[CentOS] What RH-like on a Dell XPS 15 (9590)?

[wwp]

Hello,


On Wed, 2 Aug 2017 10:55:14 -0400 Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> wrote:

> On 07/27/2017 04:16 PM, wwp wrote:
> > ...
> > It is as simple as unknown hardware at boot up, it's a well known issue
> > w/ *Lake hardware (modern hardware) that kernel 3.x cannot handle.
> > CentOS7 has a kernel which is simply not modern, unable to handle lots
> > of computers sold currently.
> >
> > That said, there might be a way to boot, but nothing trivial and
> > nothing at all I could find on the Internet, everytime it's kernel
> > 4.3/4.10 minimum required.  
> ...
> 
> While I know that Johnny has provided the experimental kernel (thanks, Johnny) I would like to just briefly address this idea that the C7 kernel is 'obviously' not going to work because 'is 3.x and must have 4.x.'
> 
> In EL-land, kernel versions are effectively meaningless, since features, hardware support, bugfixes, security fixes, etc are back-ported into the 'old and not modern' 3.10 kernel (for EL7) by competent developers at Red Hat.  An EL 3.10 kernel, such as the current 3.10.0-514.26.2.el7.x86_64 one, may have hardware support back-ported from a 4.x kernel that doesn't exist in the vanilla kernel.org kernel (I'm almost certain it does, but I'm not going to take the time to get details).
> 
> So it is very possible that full hardware support for your hardware could show up in a 3.10 kernel (in fact, I would expect that this would happen, but it might not happen quickly).  As you found out, experimental kernels and non-distribution kernels can freak out software packages, such as VMware Workstation, that only work with certain kernels and are expecting a particular kernel version and ABI for EL7.  I've tried out a few non-standard kernels before, and if you rely on packages that depend upon the distribution default kernel version (as I do with kmod-nvidia from ELrepo!) that breakage can be swift, and can derail you in a hurry, causing you to go down a rabbit hole very quickly.  So be prepared and keep your eyes open for these issues.
> 
> In some circles, the back-porting of features into old kernels is controversial; but that is a business decision made as part of the EL development and is not likely to change any time soon.  YMMV.

Thanks for this clear explanation, Lamar. I'll surely keep an eye on
further kernel updates (and CentOS 7.4).


Regards,

-- 
wwp
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