Lenovo Preloading SUSE Linux on ThinkPad

An anonymous reader writes "For years, the holy grail of the Linux desktop has been to get a major computer vendor to commit to preloading a Linux desktop. It's finally happened! Lenovo has made a deal with Novell to preload SUSE Linux 10 on its ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation. Ironically, in June, Lenovo was in hot-water with Linux fans because an executive had said that the company would no longer support Linux on its ThinkPad line. But the company did a quick about-turn. Who knows, maybe Mr. Dell will finally get the message, too?"

Mr. Dell?

[drinkypoo (153816)]

Who knows, maybe Mr. Dell will finally get the message, too?

Yeah, like he did about AMD. (Hint: try to actually buy a AMD-based server.)

Re:Mr. Dell?

[Doctor Memory (6336)]

Dell is stating that they will be introducing AMD-based servers "by the end of the year" in their first-quarter financial statement [dell.com]. Should make for great stocking-stuffers for all those little corps this Xmas!

FreeBSD too

[Local Loop (55555)]

Maybe Dell will also realize that a lot of us are pissed off that they
have stopped "supporting" FreeBSD on their servers.

Re:Mr. Dell?

[b0s0z0ku (752509)]

Who knows, maybe Mr. Dell will finally get the message, too?

Well, they are offering Precision 380 workstations with Redhat Enterprise pre-installed. A step in the right direction.

-b.

They still do, but...

[Svartalf (2997)]

It's not on all models. The biggest problem they have is that they've got magic tags in the BIOS that XP sees and uses to allow an OEM install intended for Dell machines to go on without plugging in the CD key on the labels they're sticking on the machines. They've got to make a "special" version of the machines they're offering no XP preinstall on that doesn't HAVE this magic key to "prevent piracy", especially since they've apparently caught at least three major businesses cheating on licenses this way in the past. The same goes for at least HPaq (I didn't need to key in the license when I re-imaged my laptop for a small XP partition for my wife's benefit and put Linux (Then Mandriva, now FC5 x86-64 on it...) on.

Blame their wishing for an "easier" way of things for the customer- I blame them for doing something silly that ties them even tighter
than ever to Microsoft that honestly wasn't something that was relevant save for the fact that the damn thing needs regular re-installs
to be of any use to anyone.

About time

[rjmars97 (946970)]

I've always loved the IBM Thinkpads but have had doubts about the ability of Lenovo to matain the same quality. I've been looking at getting another Thinkpad, and Lenovo offering a Linux distro may be a good enough reason to try them out. Its not my favorite distro, but its deinetly a great foot in the door for Linux, which is something I can definetly support.

Better for other distros too

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

Even if it's not your favoite distro, the drivers will be similar, so installation will still be easier.

Re:About time

[(H)elix1 (231155)]

I'm using a t60p right now with SLES 10 on it. Very nice hardware - on par with the t42p, t40p, and t30 before it. The only 'extra' bit of work for the t60 series was they switched over to a SATA HDD and a dual core CPU, which was not an issue but took a bit more work than the IDE drives and single CPU in the earlier laptops. Took forever to get the 2x2G sticks of RAM, but that would be my only beef. The rest is pretty nice kit.

Re:If it's not an Apple ][, it sucks. [NT]

[1u3hr (530656)]

Maybe you can tell me WTF this "Apple ][" symbology is. It was the second Apple model, right? Isn't it a Roman 2, i.e. II? So is this just a silly word game to show who are the true Illuminati, like "unixen", etc?

Re:If it's not an Apple ][, it sucks. [NT]

[Nimey (114278)]

See Wikipedia's entry [wikipedia.org]. That symbology was on not only the case, but when you booted up the model number (also with ][) would show at the top of the screen. Likewise with my old Apple //c and the IIgs.

There is no cabal.

hardware is a commodity business

[User 956 (568564)]

Who knows, maybe Mr. Dell will finally get the message, too?

Dell understands that the hardware business is a commodity business. There's two ways to make money in a commodity business; a. volume, and b. premium marketing

They've mostly maxed out the profit-through-volume business model, so perhaps it would be a good time for them to start positioning certain products in the 'premium' space. Linux enthusiasts are willing to pay more for a product that caters to their tastes. Case in point: the WRT54G-L router from Linksys.

Small market

[The Great Pretender (975978)]

I don't see this as any real big thing. The linux market is still dedicated to the smaller, tenacious demographic (before the flames engulf me I use Ubuntu on my Dell X300). Unless Novell is committed to supporting the operating system in a way more comprehensive manner than M$oft purports to support windows, it's just never going to grow significantly in the short-term. And lets face it, the target truely is the IT admin who's kitting out the workers. A person who's going to order 10's - 100's of units at a time. Now if they're smart, they'll put minimal resources into this until the user base increases enough for a significant cash injection. Be first at the line and capture the tidal wave of change. I really hope they don't just leave the decision to the quarterly bean counters.

Preloaded Lenova

[joshsnow (551754)]

If you lived in the UK, you can buy a Lenova/IBM thinkpad with linux preloaded already, from here [linuxemporium.co.uk]

Re:Preloaded Lenova

[rubinson (207525)]

And in the U.S., you've been able to get them for years from EmperorLinux [emperorlinux.com]. (That's where I got mine.) That's still qualitatively distinct from having it come from the OEM.

Like IBM's Linux T20

[Dr. Evil (3501)]

For years, the holy grail of the Linux desktop has been to get a major computer vendor to commit to preloading a Linux desktop. It's finally happened!

2647-L1U. It was done a long time ago.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/quickPa th.do?quickPathEntry=2647-l1u [ibm.com]

Dell did this 5 years ago

[pyros (61399)]

Dell was selling Latitude's with Red Hat pre-installed in the late nineties, lasted until at least 2002, then they canceled it due to lack of customer interest. I hope Lenovo sees better results (they should given how much Linux has improved since then).

Hmmmm..

[GmAz (916505)]

I wonder if the price of that laptop will come down since there won't be a cost of licensing any Windows products. Or will they keep it up and pocket the extra profit.

This being said....

[Cherita Chen (936355)]

I have been running SUSE 10.1 on my thinkpad T43p for several months. SUSE seems to be the only distro that has implemented the Intel wireless (ipw2200) card correctly (firmware, driver, etc...), as well as provide support for Bluetooth. Red Hat and Fedora both require that you do download the firmware, and re-install the ipw2200 drivers before the wireless card will work correctly. And I wish you luck w/the Bluetooth. In fact, I can honestly say, that this was the first time that I have ever installed a Linux distro on one of my ThinkPad's (I have owned 5 total), and had everything work correctly right after install. Coincidence?

This said, I am now sure that they (Novell) have been planning on supporting the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad(s) for a quite some time...

Why this matters

[mrfantasy (63690)]

Novell employees are required to use SLED as their primary desktop. The majority of Novell employees have ThinkPad laptops (T42 and T43s). I imagine the T60p will now be the new Novell employee laptop.

I'm also hoping this extends to over ThinkPads in some form. I have the T60 (similar but an ATI graphics adapter) and would like some of these features when I run SLED 10. I'm particularly interested in getting power management similar to what we get in Windows, with full suspend mode support, better special key support, etc.

Re:First post

[joshuapurcell (714520)]

Lenovo never said that it wouldn't be supporting Linux on its Thinkpad line... it is just as much of a misquote now as it was then. The guy interviewed was a someone who didn't have anything to do with their Thinkpad brand, and was in fact talking about another Lenovo product (although I don't remember what product that was).

Re:Minor vendor, major vendor

[kfg (145172)]

It's hard to beat an incumbent?

KFG

Re:Minor vendor, major vendor

[Excelsior (164338)]

Nice logic, good point....NOT. For every minor vendor that commited to preloading Linux and never became major, there are thousands of vendors that are commited exclusively to Windows and never became major. For reference, see pricewatch.com or Computer Shopper. Good try though.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Fred_A (10934)]

But the advantage with preloading Linux is that you know that since the preloaded distro worked, your distro of choice will presumably be gotten to work as well. You even have a working model to examine.

I know I'd rather start from a SuSE laptop, even if I didn't want to run SuSE than from a random Windows one.

Re:Of course..

[(H)elix1 (231155)]

But many of the IBM'ers in the German labs liked SuSE, so most of the blue stack - DB2, WebSphere, etc - seems to get developed on SuSE and then 'ported' to other distros. RH also works, but it was not as common (from what I've seen) as SuSE. (Yes, Suse now... I know)

Re:American Way

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

The American Way: wave a (made in China) American flag whenever something has an American label, and turn your back on anything even vaguely "foreign".

How about that Microsoft monopoly abuse decision? They abuse Americans. How about that MS corporate tax payment? They don't pay any [google.com], but Americans have to pay for all the government services they consume - including all the government SW revenue we pay for.

Linux, on the other hand, is an essential tool for millions of taxpaying Americans. Which represents the best American traditions of hard individual work paying off in results rewarded by merit, not corporate leverage. And it's an immigrant which has brought its experience to build America, in the best American tradition.