Re: "without pre-installed software" @Charles 9
"I've installed or used (eg via live distro for data recovery or AV) Linux on a hell of a lot of laptops, many of which have broadcom chips. Never once had an issue."
Oddly enough, I would have agreed with you until last week. I was on site trouble shooting an almost brand new Laptop and one of the tests I often do with any potential hardware fault is to boot a live Linux from USB just to try and quickly eliminate/confirm Windows OS or driver issues. I couldn't get either Ubuntu, XUbuntu, or Mint to boot through to the GUI at all. Not even in VESA mode. Obviously a video driver issue, but something weird enough that those Linux boot images didn't support the hardware.
It turned out that someone had disabled ALL the networking devices in the BIOS setup when trying to disable UEFI/enable legacy and get rid of secureboot so a chargeable call out anyway.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
