Hewlett-Packard made quite a splash when they announced that they are
offering Linux on the nx5000, one of the latest HP laptop models. HP also sponsored aKademy, the KDE Community World Summit as a Platinum
sponsor. This included a loan of 24 laptops for usage in the tutorial rooms
as well as a special deal for KDE contributors to buy the nx5000 model at a
reduced price. The aKademy press team arranged a meeting with Thomas Schneller, Manager Software R&D and asked him about this venture from HP.
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Can you please introduce yourself?
My name is Thomas Schneller, Manager Software R&D of the HP EMEA Product Development Center based in Munich.
I was part of the Linux Core team which developed the first Linux pre-installation on a nx5000 Laptop.
The KDE desktop contributed to the success of SUSE Linux and HP chose SUSE/KDE for this laptop. What
were the strong points for offering a KDE desktop to your customers?
We used the standard configuration which comes with SUSE Linux which is KDE.
We believe that KDE is a good choice as it offers basically everything needed on a today's desktop.
Do you give support for the nx5000 configured with a KDE/Linux configuration?
Yes, there is a 90 days support for the pre-installed Linux software shipped on
that laptop which is similar to Windows where we offer the same support.
Are there any plans for more models supporting Linux?
It depends on the market response to the nx5000 offer. If there is a need for Linux pre-installed
Laptops we will discuss how to support that. Currently we are also thinking to offer better support
for Linux in the first place.
Right now the nx5000 is not available in Europe. Do you have any plans to sell them anywhere other than the US?
It is true; right now the nx5000 is only available in USA. It would have been too much effort to offer it
for Europe as well as there are so many languages and localization options to take care of. But European
customers are welcome to buy it in the USA if they want. It can be ordered on the
HP website.
Just choose Linux as OS and the Integrated HP W500 wireless option.
Drivers for that device are pre-installed. The Intel 2200BG driver was not available at the
time we released the pre-installation.
Will you support people who build device drivers and will you be giving them hardware information?
Yes, we already work with the open source community. As an example have a look at HP & Open Source where several Open Source projects are hosted.
Does power management and the winmodem work on the nx5000 as they do under Microsoft Windows?
Yes, basically all hardware is working. ACPI is fully supported, so hibernating your Linux laptop is
possible and also the winmodem works on this model. I also want to stress the fact that we welcome any feedback
as we are eager to hear people's experiences with our product.
Did you have some problems of getting hardware components to work?
We carefully choose the target platform for that project. We wanted to make sure everything just works.
The only problems we had during development were caused by pieces of hardware where detailed specs were not available to us.
Will this only work on SUSE or do you have any plans to support more distributions.
Does HP have any plans to better support Linux in general?
Of course other distributions are free to benefit from the work we did. There are plans to distribute BIOS in a Linux-friendly format for selected Models. For the nx5000 this kind of BIOS is still available:
ROMPaq for HP Notebook System BIOS (68BCU ROM) Linux-Based.
You can just download it onto your Linux desktop, unpack it and run a script which will ask, if you want to create
a bootable diskette or a bootable CD. Then you only need to reboot with the bootable media and can flash your BIOS easily.
Plans to collect and offer Linux pre-installation instructions and white papers on an open source basis are discussed as well.
Did you write any additional software for the nx5000 project? Any plans maybe on doing that?
Well any needed software we were looking for was already provided by the SUSE Linux distribution like
for example the power management applet. So we did not need to write additional software.
Any ideas of working together with KDE developers with this. How about a KControl module
for usage in KControl?
HP will support initiatives which will enrich the desktop experience on our laptops. If you or
your project has an interesting piece of software please let us know.
Can you tell us about any experiences your customers have with the KDE desktop on these laptops?
Currently it is still a bit early but we are busy collecting feedback from all people who are using these
Linux laptops. We have a feedback loop installed for this. But at least the experience of testers are telling us,
we are on the right way.
You sponsored the KDE Conference with these laptops and you even decided to sell some of those laptops at a lower price
to our developers. What's the gain for HP for doing all of this?
HP was an official sponsor of the KDE Conference as we are sponsoring open source events in general. Also we hope
that by selling these laptops at a nice price that some KDE people will provide us some feedback. We as HP want to
improve Linux support for selected models and to do so, we need to understand the issues. We appreciate your feedback,
please don't hesitate to send us any problem you're having with the nx5000 you bought.
Is there anything else you want to mention?
Yes. Please post your comments below the article. I will read through them and answer any question appearing.
Thank you for answering these questions and also a big thank you for the support HP has given to KDE.
Comments
I'm actually looking to buy a new laptop soon and the nx5000 looks pretty nice (once you up the RAM and get the SXGA+ screen)
My question is about the wireless card. I'm a big fan of Intel's Pro series wireless cards, and they seem to be the only way to get "G" support anyway. What I'm wondering is: would it be possible to order the Linux laptop with the Intel Pro wireless card?
I realize that the Intel drivers are still alpha/unstable, but I'm willing to wait and would not expect HP to help me get it working. Would such an order be possible? If not, I can only imagine that I'd have to order a more expensive Windows laptop and install Linux myself. Would this skew your sales statistics and hurt the chances of this model succeeding with Linux?
If you mean the 1400x1050 resolution with SXGA+ then I can tell you it's not working under Linux. HP has chosen the Intel 855G for the graphics in the nx5000 and the bloody Intel driver reads the resolutions from the BIOS and refuses to run at 1400x1050. I already opened a case for that with HP (which worked reasonably well considering the novelty of the product) and they forwarded the case to Intel. The message from Intel is that there won't be any new Linux driver before December. So, if you consider the high resolution display you should probably wait a bit until this is sorted out. Of course, you can use the 855resolution hack in order to get around it but that won't work with suspend and resume :-(. At least, I couldn't find a way yet to wake up the laptop with the 1400x1050 resolution.
But other than that it works great, including LinDVD. I haven't tested the wireless stuff because that's forbidden in our company.
kk.
I think SUSE recently shipped a patch for this for 9.1 ... at least it was advertised as such.
1400x1050 resolution patch here (below)
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/apoirier/
I think the main criteria for buying a laptop for Linux is the screen resolution, SXGA+ should be the minimum criteria. If you can't get this HP Laptop right now, try buying OEM Asus M3700. You can buy one without MS on it. I just got one 3 months ago, 1400x1050 res PCLinuxOS works on this laptop. It resemble like (Apple iBook is also made by Asus).(Asus also makers of IBM Think and Ipod mini :-)).
As I wrote before, 855resolution is not a complete solution as it doesn't survive a suspend/resume. I haven't found a way yet to patch the BIOS on resume before the X server is restored and the result is that X simply doesn't get restored. So, if you don't care about suspend/resume it works fine but on a laptop suspend/resume is one of the main features so the 855resolution program is NOT a fix for the resolution problem.
kk.
About the wireless card if i'm not wrong it's an intel ipw2200. There is a lovely guy (although he has a greece surname :-P ) from intel that is doing a wonderfool work with wireless intel cards, under GPL, have a look at ipw2100.sf.net. I'm usng his driver for my intel ipw2100 at home where I have a WEP-ed network and it does wonders.
The support I got from him too.
So this card will work just fine.
And, together babies, give him a thank!!!!!
--
tirona rulez :-)
>would it be possible to order the Linux laptop with the Intel Pro wireless card?
Sure. Just choose the Intel wireless option. Driver can be found here:
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/
I've seen it working on several distributions. But as it is not part of the pre-installation HP will not officaly support it.
From what I see, Intel wireless is not an option with the Linux model--only with the Windows model.
I'd love to see the nx5000 w/ Linux include the Intel Pro Wireless 2200 BG instead of the HPW500 as an option. I'd buy it in a second.
Of course I say that and it's there already. I guess I'll just have to buy it then :-D
HP makes it easy to find this really informative link to drawings & specs that labels and identifies the laptop's parts. I found a flash file that uses photgraphs in a similar fashion and is quite helpful.
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/information_storage/software/flash/nx5000_part_locator.swf
This is quite the laptop and now a real contender for my next major purchase.
James Pryor
Have you looked at Dell 5160? 3GHz Petium-M for under $1200.
Not quite, the Dell Inspiron 5120 has a Pentium 4 M processor aka Mobile Pentium 4. This is different to the Pentium M and doesn't have the same low power usage. The Moniker M was probably added by Marketting.
The rule of thumb I use is: < 2 GHz probably Pentium M, > 2GHz definately not Pentium M.
I've got the precursor of the 5160, the 5150, and I'm really satisfied. It isn't often that one still feels pretty chuffed six months after a computer purchase, but given that Dell doesn't offer either the 5150 or the 5160 with the 1600x1200 screen and that prices haven't gone down appreciably since February, I feel I made my purchase at the right time. This screen is so unbelievably good...
Yeah, I'm typing on one now. Love it. The HP doesn't look very special compared to the Dell -- still, a fine machine. ;-)
Hi,
I'm sure there will be demand for this notebook in Europe (and the rest of the world, btw). Given that you based your US version on SuSE, will the add-ons be contributed to a future SuSE version? Then, these might work out-of-the-box, and everybody could buy a notebook (without os) and install a perfectly running SuSE linux....
Regards, Andreas
>Given that you based your US version on SuSE, will the add-ons be contributed to a future SuSE version?
There are no special add-ons except the wallpaper and LinDVD. The pre-installation is based on Suse 9.1 professional. So if you install that it will run pretty much out of the box. Some manual tewaks of ACPI and some configuration to make the special buttons works. But that's not unusual for a Linux installation.
Will the manual tweaks of ACPI and the configuration to make the special buttons work be published somewhere?
At least the aswer regarding the special keys still available:
http://dot.kde.org/1094715499/1094828408/
I noticed that the only video card option seems to be the intel integrated extreme 2. which is not the great of a video card really. How come no ati or nvidia option? I wouldn't think their license requirements would be that bad if your selling a laptop, but then I don't know for sure. I went through a full configure before I realized I couldn't choose a video card.
>How come no ati or nvidia option?
As we use the Intel chipset where graphics is part of, offering other graphics otions would mean to develop a second motherboard with a different chipset. This might change in the future with pci-express as graphics is a module in this case which can be changed.
From a marketing perpective, the US only decision is probably not a great idea. The acceptance of Linux in the US is much weaker than in Europe in my personal experience.
This could be a great niche if pursued by HP, but trying it out in the European (German) market first and gearing it at a student / tech audience is where the money is.
And there would be a lot of money there I believe. I personally have been waiting for a fully supported preinstalled laptop of this kind for a long time. I need someone who guarantees that eg the wireless card works out of the box. I just won't risk > 1500 Euros to kater find out that it could have worked in principle but ...
best of luck in the US corporate market.
>I personally have been waiting for a fully supported preinstalled laptop of this kind for a long time. I need someone who guarantees that eg the wireless card works out of the box.
Option here is to buy the windows version and install Linux yourself. If choosing Suse 9.1 pretty much everything except SD card reader will work out of the box when choosing the HP wireless option. Driver for that device is available and works without any problem.
> Option here is to buy the windows version and install Linux yourself.
But that means paying the Microsoft tax. This is a showstopper for a lot of people (well, for me it is anyway).
Is why is HP testing Linux on the worst market possible, where Linux-penetration is the lowest (at least of all industrialized countries)?
The nx5000 would be a great success in Europe and Asia, as there is much more mindshare and people running Linux there.
As for localization, all that is needed is the appropriate keyboard-layout, SuSE itself comes in several dozen languages, as does KDE.
So please bring the nx5000 to Europe as soon as possible, you will get a bigger response than in the USA.
I congratulate HP for such initiative. I think I was getting worried that while HP was claiming linux support, their various product branches were not even checking if linux run on their machines. It is very difficult to find information on which machine runs linux fully (meaning with all drivers). When you corporate purchase, most of the time you purchase on specs alone. Yes, you can have a demo machine, but sometimes it is difficult to test everything, or the demo is slightly different from the sold machine. For instance I see that you must purchase the nx5000 with the non broadcom wireless card.
I used HP customer support and suceed to escalate the problem to product managers regarding my HP nx9110. The ATIIXP new shipset is just supported in latest kernel, the winmodem is just supposed to be supported and the wireless card will never e supported, broacom refuses to release data. What I see important is that HP makes its choice of hardware now based on linux drivers. Yes they can still ship windows, but they should check that their hardware choices do not include unfriendly-linux manufacturers.
For all that to happen, well the sale of the nx5000 with linux must be a success so that everybody in HP take notice.
I would like to see on HP web site, a graph that shows which machine runs linux kernel fully or not (ie there are linux drivers for the hardware). It will allow us, the community, to make an informed decision. We don't need a certification programme, but just, we installed this kernel, and all hardware components were recognised. Up to linux distributors to ship the right kernel and configuration tools.
Ok, carry on.... Good one.
PS: I like the idea about mandrake. As I'm talking about it, they do need to test their distribution on HP servers, as the HP raid array card is always having trouble to being detected at install. HP can you give them access to machines so they can test each release?
Hi,
I purchased the Compaq Presario R3000Z with AMD64 bit processor and this laptop is an excellent candidate for installing Linux. I have Fedora Core 3 working just fine. The only things I had to do is install the 3D Nvidia drivers for full video support. Install ndiswrapper for Broadcom Wireless NIC and finally get the pcmcia config file from "Linux on Laptop" website so that 16bit cards can work (Sorry to say that 32 bit cards are still not working). After all this tinkering, the only thing that does not work is the multimedia card, modem, suspend to disk and standby mode. However, I am very happy with my laptop and can't wait for the rest of it to work without a glitch as the Linux 2.6 kernel continues to mature.
>and the wireless card will never e supported, broacom refuses to release data
broadcom? As far as I know the nx9110 is offered with HP wireless option which is a Atheros based module. Drivers are available for it. The other option is Intel wireless where a driver is available as well.
>As I'm talking about it, they do need to test their distribution on HP servers, as the HP raid array card is always having trouble to being detected at install. HP can you give them access to machines so they can test each release?
I will forward that request to the right people.
I can confirm the Mandrake problems with the HP servers that use the cciss storage driver.
Model: Hp/Compaq ProLiant ML370T G3 2.4 Ghz Xeon
We are using two drives in the 6-Bay Ultra3 hotswap drive cage. It works fine with Suse 9.1, but MDK, which is what we have standardize on company wide, had trouble recognizing the array.
Thanks for your great work. I am going to see if we can get some of the new HP laptops with Linux preloaded at work.
Well the next step is have HP sells one iPAQ with something like GPE (http://gpe.handhelds.org/)
Cheers
I am happy to see HP finally offer a notebook with Linux. (Even though many of their salespeople don't seem to know it yet.) Unfortunately it seems to be only the nx5000 so far.
I would really like to buy an Athlon 64 based notebook but am opposed to paying the "windows tax" and have been delaying a notebook purchase for several years now...
I would really like to buy an Athlon 64 based notebook but am opposed to paying the "windows tax" and have been delaying a notebook purchase for several years now...
Have you considered getting something from Apple?
I know it's not what you talked about, but OS X seems pretty neat, Powerbooks are very high quality and at least your money doesn't go to microsoft.
I just got an AMD64 notebook and it's sweet. I too don't like the windoze tax, but in this case I had several reasons to object less.
1) Price wise it was still irresistable
2) Because of compatibility issues I could insure access to everything this way including flashing the bios if need be so it is sort of a back up until I get everything working.
3) It gives me one system I can test web sites of my test server with IE.
The funny thing is that since windoze can't take advantage of AMD64 the prices are falling. I just saw an AMD64 chip and an AMD Barton with the same speed rating at the same price. I got a Compaq Presario R3240US with a 3200+ processor, 512 MB of RAM, 60 GB drive, 15.4 inch wide screen (1280x800) and a DVD burner. It also has the rest of the usual goodies and it is really sweet. I got it for $1479 at Bestbuy and it has $180 in rebates. That comes in at $1,300. They are $50 less now.
The downside is what doesn't work. The touchpad works in a 64 bit Knoppix port with a 2.4 kernel, but I'm running Gentoo which sensibly makes 2.6 the default kernel for all the benefits 2.4 doesn't have. Anyway early attempts to use the touchpad have had unstable results and while I think I found a solution I have a USB notebook mouse I like better for most uses. The card reader is on my do list, but I have USB for my camera. The wifi is broadcom and works if you want to run 32 bit, but it looks like I may need to spring for a PCMCIA card if I want 64 bit wifi. Outside of that I'm slowly tweaking the rest.
Performance is startling. I was showing a neighbor and went to edit a photo in Gimp2. I selected one on my desktop system (AMD XP 1900, also 512 MB RAM) and the splash came up. Then I navigated to a photo on the laptop and lanuched. It looked like I maybe should have started them together to keep from embarassing myself... but the laptop suddenly opened the windows and the image and was done... leaving us to watch the windows draw on the desktop for several seconds. I've read speed can be substantially more in 64 bit mode and that is the explanation that makes sense of 3200 being over twice as fast as 1900. It compiled kdebase clean in something less than an hour and a half and compiles often look like catting a file. I'm looking forward to when x86_64 optimzations get better as it has really only started compared to x86.
We can certainly hope for things to get better since HP owns Compaq now and I believe HP is showing commitment to Linux. Bleeding edge hardware is always more challenging, but one thing is for sure. Athlon 64 is just awesome in Linux! It's hard to believe this is in a laptop, which BTW I ran in windoze before loading Linux and got several hours on the battery with PowerNow doing email in wifi. It's just really sweet.
Hi Eric,
I think I got a similar model, just without the wifi stuff.
To get the touchpad to work you need to apply the alps patch to the kernel, and install the synaptics driver, and modify the XF86Config a little. Works stable for me, including the scroll area on the touchpad, also together with an USB mouse.
There are some reports on the internet with details, I can look them up for you if needed. I posted them also on the SuSE AMD64 mailing list.
I recommend using a kernel >=2.6.7, because otherwise PCMCIA might not work, and that's what you say you want to use.
BTW, the Compaq and the HP AMD64 notebooks are almost identical. So you can go by instructions for anyone of them.
And SuSE 9.1 for AMD64 has touchpad mostly working (not the scroll area) right out of the box, but not PCMCIA, because the kernel used is 2.6.4.
HTH,
Matt
Actually I just bumped into this. It's way lighter than mine and less expensive as priced, but the video may introduce problems as I've seen ATI be less than desirable with AMD64. Still this is no windoze tax and looks good.
http://linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2464.html
Same here. I'll wait for a good one to be available in the UK to replace my desktop.
There is an HP Athlon 64 laptop available:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF05a/21675-283229-283229-283229-297845-4532387.html
and I will forward the complains about the "windows tax" to the right people.
Thanks
you can count one more in your linux stats - I bought the HP zv5188EA AMD64 laptop, only to throw out Windows and install SuSE 9.1 for AMD64, and it rocks!
Only the winmodem refuses to work. Is it the same as in the nx5000? SuSE 9.1 recognizes it somehow, but does not configure it.
Get this going somehow, and you can sell the zv5188EA and similar with SuSE 9.1 AMD 64 easily. All you need to do is to
* add the unusual resolution to the x setup,
* if you need pcmcia: adjust the pcmcia config file to include the memory and ports of this architecture, and use a kernel >= 2.6.7
* have a look at the touchpad setup it works out of the box, but not the scroll area at the right side of it, for that you need to install the synapticts driver and the alps kernel patch) and
* get this stupid winmodem going!
The zv5188EA boots up with SuSE 9.1 *extremely* fast, much much faster than my sata P4 2.4 ghz desktop, and works stable, no problems at all, with great performance.
Only the winmodem is annoying me, I don't like to carry an external one around... HELP!!!
Regards,
Matt
>Only the winmodem refuses to work. Is it the same as in the nx5000? SuSE 9.1 recognizes it somehow, but does not configure it.
Just did a install of standard Suse 9.1 on my nx5000 test unit. Modem was recognized during installation but not configured. When clicking configure it installs the smartlink softmodem driver and it is up and running. Could still use it during installation to pull updates from Suse.
Please make sure that wait for dial tone is disabled. Having that enabled causes problems sometimes.
Thanks for the feedback
Hi Thomas,
here YAST does tell that it configured the modem on /dev/ttyS3 (which sounds not bad), but when I try to use it:
kinternet: "Modem not responding"
kppp: "modem busy"
But now I'm full of hope:
Your answer does imply somehow, that the winmodems used in these both notebooks (my HP zv5188EA AMD64 and your nx5000) are indeed the same! (Yast just says it is a "Hewlett-Packard Company Modem".)
These means I could go ahead and install the smartlink softmodem driver myself and it "should" work, shouldn't it? May be there was just a hickup in SuSE's setup of the smartlink stuff for the 64 bit version...
Regards,
Matt
>These means I could go ahead and install the smartlink softmodem driver myself and it "should" work, shouldn't it?
Hopefully. Didn't test it with the Linux 64bit version, but chances are good....
oops, at http://portal.suse.de/sdb/en/2004/05/thallma_91_smartlink.html
I found this:
"The SmartLink driver is not 64-bit-capable. Therefore, it is not included in the 64-bit version of our distribution."
That is why it did not work with SuSE 9.1 AMD64 out of the box...
Yeah, and testing to compile it myself fails with "i386 architecture of input file 'dsplibs.o' is incompatible with i386:x86_64 output"
So what will HP do? Get smartlink to write a 64 bit capable driver, or get a real modem build in the notebooks?
Be carefull though with pavillions. I bought a zv5139EA, which has one of the cripled AMD64s without x86-64, and I've had tons of trouble.
It boots up in powersave mode which is only half speed, and they have disabled the legacy-style powernow mode from the BIOS, which means powernow only works in Linux 2.6 over ACPI, and just that combination happens to be very unstable. For the first 2 month I owned it, I was only able to run the laptop in half speed when using Linux, now I found a temporary-fix; by disabling IO-APIC, ACPI is now mostly stable in Linux 2.6, and I've been able to run full-speed.
The wireless card still doesnt work even though I've installed the ndiswrapper, and broadcom windows-driver. Apparently they are using one of those proprietary software disables, which means only a special windows tool can enable the card.
I know the smartlink modem driver you need is compiled only for I386 architecture. So until the smartlink company does not recompile it's binary object for a x86_64 architecture this winmodem does not work. The only alternative is to run a ix86 32bit linux system.
I've yet send an email to smartlink about their plan to porting this driver.
From the interview:
"It would have been too much effort to offer it for Europe as well as there are so many languages and localization options to take care of."
"Well any needed software we were looking for was already provided by the SUSE Linux distribution like for example the power management applet. So we did not need to write additional software."
From the "European Localization" thread:
"There are no special add-ons except the wallpaper and LinDVD. The pre-installation is based on Suse 9.1 professional."
So, given that KDE is fairly extensively localised, what's all the extra effort for? Documentation? Are there applications in SuSE 9.1 which aren't localised properly? I'd be tempted to get a laptop like this if it were available with Linux in the Nordic region, but the only models that HP resellers offer (including the nx5000) run Windows XP. And I don't see why I have to drop money into Microsoft's slush fund just to have the "privilege" of installing a separate copy of SuSE over the top.
So what's it going to take for HP to really make this available in the rest of the world? Outside developer gatherings, that is.
So, given that KDE is fairly extensively localised, what's all the extra effort for? Documentation? Are there applications in SuSE 9.1 which aren't localised properly?
KDE is localised, but the HP manuals aren't. That's the costly part.
> KDE is localised, but the HP manuals aren't
Not really :(. I've tried using it in Finnish once or twice, but
what I usually get is a severe language mess :(
>So, given that KDE is fairly extensively localised, what's all the extra effort for? Documentation?
Documention on one hand, keyboard layout on the other hand. We need to generate a sku for every configuration, which costs money. In additon our quality assurance guidlines are very strict. This means, all this skus would need to pass the internal quality assurance which would have been an enormous workload. Keep in mind how many languages we have here in Europe.
>And I don't see why I have to drop money into Microsoft's slush fund just to have the "privilege" of installing a separate copy of SuSE over the top.
We are internally discussing how to address that issue.
"Documention on one hand, keyboard layout on the other hand."
Since the nx5000 is available in the Nordic region (for example) with Windows XP, and since other models (like the one I'm using now) have localised keyboards - so I suppose the nx5000 also has them - doesn't that just leave the documentation?
I think what you've done is a great start. What would be even better would be worldwide support for Linux across as many models as possible. Whilst the suits at corporate HQ might claim that "customer demand drives our offerings" and that "there isn't significant demand for Linux", one has to ask how customer demand can influence HP through resellers who don't offer Linux options and who show no sign of doing so.
A Linux laptop from a vendor who can support it in my region (although hopefully that vendor could also put a bit of pressure on their suppliers, too, in the case of Intel and their chipset) would rise to the top of my shopping list. Without such a product on offer, I might as well buy a system without Windows from a vendor who is honest about what's in the box and where I have a chance of discovering whether it supports Linux well enough.
As said we would need to generate a seperate sku for every configuration different from the one shipping with MS. A sku is a list of components the unit will be assembled out of and a list of items needed to be packed in the box. This sku goes into maufactuing which delivers the product to the self. So doing a extra sku for all european country simply was to expencife specially when not knowing how the market demand is.
But as said as well, we are internally discussing how to address that.
>one has to ask how customer demand can influence HP
You are still influencing HP. We appreciate your feedback and I will input directly into the Linux core team.