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