MESSAGE
| DATE | 2015-06-06 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Linux Laptops cheap
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Quoting Ruben Safir (mrbrklyn-at-panix.com):
> You can pulled the card out and sell it separately?
With miniPCI cards, certainly. Some are such junk they're not worth the
bother, though. (I hear rumours that some manufacturers gimmick some
miniPCI cards to authenticate only to the models they ship with. Such
would be included in the category of 'junk'.)
> Well, they gottah get someone to write it, which is not a thing they
> generally want to do.
No, that's not what I was talking about. I'm talking about them
gathering weird, buggy, fragile, kernel-version-dependent proprietary
drivers and merging them into a custom Ubuntu preload image for that
specific unit that is then bulk-copied onto them at the factory. This,
after all, is what they already do with MS-Windows. Why wouldn't they
do the same with a Linux preload?
> > Instead of a machine that you can safely asasume runs vanilla Ubuntu
> > out of the box,
>
> That is NEVER guaranteed with a new laptop, especially a cheap one.
One, I generally avoid brand-new laptop models, _most_ especially cheap
ones, because they are likely to include problematic chipsets -- that
are problematic either because they are so new that open-source coders
haven't had time to figure them out, or because they're so awful that
open-source coders wouldn't want to own them (hence have little
incentive to code drivers for them), or both. Have you heard the
technical support joke that starts 'Doctor, doctor, it _hurts_ when I do
this'? Then, you know the punchline.
Two, in the event of wanting to take a gamble on a new-model laptop, I
will try to do one or more of:
o Boot a live CD on it (prefer Aptosid) and list out chipsets.
o Research chipsets via online data, which tends to work pretty
reliably for everything except occasional Dell units. (Note
that I have a great deal of practice at this, and some
considerable skill, e.g., I used to be Cadence Design Systems's
one guy examining and certifying proposed new models of servers,
laptops, and workstations for Linux and Solaris.)
o Make sure I can have an easy refund or resale.
There's a superior alternative to buying a new-model laptop: Buy a
model of laptop that's at least a year old. If it's not a Dell, it's
extremely likely to have stable chipset selection.
> I'm sitting here with 2 lenova think centers what still have trouble
> with their video and touchpad.
Well, Don't Do That, Then.
Most especially, if you bought them without researching the chipsets
first, don't do _that_ again.
Some of us learned this twenty years ago.
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