---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 21:24:24 +0000 From: Karsten M. Self kmself@ix.netcom.com To: linux-elitists@zgp.org Subject: Re: [linux-elitists] Our little side project... Just Linux Hardware (dot com)
on Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 10:48:42AM -0500, Michael Bacarella (mbac@netgraft.com) wrote:
Shopping for hardware is a chore. For us elitists, it's especially bothersome because you have to investigate devices for Linux compatibility.
This seems like a barrier to sale to me, so I thought about attacking the problem by building a site that only lists well supported Linux hardware, and provides links to purchasing it via affiliates.
Here is the unborn unreleased please be gentle in criticism version we've come up with so far.
http://justlinuxhardware.com/Probably not a directly viable business model, but I still think it's worth me spending money on. Consider, if the site is any good:
1. Shopping for Linux becomes a bit easier (hopefully?), which is better for the community. 2. Vendors who support Linux are rewarded by increased sales. 3. Retailers who sell vendor's products are rewarded by increased sales. 4. Companies who haven't decided to support Linux yet can see a real picture of what kind of business they're missing out on. The invisible hand... 5. Companies in step #4 who want to develop a Linux strategy have been introduced to an ally who can help them in their quest. And if this leads to work, I know a list or two of consultants who may be able to help us out...What do you folks think?
Good idea.
In one category, at least, there are two tools which may be very useful.
Assessing whole systems (particularly laptops) is a crapshoot. You pretty much have to find out who's installed GNU/Linux on the same (or often: a similar) model. And then hand-tweak to get the thing up and running.
Fortunately there are two tools which take a lot of the uncertainty out of this picture. One is bootable GNU/Linux systems with extensive hardware autodetection (e.g.: Knoppix). The other are tools to extract system capabilities and configuration, and dump this to a file.
I've written one such of the latter, called system-info. There's a copy at http://twiki.wethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SystemInfoScript, along with sample output.
This still isn't fully sufficient, though it's a good start. Among other settings that would be useful:
- Suspend/hibernation & APM settings. - hdparm configs. - X configuration and/or spec.
Posting system specs and the output of system-info to a system review site would be a strong positive step, and puts a minimal load on the vendor (boot Knoppix, run script). I'd love to see someone run with this.
Peace.