Installing Linux On A Wal-Mart OS-less machine

Azar writes "An article at Newsforge details the experience of installing Linux on Wal-Mart's OS-less PC. It states: 'A few months ago, super-sized discount store Wal-Mart made the headlines in the Linux world by becoming the first major U.S. retailer to offer PCs without Windows preloaded...While this was widely hailed in the Open Source community as a victory over the "Microsoft tax," which usually afflicts buyers of Linux PCs, one major question remained unanswered: How well do these machines support Linux?' Here is your answer." Newsforge is owned by OSDN, which also owns Slashdot, is all part of the sinister Andover keiretsu.

Comments

Re:Why oh why did they use a software modem?

[levik]

Somehow, I doubt that the decision to drop windows from the bundle was motivated by the highter purpose of giving users a choice. The idea was to cut corners where possible. Since when looking at the spec sheet, the absence of an OS isn't what strikes you right away, they probably thought this was one of the corners they could cut more or less unnoticed.

Now given that it was never their intent to promote the use of alternative OS, I think their decision to use a (cheaper) winmodem, makes all the sense in the world. Its disappointing to the /.ers because we just go and assume that anyone who unbundles windows from a system is a Good Guy (tm). But really, sometimes people are just greedy.

Re:Summary for the lazy

[flipflapflopflup]

I disagree:

> As long as you have experience putting linux on a PC

the author picked "newbie" options every time, and everything worked straight away (bar the modem). So it would be fair to say "You don't need experience of putting Linux on a PC"

>as long as you don't need a modem; it's a winmodem

If you look at the comments further down, several people got the modem to work (albiet having to recomile their kernels). So it *is* possible to get the modem to work under Linux. Admittedly, maybe beyong a beginner.