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Comment by krylon | Hacker News Reader

The big deal, IMHO, is not so much that it comes with Ubuntu preinstalled, but that it (I naively assume) contains only hardware supported by Linux.

I have been ridiculously lucky when buying hardware, but I am told it is not that difficult, even today, to run into machines with hardware that is not well-supported by Linux.

So I think I would actually prefer if vendors sold machines that have been tested to work well with Linux, kind of like the "Designed for Windows"-stickers on PCs and notebooks.

If a machine is made of hardware that Linux supports well, I do not care what OS is preinstalled, since I will probably wipe it and install one myself anyway. But having a guarantee from the vendor that I can do so without trouble or fear of bricking my machine would be helpful.

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My monitor, a Dell UP2715K, is one of the most unsupported pieces of hardware I've ever dealt with on Linux. It has been a nightmare. Nvidia graphics card support has caused me weeks of grief as well. So why have I kept it? Because when I finally got everything to work, I have become addicted to the quality of the text! I honestly can't work with other monitors now due to the low DPI looking like absolute crap. Apple has ruined me. Too bad no one else has stepped into the 5K monitor market.

I was confused about how a monitor would cause problems until I understood that it is a very-high-res display.

I am happy that my dual-display setup at home works the way I want it to. Before getting my current desktop PC, I had not used GNU/Linux on a system with more than one display, and I had heard horror stories of how that did not work out very well. Fortunately, for me it just worked(tm).

Speaking of monitors, Eizo makes a monitor with a 1:1 aspect ratio, i.e. the display is a square, 1920 by 1920. I would so LOVE to have one of those, but of course it is prohibitively expensive (at least for my monitor budget).

I agree, but it would be a nice bonus not to have to pay for Windows at all. This also gives a clear signal to Dell.

You never really pay for Windows. Most OEM vendors make up for the price of the license by installing tons of additional crap on every Windows they ship out, so practically Windows does not make your laptop more expensive.

If Windows were free what are the odds the market would force OEMs to do that anyway to shave a percentage point off their prices/profit margins? I'm betting near 100% and only premium machines wouldn't have crapware.

Yeah I think they would do it anyway, regardless of Windows cost. What's interesting is that so far, they don't when it comes to Linux installations. Not that there is that much crapware they can actually install for Linux, but they could potentially bundle Chrome and stuff like that if they really wanted.

Dell charges you 100 euros more for Ubuntu than for Windows.

http://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/notebooks-und-ultrabooks/xps-...

On the Precision machines, which you can configure manually, switching from Windows to Ubuntu makes the machine cost about 100 USD less. The price difference is probably other hardware.

To this day, my Lenovo will not go into hibernation when battery is critically low, even though I have it configured in the power settings. Not that big of a deal, I simply need to be aware of the battery meter all the time, but I wish it would just work.

If hibernate only fails when the battery is low, this doesn't necessarily sound like a hardware issue.

My Thinkpad X220 gives 3 beeps when it's at 5% battery. Probably OS independent, though I've only run Linux on this thing. Enough time for me to grab the charger or put it in hibernate.

Does yours not have that option in the BIOS?

Haven't checked the BIOS, I'll have a look, thanks.

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