Compulsory Windows purchasing by way of PC bundles is one of the biggest hurtles to alternative OS adoption. Some people have been able to fight it: "Reading the Slashdot article about Dave Mitchell from Great Britain, who got a 47 pounds refund from Dell for returning his copy of Windows was an inspiration for me to check, if it is possible in Poland, too. This is my success story."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Asus and (especially) Acer laptops aren't really in the same league as Thinkpads; if I have to buy inferior hardware to get Linux, there's still something wrong...
Sure, there are Thinkpads that ship with Linux...but I haven't noticed them anywhere in PL/they would end up much more expensive/no X-series among them (and I'm in the market for one currently)
PS. And you should also mention that on many laptops sold in PL with "Linux", the OS usually doesn't support all of the hardware (witnessed by me in case of Acer, Benq and Fujitsu-Siemens), often is completelly unuseable (Acer), sometimes not installed (LiveCD thrown into the box - Fujitsu-Siemens, Benq); essentially they have Linux just for show/not to be accused of promoting piracy (most of those machines will end up with pirated Windows)
Member since:
2006-01-06
...just buy laptop with Linux pre-installed. In Poland it's much easier than for example in UK, from my experience, to find off the shelve laptop with Linux pre-installed. I have bought 2 Acer laptops, with Linux and Asus Eee PC recently in Poland and I'm very satisfied. Of course I don't use Linpus Linux and Xandros, but it's just a matter of re-installing with your favourite distro.
I never buy any hardware with Windows operating system because I don't have to.
Edited 2008-08-30 17:57 UTC