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Lenovo to Sell, Support Linux on ThinkPads
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Aug 06, 2007 02:08 PM
from the march-of-the-distributions dept.
from the march-of-the-distributions dept.
Pengo writes "Lenovo has announced that they will begin selling T-series ThinkPads with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 pre-installed beginning sometime during the fourth quarter. In addition to supplying the hardware support, Lenovo will also handle OS support for ThinkPad customers, with Novell providing software updates. 'Unlike Dell, which has targeted its Linux offering primarily at the enthusiast community, Lenovo's SLED laptops are targeted at the enterprise. Whether they are running Ubuntu, SLED, or some other distribution, the availability of Linux pre-installation from mainstream vendors increases the visibility of the operating system and gives component makers an incentive to provide better Linux drivers and hardware support. If Lenovo is willing to collaborate with the Linux development community to improve the Linux laptop user experience, it will be a big win for all Linux users, not just the ones who buy laptops from Lenovo.'"
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Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Note to moderator, I recommend the "insightful" tag for this response.
Yes it is the Year of Linux. (Score:4, Interesting)
2007 is much more the year of gnu/linux than it is the year of Vista [slashdot.org]. First Dell, now Lenovo. Acer might soon decide their Singapore gnu/linux laptop has a market in the UK and US after all. That would leave HP as the only one of the big four desktop makers who don't sell models with gnu/linux. Driver support for Linux is already good but vendor demand is going to make it better, which is why M$ has done everyting in their power to keep vendors from doing this. Vista is a flop and no one is making money off the upgrade train anymore, so M$ has nothing to offer, vendors have nothing to lose and the M$ death spiral is on.
Death spiral? Yep. They did not have the resources to make Vista modern or even functional. Low sales of Vista have flatlined their revenue, so they will never have the resources to recover. Vendors are defecting and that lowers the likely hood that Vista will ever be ready and reduces their ability to sabotage free software with bogus non standards.
The non free way has finally failed. This will be good for everyone but M$.
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Re:Yes it is the Year of Linux. (Score:4, Insightful)
If that's not failure, I don't know what is.
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20, 40, 60, It's all the same when you make it up. (Score:4, Insightful)
So now they are claiming 60 million by the end of June? That would make 20 million coppies sold in June alone because they were boasting 40 million in May. [slashdot.org] Given that the market is on the order of 230 million a year [pcworld.com], and most people don't want Vista, it's unlikely that many desktops were sold and less likely they all had Vista.
If things were really rosy for M$, you would not see systems with gnu/linux. That you do signals the end of the M$ monopoly.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Resources, they had more than enough of. Now things like Skill, Insight, Innovation (the real kind), Design Acumen... those were what they lacked.
IMHO, they also lacked the cojones to tear the guts out of the thing and start from scratch, a'la OSX.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
M$ Fanboy, Macthorpe [slashdot.org] thinks that Vista has captured seven times the market share of gnu/linux:
2007 is much more the year of gnu/linux than it is the year of Vista. Did you deduce that from the statistics that show that Vista is already being used on more than seven times the number of Linux machines?
No, I based it on low sales of Vista and industry disappointment [slashdot.org]. That's not suprising, given the 12% interest in Vista in polls of both business and home users. If those polls are correct, a 5% market s
about time! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:about time! (Score:5, Funny)
and they'll announce it again exactly a year from now! it's like festivus... we do it every year!
Parent
Well (Score:2, Informative)
After 10 years of driving an Open I am now driving a Nissan. I am pleasing with it, but I be
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
The best part about this is you've got two separate companies (Lenovo and Dell), two different product lines (Thinkpads and Inspirons), and two different distributions of Linux (SUSE and Ubuntu). This means that both companies and both distros will be pushing to get laptop hardware support working well with Linux.
If you've just got Dell trying to buy compatible hardware for a single product line, then good Linux support for each laptop component might only come from a single manufacturer. Now that Lenovo's in the game, they'll be looking for Linux compatibility from their hardware manufacturers' as well; manufacturers which are bound to be different in many cases from Dell's. Let's also not forget software configuration, how many times have you been using one distro and just can't get some piece of hardware to work, you find a solution online, but come to find out it's only if you're using a certain distro with a certain kernel version.
This situation means better hardware support for everyone no matter the distro or company (or lack there of).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Driver support isn't a question of well, Lenovo is selling laptops with linux preinstalled, maybe we should make a driver!
Historically, the open source community has been very resourceful at making their own drivers, very good ones too.
My response to this would be, "So what!".
What has to change, is patent law before we get great linux drivers for video cards say.
That way, Nvidia and ATI can't sue each other when they find out both are using the others patents.
That won't ever happen, bec
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
I have one of the Ubuntu-preinstalled Dell laptops (the 1420n), and it does include two binary drivers: one for the wireless, and one for the modem. The wireless card is actually supported by free drivers (albeit with non-free firmware) in more recent kernels, just not in the particular kernel supported in Feisty Fawn. Dell is also selling Ubuntu desktops with nVidia video.
It does seem dubious, and hope they'll be able to do better in the future. Oh well.
(For what it's worth, I'm quite happy with this laptop (which I'm posting from). It was nice for once to be able to just take the laptop out of the box, turn it on, and use it, without the usual fuss required to install the OS I actually need. And they seem to be working well with upstream--the factory install seems to be *very* close to a stock Ubuntu installation, so I don't have any worries about it being abandoned.)
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Similarly with Linux, if IBM and Dell mass produce and spread awareness compatible third party hardware will be more available. I am happy to see this news because I felt like things were slowly creeping in the w
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Customer service (Score:4, Interesting)
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Just curious.
System Administration in the Rabbit's Warren. (Score:2)
Re:System Administration in the Rabbit's Warren. (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I would appreciate it if someome were to work on a similar product (or a port) to Ubuntu.
Parent
Re:System Administration in the Rabbit's Warren. (Score:4, Informative)
I find that very interesting. I have been running Suse for many years now, and one of the reasons is YAST. I like the fact that I can use it in text mode and do remote administration without running X. I have always found it to be a very user friendly application. I was also very pleased that when Novel bought Suse, one of the first things they did was open YAST. I would like to see it included with more distributions.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In the KDE menu, do I go for Control Center, System > Control Center (YAST), or System > Configuration > Control Center (YAST)?
I'll pick one of the YAST ones.
Ok, now do I go for Software > Online Update, Software > System Update, or Software > Software Management?
I'll go for Software Management.
Ok, now I'm faced with the bizarrest interface I've seen in a long time.
It really shouldn't be this hard. Of course if I switch to Ubuntu/Red Hat/Debian
Flip Flop (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha.
Re:Flip Flop (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's "wishful thinking" based on a desire for Microsoft to "get what's coming to it" on your part to think this has anything at all to do with Vista / Microsoft, and don't forget that XP is still an option with *most* OEMs. This has nothing to to with Microsoft's market share, which unfortunately remains strong. Assuming a great shift in the Dark Side is presumptuous at best.
But it's still a great sign that things are starting to move just a little.
Parent
Vista? (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I right?
Offering XP is product differentiation (Score:2)
Plus (Score:2)
Nice gesture, but Novell is Not Welcome (Score:3, Interesting)
On the positive side, one can argue that for a Free Software user it's better to pay for Novell's product than Microsoft's, because at least the hardware is more likely going to be compatible with other, more respectable Linux distributions.
A good step forward, but there is much room for improvement.
Improved sensor support? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheers (Score:2)
That's all I have to say.
Re:Cheers (Score:5, Informative)
Well, maybe one cheer.
I did the obvious test, that I've done for a number of other such "Linux is available on FOO" announcements: I went to lenovo.com, and tried to configure a laptop that ran linux.
I failed.
Nowhere on any of the couple dozen pages that I looked at did the "linux" string appear. Nowhere was I even given a choice of operating system. The choice was "Windows Vista".
I'll give three cheers when someone who wants a linux machine can easily configure it and order it. Until then, I'll consider such announcements to be PR aimed at quieting the linux crowd without intending to sell anything to them.
It is sorta curious that a company would so blatantly violate the old "Give the customer what they want" rule. They don't have to force linux on Microsoft fans; all they have to do is make it available. That's not difficult. So why don't they do it?
(I recently checked at ibm.com, and I still couldn't figure out how to order a linux laptop from them, either.
Parent
A sign of better times? (Score:3, Interesting)
A combination of Windows Vista flunking and not meeting the needs of consumers (compared to Windows XP), the business requirement to bring down prices (no Windows tax) so their range of laptops can be more competitive with in the market their targeting (basically small businesses and students) means that Linux is starting to become a possibility, considering Ubuntu is often said to be easier to use than Windows XP.
Now, can you seriously consider hardware vendors like Lenovo pushing laptops with Vista pre-installed when they know battery life descreased and the minimum required specs will be seriously increased, driving up the base cost of the machine.
Yeah, I can see where these people are coming from, it's a pure business decision with the side effect of getting the Linux geeks on your side.
This is a Good Thing (tm) (Score:3, Insightful)
Dell, HP/Compaq, Lenovo/IBM...these are the big three that the Linux community needs to really push the off-the-shelf sale. The sales of these three dwarf all of the rest of the competition.
Thus, I say bring it on, Lenovo! Soon, all of the other 1st and 2nd tier vendors will fall into the new order of the world or risk being left behind.
Re:This is a Good Thing (tm) (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really.
Apple tried that (might still be trying it, for all I know), and it didn't make any difference. When I was in K-8 (eighties), you would have been hard-pressed to find a non-Apple product in any of the classrooms. When I was in HS (90-94), the school computer lab had only Macs. Our two semesters of programming were taught in Pascal on Macs. It wasn't until college that I had a PC computer lab available to me. Didn't make any difference at all.
Why not? Because I didn't make the purchasing decisions for my family. My parents did. And my dad had to use PCs at work. This had nothing to do with what he had grown up using - PCs were thin on the ground when he graduated HS in '67 - but with what his office had purchased. Which means, despite Apple's best efforts at co-opting the brains of America's youth, I learned to use the PC.
Which is why, once the PC was entrenched on the office desktop, that was it. If we want Linux/BSD/HURD/what-have-you to gain widespread adoption, it's the business desktop that we need to target.
Parent
Re:This is a Good Thing (tm) (Score:4, Insightful)
With all due respect, if corporate management would shut up and listen to what those unwashed hippies are actually saying, they might be able to get their collective head out of their ass and realise that the irrational, unrealistic ideologues are the ones in the Brooks Brothers suits.
Free Software is not jihad. It's a rational and well-developed model for sustainable software development. Even a cursory investigation of the FOSS phenomenon makes this abundantly clear. Dismissing the Four Freedoms as inconvenient rhetoric serves no useful purpose whatsoever, unless the corporate strategy is to take from Free Software and never to give back. And that flavour of corporate piracy is an ideology that I personally find a great deal more offensive than Stallman's.
I know you're probably offering this as empirical fact, rather than necessarily attempting to validate or justify the idea. But honestly, the utter illogic behind an approach like that is astounding. Enriching one's declared enemy in the hope that they won't attack once strengthened - that's madness.
I believe the proper term for this kind of thing, by the way, is danegeld [wikipedia.org]. Most people do not hold such strategies in very high esteem. English poet Rudyard Kipling, who knew a thing or two about conflict, had a thing or two to say [wikipedia.org] about it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux on my Thinkpad (X61) (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, Thinkpads don't come with install media. You can make your own, but that's sort of hard if you bought a slimline model like the X61 without a CD drive. The tech support people were ultimately not helpful. They were willing to waive the $40 media fee (Lenovo, WTF?) because my computer doesn't have a disk drive, but it was "too new" for my warranty to be in their database (WTF?) and they couldn't send me the disks.
Still, as long as I didn't touch their initial partition, I reasoned, I could still get back to a factory install. Windows was only a last resort if I couldn't get Linux on there anyway.
The SATA controller had to be put in compatibility mode, unsurprisingly. The wireless worked in Ubuntu when I backported the Gutsy kernel, but the screen brightness control stoped working with the Gutsy kernel. So I tried Fedora 7.
In Fedora 7 (32 bit version), wireless worked out of the box once all the kernel updates were installed (mostly worked that is -- reboot and "modprobe -r iwl4965; modprobe iwl4965" often).
I can't get sound working even with the CVS copy of the "patch_analog.c" from alsa cvs copied into the alsa driver source. Others have had more success with this.
Suspend (often) works after following the instructions for a T61 linked from here [fedoraforum.org]. Of course, 50% of the time the machine will crash coming out of suspend, so I'm going to try the instructions here [thinkwiki.org] and see how it goes.
I haven't even tried to get all the keyboard function buttons working.
why no kde? (Score:3, Insightful)
Differentiation (Score:3, Insightful)
With Vista sales at a blisteringly mediocre pace and consumers increasingly met with nearly identical machines at identical prices from identical companies with identically poor support where else can the OEMs turn?
We've seen M. Dell mention publicly that he would distribute OS X if he could, and Apple will never do that. Linux provides for the utmost extreme example of potential product differentiation at a nominal cost to the OEM. Most of them will take differing sides in the Flavor-of-the-month club. Dell has chosen Ubuntu, Lenovo has chosen Suse. Who will HP pick? Madriva or Fedora maybe. The OEMs want to sell machines, they need to find new markets and differentiate their products. This is the beginning of a time travelling exercise to about 1986 when CP/M, Commodore's Amiga, and DOS were but a few of the possible business and consumer choices out there. MS did some great things in introducing a common platform for development and such, but I think that world+dog realizes that homogeneous computing has more downsides than ups.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This can only mean one thing! (Score:3)
I was a die-hard ATi fan starting with VGA Wonder-XL(ISA) until the Radeon 8500(PCI) series. After owning every generation of All-In-Wonder that they produced and never enjoying the usage of those products to the extent that was possible.
I am now in the market for a laptop, and the number of Nvidia laptops is slim. I hope this will encourage ATi to fix the damn things.
This is big...if it happens (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is great, if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Small steps in the wrong direction aren't good steps. They actually get you further from your goal.
While I am not certain that this is actually in the wrong direction - I do know that the Novell - Microsoft agreement is NOT THE RIGHT direction.
Losing does not justify making bad decisions.
Note as well that losing is your word. I did not realize that have a plethora of available software packages and alternatives meant losing. If you mean that the OS community is smaller then Microsoft then I'll agree. But when I want to run a LAMP server or toss Ubuntu on my new box I can do that.
I do have the freedom to choose. Agreements like the Novell - Microsoft agreement lead towards losing many of those freedoms.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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