[CentOS] Centos laptop support

[Johan Vermeulen]

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 at 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 at 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
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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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