On 01/22/2009 03:02 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
WRT: Gateway. We used them in 2 different companies I worked for, and both companies experienced an over 90% flawed on arrival. I opened the box, and found the secondary IDE port was DOA. I know a few people who bought Gateways, and only one of them got a system that worked perfectly out of the box.On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Jerry Feldman <g...@blu.org> wrote:Subsequently once you have Ubuntu (or other Linux) installed, you could install the proprietary Nvidia or FGLRX drivers so that you can get a good resolution.Can the proprietary driver packages be copied to a separate USB flash drive, and then installed into the in-RAM "live" system?Although I am not a fan of Dell's for the most part they put out a decent product ...If you buy a Dell, I *strongly* recommend the "Gold Tech Support" package, or whatever they're calling it these days. The difference is night and day. With it, I'm a happy Dell customer. Without it, I wouldn't touch their stuff.... unlike Gateway.At %DAYJOB%, we're a former Gateway customer. They are slowly evaporating. They spun off, and then liquidated, their business division. Their consumer division is now showing signs of stress as well. I don't expect them to live through the current economic mess.You are going to run into this problem in most systems today.Sadly true. Free Software was finally gaining serious traction thanks to Linux, and now it's being challenged by hardware that's closed-off for no good reason at all. :-(
If you buy "Gold Tech Support", what do you get if you buy a laptop with Windows installed and install another OS,, like Fedora or Ubuntu.
Many of the proprietary chips are now being opened up, but ATI and Nvidia who do support the Linux and FOSS community, do so with closed-source drivers. Broadcom is the same way. While we now have a generic Broadcom driver, the firmware needs to be obtained. In the Ubuntu Community, Canonical provides these drivers in their restricted data bases, and Fedora uses RPM Fusion, and SuSE uses Pac Man. Additionally, most printers (Epson, HP, and Brother) are well supported by Linux. My last 2 laptops have been HP, and have been abused. The older one served me several years, and used a rubber band to keep the power plug in the jack (it was loose resulting from a few falls). My current one goes to work, home, MIT, Amtrak, New Orleans, and Atlanta. I don't know if the HP warranties have changed, but it used to be that the standard HP warranty was 1 year where the Dell is 90 days. My HP nx6125 had a 3 year warranty.
-- Jerry Feldman <g...@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id: 537C5846 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846
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