Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
My original plan was to purchase a laptop and install Centos 6 on it. I went to Staples and tried booting it on every model of laptop that they had in the store. They all come with Windows 8 installed, and for the edification of anyone who doesn't know this (I didn't until today) you have to conduct a real song and dance to get to the bios settings on one of those things:
boot windows move mouse pointer to the top right corner of the screen move down to setting menu (gear) that shows up click on power off icon Hold shift key and left-click on "restart" it goes to the troubleshooting screen click on advanced troubleshooting click on "change uefi settings" now we get to the bios set secure boot off set legacy boot priority
And then you can boot from a USB flash drive. *whew* (It's easy to put it back afterward, just go into the bios and tell it set to defaults, save and exit.)
Anyway, I tried booting a Centos 6 Live CD image on a usb flash drive on every single model of laptop they had in stock and no joy on any of them -- they either hung altogether, started booting and hung at some point along the way, started a continuous cycle of start booting, reset, start booting again, or kernel panicked. Every last one.
I then tried a Centos 7 Live CD image on another usb flash drive and then the third machine that I tried it on (Lenovo Ideapad S400 Touch) worked. So I bought that one and have now wiped Windows off of its hard drive and installed Centos 7 so it now looks and acts like a real computer.
I never would have thought that it would take all bloody day to purchase one laptop. (And I'm going to be having nightmares about that Windows Boot Manager thing.)
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
On Oct 1, 2014, at 22:57, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote: [...] Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop?
For the last few years I've been getting top of line Thinkpad T and X series. Too bad they've been making them cheaper recently.
On 10/02/2014 12:39 AM, Devin Reade wrote:
On Oct 1, 2014, at 22:57, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote: [...] Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop?
For the last few years I've been getting top of line Thinkpad T and X series. Too bad they've been making them cheaper recently.
I agree with this ... the Lenovo T and X series are known to work well with both CentOS-6 and CentOS-7.
I have also had good luck with the Dell Inspiron and Dell Moblie Workstation type laptops (m4*00 and m6*00 series) laptops.
Since CentOS is built from source code provided by Red Hat, one can go here and search for laptop to get an idea of what should work with each major version of CentOS:
Note: This is just a list of things that is likely to work as CentOS contains no official certification of hardware and CentOS is not RHEL. But if it runs RHEL, it likely also runs CentOS.
Hello Frank,
On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 22:57:30 -0600 Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
[snip]
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
Dell Latitude series, from the old D810 to more recent E65xx ones.
Regards,
op 02-10-14 09:01, wwp schreef:
Hello Frank,
On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 22:57:30 -0600 Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
[snip]
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
Dell Latitude series, from the old D810 to more recent E65xx ones.
Regards,
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hello All,
when buying laptops I try to avoid Ati/Radeon cards, because of pas issues. But maybe it would be all right now.
Definitely no Broadcom wireless. No Lenovo because of id/pairing protected cards. In short, I look for laptops with as many Intel parts as possible.
Although it is true that Amd is a lot of power for a buck.
Greetings, J.
Hello,
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:01:19 +0200 Johan Vermeulen jvermeulen@cawdekempen.be wrote:
op 02-10-14 09:01, wwp schreef:
Hello Frank,
On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 22:57:30 -0600 Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
[snip]
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
Dell Latitude series, from the old D810 to more recent E65xx ones.
Regards,
Hello All,
when buying laptops I try to avoid Ati/Radeon cards, because of pas issues. But maybe it would be all right now.
Definitely no Broadcom wireless. No Lenovo because of id/pairing protected cards. In short, I look for laptops with as many Intel parts as possible.
Although it is true that Amd is a lot of power for a buck.
What's wrong w/ Broadcom wireless? Works fine here (Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)), even if I had to install their driver (it's well documented on the CentOS wiki).
Regards,
op 02-10-14 11:33, wwp schreef:
Hello,
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:01:19 +0200 Johan Vermeulen jvermeulen@cawdekempen.be wrote:
op 02-10-14 09:01, wwp schreef:
Hello Frank,
On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 22:57:30 -0600 Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
[snip]
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
Dell Latitude series, from the old D810 to more recent E65xx ones.
Regards,
Hello All,
when buying laptops I try to avoid Ati/Radeon cards, because of pas issues. But maybe it would be all right now.
Definitely no Broadcom wireless. No Lenovo because of id/pairing protected cards. In short, I look for laptops with as many Intel parts as possible.
Although it is true that Amd is a lot of power for a buck.
What's wrong w/ Broadcom wireless? Works fine here (Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)), even if I had to install their driver (it's well documented on the CentOS wiki).
Regards,
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hello,
as it says on the Centos wiki : *ATTENTION:* This driver module is NOT persistent across kernel upgrades (i.e. when you update the kernel, and boot the newly installed one, you'll have to do this over again).
That's a bit inconvenient.
Greetings, Johan
Hello Johan,
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 14:16:05 +0200 Johan Vermeulen jvermeulen@cawdekempen.be wrote:
op 02-10-14 11:33, wwp schreef:
Hello,
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:01:19 +0200 Johan Vermeulen jvermeulen@cawdekempen.be wrote:
op 02-10-14 09:01, wwp schreef:
Hello Frank,
On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 22:57:30 -0600 Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
[snip]
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
Dell Latitude series, from the old D810 to more recent E65xx ones.
Regards,
Hello All,
when buying laptops I try to avoid Ati/Radeon cards, because of pas issues. But maybe it would be all right now.
Definitely no Broadcom wireless. No Lenovo because of id/pairing protected cards. In short, I look for laptops with as many Intel parts as possible.
Although it is true that Amd is a lot of power for a buck.
What's wrong w/ Broadcom wireless? Works fine here (Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)), even if I had to install their driver (it's well documented on the CentOS wiki).
Regards,
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hello,
as it says on the Centos wiki : *ATTENTION:* This driver module is NOT persistent across kernel upgrades (i.e. when you update the kernel, and boot the newly installed one, you'll have to do this over again).
That's a bit inconvenient.
Well well, here I upgraded kernels thru the updates many times, never had to reinstall the driver module, it simply works - and now I wonder why! :-)
Regards,
On Thu, October 2, 2014 7:16 am, Johan Vermeulen wrote:
op 02-10-14 11:33, wwp schreef:
Hello,
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:01:19 +0200 Johan Vermeulen jvermeulen@cawdekempen.be wrote:
op 02-10-14 09:01, wwp schreef:
Hello Frank,
On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 22:57:30 -0600 Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
[snip]
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
Dell Latitude series, from the old D810 to more recent E65xx ones.
Regards,
Hello All,
when buying laptops I try to avoid Ati/Radeon cards, because of pas issues. But maybe it would be all right now.
Definitely no Broadcom wireless. No Lenovo because of id/pairing protected cards. In short, I look for laptops with as many Intel parts as possible.
Although it is true that Amd is a lot of power for a buck.
What's wrong w/ Broadcom wireless? Works fine here (Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)), even if I had to install their driver (it's well documented on the CentOS wiki).
Regards,
With Dell laptops I pay special attention to get Intel wireless (as much as I hate intel for video chip I love Intel for their wireless chip), I'm definitely allergic to broadcom wireless from the very beginning. I do avoid Compaq (and HP since compaq was bought by them): they hard code in BIOS IDs of "approved" cards - it least compaq did it to me once, I had to dump BIOS, use hex editor to add Intel wireless card ID to replace with is broadcom crap - way back (yes, I had to unsolder PPROM chip from system board for that). It was the same Compaq that did, as some remember "clean room" --> IBM PC compatible. I too decided recently to stay away from Lenovo in a future, reading this thread confirms it. I'm staying away from Sony; they release very short series of models, do small tweaks, ... you never know what you will get inside, no way to rely on experience published by others. Also I saw Sony fail more often (few people around buy them for themselves).
My $0.02
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
op 02-10-14 15:01, Valeri Galtsev schreef:
On Thu, October 2, 2014 7:16 am, Johan Vermeulen wrote:
op 02-10-14 11:33, wwp schreef:
Hello,
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:01:19 +0200 Johan Vermeulen jvermeulen@cawdekempen.be wrote:
op 02-10-14 09:01, wwp schreef:
Hello Frank,
On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 22:57:30 -0600 Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
[snip]
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
Dell Latitude series, from the old D810 to more recent E65xx ones.
Regards,
Hello All,
when buying laptops I try to avoid Ati/Radeon cards, because of pas issues. But maybe it would be all right now.
Definitely no Broadcom wireless. No Lenovo because of id/pairing protected cards. In short, I look for laptops with as many Intel parts as possible.
Although it is true that Amd is a lot of power for a buck.
What's wrong w/ Broadcom wireless? Works fine here (Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)), even if I had to install their driver (it's well documented on the CentOS wiki).
Regards,
With Dell laptops I pay special attention to get Intel wireless (as much as I hate intel for video chip I love Intel for their wireless chip), I'm definitely allergic to broadcom wireless from the very beginning. I do avoid Compaq (and HP since compaq was bought by them): they hard code in BIOS IDs of "approved" cards - it least compaq did it to me once, I had to dump BIOS, use hex editor to add Intel wireless card ID to replace with is broadcom crap - way back (yes, I had to unsolder PPROM chip from system board for that). It was the same Compaq that did, as some remember "clean room" --> IBM PC compatible. I too decided recently to stay away from Lenovo in a future, reading this thread confirms it. I'm staying away from Sony; they release very short series of models, do small tweaks, ... you never know what you will get inside, no way to rely on experience published by others. Also I saw Sony fail more often (few people around buy them for themselves).
My $0.02
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
I was wondering about HP, I saw only one post saying they also have the id:pair coding. So confirmed here.
I guess you can have the Broadcom cards work across kernel updates with DKMS, but never tried that. I try to keep third-party packages away from vital parts like kernels.
That is what I appreciate about distro's like Fedora and Centos: they have no easy-enabled non-free repo ( that I know of ) that would let me use the Broadcom cards out-of-the-box. So you get to discover the limitations of open source software and you learn that some hardware manufactures are with it and some aren't. And that narrows down the decision on where to spent my money and my company's money.
Greetings, Johan
Thinkpad T series, and fully agree with Devin. Rock-solid, and pretty much all the pieces work - even Optimus.
Still, CentOS would never be my first choice for a personal laptop ...
On 10/02/2014 07:02 AM isdtor wrote:
Thinkpad T series, and fully agree with Devin. Rock-solid, and pretty much all the pieces work - even Optimus.
Still, CentOS would never be my first choice for a personal laptop ...
Why not? (Not disagreeing, not either agreeing. Just wondering about your reasons and what you'd select instead.)
On 2 October 2014 14:22, ken gebser@mousecar.com wrote:
On 10/02/2014 07:02 AM isdtor wrote:
Thinkpad T series, and fully agree with Devin. Rock-solid, and pretty much all the pieces work - even Optimus.
Still, CentOS would never be my first choice for a personal laptop ...
Why not? (Not disagreeing, not either agreeing. Just wondering about your reasons and what you'd select instead.)
My use of Linux on laptops predates my exposure to CentOS. I only ever switched distributions once, and IIRC it was when we were still using RHEL in the office.
I need a distro that allows keeping up date in a reasonable way (but not necessarily bleeding edge, like Fedora). A largely static environment as presented by CentOS over its lifetime doesn't suit. A new and recent requirement is to keep the machine free of poetteringware as much as possible.
On Thu, 2014-10-02 at 14:48 +0100, isdtor wrote:
A new and recent requirement is to keep the machine free of poetteringware as much as possible.
Too optimistic. As Johnny states: what is in RHEL is, inevitably, in Centos.
I'm staying on Centos 6 ...... for as long as possible.
Regards,
Paul. England, EU.
Learning until I die or experience dementia.
On Thu, October 2, 2014 9:02 am, Always Learning wrote:
On Thu, 2014-10-02 at 14:48 +0100, isdtor wrote:
A new and recent requirement is to keep the machine free of poetteringware as much as possible.
Too optimistic. As Johnny states: what is in RHEL is, inevitably, in Centos.
I'm staying on Centos 6 ...... for as long as possible.
And then, finally going away - likely to FreeBDS, NetBSD, OpenBSD (much less likely), PC-BSD (more likely) - you continue the list yourself... ;-)
My next laptop (I'm eagerly awaiting its arrival) will be FreeBSD (knocking on wood I didn't screw up with hardware and will not screw up with system installation...)
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Oct 2, 2014 9:23 PM, "ken" gebser@mousecar.com wrote:
On 10/02/2014 07:02 AM isdtor wrote:
Thinkpad T series, and fully agree with Devin. Rock-solid, and pretty
much
all the pieces work - even Optimus.
Still, CentOS would never be my first choice for a personal laptop ...
Why not? (Not disagreeing, not either agreeing. Just wondering about
your reasons and what you'd select instead.)
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Dell inspiron e5440 (i think) works ok w CentOS 7.
On 10/02/2014 06:39 AM, Brian Miller wrote:
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop?
Been using CentOS.available on a series of Dell Precision laptops (M4300, M4600) since 2007 or so without much difficulty.
I am typing this reply on a Dell Precision M4300 in Thunderbird on CentOS 6.
Even though the M4300 isn't the newest thing out there, it is my primary machine, and has been for a year or so (previously my primary was a Dell Precision M65 for about four years). The M4300 is essentially the exact same thing as a Latitude D830, with a different main and video BIOS. The video chip in the D830, if you pull the heatsink, actually has the FX 360M silscreened on the die, even though it identifies as either an NVS135M or NVS140M (depending upon amount of video RAM). (The M65 is essentially the D820, and the D820 just has a slightly crippled BIOS that reports the video as and NVS-series instead of an FX-series).
With a Penryn CPU and sufficient RAM the box is snappy (I have a T9300 in mine, although the T9500 or X9000 would be a bit faster. The X9000 is over three times the price of a T9300, used, and the difference between a Penryn at 2.5GHz and at 2.8GHz is minimal; now, the 2.5GHz T9300 will wipe the floor with a 2.6GHz Merom-core T7800 (I've tried this comparison, and the Penryn is significantly faster). And since many sellers just list the speed and not the core, you're guaranteed a Penryn if you get a 2.5GHz, but the T7800 Merom and the T9500 Penryn are both 2.6GHz..... and while the T9300 and T9500 are both listed as 35W chips (the X9000 is a 44W chip, and while it will work, these machines are already straining in the thermal management department.....) the T9300 does run a bit cooler, and that's good for the GPU, which shares the heatpipe radiator with the CPU and northbridge.
Do note that the FX 360M is one of the heat-plagued nVidia chips, so I have a small supply of known working motherboards (mine are in machines....) on-hand, since the GPU will fail sooner or later.
As to the wifi, I'm using a Dell-branded Broadcom BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n card, using the ELrepo kmod-wl built from the 'nosrc' RPM available from ELrepo (the kmod interface means kernel updates shouldn't break it.....). The reason for the Broadcom has to do with another OS that I'm dual-booting on this machine.....
I know, that's probably more than you wanted to know.... but, not too incidentally, a gently-used M4300 can be had on eBay for less than $100. I got another spare just this past week for about $60, 1920x1200 screen and all. I have thought about trying for an M4400 with a quad-core, though.
On 10/02/2014 01:38 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
On 10/02/2014 06:39 AM, Brian Miller wrote:
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop?
Been using CentOS.available on a series of Dell Precision laptops (M4300, M4600) since 2007 or so without much difficulty.
If you look at the Latitude and Precision offerings from Dell you will notice that RHEL is offered as an OS. These are specifically designed to run Linux and therefore, they should all work fine with CentOS as well.
Mike
On 10/02/2014 02:11 PM, Mike McCarthy, W1NR wrote:
If you look at the Latitude and Precision offerings from Dell you will notice that RHEL is offered as an OS. These are specifically designed to run Linux and therefore, they should all work fine with CentOS as well.
Very true; Dell has offered RHEL on the Precision workstations, desktop and mobile, for a number of years.
On Thu, October 2, 2014 1:11 pm, Mike McCarthy, W1NR wrote:
On 10/02/2014 01:38 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
On 10/02/2014 06:39 AM, Brian Miller wrote:
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop?
Been using CentOS.available on a series of Dell Precision laptops (M4300, M4600) since 2007 or so without much difficulty.
If you look at the Latitude and Precision offerings from Dell you will notice that RHEL is offered as an OS. These are specifically designed to run Linux and therefore, they should all work fine with CentOS as well.
I would also mention my "predicted hardware longevity" test I do to laptops. I grab the base part on the sides with both hands and attempt to bend it to a shape of propeller. If it is sturdy and doesn't bend, it passed the sets. If it is flexible (flexibility is only good quality for a person, not for equipment ;-) then the system board will be flexed and will develop micro cracks quite likely - much sooner than sturdy laptop will. Then the laptop will be not reliable or die soon. (This cuts out many inexpensive laptops on consumer market, variety of Dells included)
Just my $0.02
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev wrote:
On Thu, October 2, 2014 1:11 pm, Mike McCarthy, W1NR wrote:
On 10/02/2014 01:38 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
On 10/02/2014 06:39 AM, Brian Miller wrote:
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop?
Been using CentOS.available on a series of Dell Precision laptops (M4300, M4600) since 2007 or so without much difficulty.
If you look at the Latitude and Precision offerings from Dell you will notice that RHEL is offered as an OS. These are specifically designed to run Linux and therefore, they should all work fine with CentOS as well.
I would also mention my "predicted hardware longevity" test I do to laptops. I grab the base part on the sides with both hands and attempt to bend it to a shape of propeller. If it is sturdy and doesn't bend, it passed the sets. If it is flexible (flexibility is only good quality for a person, not for equipment ;-) then the system board will be flexed and will develop micro cracks quite likely - much sooner than sturdy laptop will. Then the laptop will be not reliable or die soon. (This cuts out many inexpensive laptops on consumer market, variety of Dells included)
Like it. I was *always* leery of the Razor phone, and the Vaio - too bloody thin, too likely to bend and have something break.
mark
Many years ago I purchased a Dell Inspiron direct from Dell and had very similar issues, so it is not just WinBloze 8, it is that the systems are intentionally set up to make it difficult. Took me about 3 hours just to get to the BIOS because the window of time was less than 1 second to hit the right key combo.
The last time I purchased a laptop was from Emperor Linux in Atlanta, GA.
I purchased a Lenovo W500 from them a few years ago with my favorite flavor of Linux already installed. They have very good support and the owners are very helpful. They also have a very large selection of models and you can choose your own hardware configuration.
I have long since installed more recent versions of Linux, including Fedora 20. The best thing about purchasing from them is that they have tested and configured each computer before they ship them.
It is a few hundred $$ more expensive than purchasing from a local big box store. I imagine I would have spent many hours researching and testing before I purchased, and then some additional time getting Linux installed and running on anything I purchased. As a business owner of a Linux consulting and training company, I consider my time worth at least $100 per hour which is my basic hourly charge when consulting. So figure that purchasing from Emperor saved me way more than the additional cost I paid to them. Plus I did not have to pay the M$ tax.
I have also helped customers with recent Acers that seem to work well with Linux.
I hope this helps.
On 10/02/2014 12:57 AM, Frank Cox wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
My original plan was to purchase a laptop and install Centos 6 on it. I went to Staples and tried booting it on every model of laptop that they had in the store. They all come with Windows 8 installed, and for the edification of anyone who doesn't know this (I didn't until today) you have to conduct a real song and dance to get to the bios settings on one of those things:
boot windows move mouse pointer to the top right corner of the screen move down to setting menu (gear) that shows up click on power off icon Hold shift key and left-click on "restart" it goes to the troubleshooting screen click on advanced troubleshooting click on "change uefi settings" now we get to the bios set secure boot off set legacy boot priority
And then you can boot from a USB flash drive. *whew* (It's easy to put it back afterward, just go into the bios and tell it set to defaults, save and exit.)
Anyway, I tried booting a Centos 6 Live CD image on a usb flash drive on every single model of laptop they had in stock and no joy on any of them -- they either hung altogether, started booting and hung at some point along the way, started a continuous cycle of start booting, reset, start booting again, or kernel panicked. Every last one.
I then tried a Centos 7 Live CD image on another usb flash drive and then the third machine that I tried it on (Lenovo Ideapad S400 Touch) worked. So I bought that one and have now wiped Windows off of its hard drive and installed Centos 7 so it now looks and acts like a real computer.
I never would have thought that it would take all bloody day to purchase one laptop. (And I'm going to be having nightmares about that Windows Boot Manager thing.)
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
--
David P. Both, RHCE Millennium Technology Consulting LLC Raleigh, NC, USA 919-389-8678
dboth@millennium-technology.com
www.millennium-technology.com www.databook.bz - Home of the DataBook for Linux DataBook is a Registered Trademark of David Both
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1. use Fedora Live instead of CentOS for boot test, then install CentOS and replace the kernel with ELRepo kernel-ml. This is usually newer even than Fedora's, thus presumably with much better support for new HW than stock CentOS.
Of course, the risk here is that CentOS would not install/boot to the point to have a working yum and (wired) network. This can be usually tweaked, but hackish.
2. search the net how well is supported (any) Linux distro by the models of interest, to not waste time trying them all at the shop. With ELRepo kernels one can usually replicate the same or better support for CentOS -- if it can be tricked into installing and booting a minimal installation with yum and network.
Using Fedora for many years, I have noted that a new HW gets fully supported gradually over 6-12 months. For instance, the last laptop I bought was an Asus UX31E for which even the motherboard was not well supported at the begin. After a year or so all fit into place. :-)
I also keep a copy of the full disk with the original OS untouched to not loose the warranty. Before installing I boot into any Linux Live I have at hand and issue something like: dd if=/dev/sda | xz -9c directing the output to a network storage.
Hope this helps.
Mihai
On Wed, Oct 01, 2014 at 10:57:30PM -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
My original plan was to purchase a laptop and install Centos 6 on it. I went to Staples and tried booting it on every model of laptop that they had in the store. They all come with Windows 8 installed, and for the edification of anyone who doesn't know this (I didn't until today) you have to conduct a real song and dance to get to the bios settings on one of those things:
boot windows move mouse pointer to the top right corner of the screen move down to setting menu (gear) that shows up click on power off icon Hold shift key and left-click on "restart" it goes to the troubleshooting screen click on advanced troubleshooting click on "change uefi settings" now we get to the bios set secure boot off set legacy boot priority
And then you can boot from a USB flash drive. *whew* (It's easy to put it back afterward, just go into the bios and tell it set to defaults, save and exit.)
Anyway, I tried booting a Centos 6 Live CD image on a usb flash drive on every single model of laptop they had in stock and no joy on any of them -- they either hung altogether, started booting and hung at some point along the way, started a continuous cycle of start booting, reset, start booting again, or kernel panicked. Every last one.
I then tried a Centos 7 Live CD image on another usb flash drive and then the third machine that I tried it on (Lenovo Ideapad S400 Touch) worked. So I bought that one and have now wiped Windows off of its hard drive and installed Centos 7 so it now looks and acts like a real computer.
I never would have thought that it would take all bloody day to purchase one laptop. (And I'm going to be having nightmares about that Windows Boot Manager thing.)
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
On 10/01/2014 11:57 PM, Frank Cox wrote:
I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
I don't make laptop purchases often... but it's 100% Intel hardware when I do.
Currently using a HP Envy TS m6-k025dx Sleek Book
Refurbished from HP @ $529 [1]. You can still find them on-line... they were $750 new.
Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz 8GB / 750GB 15.6" LED-backlit touch screen @ 1920x1080 Intel HD 4400 graphics 5.6 lbs
Everything works out of the box with C7 including touchscreen, wireless, blue-tooth, camera, audio. I had to reassign two pins on the sound chip to enable the sub woofer. I'd want a better keyboard if I were using the machine to code...
[1] Windows users were returning them in droves due to buggy Intel wireless drivers. Thanks for the $220 discount HP !
On 2014-10-02, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
I know this is probably a bit sacrilegious, but recently I have been tending to get a Mac laptop, and run any linux distributions I need inside a VM. OS X is (just barely) tolerable enough to be usable for most of my desktop purposes. (It's not really cost-effective compared to non-Apple laptops, unfortunately.)
--keith
On Thu, October 2, 2014 10:48 am, Keith Keller wrote:
On 2014-10-02, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
I know this is probably a bit sacrilegious, but recently I have been tending to get a Mac laptop, and run any linux distributions I need inside a VM. OS X is (just barely) tolerable enough to be usable for most of my desktop purposes. (It's not really cost-effective compared to non-Apple laptops, unfortunately.)
Somebody said: having mac is like driving Ferrari. Subaru or Ford will get you there as well, so you just pay extra for chic.
<rant>
Having said that, I do have mac (paid by the Department) so I can support Mac users (and give exact instructions). My particular model of MacBook Pro has known NVIDIA problem (you can search for that): with latest MacOS it kernel panics inside nvidia driver (let's call it: nvidia driver is incompatible with that chip). So: 4 years old decently capable hardware can not be used with latest system. And Apple would not fix that as these machines are beyond 3 year of Apple "protection plan". I reject suggestions to stay with system one version older: the only reason for this laptop was for me to give mac users (whom my job is to recommend to get latest system + updates) exact directions, so _I_ have to have latest system for that. Therefore strong decision not to invest into any Apple hardware whenever possible.
</rant>
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 2014-10-02, Valeri Galtsev galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu wrote:
On Thu, October 2, 2014 10:48 am, Keith Keller wrote:
I know this is probably a bit sacrilegious, but recently I have been tending to get a Mac laptop, and run any linux distributions I need inside a VM. OS X is (just barely) tolerable enough to be usable for most of my desktop purposes. (It's not really cost-effective compared to non-Apple laptops, unfortunately.)
Somebody said: having mac is like driving Ferrari. Subaru or Ford will get you there as well, so you just pay extra for chic.
I agree to a point. To extend the analogy further (perhaps too far), I pay a lot for my Ferrari, but I don't have to spend days researching whether I should get Subaru, or Ford, or Toyota, and then I don't have to spend days or weeks fighting to get my Toyota working (and, likely, regretting that I didn't get a Ford) because I really really refuse to use the default Toyota engine.
If getting OS X to do what I want were any more difficult, I would abandon it. So really I'm paying extra for laziness.
(FWIW, and not really on-topic, in my home environment my family has apps that only run on OS X, so that locks me in there. And at work, much of my group is on OS X, so I get benefit from being on the same platform as my colleagues.)
--keith
On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Keith Keller kkeller@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us wrote:
On 2014-10-02, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
I know this is probably a bit sacrilegious, but recently I have been tending to get a Mac laptop, and run any linux distributions I need inside a VM. OS X is (just barely) tolerable enough to be usable for most of my desktop purposes. (It's not really cost-effective compared to non-Apple laptops, unfortunately.)
That approach works with windows too. You take a small hit in performance as a tradeoff for not having to scramble for drivers all the time. But, most of my real work actually runs on headless servers with NX/freenx giving a fairly efficient remote X desktop from linux/windows/mac systems with the advantage that you can suspend the session and pick it up from a different location with everything still running. X2go has equivalent features and seems to replace freenx for CentOS 7. I just haven't switched because I run 'synergy' to share the keyboard/mouse on my main desktop and there is some sort of conflict.
Keith Keller wrote:
On 2014-10-02, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
I know this is probably a bit sacrilegious, but recently I have been tending to get a Mac laptop, and run any linux distributions I need inside a VM. OS X is (just barely) tolerable enough to be usable for most of my desktop purposes. (It's not really cost-effective compared to non-Apple laptops, unfortunately.)
For the last five years, I think it is, I've had the Ubuntu netbook remix on my HP netbook. I keep thinking about moving to CentOS - I rather dislike Ubuntu's idea of where to put things, how to update, the almost-bleeding-edge frequency of updates....
If I were buying a laptop, I'd probably go for a Dell Lattitude (*enterprise* grade laptop, not consumer grade, which are crap, intended to run WinDoze, and they expect you to buy a new laptop the next time M$ releases a new version of WinDoze, since it needs that much more in the way of performance....
mark mark
Any Windows 8 laptop requires "secure boot" does it not? If I'm not mistaken that's where your issues stem from. Just Micro$oft trying to get even more control from what I've heard.
— Sent from Mailbox
On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 12:58 AM, Frank Cox theatre@melvilletheatre.com wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey. My original plan was to purchase a laptop and install Centos 6 on it. I went to Staples and tried booting it on every model of laptop that they had in the store. They all come with Windows 8 installed, and for the edification of anyone who doesn't know this (I didn't until today) you have to conduct a real song and dance to get to the bios settings on one of those things: boot windows move mouse pointer to the top right corner of the screen move down to setting menu (gear) that shows up click on power off icon Hold shift key and left-click on "restart" it goes to the troubleshooting screen click on advanced troubleshooting click on "change uefi settings" now we get to the bios set secure boot off set legacy boot priority And then you can boot from a USB flash drive. *whew* (It's easy to put it back afterward, just go into the bios and tell it set to defaults, save and exit.) Anyway, I tried booting a Centos 6 Live CD image on a usb flash drive on every single model of laptop they had in stock and no joy on any of them -- they either hung altogether, started booting and hung at some point along the way, started a continuous cycle of start booting, reset, start booting again, or kernel panicked. Every last one. I then tried a Centos 7 Live CD image on another usb flash drive and then the third machine that I tried it on (Lenovo Ideapad S400 Touch) worked. So I bought that one and have now wiped Windows off of its hard drive and installed Centos 7 so it now looks and acts like a real computer. I never would have thought that it would take all bloody day to purchase one laptop. (And I'm going to be having nightmares about that Windows Boot Manager thing.) Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes. -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 09:02:28 -0700 (PDT) jwyeth.arch@gmail.com wrote:
Any Windows 8 laptop requires "secure boot" does it not? If I'm not mistaken that's where your issues stem from.
The second-last step in my little how-to list is "set secure boot off". None of those laptops worked with Centos 6 after that. (I tried Acer, Asus, Lenovo and HP -- everything in the store from the cheapest one up to about $800 or so.)
Frank Cox wrote:
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 09:02:28 -0700 (PDT) jwyeth.arch@gmail.com wrote:
Any Windows 8 laptop requires "secure boot" does it not? If I'm not mistaken that's where your issues stem from.
The second-last step in my little how-to list is "set secure boot off". None of those laptops worked with Centos 6 after that. (I tried Acer, Asus, Lenovo and HP -- everything in the store from the cheapest one up to about $800 or so.)
You sure there was no *separate* thing to check to ->enable<- "legacy boot"?
mark
The second-last step in my little how-to list is "set secure boot off". None of those laptops worked with Centos 6 after that. (I tried Acer, Asus, Lenovo and HP -- everything in the store from the cheapest one up to about $800 or so.)
You sure there was no *separate* thing to check to ->enable<- "legacy boot"?
I think the problem here was that the kernel in CentOS 6 is too old to boot on a modern laptop, there is not enough back-ported hardware enablement to drive systems that didn't exist when 2.6.32 was released 5 years ago in 2009. CentOS 7 booted just fine on those devices and should work with SecureBoot enabled as well.
— Mark Tinberg mark.tinberg@wisc.edu
On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 16:56:57 +0000 Mark Tinberg wrote:
CentOS 7 booted just fine on those devices and should work with SecureBoot enabled as well.
Centos 7 booted just fine on the third one that I tried and then I stopped trying and purchased that one. There was no joy with the two before that, though. So Centos 7 doesn't work with all of them. One out of three in that semi-random test.
On Thu, 2 Oct 2014 12:49:18 -0400 m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
You sure there was no *separate* thing to check to ->enable<- "legacy boot"?
If there was, it was exceptionally well hidden. There aren't a whole lot of options in those bios's, though, and I saw at least four completely different versions, so I don't think I would have overlooked that.
Most of the machines (I think all of them, actually) started to boot Centos 6 to at least some extent. They just failed (lock up, kernel panic, etc) somewhere along the line after that. And Centos 7 did work on the third one that I tried.
On 10/02/2014 12:01 PM, Frank Cox wrote:
Most of the machines (I think all of them, actually) started to boot Centos 6 to at least some extent. They just failed (lock up, kernel panic, etc) somewhere along the line after that. And Centos 7 did work on the third one that I tried.
On the HP laptop I mentioned earlier, I absolutely could not get C6.5 live to boot (kernel panic). But I was able to install C6.5 on it using the net install iso! Not sure what is different with the two, but the machine ran C6.5 perfectly (except touchscreen, which I never attempted to research).
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
My original plan was to purchase a laptop and install Centos 6 on it. I went to Staples and tried booting it on every model of laptop that they had in the store. They all come with Windows 8 installed, and for the edification of anyone who doesn't know this (I didn't until today) you have to conduct a real song and dance to get to the bios settings on one of those things:
boot windows move mouse pointer to the top right corner of the screen move down to setting menu (gear) that shows up click on power off icon Hold shift key and left-click on "restart" it goes to the troubleshooting screen click on advanced troubleshooting click on "change uefi settings" now we get to the bios set secure boot off set legacy boot priority
And then you can boot from a USB flash drive. *whew* (It's easy to put it back afterward, just go into the bios and tell it set to defaults, save and exit.)
Anyway, I tried booting a Centos 6 Live CD image on a usb flash drive on every single model of laptop they had in stock and no joy on any of them -- they either hung altogether, started booting and hung at some point along the way, started a continuous cycle of start booting, reset, start booting again, or kernel panicked. Every last one.
I then tried a Centos 7 Live CD image on another usb flash drive and then the third machine that I tried it on (Lenovo Ideapad S400 Touch) worked. So I bought that one and have now wiped Windows off of its hard drive and installed Centos 7 so it now looks and acts like a real computer.
I never would have thought that it would take all bloody day to purchase one laptop. (And I'm going to be having nightmares about that Windows Boot Manager thing.)
Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on something that used to take fifteen minutes.
Choosing a laptop these days does have some extra pitfalls, especially if you're a GNU Linux user. I have just started college (return to education) and while waiting for my student finance having been looking round at the laptop options.
My intention is to run CentOS 6.x and VM Windows and any other OS etc. After discarding many options I seem to have settled with an eye on a HP ProBook 455 G2.
http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=G6W43EA&opt=ABU&se...
This system has legacy BIOS options if you read the manuals and does mention linux quite a bit. There is info about Ubuntu and below is a link to the laptop on Ubuntu certification site.
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201404-14968/components/
If anyone is running CentOS on this series of laptop, I would very much like to hear your experiences!
Regards
Phil
On Sat, 2014-10-04 at 12:56 +0100, Phil Wyett wrote:
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
My intention is to run CentOS 6.x and VM Windows and any other OS etc. After discarding many options I seem to have settled with an eye on a HP ProBook 455 G2.
http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=G6W43EA&opt=ABU&se...
There are several ProBook 455 G2 variants. Your one is G6W43EA.
AMD Dual-Core A6 Pro-7050B APU with Radeon R4 Graphics
Very unimpressive CPU. I stopped buying anything that low in performance 4 years ago. But it is your choice. For simple writing it may be sufficient. If you can afford it, and regardless of which machine you eventually purchase, increase the memory to 8 GB.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
Seeing off-the-shelf computer systems available only with Windoze greatly depresses me. Inevitably one wonders if Centos will cleanly install on them or whether the hardware/firmware have been 'windozed' to prevent the installation of superior competing operating systems.
The windoze monopoly should be stopped by law. The only hope is the EU's anti-competition policy since the USA will not act.
On Sat, 2014-10-04 at 14:58 +0100, Always Learning wrote:
On Sat, 2014-10-04 at 12:56 +0100, Phil Wyett wrote:
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
My intention is to run CentOS 6.x and VM Windows and any other OS etc. After discarding many options I seem to have settled with an eye on a HP ProBook 455 G2.
http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=G6W43EA&opt=ABU&se...
There are several ProBook 455 G2 variants. Your one is G6W43EA.
AMD Dual-Core A6 Pro-7050B APU with Radeon R4 Graphics
Very unimpressive CPU. I stopped buying anything that low in performance 4 years ago. But it is your choice. For simple writing it may be sufficient. If you can afford it, and regardless of which machine you eventually purchase, increase the memory to 8 GB.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
Seeing off-the-shelf computer systems available only with Windoze greatly depresses me. Inevitably one wonders if Centos will cleanly install on them or whether the hardware/firmware have been 'windozed' to prevent the installation of superior competing operating systems.
The windoze monopoly should be stopped by law. The only hope is the EU's anti-competition policy since the USA will not act.
Yes, the plan was to upgrade the RAM to 12GB if I were to get it. The performance of mobile APU is a worry and I will be taking one for a test drive closer to purchase time. Also the time I would test a C6 usb stick on it too.
I do have another laptop in my 'possible purchases' bookmarks, an 8GB, i7 (intel 4000 graphics) Asus vivobook X550CA. My only check-ups to do with this one is the BIOS/ability to use older OS like C6 and the chassis itself - must see and touch it as I have seen way too many laptops these days that are a bit flimsy in construction.
Regards
Phil
On Sat, October 4, 2014 8:58 am, Always Learning wrote:
On Sat, 2014-10-04 at 12:56 +0100, Phil Wyett wrote:
On Wed, 2014-10-01 at 22:57 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
Today I found myself in need of a laptop to run Centos on. And that
simple statement led to an all-day odyssey.
My intention is to run CentOS 6.x and VM Windows and any other OS etc. After discarding many options I seem to have settled with an eye on a HP ProBook 455 G2.
http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=G6W43EA&opt=ABU&se...
There are several ProBook 455 G2 variants. Your one is G6W43EA.
AMD Dual-Core A6 Pro-7050B APU with Radeon R4 Graphics
Very unimpressive CPU. I stopped buying anything that low in performance 4 years ago. But it is your choice. For simple writing it may be sufficient. If you can afford it, and regardless of which machine you eventually purchase, increase the memory to 8 GB.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
Seeing off-the-shelf computer systems available only with Windoze greatly depresses me. Inevitably one wonders if Centos will cleanly install on them or whether the hardware/firmware have been 'windozed' to prevent the installation of superior competing operating systems.
The windoze monopoly should be stopped by law. The only hope is the EU's anti-competition policy since the USA will not act.
I have dual feelings. I do agree, but on the other side, we vote for laptops that ship with Windoze only by paying for them. To the best of my knowledge, we (who prefer main OS to be not Windoze, majority on this list would say Linux. I'm getting myself laptop nu which I hope to have under FreeBSD; in the past I had solaris once...). Still, we are not the ones whose dollars, Pound Sterlings, Marks, euros define manufacturer's profits. Majority doesn't care what system there will be... And they don't care about hardware thus I see many video cards on laptops with "shared memory" - read without memory, but clogging memory bus with video traffic that doesn't belong there. Kind of reminds me computer I soldered together (yes, from ICs: Z80 processor, video controller IC, RAM ICs, EPROM,...) that had video frame leaving in some range of RAM addresses. Which leads me to the question which I realaly like to ask you, Experts:
Many curse AMD video chips (for laptop) in this thread. Are these only "shared memory" chips that people have reason not to like? Or real "discrete" AMD (former ATI) chips are bad on laptops as well? If there are any. (Are there any with their own dedicated video RAM?). What about NVIDIA as a comparison? (I'm not asking about intel which sits inside CPU case and definitely is "shared memory" type, - or I'm wrong?)
In the past (and my experience was still the same recently) NVIDIA had too little disclosed about internals of their chips, so there was no way to write open source driver covering more than just generics (not too trivial thing is, e.g.: two screens of different resolution on the same chip). ATI (then, before they were bought out by AMD) video chips (again, the real ones with "discrete" video memory) had better publicly accessible documentation, so open source video drivers for them were waaay better (ATI cards were my life savers! And still are). What is the state of the art in that respect now? (I guess, having "Sr" in my job title I should do my homework myself, still nor being "sr" citizen yet, but just lazy I feel it would be great to hear what experts say).
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 10/04/2014 07:19 PM Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Many curse AMD video chips (for laptop) in this thread. Are these only "shared memory" chips that people have reason not to like? Or real "discrete" AMD (former ATI) chips are bad on laptops as well? If there are any. (Are there any with their own dedicated video RAM?). What about NVIDIA as a comparison? (I'm not asking about intel which sits inside CPU case and definitely is "shared memory" type, - or I'm wrong?)
In the past (and my experience was still the same recently) NVIDIA had too little disclosed about internals of their chips, so there was no way to write open source driver covering more than just generics (not too trivial thing is, e.g.: two screens of different resolution on the same chip). ATI (then, before they were bought out by AMD) video chips (again, the real ones with "discrete" video memory) had better publicly accessible documentation, so open source video drivers for them were waaay better (ATI cards were my life savers! And still are). What is the state of the art in that respect now? (I guess, having "Sr" in my job title I should do my homework myself, still nor being "sr" citizen yet, but just lazy I feel it would be great to hear what experts say).
Valeri, good topic!
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter. (It's been a long time since I read up on this, so forgive me and correct me if that number is off-- it might be too small.) Static RAM is, however, more expensive. So PC manufacturers, in trying to reduce costs so's to increase profits when- and wherever possible find this a convenient place to cut quality because most consumers know nothing about video cards, let alone video RAM. Just last week I was looking at the "specs" on laptops of a major vendor and that webpage didn't even mention a video card! Perhaps I've become too cynical, but it's hard to believe that was an oversight.
Is there a command or script which reveals the amount of dedicated video RAM, if any, is on a machine's video card? If so, it should be included on the live CD, so that when we're shopping, we can quickly determine that. If not, it would bestow much kudos upon a developer to provide us such a command or script.
On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote:
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter.
NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s.
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent, at least on MS Windows systems. the main memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop.
On 10/05/2014 04:02 AM John R Pierce wrote:
On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote:
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter.
NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s.
Perhaps you're intimately familiar with each and every video card manufactured since the early '80s except for the ones I bought with my machines, because I've always insisted on video cards with static RAM. Or perhaps your understanding of static RAM is different from what I'm talking about.
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent, at least on MS Windows systems. the main memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop.
It would be nice to have authoritative sources for these opinions.
Also, the speed of a video card is going to depend a lot on the instruction set provided by the particular card and and then also very much on how well the software/drivers make use of that instruction set. Those factors are going to vary widely, which is why I spoke only to the speed of the *memory*. So saying "a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D" is meaningless, like saying 'a car with ABC tires might be faster....'
Dynamic RAM actually uses *more* electricity than static RAM.
On 10/5/2014 1:58 AM, ken wrote:
Perhaps you're intimately familiar with each and every video card manufactured since the early '80s except for the ones I bought with my machines, because I've always insisted on video cards with static RAM. Or perhaps your understanding of static RAM is different from what I'm talking about.
I'm using the industry standard definitions of dynamic RAM vs static RAM...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_random-access_memory
what graphics card made since the the days of the original PC Monochrome Adapter (text only) uses static ram?
ALL ATI/AMD, Nvidia, and Intel graphics systems since the mid 90s use various flavors of SDRAM (the S in SDRAM stands for Synchronous, not STATIC)
On 10/05/2014 04:58 AM ken wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:02 AM John R Pierce wrote:
On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote:
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter.
NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s.
Perhaps you're intimately familiar with each and every video card manufactured since the early '80s except for the ones I bought with my machines, because I've always insisted on video cards with static RAM. Or perhaps your understanding of static RAM is different from what I'm talking about.
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent, at least on MS Windows systems. the main memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop.
It would be nice to have authoritative sources for these opinions.
Also, the speed of a video card is going to depend a lot on the instruction set provided by the particular card and and then also very much on how well the software/drivers make use of that instruction set. Those factors are going to vary widely, which is why I spoke only to the speed of the *memory*. So saying "a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D" is meaningless, like saying 'a car with ABC tires might be faster....'
Dynamic RAM actually uses *more* electricity than static RAM.
Here are some sources which support the statement above that dynamic RAM uses more electricity than static RAM, making static RAM more suitable for use in laptops and other situations where power consumption is an important consideration:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question452.htm
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-difference-between-static-ram-and-dynamic-ram.htm#didyouknowout
... Ken, please provide links to prove your claims that SRAM is still being used as opposed to asking for links for the opposition. I see no proof that SRAM is still used at all except for in Xbox One and CPU's L3 cache, etc. I also see that its much more expensive and when I attempt to find a laptop using SRAM.. Imagine that, I can't. You appear to have this process down though, so please provide some insight.
— Sent from Mailbox
On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 5:57 AM, ken gebser@mousecar.com wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:58 AM ken wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:02 AM John R Pierce wrote:
On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote:
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter.
NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s.
Perhaps you're intimately familiar with each and every video card manufactured since the early '80s except for the ones I bought with my machines, because I've always insisted on video cards with static RAM. Or perhaps your understanding of static RAM is different from what I'm talking about.
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent, at least on MS Windows systems. the main memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop.
It would be nice to have authoritative sources for these opinions.
Also, the speed of a video card is going to depend a lot on the instruction set provided by the particular card and and then also very much on how well the software/drivers make use of that instruction set. Those factors are going to vary widely, which is why I spoke only to the speed of the *memory*. So saying "a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D" is meaningless, like saying 'a car with ABC tires might be faster....'
Dynamic RAM actually uses *more* electricity than static RAM.
Here are some sources which support the statement above that dynamic RAM uses more electricity than static RAM, making static RAM more suitable for use in laptops and other situations where power consumption is an important consideration: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question452.htm http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-difference-between-static-ram-and-dynamic-ram.htm#didyouknowout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Sun, October 5, 2014 6:34 am, jwyeth.arch@gmail.com wrote:
... Ken, please provide links to prove your claims that SRAM is still being used as opposed to asking for links for the opposition. I see no proof that SRAM is still used at all except for in Xbox One and CPU's L3 cache, etc. I also see that its much more expensive
Indeed static RAM is [much or not much, still] more expensive. Factors: more hardware (full blown CMOS flip-flop per cell instead of just one FET transistor). CMOS chip has more sophisticated manufacturing technology needing to make two different (complimentary: N-channel and P-channel) types of MOS transistors (somebody correct me ...). And: dynamic RAM is manufactured in huge amounts, that always diminishes cost, I've heard.
Valeri
and when I attempt to find a laptop using SRAM.. Imagine that, I can't. You appear to have this process down though, so please provide some insight.
â Sent from Mailbox
On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 5:57 AM, ken gebser@mousecar.com wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:58 AM ken wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:02 AM John R Pierce wrote:
On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote:
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter.
NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s.
Perhaps you're intimately familiar with each and every video card manufactured since the early '80s except for the ones I bought with my machines, because I've always insisted on video cards with static RAM. Or perhaps your understanding of static RAM is different from what I'm talking about.
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent, at least on MS Windows systems. the main memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop.
It would be nice to have authoritative sources for these opinions.
Also, the speed of a video card is going to depend a lot on the instruction set provided by the particular card and and then also very much on how well the software/drivers make use of that instruction set. Those factors are going to vary widely, which is why I spoke only to the speed of the *memory*. So saying "a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D" is meaningless, like saying 'a car with ABC tires might be faster....'
Dynamic RAM actually uses *more* electricity than static RAM.
Here are some sources which support the statement above that dynamic RAM uses more electricity than static RAM, making static RAM more suitable for use in laptops and other situations where power consumption is an important consideration: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question452.htm http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-difference-between-static-ram-and-dynamic-ram.htm#didyouknowout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 10/05/2014 07:34 AM jwyeth.arch@gmail.com wrote:
... Ken, please provide links to prove your claims that SRAM is still being used as opposed to asking for links for the opposition. I see no proof that SRAM is still used at all except for in Xbox One and CPU's L3 cache, etc. I also see that its much more expensive and when I attempt to find a laptop using SRAM.. Imagine that, I can't. You appear to have this process down though, so please provide some insight.
— Sent from Mailbox
jwyeth,
I never claimed "that SRAM is still being used", though links already provided do mention that. And I hope you'll understand why I don't feel it's necessary to provide links for something I didn't say.
While it's okay to question or disagree with something, practicing polemics for its own sake is quite often not beneficial to anyone. I asked John for links because he made quite a few claims which asked for substantiation or, at minimum, more investigation. I don't know why you would object to that completely valid request, but at the same time am not asking for a response on that point... or, indeed, anything in this post. Instead, I'd only suggest that we all consider, prior to posting, whether a disagreement or other statement is beneficial to the list as a whole and relevant to the current thread.
Finally, as it seems you may not be aware, it would show consideration for others if you wouldn't top-post. So, just a suggestion.
On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 5:57 AM, ken gebser@mousecar.com wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:58 AM ken wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:02 AM John R Pierce wrote:
On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote:
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter.
NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s.
Perhaps you're intimately familiar with each and every video card manufactured since the early '80s except for the ones I bought with my machines, because I've always insisted on video cards with static RAM. Or perhaps your understanding of static RAM is different from what I'm talking about.
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent, at least on MS Windows systems. the main memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop.
It would be nice to have authoritative sources for these opinions.
Also, the speed of a video card is going to depend a lot on the instruction set provided by the particular card and and then also very much on how well the software/drivers make use of that instruction set. Those factors are going to vary widely, which is why I spoke only to the speed of the *memory*. So saying "a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D" is meaningless, like saying 'a car with ABC tires might be faster....'
Dynamic RAM actually uses *more* electricity than static RAM.
Here are some sources which support the statement above that dynamic RAM uses more electricity than static RAM, making static RAM more suitable for use in laptops and other situations where power consumption is an important consideration: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question452.htm http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-difference-between-static-ram-and-dynamic-ram.htm#didyouknowout
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory
_______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
_______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 10/6/2014 1:24 AM, ken wrote:
I never claimed "that SRAM is still being used", though links already provided do mention that.
yes, you did. you said....
... I've always insisted on video cards with static RAM. Or perhaps your understanding of static RAM is different from what I'm talking about.
and I provided my understanding of ram, via definitions of Static vs Dynamic RAM, and asked you for an example of a laptop or chipset with static ram based graphics. you never replied to this.
I asked John for links because he made quite a few claims which asked for substantiation or, at minimum, more investigation.
my assertation about onboard graphics performance vs midrange discreet graphics was based on my own testing, and is unpublished, so I dont have any links to share with you on this. you could, I suppose, look things up on most any of the benchmarking sites, such as http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/mid_range_gpus.html and note that in 3D 'Passmark', the Intel HD4600 is nearly as fast as the Geforce GT 735M, which is a typical lower end laptop discrete graphics card. the monster high end cards are, of course, many times faster than this, for example a GT870M is 3380, about 5X faster (on a different 'high end' page on that same site). These are purely 3D benchmarks, and relate more to gaming performance than desktop.
On Sun, October 5, 2014 4:57 am, ken wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:58 AM ken wrote:
On 10/05/2014 04:02 AM John R Pierce wrote:
On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote:
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter.
NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s.
Perhaps you're intimately familiar with each and every video card manufactured since the early '80s except for the ones I bought with my machines, because I've always insisted on video cards with static RAM. Or perhaps your understanding of static RAM is different from what I'm talking about.
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent, at least on MS Windows systems. the main memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop.
It would be nice to have authoritative sources for these opinions.
Also, the speed of a video card is going to depend a lot on the instruction set provided by the particular card and and then also very much on how well the software/drivers make use of that instruction set. Those factors are going to vary widely, which is why I spoke only to the speed of the *memory*. So saying "a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D" is meaningless, like saying 'a car with ABC tires might be faster....'
Dynamic RAM actually uses *more* electricity than static RAM.
Here are some sources which support the statement above that dynamic RAM uses more electricity than static RAM, making static RAM more suitable for use in laptops and other situations where power consumption is an important consideration:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question452.htm
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-difference-between-static-ram-and-dynamic-ram.htm#didyouknowout
To put this into layman's language... No wrong, to give in simple words what we learned in electrical engineer course ;-)
Static RAM uses CMOS 2 state cell (flip-flop). Therefore it contains at least 4 MOS FET transistors (2 complimentary pairs). CMOS 2 state cell only consumes energy in transition between states (and needs energy to charge/discharge related to gate capacitance). The rest of the time it is virtually zero energy consumption.
Dynamic RAM uses as memory cell capacitance, and hence the minimum number of FET transistors per memory cell can be diminished to 1. This reduces the cost and area on the chip (or increases density). But you have to refresh charge of these capacitors. Hence, you constantly spend energy on maintaining memory content.
Also, purely on physical principle: changing state of dynamic RAM cell requires charging or discharging capacitor (which must be larger than stray capacitances, as it needs to keep charge for some time, and in switching process it shouldn't change much because something else changes which is coupled to it via stray capacitance). This leads to [correct] conclusion that static memory will switch between states faster, and will cost less energy spent on switching.
So it all finally boils down to choice of dynamic RAM based on:
Less hardware and higher density on the chip (hence less cost per bit)
at the expense of
Higher energy consumption (including consumption just to maintain the state without changing content), slower speed, and extra complexity elsewhere (hardware to maintain state: scan through address rows or columns, whichever...)
If I were designing small low energy consumption in stand by state and switching often from stand by to run state device (smart phone?), I would go with static RAM....
... Going back to my original curiosity: Are there laptops with AMD/ATI dedicated video memory chips, and how are they compared to similar NVIDIA ones? Anybody?
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Sun, October 5, 2014 3:02 am, John R Pierce wrote:
On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote:
I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than the latter.
NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s.
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent,
John, I would respectfully disagree. The bad thing about "shared" memory video cards is fundamental in the architecture. They use as video RAM a portion of main RAM, that means they place the video traffic (30, or 60, 50 25 frames per second multiplied by number of pixels worth) onto memory bus. This traffic has nothing to do with anything but the screen and just doesn't belong there. It is logically independent on anything and should be kept separate from memory bus - physically.
I mentioned single board computer I soldered for my kid back then based on Z80 processor as an example of how rudimentary is to mix video traffic into memory bus. It was OK to do that on trivial amateurish single board computer. It is awful to step that low from architecturally good dedicated video ram away on modern sophisticated computer. My computer science degree rejects that and asks to take from "inventors" of that away their computer science degrees.
Sorry about harsh attitude. Crap deserves crap.
Valeri
at least on MS Windows systems. the main memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 10/5/2014 6:17 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
John, I would respectfully disagree. The bad thing about "shared" memory video cards is fundamental in the architecture. They use as video RAM a portion of main RAM, that means they place the video traffic (30, or 60, 50 25 frames per second multiplied by number of pixels worth) onto memory bus. This traffic has nothing to do with anything but the screen and just doesn't belong there. It is logically independent on anything and should be kept separate from memory bus - physically.
I mentioned single board computer I soldered for my kid back then based on Z80 processor as an example of how rudimentary is to mix video traffic into memory bus. It was OK to do that on trivial amateurish single board computer. It is awful to step that low from architecturally good dedicated video ram away on modern sophisticated computer. My computer science degree rejects that and asks to take from "inventors" of that away their computer science degrees.
the Z80 had maybe 2MB/sec of memory bandwidth (thats off the top of my head before coffee). A Z80 system rarely had over 64K of ram, usually static, btw.. the DDR3 on a Intel i5-4570 (random upper midrange cpu I picked) has 25.6GB/sec memory bandwidth. a typical 1920x1080 display is 2Mpixels, at 24 bit/pixel and 60Hz LCD refresh rate, thats 360MB/sec to refresh the display. almost *nothing* compared with that 25GB/sec bandwidth. lost in the noise (half of the .6, to be more specific).
On 10/05/2014 12:32 PM John R Pierce wrote:
.... the DDR3 on a Intel i5-4570 (random upper midrange cpu I picked) has 25.6GB/sec memory bandwidth. a typical 1920x1080 display is 2Mpixels, at 24 bit/pixel and 60Hz LCD refresh rate, thats 360MB/sec to refresh the display. almost *nothing* compared with that 25GB/sec bandwidth. lost in the noise (half of the .6, to be more specific).
John and all,
This can be seen as a good approach in that it suggests the kind of rational approach to making an evaluation toward purchase. But the example is a bit oversimplistic.
(I'll not provide links to the below because this information can be found in text- and other sorts of books on programming, especially those on video programming.)
The calculations John makes are valid as far as they go, valid for a screen with no applications/windows visible on it. Every time a window is opened onscreen not only must that window be painted on, but what was behind that window must be preserved in memory (in the even that window is closed). This applies to every window which is opened on that screen. Considering that there are often windows on top of windows on top of windows, we can see that there are layers upon layers of screen data which must be saved in memory and recallable at the click of a mouse. And not only must the screen data per se be stored in memory, but also its coordinates and "stack" position (which other windows and/or screen elements) it is "on top of" or "underneath". There are many other window properties which must be saved and recalled and then deleted to/from/to memory at appropriate times. (Consult a decent book on low-level X programming for some serious surprises.) Keeping track of all of this means that there is a lot of overhead in properly managing a display.
Don't forget the cursor: as it moves about the screen it, the screen underneath it (composed of different either wholly or partially displayed windows, all stored in different parts of memory) must be constantly saved and restored. And for this to happen at all, the mouse must be constantly polled for input-- e.g., for movement, but also accompanying keyboard and mouse-button input-- and change shape accordingly. The cursor also changes shape as it moves over parts of the screen with different properties, stored in different parts of memory, requiring management overhead to determine which ones.
Moreover, things happen within windows. Text might be updated, images changing, and videos running, even in windows not currently having the focus. Every time the user clicks on a dropdown or opens a child window within an application or cuts/copies and/or pastes text, screen data must be saved and managed. Apps like Firefox and Thunderbird, moreover, can have tabs, each of which is yet more screen data to store and manage.
Now consider that with X we can have multiple viewports, what you might think of as desktops. The number of these is configurable, but I've often configured my display for four of them. (A long time ago I read that X was capable of handling 4 billion of them, at the time I though, "Pretty cool... more than one for each person on the planet".) Each of those can contain/entail everything mentioned above for a single viewport/desktop, possibly multiplying memory usage and processing by a factor of four. Lay on top of all of this that some people run virtual machines which can increase the need for video memory by yet another factor.
In brief, a lot has to happen in addition to the simple rastorization of the screen that John describes, and so a video subsystem requires many times the amount of memory he suggests and number of discrete processor instructions his description would imply. Unless-- as could be the case-- there is some utility to assess/monitor all of these factors and output meaningful numbers, numbers which could be compared against similarly meaningful assessments/benchmarks of available video cards, we're left with anecdotal evidence which can vary widely from one user to another, for the same user from one day to another, even from one session to another. In addition, what a user does on his current system might not be the same as what he hopes to do or unexpectedly ends up doing on his next system, the system he's looking to purchase. Examples of anecdotal evidence might include: the user moves a window and, instead of the screen underneath it being instantly repainted as the window moves along, a gray trail is left in the wake of the window which may take some seconds to be filled in; or switching to an existing but hidden window (hidden under other windows), it takes a bit of time for the contents of that window to be painted in; a window initially resists moving after the user has grabbed it with the mouse pointer. These are all symptoms of a slow video subsystem; there are others, both more trivial and more serious-- and the sort of behavior I would think most users would want to avoid. Question (one among several): Wouldn't this kind of behavior be more likely to happen under a heavy system load-- say, upwards from 4.0 and even above 6.0-- when dedicated video hardware is lacking?
On 10/7/2014 10:24 AM, ken wrote:> The calculations John makes are valid as far as they go, valid for a
screen with no applications/windows visible on it. Every time a window
...
In brief, a lot has to happen in addition to the simple rastorization of the screen that John describes, and so a video subsystem requires many times the amount of memory he suggests and number of discrete processor instructions his description would imply.
John is right. Laptops with integrated Intel video controllers have all the video processing power necessary for just about anything short of heavy gaming or real-time professional-level image processing.
I run a virtual desktop infrastructure. A typical VDI host here will be running around 30 virtual desktops with dual displays at around 30% CPU utilization on 16 cores. Granted, you won't find those Xeons in any laptops, but those virtual desktops (running a full suite of business apps) AND their 60 displays are being emulated entirely in software, and then the display output is compressed and sent to the user over Ethernet, yet the users do not experience the dreadful video performance you describe being the result of not having discrete graphics.
Also, each virtual desktop consumes about 3.5GB of memory (including its displays) on its host. The display memory isn't allocated directly as a number, but as a resolution. I seem to recall that it would take up to 128MB to support two 1920x1200 displays, however.
Valeri Galtsev galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu
On Sun, October 5, 2014 3:02 am, John R Pierce wrote:
the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel HD4500 stuff is excellent,
John, I would respectfully disagree. The bad thing about "shared" memory video cards is fundamental in the architecture. They use as video RAM a portion of main RAM, that means they place the video traffic (30, or 60, 50 25 frames per second multiplied by number of pixels worth) onto memory bus. This traffic has nothing to do with anything but the screen and just doesn't belong there. It is logically independent on anything and should be kept separate from memory bus - physically.
I don't think that the shared memory integrated cards work that way, the video output has dedicated frame buffer memory so that every screen refresh doesn't go over the main memory bus, what goes over the main bus are all of the graphical assets and commands used to compose the final image, which often need to be shared with the main CPU anyway.
— Mark Tinberg mark.tinberg@wisc.edu
On 10/6/2014 8:28 AM, Mark Tinberg wrote:
I don't think that the shared memory integrated cards work that way, the video output has dedicated frame buffer memory so that every screen refresh doesn't go over the main memory bus, what goes over the main bus are all of the graphical assets and commands used to compose the final image, which often need to be shared with the main CPU anyway.
yes, it all goes over the same memory bus, but that bus is so insanely fast now, that its only using like 1-2% of the total bandwidth to maintain a medium-high resolution laptop screen, such as 1920x1080 at 60Hz refresh and 24 bit/pixel. The Intel integrated graphics adapters are actually integrated into the CPU chip itself, along with the memory controller.
On 10/6/2014 8:28 AM, Mark Tinberg wrote:
I don't think that the shared memory integrated cards work that way, the video output has dedicated frame buffer memory so that every screen refresh doesn't go over the main memory bus, what goes over the main bus are all of the graphical assets and commands used to compose the final image, which often need to be shared with the main CPU anyway.
yes, it all goes over the same memory bus, but that bus is so insanely fast now, that its only using like 1-2% of the total bandwidth to maintain a medium-high resolution laptop screen, such as 1920x1080 at 60Hz refresh and 24 bit/pixel. The Intel integrated graphics adapters are actually integrated into the CPU chip itself, along with the memory controller.
Yeah, I'm aware that they are part of the CPU die but I was splitting some hair about the output being buffered on the video output port (HDMI/VGA) so that if the image doesn't change then the video output port doesn't even hit main memory, it can just resend it's buffer. Maybe I'm remembering how it worked when the GPU was integrated with the motherboard chipset and memory controller, which had a couple of megabytes of video ram, before those features were pulled into the CPU itself. It looks like also on the higher specced Haswell chips that there is a new 128MB eDRAM L4 cache shared between the GPU and CPU execution units which also greatly reduces the memory bandwidth needs
— Mark Tinberg mark.tinberg@wisc.edu
On 10/4/14, Phil Wyett philwyett@aura-tech-systems.co.uk wrote:
My intention is to run CentOS 6.x and VM Windows and any other OS etc. After discarding many options I seem to have settled with an eye on a HP ProBook 455 G2.
http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=G6W43EA&opt=ABU&se...
This system has legacy BIOS options if you read the manuals and does mention linux quite a bit. There is info about Ubuntu and below is a link to the laptop on Ubuntu certification site.
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201404-14968/components/
If anyone is running CentOS on this series of laptop, I would very much like to hear your experiences!
I don't run C6 on this series but having tried both C6 and C7 on a HP Touchsmart with AMD/ATI GPU, my suggestion echos others in the thread, stay away from AMD graphics for laptops. C7 works fine, once I got proprietary AMD drivers installed and remembered to recompile them after a kernel version jump.
On 10/02/2014 06:57 AM, Frank Cox wrote:
I went to Staples and tried booting it on every model of laptop that they had in the store. They all come with Windows 8 installed, and for the edification of anyone who doesn't know this (I didn't until today) you have to conduct a real song and dance to get to the bios settings on one of those things:
I also wanted to make sure that Linux is supported by my new laptop so I went to the store and booted a live CD. For better hardware support and newer drivers I didn't choose CentOS but Lubuntu LTS.
Luckily, the first laptop, a Toshiba Satellite L50 booted without any issues. WIFI was also working so I took that.
I wouldn't use mail order since I've read that there are different hardware configurations possible, although they're using the same model name.
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Always Learning -
Brian Miller -
Chris -
Chris Beattie -
Chris Pemberton -
David Both -
Devin Reade -
Emmanuel Noobadmin -
Frank Cox -
isdtor -
Johan Vermeulen -
John Doe -
John Hoe -
John R Pierce -
Johnny Hughes -
jwyeth.arch＠gmail.com -
Keith Keller -
ken -
Lamar Owen -
Les Mikesell -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Mark Tinberg -
Mihai T. Lazarescu -
Mike McCarthy, W1NR -
Phil Wyett -
Valeri Galtsev -
Victoria Svitovenko -
wwp