15
HP Elite Desk
(lemm.ee)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Those machines are very, very good to run Linux. Stable, everything is supported out of the most, very reliable. About calling home, they don't, however some models, like most machines, have Intel ME baked into the CPU and that can be remotely accessed. The good thing is that you can disable the Intel ME features on the UEFI and there's a toggle to completely disable the network card before an OS is loaded.