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What companies sell computers without pre-installed proprietary operating systems like Mac OS X or Windows? I only know of System76, but are there others? Does Asus?

Geremia
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    Asus used to with their "eee" netbooks; I don't know if a Linux pre-install is an option any longer. I believe Dell and Lenovo either currently do or had formerly offered Linux in lieu of Windows. – DopeGhoti Nov 27 '17 at 17:15
  • Do you want a machine without an operating system or do you want one with your preferred OS installed? – fcbsd Nov 27 '17 at 17:17
  • @fcbsd I don't care if it doesn't have my preferred distro (Slackware) installed; I just don't want to pay extra for it having a proprietary OS installed. – Geremia Nov 27 '17 at 17:29
  • On online shopping site, I filter contents by Free DOS and they come up with lot of models of hp, Dell and Lenovo which doesn't have Windows. – defalt Nov 27 '17 at 17:32
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    Have you considered buying the individual components yourself and assembling them? – JAB Nov 27 '17 at 18:29
  • Surely this depends on the country you're buying in? – Chris Davies Nov 27 '17 at 20:51
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's totally country and time dependent, and any answer will be out of date within weeks if not days of it being written. – Chris Davies Nov 27 '17 at 20:52
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    This looks like a shopping-recommendation question, which is off-topic. I'd like to know the answer too, but I'm not sure that here's the right place. – wizzwizz4 Nov 27 '17 at 21:00
  • Don't have time for a full answer, but Metabox do laptops with no OS as an option (that saves you around $100). – detly Nov 27 '17 at 21:00
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    @delty You could post a short answer instead of a comment. Even when you don't have much time, an answer should still ideally go in the answer box if it answers the question. – wizzwizz4 Nov 27 '17 at 21:00

6 Answers6

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HP makes a number of machines that are Canonical (Ubuntu) certified. I know that on some of their workstations, you can get Ubuntu and Redhat distros (See the HP z840).

Another good place to look might be the Free Software Foundation (FSF). I know they do some hardware certification.

Zerodf
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  • I didn't know FSF did "hardware certification". Is that really necessary, though? Linux runs on just about everything. – Geremia Nov 27 '17 at 17:30
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    @Geremia, that is an excellent question.

    It depends on what you are looking for in a completed system. If you just want a system that will run Linux well, than a vendor certification is probably more than good enough. However, if you want to run nothing but Free and Open Source software, then you might still need to look elsewhere.

    For example, I manage some HP Z420 desktops. They are Canonical certified. However, the graphics cards require a closed source, NVidia driver for best performance. That is not an issue for me or my organization. However, it might be for some users.

     – Zerodf Nov 27 '17 at 17:37
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The Ministry of Freedom sells computers with not only GNU-approved free operating systems (I believe they use Trisquel), but also Libreboot, a free and open source BIOS replacement.

gmarmstrong
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On https://linuxpreloaded.com/ you will find a rather up-to-date list of such vendors, curated by hand. It is a subjective listing, but without ads or referral links.

Disclaimer: I am the editor of the web page.

brokenarrowkey
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In addition to what has been mentioned, Dell sells system's pre-loaded with Linux, though this generally requires buying direct from them.

Austin Hemmelgarn
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I bought a Brix by Gigabyte for my htpc.

dawja
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There's also the Raspberry Pi that comes without an OS. The hardware contains a single binary blob graphics driver, but no proprietary operating system comes preinstalled.

gmarmstrong
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J Smith
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    Isn't the RaspberryPi firmware proprietary? – Geremia Nov 29 '17 at 16:24
  • Yep. There's a closed-source binary blob driver. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/a-birthday-present-from-broadcom/ That being said, this does answer the question that was asked. – gmarmstrong Feb 27 '18 at 19:07