FreeBSD laptop progress

The FreeBSD Foundation has a blogpost about the progress it has made in 2025 on the Laptop Support& Usability Project for FreeBSD. The foundation committed$750,000 to the project in 2025 and has made progress on graphicsdrivers, Wi-Fi4 and 5 support, audio improvements, sleep states,and more.

The installer for FreeBSD has gained a couple of new features thatbenefit laptop users. In 15.0 the installer now supports downloadingand installing firmware packages after the FreeBSD base systeminstallation is complete. Coming in 15.1 it will be possible toinstall the KDE graphical desktop environment during the installationprocess. Grateful thanks to Bjoern Zeeb and Alfonso Sicilianorespectively. [...]

The project continues into 2026 with a similar sized investment andscope. Key targets include completing work on sleep states (modernstandby and hibernate), adding support for graphics drivers up toLinux 6.18, Wi-Fi 6 support, USB4 and Thunderbolt support, HDMIimprovements, UVC webcam support, and Bluetooth improvements.

A substantial testing program will also start in January, aiming totest all the functionality together across a range ofhardware. Community testers are very welcome to help out, theFoundation will release a blog post and send an invite to help to theDesktop mailing list some time in January 2026.