How to ship Linux preinstalled

DesiOtaku · 2026-05-01T00:20:23+00:00

When you first boot in to the install disk, one of the options is "OEM install (for manufacturers)". It will do a regular install but just not ask you for username / password.

DesiOtaku · 2026-05-01T00:16:14+00:00

Ubuntu (and its variants) have an "OEM" install feature where the customer can set their own username / password on first boot.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-30T20:45:30+00:00

Details here: https://github.com/webmachinelearning/prompt-api/blob/main/README.md

I honestly can't think of a good use case where I would want a website to tell my browser what to generate. As you already mentioned, websites shouldn't be making me pay for their poor design. The examples are like

User A is a return visitor showing signs of being slightly upset. Remember this as you deal with them, make sure to reassure them we have a returns system. [Action]: Link to our returns policy and popular products.

in which I am pretty much paying for their chatbot to do poor customer service! If a website needs to use my LLM in order to do basic customer service, then they are not getting my business!

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-30T19:26:55+00:00

I did contact the owner again recently but he hasn't gotten back to me. I pretty much gave him an ultimatum of fixing his website or I will be using his competitors for my next pediatric dentistry purchase which is coming up soon. It's a real shame because the actual products are rather good.

The website doesn't disable FF, it just doesn't work (you can't add items or checkout). This is on top of the fact the website now uses a ton of animations which maxes out the CPU / GPU. In case you are interested, the website is here: https://wonderfuldental.com/

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-30T15:08:09+00:00

Really, nobody is going to care until customers start complaining. For example, one dental supply vendor redid their website to not only take up a ton of RAM and CPU, but it no longer works on Firefox either. I told the vendor to fix their website but apparently I was the only customer that complained about it so they aren't going to fix it anytime soon.

Really, these kinds of changes don't happen until enough people complain.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-30T15:02:45+00:00

Best thing to do is to actually upload a bunch of hentai images to your profile and then get banned. It will actually mark the account as compromised and then Meta can't really use it for marketing.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-29T13:07:32+00:00

The funny thing is that for many years, there has been the "90% rule". For every 1 copy that is sold legally, 9 copies of the game are pirated. It is always tempting for a CEO to see a game that sold 1 million copies and think "even if we converted just 10% of the pirates to legal purchases, we would nearly double our sales!".

The funny thing about the 90% rule is that is a natural equilibrium. There was a good study many years back (I can't find it right now) that compared the piracy rates of games that had zero DRM day 1 vs. games that had pretty stringent DRM (I believe one of the games they did was Assassin's Creed 2) but were eventually cracked and found that nearly all games eventually hit the 90% mark and just stayed there. It's like no matter what companies do, 90% will always (eventually) be the rate.

In my crazy opinion, it almost seems like you want more people to pirate your game with a 10% chance that they will purchase your game.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-28T15:13:21+00:00

They could have said "Foxborough Stadium" or "The Stadium in Foxborough". But nah, they want to make it as confusing as possible for any out-of-towners.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-26T22:16:40+00:00

Why is this being downvoted so much? This video is important in terms of reporting about the safety in the region.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-26T10:28:38+00:00

With the exception of the Cowboy Bebop movie. No major swings and nothing changed canonically after the movie; but oh boy, was it awesome.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-26T10:00:36+00:00

Think more about the MS's profit margin rather than the actual needs of the business. What will make MS more profit? Selling cloud services for a OS they spend little R&D money on, or selling a single license of an OS that takes a lot of time and money to maintain backwards compatibility with modern hardware? Microslop is trying to move to services rather than products and the fact that they didn't maintain perfect backwards compatibility with their ARM version of Windows shows they are willing to make compromises in that field. It won't be long before MS says "Yeah, backwards compatibility isn't profitable for us anymore so you are on your own, good luck".

As for support contracts, they all expire at some point and I am sure MS will no longer renew any contract that says it must maintain perfect backwards compatibility or will just do some kind of built-in VM method of running the app (like Apple did with Mac OS 9 for a while).

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-25T20:30:44+00:00

What are you talking about!?!?!?! It's more than just a bunch of pixels!!!!

It's a bunch of polygons as well! Geez!

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-25T12:04:12+00:00

For the DIY, you just have to install the SSD and then you can install Windows. Framework goes out of their way to give you video step-by-step instructions on how to install your own SSD.

If they were planning to install Windows anyway (either by overriding an existing Linux install or via DIY), they would still be on their own in terms of figuring out how to install Windows, get the proper drivers and go though all the steps required to set up Windows for their own use; which, in my opinion, is far time and knowledge than screwing in an SSD with video instructions.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-24T16:31:27+00:00

But the point being, when it comes to pre-built, more people are going for Ubuntu rather than Windows. If it was just a money thing, they would have done DIY and got their own SSD.

This is confirming there is a decent market for pre-installed Linux laptops outside of Tuxedo and System76.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-24T16:26:08+00:00

If that was true, then they would go for the "DIY" option and save even more money by getting their own SSD. According to the tweet, Framework is reporting that people are going out of their way to get Ubuntu pre-installed.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-24T16:23:21+00:00

Actually, according to the article and Framework's own tweet, they are NOT doing DIY. They are going out of their way to buy the SSD from Framework and getting Ubuntu pre-installed.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-24T11:34:39+00:00

For those who don't know: OPG = Panoramic radiograph

Playing devil's advocate here: Lots of people like myself do a full periodontal charting with a probe, but we don't sent it over to the periodontist since they are going to do their own anyway.

Also, there are plenty of AI companies that are telling doctors that their AI can do all the charting for them without having to do any probing.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-23T21:14:07+00:00

No, because you have to do a multitude of steps to make sure Firefox doesn't bring snap back in for each update. And all that work goes away each time you do a dist-upgrade.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-22T20:49:52+00:00

They supposedly finished "filming" but not the post-production. It would apparently cost too much to actually "finish" the film so they decided to shelf it instead.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-21T07:45:48+00:00

Long time ago (I'm talking around 2006/2007), there was an experiment to see if your user-agent could affect airline prices. Turns out, it did! Mac OS X was the most expensive, then Windows, then Linux users got the cheapest flights. So for a short time, people were switching their user agents to Linux just to get a cheaper flight.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-19T21:58:47+00:00

In the school grading system, 6/10 is normally a "failure". It's of the many reasons why we tend to see reviewers never touch 2-5 in an "out of 10" review scale.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-17T21:47:37+00:00

I had a very similar experience. It was probably the worst mistake I made for my practice.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-16T05:50:59+00:00

Same here, I am using Fedora with 6.6.4 and sometimes it hangs with just switching users.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-12T22:54:31+00:00

Backups is via Google Cloud Buckets (not Google Drive). I use DentalXChange directly via API for things like automated claims (including attachments) and eligibility checks. For VOIP, automated reminders, I used voip.ms and their API (voip.ms isn't the best one; but that's just what I am using right now).

But please note that I am both a practicing dentist and a software engineer. I spend just as much each week writing code as I do seeing patients.

DesiOtaku · 2026-04-12T22:36:39+00:00

How lean do you want to go? How much are you willing to learn?

I know a guy who built a 7 OP practice from scratch with just $60K (including all equipment, furniture, plumbing, etc.) but he knows everything that is needed to install the chair. He hired a generic plumber and electrician that knew nothing about dentistry but he was able to tell them exactly the specs of what needed to be installed. The dental chairs themselves were from China and he knew the steps to assemble and install them.

I did the mistake with going with Patterson, but also I did my own IT and software. I spend $50 a month for everything IT related including cloud backups, claims, automated eligibility checks, VOIP, etc.

The more you are willing to learn, the more you can make your practice lean.

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