Find out why Jack Wallen finally bit the bullet and paid a premium price for a desktop machine with pre-installed Linux. He suggests that you also bring your buying power to open source.
I’ve been writing about Linux and open source for nearly 20 years. In that time, a good number of desktops and laptops have graced my office. Some of those desktops were hand-built by me, and some were purchased from big-box stores. Embarrassingly, it’s taken me this long to bite the bullet and purchase a desktop machine with Linux pre-installed.
Why has it take me nearly 20 years? At first, it was a matter of cost. If you’ve shopped around for such a machine, you know that it can be cost prohibitive. There’s a reason for that — the companies that sell pre-installed Linux machines tend to be smaller shops, so they don’t have the ability to offer the rock-bottom discounted prices that the likes of Lenovo, Dell, and HP offer. But let’s get one thing straight — nearly all of those big brands are using ODM parts to piece together their machines. So, in the end, you’re just paying someone who can purchase ODM components in serious bulk, slap them together, and offer you the end results at high discounts.