Naked pc

[Michael Butash]

Long story short, ignore the fact it ships with windoze, format the disk,
and just install a linux over it.  Almost not worth the hassle or added
expense to find/get a "factory linux" system.

TL:DR version:

Unless you buy a pc specifically from System76 or another linux-friendly
laptop, they're always going to have windoze on them.  This goes back to
the 90's when Microsith forced universally all oem's to include windoze, as
any barebones pc sold really meant a pirated copy of windoze going on it.
There really wasn't a viable os alternative then (no, warp and beos didn't
count), so sort of made sense, but for me just meant I started building my
own pc then.  Now it's just grating with linux mature and totally viable.

That said, oem windoze is almost marginal cost in a pc (oem's usually pay
~$20 or less), and while annoying, buying a pc with windoze on and paying
the M$ tax is a "who cares" other than to make a point.  You'll pay more to
get someone NOT to sell you windoze on a pc.  Also, I still find to do
things like upgrade ssd firmware and some other odd hardware (thunderbolt
things, docks, etc) still just plain need windoze for firmware loading.  I
kept my dell xps15 dual boot for this reason, every 6mo-1yr I'll boot over
to windoze, upgrade everything, and go back to forgetting it's there.

Even System76 just mostly rebrands/skins ubuntu as their PopOS, and
otherwise don't think it's doing anything special with drivers or
firmware.  If the stock kernel and drivers don't work, I doubt they're
doing much to fix outside mainline linux releases.  Their systems were
fairly pricey last I looked, vs. I always buy refurb'd dells at significant
deals via dell outlet, and stacking on a 30-40% off coupon with it as they
pop up around holidays.  I'm cheap.

Dell also puts out linux-based systems infrequently, but might find these
at a good price with coupons occasionally in their XPS "Developer editions"
with Ubuntu.  Only issue I ever run into with linux on dell hardware is
when they have an nvidia+intel hybrid graphics - I can never make these
work reliably, my current xps15 9560 being a good example of this, but
otherwise with intel only loaded (nvidia drivers removed) works fine (minus
gaming).

HTH!

-mb


On Wed, Apr 1, 2020 at 9:17 PM Jim <azanorak at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm looking to buy a desktop pc but I don't want one that has windows
> already on it since I won't use it.   Can someone suggest somewhere
> online that sells them?  thanks
>
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