Installing CentOS 7.x on Dell Precision Laptop

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S0L0
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Installing CentOS 7.x on Dell Precision Laptop

Post by S0L0 » 2018/03/17 03:50:11

RHEL is certified on the Dell Precision Workstations (5520, 7520, 7720) and the Dell Drivers page lists "Red Hat Workstation 7.3".
Would Dell Precision RHEL drivers work for installing CentOS 7.x?

There are only two RHEL drivers for download (System Bios and Nvidia Quadro) compared to ten for Windows 10 (audio, chipset, bios, etc.)
Does Linux not require all those additional drivers like Windows?

Someone posted a 22 step process for installing CentOS on the Dell Precision 7510 laptop. Here
Can anyone confirm if the newer models would be more straightforward with driver support CentOS 7.x?

Any advice on this subject would be much appreciated.

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TrevorH
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Re: Installing CentOS 7.x on Dell Precision Laptop

Post by TrevorH » 2018/03/17 14:30:02

The BIOS update will be the same whether you're in Windows or linux or even DOS. It'll only need to be done once so you should compare the BIOS version you see when you boot up - I think it's on the initial splash screen - with the one that the download file says it provides. If they are the same then you don't need to use it. If you updated your BIOS on Windows recently then you probably won't need to do it at all.

For nvidia drivers, I'd just avoid those entirely and use the ones from the ELRepo yum repository (which you have to install yourself - google "elrepo" to find out how). Install the ELRepo repo, yum install nvidia-detect and run nvidia-detect - that will tell you which of their kmod-nvidia packages to install so then yum install that as well.

As for the 17 step process, not all of those are necessary but it looks like a fairly good outline of the process involved. You don't _need_ to disable secure boot but many people do. You might want to look at using "Bumblebee" for your graphics as that allows you to use the intel card for basic tasks and the dedicated graphics for more intensive ones. However that needs special setup - ELRepo have a special page about doing it. If you're not aiming on dual booting Windows and CentOS then a lot of the first 9 steps are not needed.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

S0L0
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Re: Installing CentOS 7.x on Dell Precision Laptop

Post by S0L0 » 2018/03/18 02:11:36

I am pretty new to Linux and looking for something as close to plug and play as possible for getting started. Would you suggest I start with Ubuntu in this case?

Its down to CentOS and Ubuntu as they are certified on the dell laptops and also I would like to use the laptop as a server down the road and both linux distros seem well suited to this task.

The two issues I face with CentOS are:

1) ease of use (i.e. complicated install process, more command line use than Ubuntu which seems more GUI based)

2) XFS seems to have issues with shrinking and power failure. I would assume most of the people having issues with it are not experienced with it enough to know how to use it effectively therefore leading to such errors.

Ubuntu + Ext4 seems like a more straightforward process? Anyone care to share their experiences with either operating systems.

Something I like about CentOS + RHEL is that many of the 3D graphics programs like Maya, and Substance Painter support it, though I am not sure how simple of an install it would be. (I am coming from Windows so pretty used to the GUI streamlined way of doing things).

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TrevorH
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Re: Installing CentOS 7.x on Dell Precision Laptop

Post by TrevorH » 2018/03/18 03:34:50

2) XFS seems to have issues with shrinking and power failure. I would assume most of the people having issues with it are not experienced with it enough to know how to use it effectively therefore leading to such errors.
XFS doesn't have issues with shrinking. It just cannot be done. At all. On any distro. But you can install CentOS on ext4 instead if you like, it's just that Redhat decided that for RHEL, xfs would be default and CentOS followed suit. Doesn't mean you have to.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

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