[PLUG] Linux on HP Slimline s7700n; Fry's returns
eehouse.org
eehouse at eehouse.org
Wed Apr 4 18:36:06 UTC 2007
In what I hoped would be the final step in my search for a small,
quiet, 64-bit, dual-core, VT-enabled (whew) machine, I bought an
s7700n at Fry's on Sunday. I knew I might be returning it since it's
advertised as having an nvidea video subsystem. We have a bunch of
Dells at work with nvidea chips, some of which work beautifully with
the FOSS drivers and some of which suck.
The s7700n sucked, even with the nvidia-supplied binary drivers in
Ubuntu. It turned out that there's a bunch of other nvidea stuff on
there as well: sound, memory controller, ethernet, etc. (Shoulda
saved the output of lspci. Duh!) Ethernet worked fine, as did memory
(obviously). Sound did not work at all. A few years back I'd have
spent hours or days updating drivers and tweaking kernel compile
options attempting to make the thing work, but I decided to return it
and to give my money to manufacturers that use Linux-friendly parts.
I'll get a Dell with Intel chips, more-n-likely.
A couple of days ago googling for 'linux HP slimline s7700n' didn't
turn anything up. I hope this post helps with that a bit.
Anyway, returning the thing to Fry's was painless, but made me think
they haven't quite figured out Vista yet. The machine came without
any media, but you're allowed to make a single set of "recovery" CDs
or DVDs. One set, and that will work only on your machine. After
you've made the set, even if you reinstall from that set, you can't
make another. Since I was reformatting the drive to install Linux I
made the set, and used it to restore the drive before returning it.
But Fry's, after verifying that the machine was fine and reformatting
from the recovery partition, reboxed it with a discount price and
will, I assume, sell it to somebody who will eventually try to make
recovery disks. I wonder how long it'll take folks to figure out
what's wrong.
(HP will sell you a set of disks for about $15 shipped. Let's hope
Fry's discount on the box is more than that. :-)
--Eric
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