Shopping For Linux Compatible Hardware

[MartjeB]

I don't think integrating with Amazon.com is a good idea. Put up your own website (Phoronix is big enough to do this).

But don't restrict to only be a compatibility list! Attach some sort of 'pricewatch' to it, like this website Tweakers.net does. For those who can't read Dutch: all shops in and around the Netherlands having the product (AMD Phenom X4 9950) are listed. Not only the price without shipping are there, but also including shipping costs.

In addition to that, display PTS-results with every product!

And for the love of God, don't restrict yourself to America-only. Make the whole website (every aspect of it) translatable.

[oelson]

Wouldn't be simpler to add on each hardware's page a paragraph with the mention "Open source Linux driver released for this hardware" ?

You could add also some icons in this paragraph to let the user know on what distribs the driver works out of the box.

I think that is the two main informations a linux user want to have when he buy hardware.

It's not very difficult to realize if you use the help of the community, but you have to build a (web-based and centralized) system where users can commit they reports about hardware.


Though, that's a great idea, even if Amazon isn't the cheaper vendor. I can pay a little bit more if I have the certitude that my hardware will work.

[MartjeB]

Though, that's a great idea, even if Amazon isn't the cheaper vendor. I can pay a little bit more if I have the certitude that my hardware will work.

But you can get the exact same hardware cheaper elsewhere. So why pay more? Create a 2nd Pricewatch, really.

[nanonyme]

And for the love of God, don't restrict yourself to America-only. Make the whole website (every aspect of it) translatable.

Meh, it's not as if English wasn't easy enough a language to learn. Auto-translators are godawful so it couldn't work at all on forum side and having people write the same damn article in every language sounds a bit too much to ask.

[Setlec]

Motherboards might work well to in the store, but CPUs or Hard Drives and other components may not since they'll always work in Linux. Never seen a "Windows-only" CPU before.

PowerPC are mac only.. (i'm saying that from a ex-windows user point of vue, b4 using linux)

[nanonyme]

PowerPC are mac only.. (i'm saying that from a ex-windows user point of vue, b4 using linux)

Nope. Mac no longer uses PowerPC whereas AmigaOne and some game consoles do afaik.

[Setlec]

Nope. Mac no longer uses PowerPC whereas AmigaOne and some game consoles do afaik.

read again please, you didn't get my point!

Still not getting my point? well I'm not talking of Mac being PowerPC only, but i'm talking of PowerPC are Mac only and not windows compatible!

[nanonyme]

read again please, you didn't get my point!

Still not getting my point? well I'm not talking of Mac being PowerPC only, but i'm talking of PowerPC are Mac only and not windows compatible!

Read again please, you didn't get my point. I said that Mac isn't PowerPC-only and that PowerPC isn't Mac-only. If you had just said "Windows only supports x86, amd64 and ia64", I would've agreed. This is a limitation of Windows, nothing more.
ps. You don't have to yell even if you're wrong.

[morgoth]

This is a very very good idea. But please be very exigent in term of compatibility. Saying that a laptop is Linux compatible means that ALL its components are working (including webcam, card reader, ...). I say that because some "Linux laptop resellers" are very lazy in testing and they give certification as soon as processor is working...

Also, will you support localized Amazon sites like amazon.fr?

[deanjo]

Also, will you support localized Amazon sites like amazon.fr?

This would be kind of hard to do especially with the laptop example you use. Laptop's and Prebuilts very often carry different revisions country to country. HP for example is very bad for this. Even though their systems may carry the same model number many times the components of such systems vary in the devices used to create them. So whil a US model may have excellent linux support a foreign one may not. Also later revisions of the same model can have different accessories such as card readers. These type of items often change throughout a systems lifespan as those components are swapped freely during the manufacturing lifespan based on availability and cost.