Yes. Everything from low-cost home desktop systems to high-end workstation and servers are being sold today with Linux preinstalled. The Linux.org site maintains a list of vendors who sell computers with Linux preinstalled. You can find that list at www.linux.org/vendor/ system. Companies such as Pogo Linux (www.pogolinux.com) and Penguin Computing (www
.penguincomputing.com) offer workstations with Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux preinstalled for under $1,000 or $1,800, respectively.With a PC from those companies, you can start right in installing and building Linux Toys II projects.
If you are looking for a laptop computer with Fedora preinstalled, check out Linux Certified (www.linuxcertified.com). Laptops with Fedora installed start at under $1,000. There are also very low end PCs being mass-marketed with Linux preinstalled. A company called Linare offers desktop computers starting under $200 with Linux preinstalled and laptops for under $500 that are being sold through Wal-Mart and Amazon.com. They come with a Linare operating system installed. If you want to take a chance on one of those computers, you can try installing Fedora or RHEL on them if the projects don’t work in Linare. The trend is toward more and more inexpensive computers becoming available with Linux installed on them. Buying a computer with all hardware components certified to run Linux can save you some of the problems that put off many first-time Linux users. For example, to get
Linux running on a computer that had Windows pre-installed often requires resizing the disk, dealing with winmodems and winprinters (software-driven hardware that is tricky to get working in Linux), and potentially messing up the boot loader when you install Linux.
