[oi-dev] OI HCL - AMD Laptops with RJ45 Port

[Atiq Rahman]

Happy Friday, everyone!

A friendly nudge on this thread before I commit to a machine. I'm planning
to buy and dedicate a mobile workstation to OpenIndiana/illumos development,
and firsthand reports on recent or slightly older hardware would be a big
help.

My current machine has been less of a workstation and more of a lesson in
patience: I haven't been able to get either the GUI or networking working.
I know accelerated AMD graphics is a separate challenge, but I'd especially
welcome reports on booting and wired Ethernet. Has anyone tried the P14s
Gen 6 or Gen 7, or found another laptop that works well? If a small desktop
is the safer bet, I'd be glad to hear that too.

Thanks, and have a good weekend!

Cheers,
Atiq

On 9/20/26 14:41, Atiq Rahman wrote:
 > Hi,
 > Or, is the suggestion to stick to desktop workstations for better
 > support e.g., ThinkCentre M75q Gen 5 Tiny (AMD) PC (has AMD Ryzen™ PRO
 > 8000 Series processors) ?
 >
 > Best,
 > Atiq
 >
 > On 9/19/26 18:05, Atiq Rahman wrote:
 >> Hi Joshua and list,
 >> It has been about a year since our last exchange on AMD desktop
 >> qualification. I hope everyone is doing well.
 >>
 >> I am looking to go the laptop route for greater portability and wanted
 >> to check how recent AMD hardware is currently looking under
 >> OpenIndiana and illumos.
 >>
 >> Specifically, I am evaluating these two models, both featuring native
 >> RJ-45 Ethernet ports:
 >> - ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 (14″ AMD)
 >> - ThinkPad P14s Gen 7 (14″ AMD)
 >>
 >> Between these two, would Gen 6 be expected to have better
 >> out-of-the-box stability on illumos than Gen 7? Keeping in mind our
 >> earlier discussion that DRM/accelerated graphics (amdgpu) is not yet
 >> supported in illumos and that the UEFI static framebuffer is the
 >> expected fallback, my main concern is reliable wired networking
 >> (e.g., rge(4D) for the onboard Realtek NIC), NVMe storage, and general
 >> ACPI/boot stability.
 >>
 >> Has anyone on the list had a chance to test either machine—particularly
 >> the Gen 7 on a recent OpenIndiana release?
 >>
 >> If not, has anyone found other recent AMD laptops where the wired NIC
 >> works reliably on illumos? (I do not expect modern Wi-Fi to attach,
 >> though it would be a welcome bonus if it did.)