On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 8:11 PM, Milos Blazevic <milos.blazevic@xxxxxx> wrote:
> I've seen the thread(s) you started on CentOS mailing list about Dell and ThinkPad
> laptops and running Centos on 'em.
>
> Not sure if you've seen my question, but I'm considering to purchase a laptop, run EL7 on it, and I'm weighing between the Thinkpad and Latitude, so:
>
> What was it to make you opt for E7470 over, say, Carbon X1? According to RedHat's Hardware compatility list Carbon models are certified,
> while none of the Dell's aren't.
>
> Also, have you given up on CentOS over Fedora? I'd love to hear how's CentOS 7 support for E7470 hardware.
Hi Milos,
The Thinkpad T series and Latitude are *very* similar computers. They
are both business "ultrabooks" with a 1600x1080 display option, nice
keyboards (not "chicklet" style), a trackpoint and trackpad and RJ-45
builtin.
I bought a Dell Latitude E7470 over the Lenovo for several reasons.
One is this comment which is worth mentioning again:
On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 11:58 PM, Gordon Messmer
<gordon.messmer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It's worth mentioning again that Dell is one of the companies doing the
> development for the bits that don't work, and that those drivers are often
> the ones that get Lenovo equipment going, too. Lenovo does not, to the best
> of my knowledge, do any Linux development.
Another reason is that I have heard about people having problems with
Lenovo. Not just with software but with hardware malfunctions. I spoke
to someone on the phone that had hardware problems with their new
Thinkpad (although I suspect some of the problems could have been
misdiagnosis by the user). After describing how nice the E7470 they're
thinking about dumping their 1yo X250 and getting a Dell.
As for the Carbon, that is a very different computer. The Carbon is an
ultralight / thin Macbook-like machine with Windows so I have no
advice for you there.
I have not tried CentOS on the E7470 but I'm quite certain it would
not work because I have tried the latest Fedora Live which is about
100 kernel revisions newer and even that doesn't completely work.
Specifically, if I plug in an external display it freezes. My feeling
is I need a newer display driver (and thus newer kernel). The only
other issue I noticed was that wireless didn't work but it seems more
like a glue issue and not necessarily a driver. Otherwise, suspend and
everything else worked near as I can tell which is actually pretty
impressive for a brand new machine.
So, I am doing other things while this new E7470 ages like a fine
wine. Or maybe I'll loose patience and just install Fedora and try a
"vanilla" kernel package. Then maybe after a year or two CentOS 8 or
whatever will run on it and then I can just run steady for 4+ years
without getting pummeled by stupid updates and feature creep that you
get with Fedora and Ubuntu or whatever the latest hot distro is.
The E7470 is obviously a laptop of choice for business people. And
that is the type of machine developers use. So chances of good
compatibility are very high. You just have to give it time.
I was watching Daredevil season 1 and they use Latitudes that look
exactly like mine. And that was probably filmed in 2014. So the form
factor at least has been around for a while which is good.
Unfortunately I can't say the same thing about the show.
Mike
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