I worry about if and how this will affect Arch. Any opinions? On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Kyle Bassett via arch-general < arch-general@archlinux.org> wrote:

This is insane! Apple set the precedent with smart phones, but now we have Trusted Computing Creep in desktops. Used are losing further control of their own devices.

Ugh.

On 28 Sep 2016 11:27, "D C via arch-general" <arch-general@archlinux.org> wrote:

Wow, is MS desperate or something?

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 11:24 AM, Francis Gerund via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> wrote:

...

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/09/21/1516230/ microsoft-signature-pc- requirements-now-blocks-linux-installation-reports?sbsrc=md

It was nice while it lasted.

<sigh>

-- Public_Key_Block.asc

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 5:35 PM, Francis Gerund via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> wrote:

I worry about if and how this will affect Arch. Any opinions?

It's a thing people have to be wary about. Average arch users may have similar laziness with regards to what their hardware requirements are as users of other distros - we're so used to have stuff just working. So the only advice I can give, if you should figure out you buy a new device, save your receipt so you get your money back. cheers! mar77i

Good evening, Do you Have any pointer to good opensource hardware ? Le 28 sept. 2016 21:04, "Jude DaShiell" <jdashiel@panix.com> a écrit :

That or buy an open architecture device. The new computer I have is an open architecture computer for that very reason and I bought that last year.

On Wed, 28 Sep 2016, Martin K?hne via arch-general wrote:

Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2016 14:55:54

...

From: Martin K?hne via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> To: General Discussion about Arch Linux <arch-general@archlinux.org> Cc: Martin K?hne <mysatyre@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [arch-general] Microsoft Signature PC Requirements Now Blocks Linux Installation

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 5:35 PM, Francis Gerund via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> wrote:

...

I worry about if and how this will affect Arch. Any opinions?

It's a thing people have to be wary about. Average arch users may have similar laziness with regards to what their hardware requirements are as users of other distros - we're so used to have stuff just working. So the only advice I can give, if you should figure out you buy a new device, save your receipt so you get your money back.

cheers! mar77i

--

Do you Have any pointer to good opensource hardware ?

Not exactly open-source/FSF-endorsed but https://system76.com/ sells laptops with Ubuntu-preinstalled so those are also guaranteed to run Arch.

I would personally recommend the Project Sputnik hardware from Dell <http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop?c=us&l=en&s=biz>, in particular the XPS 13 Developer Edition .They put a decent amount of effort into making sure the BIOS and firmware at least work with the latest version of Ubuntu and mainline these for the most part. Worst comes to worst, you can just repackage the stuff from Ubuntu but I'd say pretty much everything is working as well as it should on mainline Arch today.

[…]

...

Not exactly open-source/FSF-endorsed but https://system76.com/ sells laptops with Ubuntu-preinstalled so those are also guaranteed to run Arch.

we should propably collect such knowledge in the wiki. something like "hardware guide" or similar?

Hi, Maxwell Anselm via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> writes:

...

Do you Have any pointer to good opensource hardware ?

Not exactly open-source/FSF-endorsed but https://system76.com/ sells laptops with Ubuntu-preinstalled so those are also guaranteed to run Arch.

Germany has such a company as well: <http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/> They're selling devices with either Ubuntu or ElementaryOS pre-installed. I bought a InfinityBook, it works pretty well and flawless. UK has something like that, too: <https://www.entroware.com/store/> They sell devices with Ubuntu pre-installed. Best regards, -- Christian Kruse https://wwwtech.de/about

On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 10:06 AM, Merlin Büge <toni@bluenox07.de> wrote:

But note that all that is not open source hardware (as mentioned above). Also I'm not getting the point in buying such hardware -- there is some linux distribution preinstalled, but that's it I guess. Or am I missing something?

The hardware might be chosen so that it works well with linux. If you're lucky. Other than that, I find the term open source hardware was probably misused in the first place in this thread, as the topic as I understood it was "hardware for use with free software".

If you want open source hardware, I recommend looking at - the EOMA68 project - Olimex - upcoming Talos Workstation by Raptor Engineering - maybe devices supported by libreboot

Whoever makes a start with the wiki page will likely refer to this thread as a reference. cheers! mar77i

thinkpenguin.com is another open architecture vendor. On Thu, 29 Sep 2016, Christian Kruse wrote:

Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 03:54:17 From: Christian Kruse <cjk@defunct.ch> Reply-To: General Discussion about Arch Linux <arch-general@archlinux.org> To: General Discussion about Arch Linux <arch-general@archlinux.org> Subject: Re: [arch-general] Microsoft Signature PC Requirements Now Blocks Linux Installation

Hi,

Maxwell Anselm via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> writes:

...

...

Do you Have any pointer to good opensource hardware ?

Not exactly open-source/FSF-endorsed but https://system76.com/ sells laptops with Ubuntu-preinstalled so those are also guaranteed to run Arch.

Germany has such a company as well:

<http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/>

They're selling devices with either Ubuntu or ElementaryOS pre-installed. I bought a InfinityBook, it works pretty well and flawless.

UK has something like that, too:

<https://www.entroware.com/store/>

They sell devices with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Best regards,

--

Hi, Ralf Mardorf <silver.bullet@zoho.com> writes:

You are right, but you also missed something. I've taken a look at an averaged tower PC. At first appearance the price seems to be ok, but after a further look I noticed that it's just the basic price, if you want at least one hard disk drive, you already need to pay more. How do they install an Ubuntu flavor, if you buy a computer without hard disk drive? In the end it's plain daylight robbery.

I don't think that this is true; generally their desktop systems come with a 500GB Segate HDD. And as I just checked I couldn't find a system without a disk; could you provide a link?

DIY is significant less expensive, even if you should buy some hardware that shouldn't work with Linux, even if you then wouldn't get your money back and need to buy some hardware twice.

DIY was always less expensive and will always be. But it will cost you your time. I'm not willing to pay that price. Best regards, -- Christian Kruse https://wwwtech.de/about

On Thu, 29 Sep 2016 10:40:17 +0200, Christian Kruse wrote:

I can be sure that everything works with Linux.

For what purpose? Writing emails and surfing through the world wide web? How does their computers work, if you boot the kernel with "threadirqs" for real-time tasks? Will it cause less or much jitter for pro-audio, or CNC? That a machine "woks with Linux" is a vague claim. I bought hardware that was announced as Linux compatible. But it wasn't. I got my money back and my dealer removed the vendor's claim from the catalogue. There are often pitfalls such as, "you can connect a drive to this interface and it will work with Linux", missing the information "you can not boot a Linux from a drive that is connected to this interface" and similar issues. Regards, Ralf

On Thu, 29 Sep 2016 10:45:12 +0200, Christian Kruse wrote:

Ralf Mardorf writes:

...

You are right, but you also missed something. I've taken a look at an averaged tower PC. At first appearance the price seems to be ok, but after a further look I noticed that it's just the basic price, if you want at least one hard disk drive, you already need to pay more. How do they install an Ubuntu flavor, if you buy a computer without hard disk drive? In the end it's plain daylight robbery.

I don't think that this is true; generally their desktop systems come with a 500GB Segate HDD. And as I just checked I couldn't find a system without a disk; could you provide a link?

My apologies, indeed, one drive is mounted, http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Computer-/-PCs/Alle-Syst... .

...

DIY is significant less expensive, even if you should buy some hardware that shouldn't work with Linux, even if you then wouldn't get your money back and need to buy some hardware twice.

DIY was always less expensive and will always be. But it will cost you your time. I'm not willing to pay that price.

DIY is usually not that significant less expensive as it is compared to tuxedocomputers.com. Regards, Ralf

On Thu, 29 Sep 2016 10:15:19 +0200, Martin Kühne via arch-general wrote:

Whoever makes a start with the wiki page will likely refer to this thread as a reference.

And perhaps http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/ however, sometimes such lists are tricky. Sometimes hardware is mentioned as Linux compatible and they forget one from 4 revisions that isn't. I experienced this for a 56K modem. It's also possible that something works with Linux, but doesn't provide all available features, such as for professional RME audio cards. Regards, Ralf

On 29 Sep 2016, at 10:40, Christian Kruse <cjk@defunct.ch> wrote:

I can be sure that everything works with Linux. I don't have the time or the energy to check the hardware vendors manually

I've been installing various Linux distributions on all kinds of notebooks and desktop-PCs for several years now, and I almost never had problems with hardware compatibility. Just follow the basic rules like avoid dedicated graphics if you don't need them, prefer Intel chips, and you're done! But even if you don't watch out for those, like many of the people did who brought me their computers, it still works - almost always. And the cases it didn't work out of the box were non-rolling-release Distros where most times a manual kernel upgrade to some more recent version fixed it. So I don't get why people are always calling for "Linux compatibility", most common hardware does work.

On 29 Sep 2016, at 11:56, Martin Kühne via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> wrote:

Honestly, though, "worked for you to this day" just doesn't cut it in this case. Just because you were lucky or never had to deal with really new hardware doesn't mean hardware compatibility is not an issue. And the rarer the case of incompatibility appears, the more disappointing it actually is when it hits you, and I guess we all agree that a bit of accumulated data about how to avoid them as much as possible is a good start.

"Worked for you this day", "you were lucky "…? I am talking of 100+ Linux installations on different hardware over the last few years. Not just one or two lucky cases. And sometimes it was very new hardware, like WiFi-Chips that were released a few weeks ago. But hey, I don't even disagree with the idea of aggregating hardware data that works. I guess running a wiki page on that really is a good idea. I just wanted to say that Linux compatibility Isn't that bad as often assumed, and I don' know why. I often hear people talking like: "Hey, watch out that this new external HDD is Linux certified", "when you buy new hardware, you really have to make sure that it's Linux compatible, because it often isn't". I wanted to give an example that People are offen overcautious with that, and that companies may abuse this misbelief to make money by selling regular hardware as "Linux compatible" at higher prices. And after all, we shouldn't scare off new soon-to-be Linux users with these old scars of hardware compatibility, should we? ;)

On Thu, 29 Sep 2016 11:35:00 +0200, Lukas Rose wrote:

And the cases it didn't work out of the box were non-rolling-release Distros where most times a manual kernel upgrade to some more recent version fixed it.

Sometimes it requires a BIOS update. When my mobo was new, it could be used with Linux, but a few BIOS updates were needed, before Linux run stable. Sometimes we simply don't notice that something doesn't work, because we simply don't use it, something like... "Certification notes Suspend is not supported on this device The hardware design of this device does not support suspend (S3). Suspend, therefore, does not work." - http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201504-18282/ ...won't be an issue for all users, but OTOH it likely is a very serious issue for other users. Regards, Ralf