New subject: Fwd: CentOS on new Dell

27 Oct 2016


      On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 8:11 PM, Milos Blazevic milos.blazevic@sbb.rs wrote:
...
I've seen the thread(s) you started on CentOS mailing list about Dell and ThinkPad
laptops and running Centos on 'em.
Not sure if you've seen my question, but I'm considering to purchase a laptop, run EL7 on it, and I'm weighing between the Thinkpad and Latitude, so:
What was it to make you opt for E7470 over, say, Carbon X1? According to RedHat's Hardware compatility list Carbon models are certified,
while none of the Dell's aren't.
Also, have you given up on CentOS over Fedora? I'd love to hear how's CentOS 7 support for E7470 hardware.
Hi Milos,
The Thinkpad T series and Latitude are *very* similar computers. They
are both business "ultrabooks" with a 1600x1080 display option, nice
keyboards (not "chicklet" style), a trackpoint and trackpad and RJ-45
builtin.
I bought a Dell Latitude E7470 over the Lenovo for several reasons.
One is this comment which is worth mentioning again:
On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 11:58 PM, Gordon Messmer
gordon.messmer@gmail.com wrote:
...
It's worth mentioning again that Dell is one of the companies doing the
development for the bits that don't work, and that those drivers are often
the ones that get Lenovo equipment going, too. Lenovo does not, to the best
of my knowledge, do any Linux development.
Another reason is that I have heard about people having problems with
Lenovo. Not just with software but with hardware malfunctions. I spoke
to someone on the phone that had hardware problems with their new
Thinkpad (although I suspect some of the problems could have been
misdiagnosis by the user). After describing how nice the E7470 they're
thinking about dumping their 1yo X250 and getting a Dell.
As for the Carbon, that is a very different computer. The Carbon is an
ultralight / thin Macbook-like machine with Windows so I have no
advice for you there.
I have not tried CentOS on the E7470 but I'm quite certain it would
not work because I have tried the latest Fedora Live which is about
100 kernel revisions newer and even that doesn't completely work.
Specifically, if I plug in an external display it freezes. My feeling
is I need a newer display driver (and thus newer kernel). The only
other issue I noticed was that wireless didn't work but it seems more
like a glue issue and not necessarily a driver. Otherwise, suspend and
everything else worked near as I can tell which is actually pretty
impressive for a brand new machine.
So, I am doing other things while this new E7470 ages like a fine
wine. Or maybe I'll loose patience and just install Fedora and try a
"vanilla" kernel package. Then maybe after a year or two CentOS 8 or
whatever will run on it and then I can just run steady for 4+ years
without getting pummeled by stupid updates and feature creep that you
get with Fedora and Ubuntu or whatever the latest hot distro is.
The E7470 is obviously a laptop of choice for business people. And
that is the type of machine developers use. So chances of good
compatibility are very high. You just have to give it time.
I was watching Daredevil season 1 and they use Latitudes that look
exactly like mine. And that was probably filmed in 2014. So the form
factor at least has been around for a while which is good.
Unfortunately I can't say the same thing about the show.
Mike