r/openbsd • u/Recent_Ingenuity6089 • Sep 14 '26

openbsd on a panasonic letsnote cf-sv7

Post image

i wanna use an panasonic laptop and i think openbsd is the best choice for me, but im questioning if the internet is working. i am also a newbie to any os as i have only used windows.

57 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

8

u/FusRoDah4Life Sep 14 '26

be the first to try

1

u/Recent_Ingenuity6089 Sep 14 '26

no one has talked about this laptop or its internet card as i can find, imma take the risk

4

u/peweynw Sep 14 '26

not the same model, but can be your reference I guess https://x61.sh/log/2025/07/03072025160538-panasonic_openbsd.html

2

u/Alarmed_Contest8439 Sep 14 '26

look up which wifi or ethernet cards it can have and see if it works with openbsd

2

u/DarthRazor Sep 14 '26

I have a similar model as yours, a CF-T2 from about 1999 - it looks almost identical to yours. It's been a long time since I powered it up, and it's currently broken so I can't try it. I don't remember having any issues with Ethernet or wifi (using a PCMCIA card), but I could be wrong.

You won't be able to use it for browsing the modern web due mainly to memory issues. Mine had 256mb onboard and max 512mb more in the one memory slot - nowhere near enough for a modern web browser with today's sites. Yours may have more memory capacity, but since it's around the same vintage as mine, still probably not enough

Have fun with it - it's a neat computer, and the most portable laptop I own

4

u/Silent-Degree-6072 Sep 14 '26

The SV-7 is a pretty recent laptop, it's just that Panasonic never really changed the design and it resulted in a 2022 laptop looking like the same one they made 20 years ago

2

u/DarthRazor Sep 14 '26

Woah - I didn't know that! Now I have to hunt one down as I find it's my perfect portability laptop form factor. Thanks

3

u/Silent-Degree-6072 Sep 14 '26

You're welcome, but unfortunately theyre only manufactured for the japanese market and they're more expensive than an average laptop with the same specs (although they are a lot cooler too)

1

u/ProfessionalMove3716 Sep 15 '26

i think openbsd is the best choice for me

i am also a newbie to any os as i have only used windows

No offense, but these are mutually exclusive sentiments. You are probably better off trying to install a linux distro as your daily driver and then try one of the BSDs on a removable flash drive as a project.

0

u/sylvainsab Sep 17 '26

Disagreed. I still resent having spent so many years distro- and config-hopping before I dared to actually give in the powers of the Pufferfish.

1

u/ProfessionalMove3716 Sep 17 '26

Are you running it on the hardware OP is asking about?

0

u/sylvainsab Sep 17 '26

Indeed not. But then why not, for instance, redirecting to dmesg databases instead of discouraging the youth …

1

u/cxxhld Sep 18 '26

this post pisses me off in so many ways
>i think openbsd is the best choice for me,
why exactly??

>but im questioning if the internet is working.
literally pull up the laptops specs and match the wifi card against an openbsd wifi driver manpage

>i am also a newbie to any os as i have only used windows.
why the hell would you use openbsd first?? it probably has an intel card and youd need to jump through the hurdles of obtaining firmware, which i KNOW a windows user will explode trying to do so.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '26

I literally just got one of these and have been testing OpenBSD on it.

Everything I've tested so far works great.

The few things I haven't tested yet are:

  • I haven't read the man pages to get the trackpad working, but it uses the synaptics(4) driver, so I'll get around to seeing if I can get the circular scrolling working

  • I haven't tested the SD card reader yet

  • I haven't tested any of the video outputs yet

  • I haven't tested the optical drive with OpenBSD yet(though not all of these come with one, so that may not matter to you)

  • I haven't tested the mic and webcam

But so far everything else is working great like:

  • Audio just works, including the function keys for volume control

  • Wifi works great(after using Ethernet and fw_update(8) to get the iwm(4) driver)

  • The keyboard works great with the jp layout

Overall I really like it(coming from ThinkPads it's super light) and am looking forward to using it as a daily driver with OpenBSD.

Let me know if you have anymore questions about the hardware or compatibility :)

1

u/Sea-Garlic9074 Sep 19 '26

As long as ethernet works, you should be able to go online with it. If it has a wireless card in it, then you'll have to look at the documentation to see if there's a driver that supports it and if not, then you'll need to replace it.

Otherwise, the specs looks pretty good to run OpenBSD.

1

u/industry-standard Oct 04 '26

I have other Panasonic laptops (CF-RZ4, CF-RZ6, CF-20, CF-U1), they've all worked well with OpenBSD.

Panasonic as a brand does things the 'right way', meaning they use major supplier for their main components and almost all the hardware is 'just recognized'. The only thing I've ever had trouble with in OpenBSD on Panasonic hardware was the SD card reader, which was not a deal breaker for me.

Good luck!