Linux Mint signs a partnership with ThinkPenguin

Linux Mint signed a new partnership with ThinkPenguin.

ThinkPenguin is an American company that sells Linux computers and related products and services and ships them Worldwide.

For each Linux Mint branded item sold, or computer running Linux Mint, ThinkPenguin donates 10% of the sale to our project.

The Penguin-Wee running Linux Mint

You can visit the ThinkPenguin online store via the following link: http://linuxmint.thinkpenguin.com

20 comments

  1. The website doesn’t load for me, from Europe, but anyway, the partnership is great. 🙂 It’s just awesome when you know people appreciate Linux Mint this much and some new people will join our big family. 🙂

    Congratulations to everyone involved in the partnership! 🙂 And if the site needs some redesign, I’m sure someone in our community can help them out considering they’re helping us back. 🙂

    Cheers! 😀

    Edit by Clem: It looks like the announcement brought too much traffic for ThinkPenguin.com to handle (that happened to linuxmint.com quite a lot a few years ago… it’s the reason we always link directly to the mirrors from the blog announcements rather than linking to the download page for instance during a release).

  2. Clem – You really need to stop making announcements like this. Every time you do you end up destroying another website. Worse than a DDoS attack. 😉

    Congrats.

  3. The time of the announcement was the problem. Hurricane Sandy was running through NJ when it went down. It is back up now. Most products are available for shipping from NJ (United States) and the UK. As is stated.

    Edit by Clem: Thanks for the update Chris. I hope you’re all safe and OK.

  4. its a good move, appreciate it. but the merchandise seems relatively bit costly. i would rather tend to donate mint directly.

  5. I would like to see a 17.3″ screen product with 256GB SSD.
    (I am getting old and my eyes are so good anymore.)

  6. May I give some comments about the store:
    * in Europe, there is at least 2 years liability by law, additional guarantee may be applied, so the one year warranty included is a joke
    * Bluetooth should be already included as a standard, wasting an USB port therefore is not up-to-date
    * I wonder where you get 80GB harddiscs now, they are no longer in production I thought…
    * ..

    There are much better configurations available that run well under Linux out of the box, better sell such products.

  7. I’m not sure where people are getting these prices from. The a dual-core system with 2GB of ram starts at $344 USD.

    I’m aware of the 2 year liability in regards to Europe. The site is not region specific and and we are working on a new version. What is expected in one region is not accepted in another.

    The reason we do not include bluetooth is because there are no free software bluetooth / wifi chipset combinations which are compatible with all distributions. We are working with Atheros on these issues and supporting us now will help get the best hardware tomorrow.

    We are not simply taking Microsoft Windows systems and wiping them and then loading Linux. Some smaller companies are doing just that or taking systems designed for Microsoft Windows and not supporting them a year later when something breaks. There is a big difference here.

    Prices have varied over time and comparing low end hardware that sells for $400 to high end low spec’d hardware isn’t a fair comparison. ThinkPenguin is the only company that is even offering lower spec’d machines of higher quality loaded with Linux.

  8. @ Chris: Lower spec’d machines, I def agree with that. But higher quality? Only if you say so.

    So your saying that these aren’t normal Microsoft Windows systems that you wipe and preload Linux? Well, maybe the wees aren’t, but the desktops and lappies are.

    I agree with the fact of your support though. Excellent. Unless it comes to replacement yeah? Oh wait, you would replace them if someone never loaded Windows on them. No support there of any kind.

    Your systems are overpriced for lower end machines. $399 for a base system is a bit much, when we can get the same machine for about $200 at New Egg or Tiger Direct.

    Let’s not forget the old hardware you throw in them. Like nVidia 9500GT. That’s how old now?

    God forbid we want to throw in an old i7 2600k. That’s what, an extra $600 yeah? Those processors are less then $300 now at Tiger Direct. But if you buy in bulk, you can get them as cheap as $125. I know, it’s how I make my living also.

  9. There are so many problems with your analysis.

    1. The hardware is of better quality. You have chosen to take the lowest quality systems and compared it against a higher quality ‘business class’ line of laptops/desktops. We don’t use refurbished components or lower quality drives for instance that many of these cheap systems contain. You are not our primary customer. Our typical customer is interested in hardware that works better. Specs matter only to the degree that performance is good/excellent. The age of the design of certain components is less relevant if things work better.

    2. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba all ship systems which implement digital restrictions. Even on the more expensive models they ship with cards that are incompatible with Linux. When users try and replace these cards they discover that they can’t. It is an expensive lesson to learn. While 95% of the components on most systems work critical ones frequently don’t. And what is critical for one user may not be for another. There are other digital restrictions we don’t ship with which is why some systems ship with 2nd generation CPU options. Others do have 3rd generation options though where we can get them without digital restrictions.

    3. The 9500GT was high end at one time. While it is not a great card for hard core gamers it is still a great card for your average consumer. In fact Michael Larabel from the leading technology review site on Linux hardware Phoronix personally recommended it to us. One of the reasons we use it is because it is the best supported. The nouveau driver has been integrated into the mainline kernel and is well supported now across distributions and releases. I am not the only person which has an issue with nVidia. Linus took issue recently with nVidia as well. Using an older high end technology with a third party driver is not the worst possible option when your goal is great support for Linux. Most of our systems ship with Intel graphics. Intel’s graphics have greatly improved and have been compared to the low end of nVidia’s offering.

    If any one would like to continue this discussion please do so on the forums:

    http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=115990&p=645266&hilit=thinkpenguin#p645266

    This isn’t a great pace for a long and continued discussion on these issues. I have posted many other comments and reasons for various actions. We are also working on improving the support situation upstream so distributions like Linux Mint end up with better support for hardware. We are for instance working with Atheros on a newer USB N chipset.

    I am positioning the company to be more than a reseller of hardware designed for Microsoft Windows and preloaded with Linux. We will have better support for regions, languages, and currencies in the near future. From laptops with EU, AU, etc AC adapters to non-English keyboard options. We have some support already. Considering that our Linux operations did not turn a profit until the summer of 2011 we have gotten quite far in improving the support situation (founded 2008).

  10. Thanks for the explanation Chris. It makes perfect sense to me. Linux isn’t the first outfit to custom compile a well suited hardware base. Think Apple. Their components aren’t necessarily cutting edge either, but people fail to recognize that it’s a synergy of all the components that have been tried and tested to work well together with OSX.

    Another point that escapes people’s notice is that there is going to be occasions where Intel and AMD don’t always improve when the latest designs come out. I can think of several right away. Thinking back awhile, the old Intell PIII 333 processor would run circles around every one of the PIII that was 350 and higher, especially if it was installed on Asus motherboards, which were actually more suited to unlock the full PIII potential. Don’t ask me to recall all the details, but someone could build a wicked fast desktop for a pittance–at least at the time.

    It’s obvious that several of these posters are not true system builders. There’s nothing wrong with that until they become critical. Please don’t conclude that I am a “true system builder.” I am not. Yes, I have been putting my own personal hardware together for years, and while they work, I realize that they are not optimized as well as they could be. But I go into these projects knowing full well that something might not mess as expected. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to take.

  11. I hope the community here supports the partnerships that help drive Linux Mint development. That could include ThinkPenguin (nice linux branding, btw), buying a shirt and wearing it, or giving moneys directly to LM and Debian.

    Linux hobbyists should be solution focused, not overly critical. Lets face it, it can’t be easy to keep stock of attractively priced models when PC hardware depreciates in value so quickly. Also, without large volumes (millions of units) its difficult for an OEM to get the initial costs down, even without a Windows license fee.

    The Linux Mint team has been doing very well and the community has benefited from that. Eyes on the prize, folks. 😉

  12. I just checked out the laptop offerings at Think Penguin, and I am both disappointed and perplexed. The machines they are selling are incredibly low-spec to start with, and upgrade prices are rather ridiculous. As glad as I am to see them exist, the “bang for the buck” is not good. I’m sorry to say that my next laptop will be either an ASUS or Samsung with Windows, and which I will have to wipe and install Mint onto. I love the idea of having Linux preinstalled, but I will not pay a huge premium just for that and from a company that may not exist the first time I need support.

  13. i7-2630 + 240GB SSD + 8GB + 1366×768 14″ screen (ouch) + Intel graphics (double ouch) with only 1-year warranty = $1566. LoL, good luck. 🙂

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