A dealer who understands h-node OR sometimes things go right for free software

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.