On: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option

[Wowfunhappy]

But customers can also order this laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled. Why offer both Ubuntu and FreeDOS, especially if the latter is just running inside of a Linux VM anyway?

[aidenn0 → Wowfunhappy]

When I last ordered from HP, many laptops did not have Linux as an option (mine did not, so I bought the FreeDOS version)

[Wowfunhappy → aidenn0]

Well that's also weird! Why are both options available on some computers, while others only have FreeDOS, even when they can't actually run FreeDOS.

[bryanlarsen → Wowfunhappy]

My guess is that those computers are missing Linux drivers for modern devices like a camera or fingerprint scanner or something. Those wouldn't be expected to be supported in FreeDOS, but would be in Linux.

[aidenn0 → Wowfunhappy]

It ran FreeDOS just fine (and indeed runs Linux just fine for me), presumably they didn't want to QA that model with Linux.