NewEgg: Installing Linux Breaks Laptop

Rick Zeman writes "According to the normally geek-friendly online store Newegg , installing Linux Mint is tantamount to breaking your new Lenovo laptop. Is it the purchaser's fault for not restoring the laptop to its original state of Windows-y goodness, or is NewEgg being too dogmatic trying to enforce a term that doesn't seem to exist?"

Comments

Re:NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is the go-to site for tech stuff?

Re:Unit cannot be resold as received?

[hawguy]

Even if there weren't a hardware defect, shouldn't they wipe the disk and reinstall the OS from scratch (to protect the second buyer from the possibility that the first buyer got some malware).

Sounds like a good way to do identity theft - buy a laptop, install your favorite malware (infecting the Windows recovery partition to make it permanent just in case they do a recovery), then return it and let Bestbuy resell it to an unsuspecting customer. Use that user's stolen credit card/bank account details to repeat the process with another batch of laptops.

Re:Unfortunate Reality of Being a Linux User

[TheGratefulNet]

its often less effort to open the machine, remove its drive, put drive on shelf (before first ever boot) and put your own laptop drive in (maybe even an ssd) and do whatever you need to.

I have not stepped on a shipped os, probably ever. drives are cheap and I'll get a 2nd one to use for my own stuff. its exactly like this situation that you keep the original o/s and for me, the original drive sits unused.

time is what I don't have lots of and doing an image backup then verify then restore later on is 3 steps I'd rather not do. yank the drive, do your stuff on your and if hardware craps out, shove the old drive back in and return it for fixing/warr work.

plus, you NEVER have any of you files on that drive. no sector scan will EVER have your stuff on it. ever. that's nice, too!