purchasing laptop without OS

[fivepesos]

anyone know of manufacturers who offer their laptops without an installed operating system? i intend to run linux or bsd solely on my laptop and i dont want to purchase a license of windows.

any suggestions? any comments on which manufacturers have strong linux device support (i head sony's vaio are great under linx). im a student and cost is a concern for me.

 

[n0cmonkey]

http://www.tuxtops.com/
http://www.apple.com (You dont pay for Windows, and you get 2 OSes free 😉)

EDIT: IBM and Sonys are great with OpenBSD, and Dell shouldnt be a bad choice for linux.

 

[FOBSIDE]

<< http://www.apple.com (You dont pay for Windows, and you get 2 OSes free 😉) >>



if you factor the cost of the OS into a machine when you buy it, apple doesnt seem all the pricey, especially with the bundled software.

 

[freebsddude]

I dont know of any. Your best bet is to buy some OS's on some older laptop models which may have Win 95/98, there may some deals around for that kinda stuff.

I found this $799 Dell deal, although I am not really sure how Dell works with Linux and *BSDs ??

 

[Abzstrak]

if your gonna run BSD of some sort then its a no brainer, go with Apple...

Otherwise its really hard to go wrong with IBM, as long as its not their lowest line (same with all manufacterers), not sure if they offer an OSless one though

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< if your gonna run BSD of some sort then its a no brainer, go with Apple... >>



FreeBSD's PPC support isnt all that great right now, unless you meant OS X. But OS X, NetBSD, and OpenBSD should all work great on an iBook or TiBook.

 

[Abzstrak]

yea, I meant cause of OS X.... If I had an apple I dont see Y I'd run another OS.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< yea, I meant cause of OS X.... If I had an apple I dont see Y I'd run another OS. >>



OS X is nice, but not everything works on Darwin. Plus, if you want to do programming for your OS of choice it would be nice to atleast dualboot.

 

[fivepesos]

thx for all the response, ive checked out tuxtops but their prices seem kinda high, ill continue to shop around.