I wanted to bounce some thoughts off your collective minds. I recently saw an ad for a cheap laptop launched by HCL - probably trying to compete with the XO and the Eee, with a 7" LCD. Contrary to their image so far of being friendly to FOSS, they seem to be preloading MS-ware (discount versions?) on this PC. I think FOSS starts with a big handicap when manufacturers offer preloaded Windows even in case of computers intended for home or educational use.
Should the community start the two following, connected initiatives?
- Lobby local computer makers like HCL and Zenith to offer an option
for loading Linux or selling systems without a pre-loaded OS (and with a tiny little discount). The pre-installed OS can be on a secondary partition, to allow Windows to be installed on a primary partition at the user's option later. I know, the manufacturers would risk paying the Microsoft Tax (TM) heavily if they tried to do anything like this, but this could at least help bring an unfair practice out into the open.
- Build up an effort to force Microsoft to let its boot loader
recognize and (hopefully) accommodate other operating systems that have been installed previously. This would at least keep them intact instead of being overwritten / rendered unusable when the user inevitably installs Windows, licensed or unlicensed, thus keeping up the possibility that it will get used sometimes, even out of curiosity.
Your constructive comments please.
A good idea,but we need good influence and enough people in the respective good books of the manufacturers we intend to influence.The second suggestion needs a world-wide movement,which looks like a task for the FSF.Kenneth? Also,the manufacturer might not mind paying the MS tax if either 1]he is actually interested in FOSS or 2]the community(since FOSS lacks a company/firm which can be dealt with directly) reimburses him for the loss.
Problem is case 1 is very rare while case 2 is almost impossible.Best way is that whenever FOSS supporters buy a new box,they should insist on either a clean HDD or a FOSS OS.Customer demand will eventually goad manufacturers into action.But,problem again is that we hardly ever need to change our boxes due to GNU/Linux' inherent properties of running on really old h/w just as good as on the bleeding edge.We need to solve this conundrum first.
Regards, Easwar