Hello all, I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7. Last time I checked this was some five or so years ago, and when I look at https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops, nothing much seems to have happened since. At that time, I had to give up CentOS on laptops, as both Wi-Fi and graphics wasn't too well supported with CentOS 5 and 6. Is the situation better now with CentOS 7? We're only allowed to buy the HP, Dell and Apple brands here at this university, so what I'm looking at is basically HP. Apple is not of interest because of their pricing. All our desktops and laptops are HP's running Windows 7 and 10, and they work fine. We do have some Dells, but only in the server area. Currently all our CentOS 6 and 7 workstations are custom built OEMs used for molecular modelling, but are now getting rather long in the tooth. I have a laptop at the office as a backup, running Ubuntu 16 LTS, as that was the only thing that found all the hardware properly at the time. However, I'd rather not go down that particular road for various reasons. The thing that interests me first and foremost is whether the latest CentOS 7 iteration will install right out of the box with all hardware properly detected, no manual compiling of drivers or jumping through hoops to _maybe_ getting stuff to work with eg a HP Elitebook 850 G4. Anybody care to chime in with a comment or hint on the laptop situation and-or their experiences? -- BW, Sorin ----------------------------------------------------------- # Sorin Srbu, Sysadmin # Uppsala University # Dept of Medicinal Chemistry # Div of Org Pharm Chem # Box 574 # SE-75123 Uppsala # Sweden # # Phone: +46 (0)18-4714482 # Visit: BMC, Husargatan 3, D5:512b # Web: http://www.orgfarm.uu.se ----------------------------------------------------------- # O< ASCII ribbon campaign - Against html E-mail # http://tinyurl.com/ascii-ribbon-campaign # # This message was not sent from an iProduct! # # Please consider the environment before printing this email. # Join the campaign at http://thinkBeforePrinting.org # # MotD follows: A father is a banker provided by nature.
I've got a HP Envy laptop and I'm fairly happy with it. The internal WiFi doesn't work with Centos but a ?5 WiFi dongle sorted that. Oddly, it still stops working once the battery drops below 50% ish. Mine is dual boot with Win8 which is pants. The biggest problem is that whenever I do much with the config, e.g. when I re-installed centos, the boot loader doesn't sort properly and I have to fiddle with it. That's the reason I've not upgraded to Win10. Video, sound, LAN, etc all work fine straight out of the box. On Thursday 02 November 2017 13:29:53 Sorin Srbu wrote:> Hello all, > > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7. > > Last time I checked this was some five or so years ago, and when I look at > https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops, nothing much seems to have happened > since. > > At that time, I had to give up CentOS on laptops, as both Wi-Fi and > graphics wasn't too well supported with CentOS 5 and 6. > Is the situation better now with CentOS 7? > > We're only allowed to buy the HP, Dell and Apple brands here at this > university, so what I'm looking at is basically HP. Apple is not of > interest because of their pricing. > All our desktops and laptops are HP's running Windows 7 and 10, and they > work fine. > We do have some Dells, but only in the server area. > Currently all our CentOS 6 and 7 workstations are custom built OEMs used > for molecular modelling, but are now getting rather long in the tooth. I > have a laptop at the office as a backup, running Ubuntu 16 LTS, as that was > the only thing that found all the hardware properly at the time. However, > I'd rather not go down that particular road for various reasons. > > The thing that interests me first and foremost is whether the latest CentOS > 7 iteration will install right out of the box with all hardware properly > detected, no manual compiling of drivers or jumping through hoops to > _maybe_ getting stuff to work with eg a HP Elitebook 850 G4. > > Anybody care to chime in with a comment or hint on the laptop situation > and-or their experiences?-- Gary Stainburn Group I.T. Manager Ringways Garages http://www.ringways.co.uk https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/garys-march-march
> -----Original Message----- > From: CentOS [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Gary > Stainburn > Sent: den 2 november 2017 14:48 > To: centos at centos.org > Subject: Re: [CentOS] HP laptops with CentOS 7? > > I've got a HP Envy laptop and I'm fairly happy with it. The internal WiFi > doesn't work with Centos but a ?5 WiFi dongle sorted that. Oddly, it still > stops working once the battery drops below 50% ish. > > Mine is dual boot with Win8 which is pants. The biggest problem is that > whenever I do much with the config, e.g. when I re-installed centos, the > boot > loader doesn't sort properly and I have to fiddle with it. > > That's the reason I've not upgraded to Win10. > > Video, sound, LAN, etc all work fine straight out of the box.Thanks. Would you know what chipset that particular wifi-dongle is running? A wifi-dongle may work, but I'm thinking it's not really desirable to go that way. I'm figuring the users will loose that dongle sooner than later! :-) -- //Sorin
On Thu, Nov 02, 2017 at 01:29:53PM +0000, Sorin Srbu wrote:> Hello all, > > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7.At daily work, we have elitebook 840g2 and 840g3, works out of the box with C7. (on the g3, the FN/light shortcuts are not working). ymmv. Cheers Tru -- Tru Huynh http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xBEFA581B -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20171102/7c509c05/attachment.sig>
On Thu, November 2, 2017 8:29 am, Sorin Srbu wrote:> Hello all, > > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7.I usually recommend against HP laptops. I had Compaq quite some time ago (the last was bought out by HP shortly after I got my laptop), and I have seen a bunch of HP laptops people in our Department got themselves. That (dealing with these, looking inside hardware etc) developed strong allergy towards HP laptops in me. My Compaq, BTW, has a list of "approved hardware" in BIOS, which is evil: I had to edit BIOS with hex editor to replace piece of crap broadcom wireless adapter with Intel one. To be fair I must mention here that I love HP printers, and the whole attitude of HP towards printers they make. Decent HP laser printers are manageable, last forever, and HP keeps making supplies for them. I just retired still working B/W LaserJet 4050, that worked for over 16 years, was heavily used, still works, print quality is the same as it always had, and HP still makes supplies for it. I usually recommend Dell: business lines of laptops, see which are offered with 3 to 5 years warranty, I do get cheapest 3 year warranty, but Dell committing to maintain it for 5 years tell you that that is solidly built, and is not expected to be obsoleted soon. I recommended IBM before they sold laptop line to Lenovo. After watching Lenovo for about 3 years, I started recommending them (they were same well engineered as IBMs were), but shortly after that they had a scandal: sold a bunch of laptops with malware preinstalled, that did it: I gave up on Lenovo for good.>From smaller players, I would just see which makes business orientedlaptops for some time (offering purchase of long warranties is a good sign). And if you can handle one before purchasing - say, you can go to computer store and handle on on display, - I would recommend "propeller test". Grab sides of laptop and try to twist it into propeller shape. If it is flexible, it is junk that will fail soon. If it is solid, it has great chance to last long. Flexing system board - motherboard is common jargon for over 30 years - leads to developing microcracks in it: copper when going through plastic deformation hardens, then cracks. Good luck. Valeri> > Last time I checked this was some five or so years ago, and when I look at > https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops, nothing much seems to have > happened > since. > > At that time, I had to give up CentOS on laptops, as both Wi-Fi and > graphics > wasn't too well supported with CentOS 5 and 6. > Is the situation better now with CentOS 7? > > We're only allowed to buy the HP, Dell and Apple brands here at this > university, so what I'm looking at is basically HP. Apple is not of > interest > because of their pricing. > All our desktops and laptops are HP's running Windows 7 and 10, and they > work fine. > We do have some Dells, but only in the server area. > Currently all our CentOS 6 and 7 workstations are custom built OEMs used > for > molecular modelling, but are now getting rather long in the tooth. > I have a laptop at the office as a backup, running Ubuntu 16 LTS, as that > was the only thing that found all the hardware properly at the time. > However, I'd rather not go down that particular road for various reasons. > > The thing that interests me first and foremost is whether the latest > CentOS > 7 iteration will install right out of the box with all hardware properly > detected, no manual compiling of drivers or jumping through hoops to > _maybe_ > getting stuff to work with eg a HP Elitebook 850 G4. > > Anybody care to chime in with a comment or hint on the laptop situation > and-or their experiences? > > -- > BW, > Sorin > ----------------------------------------------------------- > # Sorin Srbu, Sysadmin > # Uppsala University > # Dept of Medicinal Chemistry > # Div of Org Pharm Chem > # Box 574 > # SE-75123 Uppsala > # Sweden > # > # Phone: +46 (0)18-4714482 > # Visit: BMC, Husargatan 3, D5:512b > # Web: http://www.orgfarm.uu.se > ----------------------------------------------------------- > # O< ASCII ribbon campaign - Against html E-mail > # http://tinyurl.com/ascii-ribbon-campaign > # > # This message was not sent from an iProduct! > # > # Please consider the environment before printing this email. > # Join the campaign at http://thinkBeforePrinting.org > # > # MotD follows: > A father is a banker provided by nature. > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sorin Srbu wrote:> > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7. > > Last time I checked this was some five or so years ago, and when I look at > https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops, nothing much seems to have > happened since. > > At that time, I had to give up CentOS on laptops, as both Wi-Fi and > graphics wasn't too well supported with CentOS 5 and 6. > Is the situation better now with CentOS 7? > > We're only allowed to buy the HP, Dell and Apple brands here at this > university, so what I'm looking at is basically HP. Apple is not of > interest > because of their pricing.I'd prefer Dell, as I said in the post on low-end server, because Dell's support is decent or better. Also, Dell does know Linux on the server side - they offer RHEL... and their OMSA DVD boots... into CentOS. <g> <snip> And about CentOS on laptops... I've got this circa 2009 HP Netbook. The ancient Ubuntu netbook-remix was way obsolete, so I needed to update it (I only use it while traveling, for email and browsing). I just dd'd a CentOS 6.9 i386 live iso to a flash drive (and I still HATE systemd)... and it booted. Perfectly. First time. Then I rebooted, and "install" is an option. Did that, and it worked perfectly. Happy camper, here. mark
Valeri Galtsev wrote:> > On Thu, November 2, 2017 8:29 am, Sorin Srbu wrote: >> Hello all, >> >> I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7.<snip>> To be fair I must mention here that I love HP printers, and the whole > attitude of HP towards printers they make. Decent HP laser printers are > manageable, last forever, and HP keeps making supplies for them. I just > retired still working B/W LaserJet 4050, that worked for over 16 years, > was heavily used, still works, print quality is the same as it always had, > and HP still makes supplies for it.We buy compatible toner for our HP printers - it's less than half the OEM price, and works just fine. The vendor I like dealing with is tonerprice.com. We got a pallet of toner a few years ago; six or so months later, I needed toner for my cute l'il Laserjet at home... and got the *same* service, in terms of price and response time.> > I usually recommend Dell: business lines of laptops, see which are offered > with 3 to 5 years warranty, I do get cheapest 3 year warranty, but Dell > committing to maintain it for 5 years tell you that that is solidly built, > and is not expected to be obsoleted soon.<snip> Seconded. Hell, I tell everyone, including my kids, DO NOT BUY consumer-grade laptops, only business-grade. Even buying one used online, they'll last longer than any crap consumer grade. We have a lot of Dell Latitudes here at work. mark
> Anybody care to chime in with a comment or hint on the laptop situation > and-or their experiences?I'm very happy with my Dell Precision 5520 "developer edition". It shipped with Ubuntu and runs Fedora pretty much flawlessly. I haven't tried CentOS, but Dell claims that RHEL support on their spec sheet, so I would expect it to work well. Dell also have the XPS 13 "developer edition" for those looking for a smaller footprint. -- =======================================================================Ian Pilcher arequipeno at gmail.com -------- "I grew up before Mark Zuckerberg invented friendship" -------- ========================================================================
On 11/2/2017 8:35 AM, Ian Pilcher wrote:> I'm very happy with my Dell Precision 5520 "developer edition".? It > shipped with Ubuntu and runs Fedora pretty much flawlessly.? I haven't > tried CentOS, but Dell claims that RHEL support on their spec sheet, so > I would expect it to work well. > > Dell also have the XPS 13 "developer edition" for those looking for a > smaller footprint.i forget the distro offhand, but someone has a latest-and-greatest kernel for CentOS 6 & 7 which greatly helps with modern hardware support. -- john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz
> -----Original Message----- > From: CentOS [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of m.roth at 5- > cent.us > Sent: den 2 november 2017 15:30 > To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> > Subject: Re: [CentOS] HP laptops with CentOS 7? > > Sorin Srbu wrote: > > > > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7. > > > > Last time I checked this was some five or so years ago, and when I lookat> > https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops, nothing much seems to have > > happened since. > > > > At that time, I had to give up CentOS on laptops, as both Wi-Fi and > > graphics wasn't too well supported with CentOS 5 and 6. > > Is the situation better now with CentOS 7? > > > > We're only allowed to buy the HP, Dell and Apple brands here at this > > university, so what I'm looking at is basically HP. Apple is not of > > interest > because of their pricing. > > I'd prefer Dell, as I said in the post on low-end server, because Dell's > support is decent or better. Also, Dell does know Linux on the server side > - they offer RHEL... and their OMSA DVD boots... into CentOS. <g> > <snip> > And about CentOS on laptops... I've got this circa 2009 HP Netbook. The > ancient Ubuntu netbook-remix was way obsolete, so I needed to update it (I > only use it while traveling, for email and browsing). I just dd'd a CentOS > 6.9 i386 live iso to a flash drive (and I still HATE systemd)... and it > booted. Perfectly. First time. Then I rebooted, and "install" is an > option. Did that, and it worked perfectly. > > Happy camper, here.Seems like I need to get my hands on a recent HP and test this. Thanks for the feedback! -- //Sorin
> -----Original Message----- > From: CentOS [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Ian Pilcher > Sent: den 2 november 2017 16:36 > To: centos at centos.org > Subject: Re: [CentOS] HP laptops with CentOS 7? > > > Anybody care to chime in with a comment or hint on the laptop situation > > and-or their experiences? > > I'm very happy with my Dell Precision 5520 "developer edition". It > shipped with Ubuntu and runs Fedora pretty much flawlessly. I haven't > tried CentOS, but Dell claims that RHEL support on their spec sheet, so > I would expect it to work well. > > Dell also have the XPS 13 "developer edition" for those looking for a > smaller footprint.Ouch! The 5520's seems pricey! The XPS's slightly less so. HP does have an advantage wrt price. Thanks for the feedback! -- //Sorin
> -----Original Message----- > From: CentOS [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Tru Huynh > Sent: den 2 november 2017 15:13 > To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> > Subject: Re: [CentOS] HP laptops with CentOS 7? > > On Thu, Nov 02, 2017 at 01:29:53PM +0000, Sorin Srbu wrote: > > Hello all, > > > > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7. > > At daily work, we have elitebook 840g2 and 840g3, works out of the boxwith C7.> (on the g3, the FN/light shortcuts are not working). ymmv.Awesome, thanks! -- //Sorin
> -----Original Message----- > From: CentOS [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Valeri > Galtsev > Sent: den 2 november 2017 15:21 > To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> > Subject: Re: [CentOS] HP laptops with CentOS 7? > > > On Thu, November 2, 2017 8:29 am, Sorin Srbu wrote: > > Hello all, > > > > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7. > > I usually recommend against HP laptops. I had Compaq quite some time ago > (the last was bought out by HP shortly after I got my laptop), and I have > seen a bunch of HP laptops people in our Department got themselves. That > (dealing with these, looking inside hardware etc) developed strong allergy > towards HP laptops in me. My Compaq, BTW, has a list of "approved > hardware" in BIOS, which is evil: I had to edit BIOS with hex editor to > replace piece of crap broadcom wireless adapter with Intel one. > > To be fair I must mention here that I love HP printers, and the whole > attitude of HP towards printers they make. Decent HP laser printers are > manageable, last forever, and HP keeps making supplies for them. I just > retired still working B/W LaserJet 4050, that worked for over 16 years, > was heavily used, still works, print quality is the same as it always had, > and HP still makes supplies for it. > > I usually recommend Dell: business lines of laptops, see which are offered > with 3 to 5 years warranty, I do get cheapest 3 year warranty, but Dell > committing to maintain it for 5 years tell you that that is solidly built, > and is not expected to be obsoleted soon. > > I recommended IBM before they sold laptop line to Lenovo. After watching > Lenovo for about 3 years, I started recommending them (they were same > well > engineered as IBMs were), but shortly after that they had a scandal: sold > a bunch of laptops with malware preinstalled, that did it: I gave up on > Lenovo for good. > > From smaller players, I would just see which makes business oriented > laptops for some time (offering purchase of long warranties is a good > sign). And if you can handle one before purchasing - say, you can go to > computer store and handle on on display, - I would recommend "propeller > test". Grab sides of laptop and try to twist it into propeller shape. If > it is flexible, it is junk that will fail soon. If it is solid, it has > great chance to last long. Flexing system board - motherboard is common > jargon for over 30 years - leads to developing microcracks in it: copper > when going through plastic deformation hardens, then cracks.Funny you should mention the "propeller test", as this is why I've stayed away from Dell laptops, and instead went for the HP Compaq's with the magnesium chassis in the early 00's! I've stayed with HP since then. HP has however had a habit of replacing the hardware anytime within a series while calling the models the same. This has bitten both me and the people at central IT sourcing the Microsoft SCCM infrastructure for us. I think I'll keep an open mind for Dell laptops for now. Thanks for the feedback! -- //Sorin
On 11/02/2017 09:29 AM, Sorin Srbu wrote:> Hello all, > > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7. > > Last time I checked this was some five or so years ago, and when I look at > https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops, nothing much seems to have happened > since. > > At that time, I had to give up CentOS on laptops, as both Wi-Fi and graphics > wasn't too well supported with CentOS 5 and 6. > Is the situation better now with CentOS 7? > > We're only allowed to buy the HP, Dell and Apple brands here at this > university, so what I'm looking at is basically HP. Apple is not of interest > because of their pricing. > All our desktops and laptops are HP's running Windows 7 and 10, and they > work fine. > We do have some Dells, but only in the server area. > Currently all our CentOS 6 and 7 workstations are custom built OEMs used for > molecular modelling, but are now getting rather long in the tooth. > I have a laptop at the office as a backup, running Ubuntu 16 LTS, as that > was the only thing that found all the hardware properly at the time. > However, I'd rather not go down that particular road for various reasons. > > The thing that interests me first and foremost is whether the latest CentOS > 7 iteration will install right out of the box with all hardware properly > detected, no manual compiling of drivers or jumping through hoops to _maybe_ > getting stuff to work with eg a HP Elitebook 850 G4. > > Anybody care to chime in with a comment or hint on the laptop situation > and-or their experiences? >For two years now I've been semi-happily using an HP Envy with the high-end Nvidia graphics card.? Installing CentOS7, everything worked out of box except the wifi.? The problem there was due to the drivers requiring a v.3.5 kernel which centos doesn't yet have.? There were some very occasional glitches in the video, but subsequent upgrades to the nvidia drivers eventually fixed those. Audio worked initially, but after installing vlc I've had problems which I haven't been able to track down, so the sound with some apps just doesn't work.? Notably, anything audio through firefox doesn't work except that which uses flashplayer.? Audacity and vlc work just fine. The body of the laptop is solid, made mostly out of carbon fiber... it seemed like it's bullet-proof.? The pop-out DVD tray I got is really flimsy, so must be handled quite gingerly.? I've read that it's been upgraded by HP to more solid version in more recent incarnations of the Envy. I've never used the bluetooth, so I can't testify to how well that works, but I've never seen/read any complaints about it, so I'd assume it works. Of the six or more laptops I've owned in my life, the keyboard of this one has been absolutely the most difficult one to get used to.? It seems that if I don't hit a key square in the middle of the key, that character doesn't make it to the screen.? Same failure if I press the key too hard.? This craps on my typing speed immensely,? I used to type at over 100 words/minute, but I'm now down to less than half that... sucks big time. It's nice that it has a big touchpad and I use it all the time. Only very seldom to I plug in a usb mouse (e.g., in Blender).? But it's way too easy to accidently touch the touchpad, resulting in all kinds of random mayhem.? So I modified some code I found to disable/enable the touchpad and mapped that code to [Ctrl-`] so that it operates as a toggle.? Problem therewith nicely solved. Talking with folks on a suse list about the sound problem, I learned that they have have no sound problems with there and, further, my problem might be a messed up packman stack... whatever that is.? Suse also has a much higher kernel version than we do in centos, so switching over to suse is in the works.? That's sad because I've been a happy RH/centos guy for a long time. Hope this review is helpful.
> -----Original Message----- > From: CentOS [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of ken > Sent: den 16 november 2017 17:00 > To: centos at centos.org > Subject: Re: [CentOS] HP laptops with CentOS 7? > > > I'm looking into getting HP laptops for our department running CentOS 7. > > For two years now I've been semi-happily using an HP Envy with the > high-end Nvidia graphics card. Installing CentOS7, everything worked > out of box except the wifi. The problem there was due to the drivers > requiring a v.3.5 kernel which centos doesn't yet have. There were some > very occasional glitches in the video, but subsequent upgrades to the > nvidia drivers eventually fixed those. > > Audio worked initially, but after installing vlc I've had problems which > I haven't been able to track down, so the sound with some apps just > doesn't work. Notably, anything audio through firefox doesn't work > except that which uses flashplayer. Audacity and vlc work just fine. > > The body of the laptop is solid, made mostly out of carbon fiber... it > seemed like it's bullet-proof. The pop-out DVD tray I got is really > flimsy, so must be handled quite gingerly. I've read that it's been > upgraded by HP to more solid version in more recent incarnations of the > Envy. > > I've never used the bluetooth, so I can't testify to how well that > works, but I've never seen/read any complaints about it, so I'd assume > it works. > > Of the six or more laptops I've owned in my life, the keyboard of this > one has been absolutely the most difficult one to get used to. It seems > that if I don't hit a key square in the middle of the key, that > character doesn't make it to the screen. Same failure if I press the > key too hard. This craps on my typing speed immensely, I used to type > at over 100 words/minute, but I'm now down to less than half that... > sucks big time. > > It's nice that it has a big touchpad and I use it all the time. Only > very seldom to I plug in a usb mouse (e.g., in Blender). But it's way > too easy to accidently touch the touchpad, resulting in all kinds of > random mayhem. So I modified some code I found to disable/enable the > touchpad and mapped that code to [Ctrl-`] so that it operates as a > toggle. Problem therewith nicely solved. > > Talking with folks on a suse list about the sound problem, I learned > that they have have no sound problems with there and, further, my > problem might be a messed up packman stack... whatever that is. Suse > also has a much higher kernel version than we do in centos, so switching > over to suse is in the works. That's sad because I've been a happy > RH/centos guy for a long time. > > Hope this review is helpful.It is, thank you! Real life experiences are worth a lot to me, thanks again. -- //Sorin