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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard


On Mon, 1 Jul 1996, Doug Edwards wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience or useful information about using Linux
> with the new Nexar modular PC architecture?  I heard about Nexar on
> c|net and it sounded really impressive---combining the best advantages
> of buying a whole PC system and of building your own custom PC.  But the
> Nexar Web site (http://www.nexr.com/) doesn't have any price information
> and the configuration information available is spotty.  I would be most
> interested in hearing about any experience anyone has with Nexar (I
> realize it would have to be *very* recent experience, since Nexar only
> unveiled their product at a recent Comdex, June 3-6).  In fact, since
> I'm thinking about buying a Nexar PC for use with Linux, any information
> of any kind would be most welcome.

This would actually be an interesting turnabout.  Remember when Sun came
out with the "Lunchbox" (an "appliance" Unix Workstation, Cheap and
Powerful).  Actually, Nexar is the "Corporate" version of what most of the
high school and college kids have been doing for years.  Instead of buying
a "Shrink Wrapped box, complete with $600 Microsoft Bundle", they get a
"base system" made of componants, and add the software later.

The 4000 series seems to come with pretty standard componants and lists
UNIX and Xenix (Microsoft must love that), as options.  Linux would be a
natural fit.  They could commit to the Linux  support and keep the margin
for themselves.


> 	Doug Edwards
> 	dde@sirius.com
> 	http://www.sirius.com/~dde/
> 
> P.S. Incidentally, the latest Linux Hardware Compatibility, at URL:
> 
> 	http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html
> is dated 14 November 1995.  Is it really that badly out of date, or has
> someone been updating the actual content while neglecting to change the
> date?

Unfortunately, there is no requirement that someone who adds a new
hardware driver has to add to the FAQ documentation.  You may want to
check the latest Slackware and Red Hat release.  Slackware is a bit more
agressive about integrating new hardware drivers.  Red Hat is more
cautious, and generally less inclined to result in surpises over new
software.  The 2940 from slackware worked, but gave some interesting
results.  The 2940 kernel from Red Hat just refused to deal with my
machine.


	Rex Ballard


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Wed Jul  3 13:18:59 1996
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