The Freebsd Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project
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The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support and Usability Project has sparked a lively debate about Apple's potential involvement. The original poster wondered why Apple wouldn't support the effort, given their past work with FreeBSD, but commenters quickly pointed out that Apple's business model revolves around selling Macs and promoting macOS, making it unlikely they'd contribute to a project that could make their hardware compatible with other operating systems. As one commenter noted, Apple imports FreeBSD's userland but not its kernel or drivers, so their existing work wouldn't be directly useful to the project. The discussion highlights the tension between Apple's interests and the open-source community's goals.
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Dec 19, 2025 at 9:56 AM EST
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I hate bots!
BSD has a BSD license. It doesn't require source code releases.
Perhaps the person you are responding to is dense enough to know that Apple uses a BSD licensed userland: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/file_cmds
Or perhaps they know that the entire system is built with Clang and LLVM and not GCC.
Apple distributes very little GPL code (like bash) and even then it is only GPL2 (older versions).
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 will buy a Mac to run BSD is a rounding error, and those people won't buy iCloud subscriptions anyway.
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.
Aside from that the answer is "Corporate Goodwill." That actually is a bottom line number that gets reported.
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.
OS-X/macOS runs an entirely different kernel called XNU[0][1], which is why userland tools can be imported whereas FreeBSD kernel and device driver code cannot.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU
1 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu
The OS-X (now branded as "macOS") kernel was not, and is not, a derivative of the FreeBSD kernel, or any other BSD, even though macOS/OS-X has a FreeBSD kernel component due to its Mach heritage. The userland tools are however BSD. OS-X's kernel is XNU and from the XNU GitHub repo[0]:
I recommend the book "Mac OS X Internals"[1] for a detailed analysis of same.0 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu
1 - https://books.apple.com/us/book/mac-os-x-internals/id4343583...
> Exactly.
Also, Mach[0] was created by CMU 40 years ago and is not "based on technology previously used in Apple’s ..." no matter what Apple claims.Since you quoted from the provided archive, so shall I.
Apple named the above "XNU". Since Mach[0] is a micro-kernel architecture, which FreeBSD is not and never has been, there must exist: What I originally stated was: In response to your assertion of: Note my identification of the FreeBSD kernel component being a component, not the kernel itself.0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)
1 - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
2 - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
But hey, Darwin is open source so if someone wants to do go on a provenance archeological dig, it could be done!
I have seen others say that CUPS is.
Anyway, they contribute more than you think.
ie anything Apple didn't create/release themselves
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.
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) :)
- audio - wifi - biometrics - GPU drivers that work well.
I guess I'm pointing out that his experience 20 something years ago is still relevant today, even if there's a lower barrier to entry now.
Currently use my laptop's fingerprint reader under Linux.
But I think the point of FreeBSD is more to provide something that you wouldn't get otherwise, and justifies going above and beyond to get it properly working.
My own anecdote is running the 4x and then 5x versions on my cobbled parts crappy desktop as a student and getting excelent perfs for how cheap it was, while still having linux level CJK and multi-input support and stellar stability.
I wouldn't do that anymore, but hope it stays an option for those with other specific needs that a BSD OS would help.
I’ve bought a few of this vintage (7490’s specifically) and they are plentiful, cheap, and perfectly useable. I put Ubuntu on them, works great.
Think it's been 15+ years since I first tried and hardware only got more complicated and closed than back then