Just a couple of after-thoughts, Al: One, the thing already installed some of the auto-updates, then got stuck, because it had disabled the interface and couldn't download the rest, so I shall have to tell it to stop complaining about this fact until I am sorted.
Two, in fact, it appears the machine was not purpose designed, with or without "bleeding edge chipsets" (lovely phrase!) - it was designed and built in Japan to run Vista, and these LinuxCertified people just rebranded it. Alan Pope wrote: > 2009/3/2 Rowan <rowan.berke...@googlemail.com>: > >> Tell me, do you think there is any good reason, in anybody's minds but >> the LinuxCertified engineers, to use a non default driver at all? Is the >> "instability" in the r8169 driver a matter of common knowledge, or just >> something they dreamed up to make life more confusing? >> >> > > Unfortunately it's actually not _that_ easy to fulfil Linux-type > customer requirements such that all of the following are true:- > > a) provide a wide range of diverse hardware at low cost which all > works with linux > b) support all of those systems through any possible software upgrade path. > > Those might be ideal, but they're really hard to achieve. a) has > problems in that as a small-time Linux Laptop vendor, you are at the > behest of the hardware vendors and manufacturers as to what chips go > in them. If the hardware vendor uses some bleeding edge chipset which > only has a stable driver on windows then you're screwed. The vendor > can of course also change chipset from one revision of a device to > another > > b) is near impossible with a small vendor because whilst they could > test the next version of each distribution they ship on every machine > they ship, this would be quite a workload. > > I'd say the reason they shipped the non-default driver is so that you > have something that _works_. If they didn't then you'd have received a > laptop which (out of the box) failed to connect to the network. Whilst > there may be side effects to this - such as some manual labour > required after a system update, the primary goal of a Linux hardware > vendor is surely to ship a device that works from the factory. > > I seriously doubt there was any malicious intent, it makes no sense > whatsoever for them to deliberately screw machines up for customers. > > Cheers, > Al. > > -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
