Re: [tlug] Pre-installed linux?

["Lyle H Saxon" <llletters@??>]

On 2/11/07, Scott Robbins <scottro@??> wrote:

On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 10:18:47AM +0900, Darren Cook wrote:
> "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.

I did an update of Kubuntu 6.10 today and part of the update was for ATI cards (I think... it was definitely for graphics boards, and I think it was ATI), so maybe they've finally gotten that fixed?

Also, there are some pretty decent boxes on the used market these days - I picked up a Toshiba with a Celeron 1.2GHz  CPU for Y5,000.  It only had 128MB of RAM, but I had a couple of spare 256MB boards at home that I tossed in, and it's running fine with Kubuntu 
6.10.  If you spend around Y15,000, you can get P-IV's running at around 2GHz, some with USB 2.0.

It won't be preinstalled, but try Otto - they clean and test everything and generally have a lot of stuff to choose from (shop in Japanese though, most of the staff doesn't speak much English, although they have a couple of foreign employees who speak it fluently): 
http://www.ottonet.co.jp/

Lyle