Linux......Come of age!!!!!

fgaughan

isofa wrote: »

I'm with superscaper on this one.



Some people drive Fords, some Nissans, others BMWs, Mercs etc - it's nice to have a choice isn't it?

Good point how ever go to your local PC world and ask if you cant buy the PC without windows installed they wouldn't be allowed to sell it.
Even try and tell them you already got a legal copy of windows disc and they still wouldnt be able to sell it.

Only way round this if they are desperate for a sale they take the windows price off (guessing on this one i assume Win XP retail at £50) ask for that ammount taken off ..see what happens.

[Deleted User]

Don't Dell sell PCs with a flavour of linux now?

I'm sure there's plenty of smaller retailers doing it also

Lots of choice if you look for it

fgaughan

be_alright wrote: »

Where's the problem in that?

Problem is when you can do it for free Linux, how ever BBC uses linux more so to save BBC licnsce payers.

TonyLisaP

fgaughan wrote: »

Good point how ever go to your local PC world and ask if you cant buy the PC without windows installed they wouldn't be allowed to sell it.
Even try and tell them you already got a legal copy of windows disc and they still wouldnt be able to sell it.

Only way round this if they are desperate for a sale they take the windows price off (guessing on this one i assume Win XP retail at £50) ask for that ammount taken off ..see what happens.

You buy the machine with the OS on, then you remove the OS and reclaim the cost of the OS from the Manufacturer. You have to make sure that you don't accept the MS licence agreements when you first start the machine. I know a guy that did this and Dell refunded him £49 for not using the MS XP installation.

adouglasmhor

I am glad it's US taxpayers paying for it and not British ones.

BillScarab

You can easily buy PCs without Windows installed. Dell will sell you systems with Linux isntalled instead of Windows as will Tesco. I may be wrong but I have a feeling at one time Tesco sold machines with no OS at all. Places that build machines to spec will also sell without an OS if that's what you want.

No idea about PC World but then most sane people wouldn't buy a PC there anyway.

fgaughan

TonyLisaP wrote: »

You buy the machine with the OS on, then you remove the OS and reclaim the cost of the OS from the Manufacturer. You have to make sure that you don't accept the MS licence agreements when you first start the machine. I know a guy that did this and Dell refunded him £49 for not using the MS XP installation.

Oh yes they do that now.. forgot about that, glad to see a sea of change as mor epeople getting the fantastic EEPC

"How many people use Google?"
everyone puts hand up
"so there for you do use Linux"

How many people use BT home hub?
yep so you do use linux......

adouglasmhor

I would love to get my grubby mits on a disk of google linux.

[Deleted User]

fgaughan wrote: »

Problem is when you can do it for free Linux, how ever BBC uses linux more so to save BBC licnsce payers.

Just because you can download the software for free doesn't negate any associated costs in running. There have been dozens of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis done on chosing enterprise software from either Microsoft or a Linux Vendor and it's a real grey area which works out at the most cheapest over the lifetime.

BillScarab

What people forget is that when companies run Linux, particularly large companies they tend to be running versions like Red Hat and paying for support rather than just installing the latest distro from the web. As be_alright says this does tend to narrow or remove the difference in costs between proprietary software and Open Source.