Re:New Ubuntu-based Precision line-up
by SkyMarshal on Monday January 09, 2017 @08:49PM
(#13361843)
Last time I tried a Dell over a year ago I could only install its approved Linux's on it - Ubuntu (and maybe Red Hat or CentOS, don't recall exactly). Likely due to the custom motherboard, but it felt very locked down. Whereas if I spec and build my own workstation or laptop from XoticPC or similar, any distro will work with it. Anyone else familiar with this issue? Is it still a thing?
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This isn't a thing. You'll need to provide more information than you have.
While Dell does sell "certified" hardware, they have never (AFAIK) locked down a system to only allow Ubuntu installs. I don't even see how this is possible, provided Canonical doesn't supply Dell with Secure Boot keys locked in the BIOS/UEFI -- what you're describing has never been a thing, and was most likely an issue with storage controller or lacking support for a chipset generation.
For the past 17 years, our policy has been to push vendors to open source drivers and push those drivers upstream. Red Hat and Canonical rarely ever take hardware vendor patches otherwise anyway.
When you're shipping brand new hardware, not all distributions necessarily are caught up even if upstream projects (kernel, X, etc) are.
Re:New Ubuntu-based Precision line-up
by sandGorgon on Monday January 09, 2017 @10:52PM
(#13362417)
Ubuntu still has spotty supoort for installing to UEFI with the newer NVME ssd.
Which is why my office switched over to Redhat Fedora 25 and never looked back.
The entire install and out of the box experience is unbeatable.