Re: [tlug] Pre-installed linux?

[Scott Robbins <scottro@??>]

On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 10:18:47AM +0900, Darren Cook wrote:
> A friend (in Tokyo) asked me the following question; I don't know of
> anywhere but perhaps someone here does?
> 
> "do you have a recommended place to pick up a cheap linux PC? i just
> need something to run ubuntu here at the office, but the dell i have
> seems to have an unsupported video card..  is there anywhere that will
> sell linux pre-installed machines to save me messing with setup etc?"

I don't know, every time I see something like this, I get annoyed at
Ubunutu all over again.  They KNOW about the problem, they SAY they want
to be the replacement for MS, and they don't fix it.  In contrast, 
FreeBSD, ArchLinux and Gentoo, none of which claim to be 
especially newcomer friendly have fixed it.  

There is a problem with some of the xorg-7.x's and some Matrox and ATI
cards.  It has been fixed--Ubuntu hasn't gotten around to it yet, and
that includes the Feisty betas.  

If your friend could use Fedora, Arch, Mandriva, FreeBSD, Gentoo,
Vector, or basically anything NOT based on Ubuntu, he should be fine.  I
believe the Dell towers have ATI cards if I'm not mistaken.  

The other option, if it's a Matrox (but I think the Dell desktops use,
or used, at least, ATI's) is to install with the alternate install CD,
which does a text based install, and then apt-get install the fix for
it.  (If he wants to do that, I'll get you the link, it's on
bugs.ubuntu.com--do a search for mga and it should be the first that
comes up.)

As far as cheap Linux-preinstalled PCs, I only know of US ones.  
http://www.ibexpc.com for example.  


I realize this doesn't answer your question, but I feel so much better
after venting.  :)

-- 

Scott Robbins

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