I see. Yes that's the same here. I bought my netbook with a pre-installed asian linux (without even a graphical login). Had to wipe that to install openSuSE and other distros, not much difference to windows here.

I guess vendors generally don't invest much effort here -- stupid in a way, since many distros are really easy to install once you try it and they could spare license costs.

I was lucky when I bought my EEE PC that it was when "netbooks" were all the rage so, while I had to replace Xandros (or whatever that hideous and useless ditro was) I at least knew I could get Ubuntu or Mint to work out of the box. Sadly even that isn't available nowadays so one must risk buying a Windows machine and hoping that all the drivers are available for Linux.
I have a feeling that Linux machines actually cost big manufacturers* more since they have to do more testing to get a Linux build that works for them and they don't get any money from the likes of Symantec and Google for preinstalling adverts. I think Windows licences for companies Like Dell are probably virtually free anyhow since they include the MS Office "evaluation".

*for smaller assemblers of desktop PCs, of course, Windows licenses are significant. Hence being able to buy desktop PCs without an OS much easier.

Yes, the original installation was simply lovelessly done. So much so, that I still would have considered it a risk to use linux. If it were not for the fact, that the components of the netbook were decidedly not brand new, the "aspire one" series being much older than a year then. Thus I was reasonably sure that all drivers would be included in a modern distro -- true in retrospect with all the distros in my profile.

So, what I'm driving at, as long as you don't use bleeding edge components in netbooks or PCs it is reasonable to assume that you'll find a working distro.

I think the main area of concern for me is wireless drivers and, possibly, touchpad drivers and screen brightness controls. A lot of manufacturers seem bad at keeping the same wireless chipset for even the same exact model and as we know some don't really work on Linux without a lot of messing around. The touch pad issue seems to crop up a lot too even on moderately old machines, as do things like not being able to alter the screen brightness. As you say though, as long as an older machine is used it ought to be possible to get things working.

I never had any problems with those (at least under openSuSE / KDE). All working, even the dedicated Fn-keys (not the ususal function keys, but keys activated by pressing a special "Fn"-key and another one with a second (blue symbol) e.g. for dimming or brightening the screen). Perhaps you might want to test open SuSE and their KDE implementation...

To paraphrase, "Format in haste, repent at leisure." Something I'll put down to experience. Maybe someone else may benefit from this story. If i understand correctly, Linux is not a prosthelytising religion. The irony is that I need MS Windows to run what many would consider to be obselete hardware...

It's not so much a distribution thing so much as some hardware just isn't well supported, if at all. Just google something like "touchpad not working SUSE" or "no wireless Linux" and you'll see what I mean -- these might be fairly rare but they're common enough that taking the decision to void the warranty of a machine in installing Linux (well ,if not void it then cause problems with it) in place of Windows 8 carries a risk. Of course, such is Linux nowadays that these problems are rare but, for example, there doesn't seem to be a single Chromebook on which everything works under desktop Linux.

You can test with a live USB-stick before you commit or try dual booting (win and e.g. SuSE) from hard disk. But I agree a fraction of risk remains.

This laptop I am using to communicate with you came with Windows 7 installed. It had three primary partitions dedicated to it leaving me with only one primary partition (MBR). About a year ago, I decided it was time for my BIOS based laptop to have a GPT based partition scheme as that have some advantages an MBR system doesn't have.

Regarding dumping MS Windows 7 to the landfill of disuse, I have no regrets whatsoever. GNU/Linux is too much to lose just to run MS Windows. The fact that there are tens of thausands of packages and an huge repertoire of CLI commands that can do anything, together with the fact that "*nix gives you enough rope to hang yourself!", is more than enough of an attraction for me.

GNU/Linux rules, because CHOICE rules.

Typically I'll try to source a decent machine machine with no operating system and then install Linux to my spec. In an emergency I'll go to PC World and get one of their cheaper machines and wipe it before installing Linux.

Anytime I get a new or refurbished system with windows, it gets wiped ASAP. In fact, I don't even let windows boot up the first time.

Except for laptops (for obvious reasons), I always build my own PCs. I maintain 2 desktops, 1 server and 1 laptop. I keep one desktop updated frequently, recycle old parts from it to second desktop, and recycle parts of that to server that runs Linux. At the point they reach the server, the parts are generally around 4-5 years old or so. Hard drives are an exception - they pretty much go the other way, new ones to server, old ones recycled to desktops. Recently though I upgraded desktop to use a 1T SSD.

I used to dual boot all machines (except server of course), but again more recently I changed to running just windows and instead running X desktop on VNC from the linux server - I figured there's no point to go back and forth when I can run the same desktop seamlessly from any of the machines. I have unlimited data transfer through cellphone so I can just grab the same X desktop on go with laptop, through SSH tunnel.

Dual booting was just too much hassle. If for some reason I really need to have linux running on the desktop, I'd run it through virtual machine now.

Why not do it the other way around, run Windows in a vm if needed? I found that its much more efficient that way as windows does not make a good host.

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I prefer building my own computers, then putting Linux on them.

As it turns out, I was right to keep W7 around. It seems that a number of Adobe products are needed for submitting tax returns in my Cuntry! :frustrated: