Hard Drives Preloaded With GNU-Darwin

proclus writes "A 40 gig Maxtor 3.5 inch, ATA/EIDE hard drive ready to go with GNU-Darwin OS pre-installed, plus GNU-Darwin Office, plus a full ports tree and select distfiles. This bundle includes Darwin-6.0.2, GNOME desktop, AbiWord, PyMOL, The GIMP, gdFortran, parallel computing, and much more. A triple CDR set is also included. Available now for ppc and x86 computers. The PPC version includes OpenOffice-1.0.1 and Mozilla-1.0. Compatibility is as specified for our OS installer CDs. Check out our updated ordering web page. (Mirror one mirror two.) You want it."

Comments

Novel Idea

[BoBaBrain]

But who's it for? The type of people who build their own PCs are also the type who shun all things pre-installed.

Unless there's a strain of pure hardware geeks out there...

Re:Novel Idea

[longbottle]

There are. I am one.

Not everyone enjoys fucking with software to get it working. That's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of Mac OS and BeOS, and still use Windows.

I'd much rather spend the free time I have playing with my hardware, coming up with new and novel configurations and ideas.

Software is only what enables you to use your sweet hardware. Don't forget that, bub.

Re:How is this news?

[ender81b]

Well it's just like any new distro coming out. I mean they post that and they are basically ads. How is this any different? People are interested in buying it so why not.

A distro is nothing more than a hard disk filled with mostly free software.

Another Distro, different kernel

[Coryoth]

It seems we have another distro based around GNU tools plus the other usual suspects. The only main difference I can see here is that it is running on Darwin instead of Linux or (Net|Open|Free)BSD.

It doesn't actually say so on the site, but given the software they do list, it is pretty clearly just running X like everybody else. Not that that is bad thing.

It would be nice if they could make it very Windowmaker/GNUStep centric for nostalgia sake though.

Anyway, it is good to see other kernels making it into new Distro's. It bodes well for the future.

Jedidiah.

MS Tax

[Mr_Silver]

This could be an interesting way to avoid Microsoft tax. Provide the computer with a plug in hard drive and then sell them the HD seperately.

Because the PC has no HD, it has no OS and no tax can be paid. The users then simply purchase the HD (with stuff preloaded) and drop it right in. You could just provided them with the HD to install themselves, but that would require users opening up the computer - which could cause complications and also end up with warranty issues.

Of course, the far better way would be to get rid of this pointless MS tax in the first place - but until that happens, this is as good a start as any.

(subnote: Can anyone point me to a resource that describes the history of this MS tax, how it came about and why? I'm not really up on the whole thing)