<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Jun 27, 2013, at 12:24 PM, Rick Moen wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Deirdre and I are going to be in Wellington, New Zealand on Saturday,<br>July 11th, so there will be no CABAL meeting that day.<br><br><br>A few words to sum up the 'I bought this computer and have problems<br>getting driver support for its video|wireless|ethernet on my distro'<br>problem, because people keep coming here with it.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I just want to add a general comment about acquiring computers that are good with Linux.</div><div>One way to research this topic is to learn what computer models are used by Linux resellers and then buy that model of computer either from the reseller or elsewhere.</div><div>Los Alamos Computers is an example of a dealer putting Linux on new computers for sale.</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://laclinux.com/en/Start">http://laclinux.com/en/Start</a></div><div>They offer notebook and workstation computers.</div><div>Note that they are now offering Lenovo computers. I've used probably two dozen models of Lenovo in a mix of notebook, workstation, and server that found them just fine for Linux.</div><div><br></div><div>Another minor point: the cost difference between a good quality computer, such as the ones used by Los Alamos, and something cheap is about $.25 a day (25 cents) over the course of a four year life. My experience is that a quality computer is less hassle and therefore "less expensive" than cheap ones.</div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div>-- <br>Mark Weisler<br>PGP Key ID 68E462B6<br>PGP Key fingerprint 87D5 A77B FC47 3CC3 DFF0 586D 23FF F8B4 68E4 62B6</div><div><br></div></span></div></div><div><br></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><br>(But yes, no criticism whatsoever intended of Ken or the several<br>generous people who stepped forward to answer the question he asked,<br>which wasn't how to support his existing ATI chip but what video card to<br>get.)<br><br>o Brand-new is risky. Brand-new and bottom-dollar, more so.<br>(You can rely on whatever Fry's is pushing to be both.)<br><br>o Getting help requires accurate chipset identity information.<br>Look closely at any alleged chipset information from, especially, HP or<br>Dell, because they lean towards marketing names rather than real ones.<br>How do you tell the difference? Well, um, just look at these:<br><br> ATI Vision<br> vs.<br> AMD Radeon HD7560D<br><br>Isn't it pretty obvious?<br><br>o When in doubt, running 'lspci' from a live CD distro is pretty<br>definitive about what your chipsets _really_ are.<br><br>o Don't forget, if distro release n doesn't support a brand-new<br>chipset, such that you need to retrofit some proprietary-driver as<br>fallback, odds are that release n+1 will have open-source support<br>out of the box.<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>conspire mailing list<br><a href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br><a href="http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire</a><br><br></div></blockquote></div><br><div>
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