For nine years now I've bought my desktops as components. A couple of weeks
ago I looked on cclonline.com, the best known dealer in my
county/province/state who does components, for all the bits for a new PC and
noticed they'd started doing [GNU/]Linux PCs. After checking with them it
would work with Debian 'main only' I bought one of these instead
http://www.cclonline.com/product/159582/NoMfgCode/All-CCL-Desktops/CCL-Linux-2000i-PC/CCL-LINUX-MID/
The upshot was the WiFi wouldn't work without proprietary blobs. But because
I'd asked beforehand and then finding it didn't work made sure they knew
about h-node.org, they identified and shipped me a TP-Link TL-WN881ND free of
charge, which works. The salesman, Tom Lamb, said if it did they'd switch to
shipping it by default.
Tom has made plain because, as @Chris has said often, manufacturers will
change the chips used between runs, don't tell and still use the same part
number CCL won't make the 'works with all recent distros.'. Thinkpenguin
have to work damned hard to make that claim. However, what CCL are is
somewhere you can buy without paying Microsoft Tax, ask beforehand 'is it
h-node.org compatible' and have support/recourse if it doesn't. They ship to
most countries in Europe and the cart will give you a with shipping price so
you can compare with local prices. I don't know if their Collect and Return
warranty extends beyond the UK or not, but ask.
I better make plain I think the reason the built-in Ethernet works with
Trisquel 7.0 is the BIOS loads the firmware blob it needs before Trisquel
boots. But I don't know for certain.
To make it plain IMO for buying a works with a GNU FSDG distro computer:
Gluglug Libreboot laptops - Platinum Standard
Thinkpenguin - Gold Standard
CCL - Silver Standard
But CCL are new at this game, listen to their customers - so write and ask,
and mention Trisquel and GNU FSDG if you do.
A happy customer - this is strictly a personal endorsement, I've been buying
components from CCL for a decade.
