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Lenovo Delivers SuSE Linux-Based ThinkPads
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jan 13, 2008 05:26 AM
from the another-nail dept.
from the another-nail dept.
angryfirelord notes a DesktopLinux article on Lenovo's promise to deliver ThinkPads with pre-installed Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 in the week of January 14. Quoting: "Lenovo will release pre-installed SLED 10 on its Intel Centrino processor-powered ThinkPad T61 and R61 14-inch-wide notebooks. In February, Lenovo's pre-integrated Novell Linux offering will expand to include some Penryn-based ThinkPads. The starting price for this system will be $949, $20 less than the same laptop with Vista Home Premium."
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MS tax (Score:3, Interesting)
But since the OS is Suse, you still pay a Microsoft tax, am I right? I wonder when we will finally be able to buy laptops without any OS at all on them.
Re:MS tax (Score:5, Insightful)
The value of the royalties Novell will pay to MS from OEM installs is likely to be vanishingly small. The main benefit Microsoft got from the deal was the FUD, and that mostly backfired on them.
I have a HP laptop with SLED10 pre-installed, it even has a little green Suse logo where the XP one normally goes. It's one of the better Linux experiences around, especially for corporates and newcomers to Linux. And let's face it, even if you wipe SLED10 and install your own favorite, all the hardware will be supported and manufacturers will see there's demand for Linux compatibles.
I wouldn't worry about tacitly supporting Microsoft via Novell either. Now that innovators like Asus and Nokia have shown the way, I suspect the day of the big generic desktop Linux is over, and manufacturers will shrink-fit versions of Linux onto their own hardware.
Re:MS tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? There is absolutely no reason why users need to know how to install any desktop OS.
I have installed Linux for several people who manage updates and configuration fine but who would be likely to to run into problems if they installed from scratch themselves.
Servers are different, of course, and so are many corporate desktops that need a standardised installation. However, this is a laptop that is being sold to people who want a pre-installed OS.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MS tax (Score:5, Interesting)
I managed to buy a thinkpad T60 in the Netherlands a few weeks ago with a preemptive windows (XP) refund. The dealer removed the OS and gave me a discount for the OEM price, which was 129.71 euros, about 190 dollars.
I would have been happy for Lenovo to give that money to a random linux distribution, but now I can decide myself which one gets it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is certainly the case
Re:MS tax (Score:4, Informative)
IBM/Lenovo were actually very easy to convince. I called them because I had heard of the plans discussed in this article. They even offered to talk to unhelpful dealers for me. Bluelink needed a little more convincing, but I just kept politely and clearly invalidating any arguments they came up with against giving me a refund. This article by Serge Wroclawski http://www.linux.com/articles/59381 [linux.com] was very useful. The counters to all the arguments they came up with are there. I remained friendly and polite the whole time, but the people at Bluelink probably still thought I was some kind of crazy zealot making a fuss.
After my initial phone call to Bluelink asking for a written offer, all communication with them went via email. That way I had more time to think about what I said and compose a convincing message (I can be a bit clumsy on the phone), and there was a written record as well. I also took IBM/Lenovo up on the offer to talk to Bluelink for me. I have no idea what the IBM/Lenovo guy said to Bluelink to make it work, though, because I never saw that communication.
There must be other manufacturers and vendors where this could work as well. My previous laptop was an ASUS, which I bought without any OS on it about 5 years ago. Back then manufacturers were a lot less helpful. I remember talking to several manufacturers before buying the ASUS and being completely stonewalled. Because of my good experience with ASUS, I contacted them this time around too, and they seemed quite willing to help. But I didn't manage to get the store where I bought my previous laptop to cave quickly enough, so I didn't pursue it when I could get an acceptable configuration from http://zepto.com/ [zepto.com], where you can buy empty notebooks. I still preferred the specs of the thinkpad. I had almost given up on it when I got an offer with a preemptive windows refund from Bluelink.
Hope this helps!
Syonax
Re:Dumping (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dumping (Score:4, Interesting)
1) OEM is responsible for distribution and support. You buy a retail box, and you can call Microsoft for help. You buy a Dell... you call dell. (And if you bought sn OEM at newegg... call newegg for support.) Not that OEM support is worth anything, but its still a phone call MS doesn't have to try to answer.
2) With OEM editions MS tries hard to bind the OS to the physical unit to effectively strip you of your right to resell or transfer the software. They 'require' that you put the sticker on the case, and the language in the EULA is more restrictive, etc. In any case its often more a PITA to exercise your rights with OEM Windows. When you pay retail, they don't get in your way nearly as much over stuff like this. No stickers. No fuss.
3) Its been rumored, and im not sure if ever confirmed, that windows activation is less forgiving of OEM versions than retail. (in that OEM versions will require you to call microsoft for a manual activation in circumstances that the retail go through on automatic. (e.g. after a few transfers or hardware changes.) This being predicated on the logic that an OEM version doesn't get transferred, so it doesn't need as much leniency. If this is true, its not a big deal, but again, makes retail a little neater to deal with.
----
I typically buy my Windows at Retail, in the upgrade edition, as its about as cheap as the OEM, without any of the OEM hassles. (And I have enough copies to qualify for upgrades.) And the upgrade edition typically just required the previous media. Not a big deal considering it knocked half the price off.
For vista... what a Pain. The upgrade requires you actually install the previous edition then upgrade. (Makes sense from a certain point of view, given that iso's are trivial to obtain.) But its beyond stupid in practice. If my HD dies, I shouldn't have to install XP, before installing Vista.
What happens in 2020... I buy a new PC and decide to transfer Windows 9 on it...and put Ubuntu Zippy Zebra on the old one, and I've been upgrading windows all along so now I have to install windows 8 on it first for the v9 installer to run... but to do that I have to install windows 7, and to do that I have to install windows Vista, and to that I have to install XP? Good luck installing XP on a new PC in 2020... will there even be XP drivers for the ultra-hddvd-bluray-3.0 drive I'll be installing with on the BIOS-free EFI-2-superZ.22/q based motherboard using an intel octo 4 hyper III-2 cpu?
With Vista, at least there is a workaround, but its clearly an oversight on microsofts part. And I don't think it'll be their next time round.
They ought to go the OSX route, lower the price of full retail... (almost NOBODY buys that anyway on windows), and get rid of the 'upgrade editions'.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you know that it will cost more than training support for Windows?
One thing I do know is that the DRM in Windows makes support a big pain. You
MS-Blessed Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Strange, that, how when Microsoft officially blesses a Linux distribution by investing in it and making all sorts of ridiculous patent/IP claims, a major PC manufacturer brings out a line of laptops with MS Linux. You can bet that Microsoft is making exact
Re:MS-Blessed Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Re:MS-Blessed Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I care about Microsoft trying to subvert Linux. I couldn't care less about the money per se, but I worry about the lies and FUD they're putting before the PHBs of this world. And the implied legal threats.
Overview of Laptops without "Microsoft-Tax" (Score:5, Informative)
I hope they do better than Dell ... (Score:5, Interesting)
That, or I'm getting an Eee.
Branding is extremely important (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Dell did the right thing by slowly growing their Linux desktop market and now everyone is copying them.
Branding matters a lot.
It's the reason Microsoft runs it's Get the facts [microsoft.com] campaign against Linux. Having Linux associated with big brands that people have heard of increases your chance of people picking your product. It doesn't matter that Linux runs on the top 8 super computers [top500.org] of the world because people will make judgements based of how familiar they are with a product.
This is why Ubuntu is more popular then other distributions, because Mark S. has associated Ubuntu with larger brands. More people know about Ubuntu and are more likely to pick it compared to another distributions. A lot of people here on
Another branding example..
Have you noticed recently how "Windows Server" adverts keep popping up on websites such as top500.org, sourceforge, etc? Places that decision makers might see them, but also developers. Sourceforge in particular seems to have tons of Microsoft adverts that it is starting to put me off visiting that website at all.
Re:Branding is extremely important (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who actually uses Ubuntu and has in the past used (trying some extensively, some still in use) such Linuxen as PCLinuxOS, puppy, DSL, SUSE, CentOS, Mepis, and probably a few others I forget, I think I'm qualified to say that the difference is not just in the branding. I've also developed nothing in Ubuntu nor hold any financial interest in its success. I have used it solely for about 6 months and the last time I booted my XP HDD for any reason was at least 4 months ago. And I really didn't want to like it because of the ugly default shit brown theme, the name and icon seemed like something more appropriate to a Michael Jackson music video than an operating system, and just because it was too popular already. But in the end I succumbed.
Ubuntu succeeds because it is amazingly polished and stable compared to other linux distributions, with a focus on the newbie and a shockingly vast array of software in the repositories that Just Works. No one uses an OS to use an OS, they use an OS for their favorite applications.
If you want help, you are more likely to find success through googling ubuntuforums.org or posting there yourself. This is because the forums are moderated in a specifically newbie friendly fashion where RTFM is banned.
http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php?page=policy [ubuntuforums.org]
And now network effect is reinforcing the utility of Ubuntu. Basically anything FOSS gets a concerted effort to put it in the repos if it is any good, or a howto gets written for it. And any hardware has someone using Ubuntu having a hack at it to get it to go first.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope they do better than Dell ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's important to signal that there is a market for Linux machines, when you think about device drivers for example. First of all, when you buy a Linux machine, you know that the devices will work with Linux, even if you install another distro. More importantly, this sends a message to the hardware makers that mostly write Windows-only drivers.
Re:I hope they do better than Dell ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Support. I know linux, i work with linux, i can install it myself, but however, since i am working as a pysicist it is not my job to do so. I want to buy a computer and problems should be solved by calling the support.
Two questions... (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Why SuSE? Did Lenovo somehow broker an unbeatable deal on support contracts, or... ?
While googling for more news on the current development, I found an old Lenovo blog entry [lenovoblogs.com] from September of 2007 asking "What Linux distribution would you most like to see supported on a ThinkPad?". Now I'm sure that every kind of online poll has some amount of ballot-stuffing, but out of the 64572 responses, 37% chose Ubuntu, 17% chose Mandrivia, and (much farther down the list) a mere 5% chose SuSE, SLED, or OpenSuSE. SLED got only 312 votes, giving it less than 0.5% of the votes.
As unscientific as the poll was, the author of the blog admitted in the lead-up to the poll that he figured that he needed to try out Ubuntu and that he was pretty sure what linux distribution was going to be chosen. So with all this user interest in Ubuntu, why did Lenovo go the Novell/SuSE route?
Oh well -- as long as the Thinkpad hardware is fully supported by some modern Linux distro, I figure that Ubuntu should have no problems supporting it.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Votes were about 23,000 for Ubuntu and about 800 for SuSe.
So, in an effort to listen to their customers, and make a success of Linux on Lenovo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No that's not what it means because SLED 10 is not cost free. In fact it is more expensive than Windows because it carries a yearly subscription price tag of $50. Add it up over the 5 or 6 years