On: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option

[ajsnigrutin]

Shipping your PC with "some linux distro" means you have to support that linux distro.

Selling it with freedos, you only have to support freedos, and people who buy that option will install something else anyway.

[mtrower → ajsnigrutin]

> Shipping your PC with "some linux distro" means you have to support that linux distro.

But they do offer to ship with a Linux distro, even apart from this strange frankensystem option. Did you miss where straight Ubuntu is a pre-install option?

[throwaway742 → mtrower]

According to another commenter some laptops don't have Ubuntu as an option (likely due to some sort of driver issues).

[quietbritishjim → mtrower]

Yes and they charge for that, so that's consistent with what the parent comment said.

[mtrower → quietbritishjim]

Erm...no? Look at the screenshot in the article. There is no charge for Ubuntu in that shot, only for Windows.

[quietbritishjim → mtrower]

Oops, you're right. I did look at the screenshot before but totally misread it (probably because Ubuntu is just blank in the price column rather than $0, and there's no horizontal lines (thanks Tufte)).

[gambiting → ajsnigrutin]

>>means you have to support that linux distro.

But why or how? I just don't see that at all. Dell won't "support" FreeDOS either. It could be just a basic Ubuntu install that's broken as hell, and I don't see why or how Dell would need to support that.