[ILUG] Buying PC's with Linux Pre-Installed

[Paul Jakma]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Kathryn Cassidy wrote:

> kickstart or some HD imaging tool.

at escom/commodore it worked like so:

- a master disk for a particular production run would be built

- there was a room full of IDE disk cloning machines. each machine
has a copy of the master and could clone to 4 disks simultaneously.
these machines aren't that expensive - couple of hundred quid.
Personnel for this room are just monkeys to plug/unplug the disks.

- disks go to production line and computers are assembled with the
mass preinstalled disks. (in theory. in reality this isn't quite so,
as the test people have to boot the machines, but the machines have to
ship as if they havn't been booted - so that they go into windows
setup for the custard. but that's not a problem with linux)

and that's it....

You can easily imagine that there are newer/higher-end ide copiers
that can copy tens/hundreds of disks at a time, do geometry
translation, multiple masters, remote master, etc..

masters can be reused between production runs if the hardware isn't
too dissimilar.

> So, the cost to them is minimal

the build cost is minimal - one afternoon for one guy to create a
master. (and a linux build will tolerate a lot more variations in
hardware than windows).

however: the production run has to be worth it. Eg the disk copier
might only do disks in units of 50 or something.. so a single linux
install might hold up 50 slots on a cloning machine. This is awkward
at best.

Also, the test and QA people most likely know nothing about linux.

> and you're not paying for the windows licence - how in the name of god
> can they justify charging you more for a linux machine than for a
> windows one?
>

cause you have to either have quite a few linux-capable test and QA
people, or else train all your test/QA people to some kind of linux
competancy.

> Buy the bare machine and inform them that you would have bought linux
> but they're charging too much for it.
>

good plan.

> Kathryn.


oh yeah, anyone noticed how new Q desktops are shipping with the
Windows licence certificate *stuck* to the top of the *box*...
arggghhh..

--paulj