On 12/6/05, C.M. Connelly <cmc at math.hmc.edu> wrote: > > We run CentOS on our Dell kit (servers, workstations, desktops, > even some laptops) and haven't had any problems with warranty > support from them for hardware issues. > > I would never call them about software support, which we don't pay > for. If I were running RHEL more widely (I do have one install on > a server), I suspect that Dell would push me toward calling Red > Hat directly anyway. > > Dell has decent Linux support for various distros. Officially, > they only support RHEL (and theoretically SuSE), but there's > community support available for most other reasonably popular > distros (notably Debian). > > Dell's Linux Community Website, <http://linux.dell.com/>, has > pointers to various resources. If you want to run anything other > than RHEL, you can get support from the various mailing lists > (especially linux-poweredge and linux-precision). > > I know that people have gotten Dell's OpenManage (OMSA) stuff > running on other distros. I've also had no problems with Dell's > DKMS and OMSA packages on CentOS (CentOS is, after all, supposed > to be almost identical to RHEL). I recently did a bunch of BIOS > upgrades from the Linux command line with Dell's packages (sans > OMSA) and they worked well, too. > > Also, the x86_64 CentOS code seems to run fine on our Dell > Precision Workstations with EM64T processors. The issues there > are the same you'd see running on any other AMD64 hardware -- some > packages aren't built for 64-bit systems; some may not be > buildable. I can't speak for any great advantages to using the > 64-bit code; most of the work that's being done on those machines > > Claire Thanks again to everyone for the helpful responses. Claire--thanks for those links.