On Dec 14, 2004, at 10:06 PM, Joe and Colleen Huber wrote:

> I wasn't specifically told that the warranty would be voided if I were 
> to do
> so. Mostly a concern/worry based on some mumbo-jumbo on the HP website 
> about
> incurring additional costs under warranty if you "modify the system" 
> there
> by making it "harder to service" (or something of the sort)... that 
> and the
> tendency of the big name manfactures to be at beck and call of 
> Microsoft...

If that just means that they don't support Linux,  I can live with that.
>
> Haven't decided what I'm going to do. The new system is still in the 
> box...
> I was thinking that 250G UATA Maxtor from costco (and I suppose chew 
> up a
> PCI slot) putting a 100G or so partition that leaves room to do 
> something
> later with a distro in another partition. Then for the time being just 
> wipe
> W2000 on the Dell P4/450 and put Debain on. The Dell is still chugging 
> at 5+
> years - thou I opened it last night and I'm surprised it hasn't burst 
> into
> flames with all the dust sitting in there (you could grow potatoes in 
> the
> damn thing)...

Well, this is  just me but I'd make sure I had some kind of restore CD 
and then just try Linux. You can always use the restore CD to put it 
back to factory condition so HP can't say that the system 'has been 
modified'. I had a problem with some keys on a iBook going dead and 
Apple made me put their OS back on and confirm that the keys were still 
dead before they would send me a new keyboard but they didn't try to 
argue that I had 'modified the system' after I restored their OS.

Now I don't know if I would go for Debian Woody on a brand new machine. 
The last time I tried that I had a very hard time getting the video and 
ethernet to work. I knew it wasn't a 'Linux' problem because I tried 
Fedora and it worked. If fact i screwed around with it for a couple of 
days until I discovered quite by accident that buried deep in the 
directory structure of a 'Utilities' CD that came with the machine was 
the source code for all the drivers that the machine needed. The 
support person that I talked to didn't know it was there.

So my advice, which is worth what you are paying for it, is just to try 
Debian and if that doesn't work, try something newer, even if only as a 
confidence builder.

Good Luck!
--
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary 
depends upon his not understanding it.
-Upton Sinclair, novelist and reformer (1878-1968)

---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change  you mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss