I recently purchased an Acer Aspire 4315 laptop that came with a Linux distribution on it. Well, so to speak... I was very excited. So much so, that I had to write a longish letter to Acer. The letter I present you here.

Hi,

The following e-mail is NOT a support request. It is a feedback on the
way some of your hardware is marketed. Please forward it to
responsible staff members within your organization. Thank you. (If you
don't fully understand, please e-mail me back, and I will be more than
happy to explain.)

I am an experienced Linux user, and I purchased you Acer Aspire 4315
that came with Linpus Linux because I needed a cost-efficient laptop
to run Linux on it.

First of all, Linux was NOT fully deployed on the product. That
certainly didn't make me feel good about the purchase. I expected a
fully functional Linux (especially since Linpus Linux is know for it's
desktop capabilities). The installation on your product looks like a
server system, and is certainly not a good fit for a mobile PC.

Furthermore, I inspected the command history, which was not wiped
clean. (Note that I am talking about a brand new laptop that I bought
in a sealed Acer packaging.) There were actually Windows shell
commands that every Linux user knows would not execute on Linux. This
lead me to believe that some of your staff members do not take Linux
seriously. Knowing the Linux user community, I can tell you that it is
a very, very negative message.

Politics aside, Linpus not being properly set up is not a problem,
because most people will install one of the better known Linux
distributions. However, that leads us to another problem: availability
of Linux drivers for your hardware. The drivers are not included on
you CD, and not even on your FTP site.

Now, I was offered your product as a Linux-compatible laptop. That is
very logical, but the claim should have been followed through. The
linux market is slowly but steadily expanding, and the low-cost
laptops are the main battleground of that expansion. You can't expect
Windows Vista or XP to run on a low-end Celleron PC. Especially not
Vista. However, Linux will run on it beautifully and increasing
numbers of people can clearly see the difference. The only problem is
that support for such people (people like myself) is limited to say
the least.

Drivers for the laptop cannot be easily obtained on the Internet, and
that is the primary reason why I think they should be provided on your
website. Even if you cannot have dedicated resources for developing
your own drivers, you at least need to have dedicated staff members to
go out and google out existing open-source solutions such as Madwifi
drivers for the Atheros chipset, or the Acer-ACPI drivers for
power-management and hotkey support. It would not be a bad idea if
Acer could also fund some of those projects to produce usable drivers,
and it should be less costly than appointing your own developers to
solve the problem.

As a solution to the above problems, I suggest the following steps:

* Make Linpus Linux with preinstalled Acer-related drivers available
on YOUR site (Linpus' own website is too slow for access from Europe).
* Make individual drivers available on YOUR site
* Establish contact with developers of open-source drivers and offer
assistance and/or funding to accelerate development of Linux drivers
* Establish a Wiki for Linux users to freely contribute advice and
support documents on YOUR site
* Make sure Linpus Linux is FULLY deployed on newly purchased laptops
and that functionality of the laptop is fully supported

I thank you for your time, and please do understand that this is NOT a
support request. This mail will be most useful to people within your
organization in charge of Linux on laptop programme. My very best
regards to you, and please e-mail me if you need any assistance or
have any questions.

--
Branko