Laptops w/o Paying for Windows

All laptops I see these days (on Newegg, for example) come with Windows preinstalled. Where can one buy laptops either with no operating system or with Linux preinstalled? I recall Lenovo offering this a few years back.

There are a number of places you can get laptops without Windows.

Dell has sold Ubuntu on select laptops since early 2007.
Dell Home & Home Office | Ubuntu | Dell

Some of HP’s business line laptops come with SLED or freedos
HP ProBook Notebook PCs - comparison results Small & Medium Business - HP

System 76 specializes in selling Ubuntu laptops

There’s also Linux Certified laptops:
Linux Laptop - Fully Supported & Configured Linux Laptops and Netbooks | LinuxCertified

I believe Lenovo sells laptops with Linux preinstalled, but I haven’t been able to locate a link.

PCs for Everyone lets you buy a laptop without Windows preinstalled:
PCs For Everyone : Custom Notebooks by Jetta

And those are all the places I know off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more out there though. I know there are a lot of region-specific vendors, so you might want to poke around local listings to see if there’s a vendor near you.

I know that geeks.com sometimes has refurbs that are sold with no OS installed. One would have to do some research to make sure that all the hardware is compatible with Linux.

I want to add to the list from srschifano also amazon, there are some
laptops which come without windows preinstalled.

Checkout LinuxCertified, Inc at Linux Laptop - Fully Supported & Configured Linux Laptops and Netbooks | LinuxCertified.
They sell laptops with RHEL, Ubuntu, SUSE and Fedora Linux.

I sell laptops with suse linux installed and configured they are DELL and GATEWAY and there are a lot of specialty sites that deal in custom linux systems.

If you find a laptop with linux pre-installed, you usually find it is lower spec than the windows one and to upgrade to the windows spec costs more than the windows machine.
Best is to first look at the hcl or check the manufacturer has linux pre-installed and then either buy the windows one or a second hand one.
If you buy the windows one, you can try returning the software unopened and asking for your money back for the software, but don’t hold your breath.
I’ve found that generally last year’s models are cheapest (they want to offload xp/vista machines for win7 at present) and the savings can be used for extra ram or a larger hard drive.
Just be aware that most manufacturers don’t cover linux installs in their warranty, so if it needs to be returned, you will need windows on it for warranty claims.

It is also worth mentioning that for most of the big companies, MS has brokered deals whereby a laptop will be cheaper with Windows pre-installed than without. So folks who are trying to avoid paying the “Microsoft Tax” actually end up spending more in many circumstances.

That being said, if you don’t care much about the price and you just want a laptop that you know works well with Linux, then by all means look for as many vendors as you can find. I can personally vouch for Dell b/c my girlfriend bought her laptop with Ubuntu on it and it works like a champ. Dell’s slimmed their laptop offerings with Linux down from when my girlfriend got hers, so you might not have as big of a selection. But the other vendors certainly leave you with plenty of choices.

I’m actually leaning towards getting one of the HP Probooks in the near future; if you play around with the specifications enough, you can get the price pretty far down.

Thanks for all the feedback. My main concern was with avoiding the MS tax, so it’s troubling that the deals may prevent that from happening.

LinuxCertified looks like a good option. I need to start checking prices for comparable hardware profiles with other vendors.

My wife pointed out our local PC shop has a laptop for sale for only 199 euros, that comes with Linux and no MS-Windows pre-installed: Point of View Netbook NB9200-W

Make is a Point of View NB9020-W (and I am NOT familiar with this manufacturer). Its a Netbook with an Intel Atom N270 1,60GHz with 512KB L2-Cache. Chipset an Intel 945GMS (ICH7M) and it comes with 1GB RAM. Display is a small 10,2" (TFT WSVGA 1024 x 600 Pixel). It has a160 GB HDD (5.400 U/Min.) hard drive. Graphics are an Intel GMA950. It also has some (manufacturer not mentioned) wireless WLAN 802.11b/g with 54Mbit/s and the standard 10/100 MBit wired. It comes with a webcam.

The fact it comes with Linux would encourage me to believe the graphics, wireless and webcam work with Linux.

I was surprised there was no MS-Windows netbook cheaper, but I figure that particular netbook’s specs are marginal at best for Windows7, and WinXP is now being phased out. Software suppliers are no longer probably so keen in offering rebates for new PCs with the old winXP and hence the commercial aspects that drove down the price for PCs with WinXP is no longer there as much in the past (for low end PCs - its probably still there for Windows7 PCs) … ie its possible that a PC with Windows7 is cheaper than a Linux PC, but a PC with WinXP may now be more expensive than a Linux PC - all due to Windows software suppliers paying (or not paying) money to have their trial software put on a new PC.

I ended up with a MacBook Pro because I didn’t want to pay anything to M$. (However, I am not using OSX). Between M$ and Apple, I feel that Apple is less evil :wink:

Those are high for what you get…higher than comparable Windows laptops. Wonder why?

Possibly for the reason I pointed out above in an earlier post in this same thread, and I quote :

… ie when one purchases an MS-Windows PC they get a bunch of junk software with it, where the laptop manufacturer gets paid money to include the junk software (as the junk software suppliers consider this an advertising fee and hope to sell their software to the laptop buyer). That junk software income may more than offset the cost of the operating system.

That’s a valid point, hate to see it work out that way though. Dell’s systems are cheaper with Ubuntu, slightly though, I believe but that doesn’t go against your theory because of their volume.

Ok here’s one for you guys and gays to knaw at! :slight_smile:
One of my nieces children is in a special edu class (because that’s all that available btw in her area). She took my sisters Laptop with openSUSE 11.1 on it and has been using it at school mainly for math problems, spelling, grammer, etc… The school just realized it isn’t running M$ cr** and thusly, didn’t get corupted in last weeks trojan/worm infestation that shut down the school last week. This child is 7years old and can use windows but prefers Linux!
My sister called today to tell me the school wants to put openSUSE on all their machines and recommend all students also make the switch. Seems this 7 year old girl showed the instructors and principal how she uses Linux most of the time but uses win XP from the dual boot when she has too. And how M$ can’t see the Linux system but her Linux system can see everything.
In her rush to tell her mother and grandmother about this meeting, she has lost the adapter for her Toshiba A70 somewhere between the school and home. Thusly, the hasty call from my sister! How fast can you get an adapter replacement and would I be willing to travel 300miles to change over about 35 school laptops/desktops and possibly 6 to 12 student laptops.

Point is, there is growing interest in Linux which can easily be scuttled by difficult hardware (will I find the hardware won’t take because of compatibility), paying for windows even if they decide to replace hardware and don’t want windows etc…

Past experience tells me to walk softly and carry a big stick because although this may all sound rosey things are not always as they seem.

Have a second look at Dell’s offerings: When you compare the specs, you find that the windows pc has a bigger hard drive and sometimes more memory. To get the same spec with linux costs more!

(Why can’t they sell a laptop with no operating system, just like you can build your own desktop/server from components?)

Just because you bought your pc with windows, doesn’t mean you have to use windows. You can always make an image of the original install and then either wipe windows completely or repartition and install linux.

You can then try claiming your money back from the supplier that advertised:
'Free extra software worth $$$$‘s’, but don’t hold your breath.

Trouble is there is usually something that you need windows for because there is no equivalent linux app, so it’s handy to have a legal dual boot for those occasions.
To give an example:
I use a linux satellite receiver, but all the software tools are windows based - go figure!

whych wrote:

> Have a second look at Dell’s offerings: When you compare the specs, you
> find that the windows pc has a bigger hard drive and sometimes more
> memory. To get the same spec with linux costs more!
>
> (Why can’t they sell a laptop with no operating system, just like you
> can build your own desktop/server from components?)
>

Just my 2 cents:

at work a have a dell laptop (every two years they buy a new one for me).
When I rejested my current machine I told explicitly to our IT that I want
it without operating system (and they model I wanted was none of the models
available with linux preinstalled).

They phoned our local dell dealer and it was possible to get the machine
without windows and they simply subtracted the price of the windows license
from the bundle price.

But I do not know if this is possible elsewhere (I am in germany) and if it
is possible if you do not order it as a company.