HP/Compaq Presario and Linux

[Jason Stephenson]

Jon maddog Hall wrote:

> It is not just that they want to "save the cost of the CD", but some companies
> are ordering systems without CD drives because they want a thin client on the
> desktop...something without floppies and/or a CD...something that could
> boot over the network and be diskless or be (re)installed standalone with only
> a hard disk.
> 
> All data comes through the corporate server.
> 
> They view floppies, CDs and USB Flash devices as just another way of having
> games and viruses introduced into the work environment.

Yep, I know all about that paranoia. I work for a consortium of 
Massachusetts public libraries.

I've long thought that "thin client" is just market speak for rip-off. 
In other words, you pay more for less computer.

Yeah, there are places where they work, but there are places where they 
don't.

I prefer to assemble my own gear, 'cause then, when something breaks, I 
generally know what broke and what it'll take to fix/replace it. I know 
that's not an option for everybody, but if you're getting into GNU/Linux 
or similar territory, then you can't rely on the big vendors to hold 
your hand. That's what lists like this are for.

I realize that the OP is in a situation where he doesn't have control 
over the hardware that was acquired. That's an unfortunate situation to 
be in and I face it occasionally at my current job and used to face it 
constantly at previous employers. In this particular case, I'd recommend 
installing Cygwin and forget about dual booting. Pretty much anything 
you'd want to do for network monitoring on GNU/Linux you can do with 
Cygwin, unless you want to turn the box into a packet shaping firewall, 
which I don't gather the OP wants to do.