3 ms·
Did you check for Linux support before you purchased it? If not, you can't blame Dell for your choice. (I'm the type of person to buy the car before choosing
by beavis2 9y ago
Did you check for Linux support before you purchased it?
If not, you can't blame Dell for your choice.
(I'm the type of person to buy the car before choosing the tyres)
- eli_gottlieb 9y agoIt's a computer. No firmware update supplied by the manufacturer should ever brick it, no matter what operating system I put on it, which I can put on because it's my computer, not Dell's. That's the whole point of having a separate BIOS and operating system.
- ktta 9y agoThere's a reason why companies say they support specific OSes. You'll have a point if they said they supported linux. But they don't.
- eli_gottlieb 9y agoRubbish. Driver problems are mine. Firmware and BIOS problems are theirs. Legally, they didn't sell me a "computer experience" to be had in a walled garden. They sold me a computer. What they provide, such as signed firmware and BIOS updates, needs to either work correctly, or safely refuse to run on an unsupported machine. What it should not do is brick the machine by assuming it only runs inside a walled garden and breaking things -- because, again, they sold me a computer, not a walled garden. Otherwise the precedent might as well be set that, for instance, firmware updates are not required to work in the case that I've installed LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Word. After all, Dell made no commitment to supporting LibreOffice, so why should I expect the firmware update to work? Well, because it's an orthogonal concern, and because they sold me hardware, dammit, not software experiences.