Most of my machines are used machines, and when I build a new machine, I usually install Windows.
Or another way of saying that is if I need a Windows machine, I need new hardware.
Usually my Linux boxes are VMs, retired Windows machines, a used machine that I purchased.
Rarely a new machine (once again to be fair even most of my Windows machine are used)
So this is unusual, I got a new laptop from work, a Dell Latitude 5300 with 32GB of RAM, an NVME hard drive (256 GB) and an Intel Core i7-8665U. This puppy flies (for 2020 standards future readers dont laugh too hard).
Loaded CentOS 7 on it and it just screams.
But the install wasn’t as straightforward as my other builds. Couple things I had to get around, first off the BIOS was locked (this is a company equipment). Luckily, I am in IT was able to get the password.
I needed to unlock it because it came to me with the storage as Intel RAID, I needed to change it ti AHCI.
Another thing is that was really a UEFI box with secure boot enabled. No problem because CentOS 7 is properly signed and will work with secure boot.
But then there was no optical media, no problem because there are USB ports. Unfortunately there were no USB 2ports only USB 3, and for some reason CentOS 7 does not install on USB 3, once installed, it will use USB 3, but the installer is not compatible.
No problem, just PXE boot, unfortunately my home network is not set up to PXE boot UEFI machines. I will in the future, but in the short term I wanted an OS on here.
The fix was extremely simple, get a USB flash drive (it can be USB2) formatted in FAT or FAT32 and copy the EFI and images directory from the CD on it, also for yucks I copied a kickstart folder.
In the EFI BOOT folder there is a grub.cfg file, I had a variation of this entry
menuentry 'Install CentOS 7 MYLAPTOP' --class fedora --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { linuxefi /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz ip=dhcp net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0 inst.repo=http://192.168.1.10/linux/7-1908/ inst.ks=http://192.168.1.10/linux/ks/mylaptop.cfg initrdefi /images/pxeboot/initrd.img }
Because the installer source could not be on a USB3 device. Maybe I am wrong but this did work.
Also had a bonus of being able to quickly rebuild my box.
Weight: 305.0