework Laptop, the touchscreen "just worked" as did other basic functionality from the KDE desktop on FreeBSD, including peripherals like a wireless mouse.
Among the challenges were Zoom failing for video calls but eventually working, the web camera took steps to enable, and Microsoft Teams only partially worked. With the help of online resources, ultimately she was able to succeed in her journey of running FreeBSD daily on a laptop.
Those wishing to learn more about Deb's experience running FreeBSD on laptop as a daily system can see the presentation assets from OSS 2026 on the presentation page.
Instagram Engineering
Shopify Engineering