[CentOS] Centos laptop support

[Valeri Galtsev]

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&sel=PBNB
>
> 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
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