ACER Sucks !!?!

[satan0rx]

So, I got a new laptop, an ACER TravelMate 6292.
I could order it with pre-installed Linpus Linux,
which also saved 90 ?. So I did, of course.

I got that thing and wanted to check the Linpus (my plan was
to wipe that, but a look doesn't hurt ...)

And here it is:

The Acer engineers have done a great job to sqeeze the linpus
linux in less than 200 MB of disk space, by ommitting useless SW
like X11, WLAN firmware and so on.

That really sucks!!!

I don't care too muchin my case, I didn't want to use Linpus,
but assume sbdy will by this NB 'cause he needs a NB for surfing,
etc. and wants to save these 90 ? (The NB was 479?, so winblows would add 20%).

Than he sees that. He will either return the NB and get the Win NB,
or buy/pirate win and will always say things like: linux sucks.

The bad thing is that the NB really is a Centrino with GMX X3100 and
ilw4965agn, so the shit should run OOTB if you just install ubuntu or
something.

Why r the suckers doing that ??? They'd be better off selling it
w/o OS.

[curaga]

That does suck. As for why, I can only guess that since corporations tend to stay in their ways, they want official licenses from a corporation. Linpus provides those, and like any vendor, higher tiers cost more. So, I believe that this Linpus Lite is the cheapest option Linpus has, while still selling a license per netbook to Acer.

[Kano]

Well i tried to install Linpus on a pure system and it failed I don't get the purpose of it anyway. It has a gui for kids not for Linux users. I prefer of course my own distro.

[Zhick]

I think there used to be a rumor about oem-vendors having some kind of deal with microsoft that doesn't allow them to sell a pc without an OS.
So that's supposedly why they started selling pcs with freedos or minimal linux-distributions on them. It's not supposed to be a usable os but is needed to fullfil this agreement. And since a full-fledged linux-distro at least needs some configuration they probably just decided to go with something plain and simple to reduce efforts.
Anyway I don't get how this makes Acer suck? You say yourself you wanted to install the distribution of your choice on it anyway.

[satan0rx]

So, why do I say this makes ACER suck?

I don't complain about me. I'm actually perfectly fine with this situation
(up to now).

I complain about this as some sort of negative advertising campaign against linux.

As I pointed out, the thing IS CONSIDERABLY cheaper w/ Linux compared to
windows (480 vs. 570 ?). [Windows = Windows Vista Buisness/XP Pro]

So if some PC newbie looks at this, and says: "oh, let's try this linux
thing out, I can "buy" windows later".

And then he sees that ... He will get the Windows, and then tell everyone that linux sucks.

Probably NO pro-linux advertising can make him try linux again anytime soon.
==========================================
As for the configuration effort by ACER: this is mood.
There is absolutely no reason that you can't clone Linux. (Even Win can be cloned, bt then you need some tools of the internet to
change some things in the registry, eg. the licence key, and some network-related stuff).

Well, Linux does not have this Licence-key issue, so the only need to
install and configure it ONCE, and then they can clone it to all of
their notebooks. They could even clone it on the HDDs in advance.

==========================================

And there is another thing:

When I saw "linux" preinstalled, I was hoping that all the HW is
linux compatible. Granted, this is a centrino NB, so at least one
"surprise" (Wlan, ie. Broadcom 802.11n) is gone.

Well I HOPE that the other stuff (webcam, finger-print-reader, card-reader, it's an ENE PCI device) will work.