New Laptop Recomendation

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Hi,

I’m recently retired from my university job. I am looking for a laptop to run CentOS 6/7. My university was a traditional Dell site so I’ve used Latitude laptops for years, currently E6500/E6510.

Anybody got any experience of running CentOS on the newer Dell Latitudes E5000 or E7000. These are not certified according to Redhats’
Hardware Guide.

Alternatively Precision Workstations would do. These can be supplied with Ubuntu installed so they run Linux.

Thanks,

Tony

30 thoughts on - New Laptop Recomendation

  • If that’s the route you go, on outlet.dell.com you can filter for just those by choosing Outlet for Work (if you watch the banners at the top you can often squeeze an additional 20%-30% off the already discounted – from the ‘build your own’ – prices… enough to pay for 3 or 4 year Pro Support Plus coverage, which provides next-day repair service… the ‘plus’ includes even accidental damage).  
    Be aware though, their Thunderbolt 3 ports might not yet be supported by even C7 unless you’re willing to compile new kernels yourself with the proper options enabled (sorry – not sure exactly which options are required). A query about Thunderbolt 3 support in C6 at CentOS.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=57927 asked back in May has yet to attract a response. Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S5

  • I have been buying off-lease used Latitudes and Precision laptops for years for the sole reason that they are always Linux friendly and solidly reliable. Most of them can be ordered new with Ubuntu.

    Mike

  • Hello,

    I am using Dell Latitude series for more than 10 years (professionally, as a dev, so you can imagine that the system is not sleeping during working hour), solid hardware and good Linux support. I only saw minor degradations across 4 laptops and only one or two tricks sometimes necessary like for the wifi or eth chip when configuring the system but I always win at the end.

    Regards,

  • Mike McCarthy, W1NR wrote:

    Note that you can order servers with RHEL.

    mark “what do you *think* we have a lot of running CentOS?”

  • Been through the Dell site, I’m very familiar with Dell.

    The original question was whether anybody was running CentOS 6/7 on Dell Latitude or Precision Workstation so I could replace Ubuntu with CentOS.

    Rather not go for XPS basically a gaming machine not expandable enough same with Inspiron.

    Thanks,

    Tony

  • …

    Well, take another look at the URL. Most of the systems there are Precision systems.

    Can’t comment on CentOS specifically. I use Fedora for workstations.

  • which Latitude? they’ve probably made 100 different laptops over the last couple decades branded ‘Latitude’.

    I bet my wife’s new Latitude 15 5000 would be problematic, it uses USB
    C/Thunderport for its docking station which has 2 additional video adapters in it. She’s even having some issues with Windows 7 with the docking ports, Win 10 is the officially supported OS, but her $job software is all win7 based..

  • Hello John,

    D800 series (810, etc.), E6500 series (E6500, E6530, etc.), at least. Depends also of what you get inside, controller chips, video.. Globally everything will work according to my experience.

    Regards,

  • D series are 10 years or more old. ancient in laptop terms. I had a D600 for a long time (new in 2003).

    The E6x00, ’10, ’20, and ’30 are also fairly old (2008, 2010, 2011, and
    2012, respectively).

    The current models branded like Latitude 15 5000, 14 7000, etc, are in fact Exx70 models, these are 6th gen core i3/i5/i7 based, aka Skylake, and its this newest generation of stuff thats got compatibility issues with CentOS.

  • When you go to the Dell Linux site and choose shop now you are taken to a page featuring Windows 10 machines.

    Sent from my iPad

  • At least for the Precision systems, click “customize and buy” and you’ll have the option to select Ubuntu, and discount the cost of Windows.

    I believe you can contact a sales rep for the XPS system.

  • [OT rant]

    a pet peeve… webpile redesigns that mess everything up.

    I was looking for info on the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) website last night, and they’d totally redone the entire mess, it was all slick and web 3.0-ish, and full of glowing PR material, and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
    ON THE THOUSANDS OF LOCATIONS BLM MANAGES.

    could have been a brochure for a vaporware company for all the useful info I found. I don’t want to tweet or ‘like’ crap, I wanted to find out about a specific region they manage, and all the old links to this info were broken.

  • I run Dell M7710 with 32GB, SSDs, and nVidia graphics. It wasn’t cheap, but it’s blisteringly fast.

  • But they’re all old models. I already run CentOS 6/7 on Latidude E65xx.

    I’m looking for newer models.

    Thanks,

    Tony

  • That’s what I thought. I think I’ll go for a Precision Workstation. Anybody see any major problems with the following configuration.

    I’m the ex Systems Manager of a Computer Science Dept. so I have lots of experience in configuring Linux systems.

    precision 15 7510

    Intel® Core i5-6300HQ Processor (Quad Core 2.30G
    Ubuntu Linux 14.04 SP1
    NVIDIA Quadro M1000M w/2GB GDDR5
    15.6 Ultrasharp™ FHD IPS (1920×108
    Bezel For Full HD Non Touch with Camera +MIC
    16GB (2x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 N-ECC
    Intel® Dual Band Wireless 8260 (802.11ac)
    256GB M.2 PCIe Solid State Drive Additional 1TB 2.5inch SATA (7200 Rpm) Hard Drive
    6-cell (72Wh) Lithium Ion battery

    Seems pretty standard components to me.

    Thanks,

    Tony
    —
    Linux nogs.tonyshome.ie 2.6.32-642.11.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Nov 18
    19:25:05 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

  • that too is a “skylake”, latest gen intel CPU, you might have some issues with CentOS and the USB C/Thunderport, and/or USB 3 on those.
    If it works on Ubuntu, you likely can get it working with C7 albeit maybe using a newer kernel.

    unless you’re going to game or run advanced CAD software, I’d try and find one that uses Intel’s onboard graphics, just to keep things simpler, and save on battery life.

    IF that M.2 PCIe SSD is a NVMe drive, you might need to muck about with drivers or newer kernels to get it working, but it may well work in SATA
    mode ‘out of box’.

    For sure, you’ll have more luck with CentOS 7.x rather than 6.x

    —
    john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

  • Just to clarify this:

    Many modern Intel systems come configured for an Intel “RAID” mode.
    While configured for that mode, the SATA controller changes its PCI ID
    so that the standard Windows drivers don’t bind to it, allowing the Intel RAID drivers to bind to it instead. There are no Linux drivers that bind to the “RAID” mode PCI ID, though if you switch the controller to “standard” mode, Linux drivers will work normally.

    https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html?thread49398

  • I thought the mdraid software raid drivers supported the intel RST
    (formerly Matrix) fake raid ? the major difference is, with RST/Matrix, the whole disk has to be mirrored then partitioned, while mdraid normally does mirroring on a per partition basis. the other difference is the raid metadata block, but I thought mdraid understood how to interpret the intel RST/Matrix stuff ?

  • It does, but I believe this behavior is specific to Intel Skylake (and presumably, later) hardware. Matthew has a few details at the URL I
    included earlier, as well as one of his previous blog entries.

    The problem isn’t that Linux doesn’t recognize the RAID data, it’s that the controller switches to an unrecognized and undocumented PCI ID, for which there are currently no Linux drivers. Linux won’t even see the storage device, because it can’t operate the controller that the storage device is connected to (while it’s in “RAID” mode).

  • Hi Tony,

    I’ve installed CentOS7 on a Latitude 7470 and can say for a fact that most of the suff just works, while some of it that doesn’t (like HDMI, or KMS, nifty little feature I like to have) works with an Elrepo LT or ML kernels. Personally, I’d recommend the LT kernel. I also read in the RHEL 7.3 release notes that I2C support for Gen6 mobile CPUs was introduced. Thus as the time passes, say 6 months from now, one should be able to drop the LT/ML kernel in favor of the stock RHEL/CentOS kernel.

  • I think you need 4.4 lts kernel, for example elrepo lts.

    I run this time 4.8.11 with i3 6100 HP Laptop on my own special repo (Test envoirement).

    X11 uses a git version for the intel graphic card.

    If you are not a beginner. You can take a view :-)

    Sincerely

    Andy

    [cms4all-drivers]
    name=cms4all-drivers baseurl=http://CentOS.cms4all.org/repo/7/drivers/
    #baseurl=file:///srv/repo/CentOS/7/drivers gpgcheck=0
    enabled=1

    [cms4all-kernel]
    name=cms4all-kernel baseurl=http://CentOS.cms4all.org/repo/7/kernel/
    #baseurl=file:///srv/repo/CentOS/7/kernel gpgcheck=0
    enabled=1

  • Thanks to all who replied to my request above. I’m sorry for the delay in replying but I’ve been in hospital for the past month, just out on christmas leave.

    I finally ordered a Precision 7510 Workstation, as recommended by a couple of people. It arrived with Ubuntu installed ( god I don’t like Unity ) Over my christmas break I’ll have a go at installing CentOS 7
    and let ye know how I get on.

    Again thanks to everyone who took the time to reply, and have a Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year.

    Tony.