[luau] Installing Linux on a Wal-Mart OS-less PC

[Taylor Cody Civ SAIC/PETS]

Article can be found at:
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/04/29/0218241.shtml?tid=7

Monday April 29, 2002 - [ 09:47 AM GMT ]
Topic - Hardware - By Russell C. Pavlicek - 
A few months ago, super-sized discount store Wal-Mart made the headlines in
the Linux world by becoming the first major U.S. retailer to offer PCs
without Windows preloaded. At this writing, the Walmart.com Web site lists
no less than 14 PCs available without an operating system.

While this was widely hailed in the Open Source community as a victory over
the "Microsoft tax," which usually afflicts buyers of Linux PCs, one major
question remained unanswered: How well do these machines support Linux? Some
PCs produced today are crammed with "value-added" (otherwise known as "brain
dead") hardware that only works with specific drivers -- drivers that are
frequently available under Windows alone.
So, in order to get the straight scoop, we went off to the Wal-Mart Web site
to purchase a system and load Linux on it...
 

...For the purposes of this review, we ordered a 1 GHz Duron system for U.S.
$398. We figured that this would be a relatively popular selection among the
more cost-conscious Linux users. With shipping, the total was a manageable
U.S. $413. We ordered the PC on the evening of April 11 and it came to my
door on April 22...


...Conclusion 
The Wal-Mart machine itself strikes me as a very reasonable clone. With the
exception of the modem, all the hardware seems to work. I have had to live
with useless modems in clones before, but at least this modem is a card that
can be removed from the machine. I should also note that Mandrake installed
on the box easier than Windows ME did. If I had wanted to keep Windows on
the machine, I would have had to manually install drivers for both the
ethernet and sound card, because Windows did neither on installation. 
So it appears that the Wal-Mart machine as tested makes a very reasonable
Linux box. But I suggest you lose the Lucent modem card and replace it with
a real hardware modem.