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Comment by trelane | Hacker News Reader

Yes, running Linux on Windows hardware is often a recipe for misery, or at least dealing with obscure kernel parameters.

Which is why I've said and will say again: slapping Linux on Windows hardware is a mug's game. Buy it preinstalled, from a company that supports it. We actually have that option these days, and it's amazing.

Some days, I swear the smartest thing Apple ever did was prevent users from slapping OSX on commodity Windows hardware.

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Or just look up your "windows hardware" before you buy and check compatibility. Companies that sell laptops with preinstalled Linux are far more often than not just selling rebranded "windows hardware." The benefit is that you get a support number, and that they have paid attention to the Linux compatibility of the models in their range.

> Companies that sell laptops with preinstalled Linux are far more often than not just selling rebranded "windows hardware."

What examples do you have of this?

Dell did that.

Which models did they do that with? I'd heard the xps with Linux was pretty good, at least for a while.

Yes, most XPS and Latitude laptops.

What were the equivalent white box vendors and did they ship with the same firmwares? Citation to read up in this?

I don't understand what you mean by "white box".

Just look for yourself it's really not hard to find: https://www.dell.com/en-us/lp/linux-systems

Sure, I can look up Dell Linux products. However, the assertion was that they're just branded white box computers, so Im asking what the white box equivalents are, and to what extent they're really equivalent.

I didn't understand it that way at all. The assertion, as far as I understood, was that the Linux machines were the same ones that were sold with Windows on them otherwise. Which is true, Dell sell the same hardware with Windows or Linux.

Ah, I see your claim.

Is the firmware confirmed to be the same? Even with the same chips, the firmware would likely diverge between Windows and Linux (ACPI code, BIOS, EC, etc)

What is “Windows hardware”?

Hardware sold with Windows preinstalled, by vendors who won't support anything else than Windows. I simply avoid them.

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