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IBM Won't Support FreeBSD On ThinkPads
BSD Today has this story about IBM refusing to deal with the fact that FreeBSD will not boot on their laptops. The actual service page is on IBM's support site. IBM does support Linux on the A20m though, but only OpenLinux. Is it my imagination or does this seem strange for a company that seems to understand the Open Source idea? Update: Seems that the problem is a BIOS issue where IBM used partition type a5 (or 165) for their suspend partition, this was reserved for 386BSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD. (NetBSD has since started using a9.) Here's a list of partition IDs as well as an explanation.
I am a engineer that works at IBM. In fact I worked on this problem in particular. Lets get a couple of things straight: 1. IBM did nothing to INTENTIONALLY make this happen. This isn't to lock out non-approved OpSys's 2. This IS an issue with the Phoenix BIOS on these machines. 3. This WILL lock your machine up, right at post, cold. 4. I have installed EVERY flavour of Linux I could come across and so far this only seems to affect BSD. 5. From what I understand (don't quote me) there was not enough of a demand for IBM to rework the BIOS to get it going. Unsupported OS, that's how it goes!
I'm sitting on my couch watching Voyager and catching up on the day's news from an A20P running FreeBSD..
If you're looking for a workaround (for the A20P series, at least), download the oldest available BIOS from their website -- that's how I got this critter going. Doesn't do much for the current and future bugfixes available in newer BIOS revisions, but for those of us who have already have the hardware it's a start.
If there is interest I can post information concerning how to get various bits of the a20p working under FreeBSD somewhere as well..
cheers,
Cuberoot
The way this story came to slashdot, it ended up getting the wrong spin. Still, while the trollers who have been saying FreeBSD is dead for the past two or three years in the hope that by repeating it over and over they'll make it happen (sorry, it won't work) were expected, I'm throughly disappointed by the way most Linux users here are dismissing this as a "FreeBSD problem".
So let me state this up front to make it clear: No, it's *NOT* a "FreeBSD problem". And it DOES matters as far as Linux is concerned. It matters as far as ANY Open Source OS is concerned.
You see, no one really expects IBM to support FreeBSD. They don't. We knew this when we chose to run FreeBSD, and we knew it when we chose to buy an IBM notebook. If we selected operating systems by hardware support, we would run Windows. That's not the problem here.
The problem is that these notebooks won't run FreeBSD, won't even try to boot, in fact, because IBM chose to use FreeBSD's partition ID, 165 (a5), for their hibernation feature. Did they do this on purpose? No, don't be silly. They simply _did not care less_. And *THAT* is the problem, for me, for FreeBSD users, and for you, Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Hurd and whatever users.
You see, while there is no authoritative list on partition IDs, there are many respected lists, and FreeBSD, having used this particular since before it was even FreeBSD, is in all of them. And this, in turn, means that IBM simply did not pay the slightest attention to this issue.
And that's real bad news for OSS. Because we DEPEND on open standards, we depend on open specifications, we depend on makers playing by the rules. Not only they could have just as easily chosen one of Linux partition IDs, they could also have just as easily changed something else in the hardware specification that could cause problem for both Linux and the BSD, because, and I'll repeat, as long as it runs Windows, _they don't care less_.
Of course, since IBM is not the market owner anymore, it's really not much of a problem these days. FreeBSD users simply won't buy IBM anymore and that's that, just like Linux users would stop buying IBM if the affected OS was Linux. And the life will go on, and this won't have any measurable impact on the installed based of Linux or FreeBSD or the sales of said notebooks.
But as a general principle, ANYONE interested in the success of OSS should protest loudly such blatant disregard for basic de facto standards.
Actually, it's not the "Dangerously Dedicated" mode, that few people actually use. If that was the problem, you wouldn't be seeing this posted on Slashdot. The problem, as it appears now, is that IBM uses partition type 165 for it's suspend-to-disk feature, and when the bios boots it looks for a suspend-to-disk partition to reload. When it sees FreeBSD's huge partition the laptop freezes solid. Only completely wiping the disk with a "recovery CD" can bring the laptop back to life.
I read the internet for the articles.
Yes, but does it *have* to? I know Linux can use any partition type, so long as it contains a supported filesystem (although is this true of the root filesytem too?). How hard is it to install FreeBSD on a different partition type?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
When you boot Linux, if the root partition is marked as FAT32 in the partition table, but LILO and /etc/fstab know it to be an ext2 partition, then Linux doesn't care what the partition table says. Does BSD?
Hmmm... has anyone tried putting the genuine suspend partition in a place where the bios will find it first?
/etc/fstab), so there should be no problem. The bios does all the suspend to disk stuff, so as long as they always discover the correct partition in the right order and always use short circuit evaluation, then it may work.
:). My Sharp Actius laptop uses partition type a0 for hibernation, and the Linux fdisk tool calls it a "IBM Thinkpad hibernation" partition.
If the bios uses short circuit evaluation of their internal search loop, then maybe it will find this one first, see it in the expected state, and either restore it or boot normally as necessary without getting confused by the later overly large FreeBSD partitions with the same ID. The Bios is bound to searche either first to last, or last to first. Heck, put two suspend partition in, one first, one last, and tuck the freeBSD partition in between. Worth a try anyway.
I know nothing about FreeBSD, but I suspect it is like linux systems in that while it would think the suspend partition is a FreeBSD partition, it will only mount it or mess with it if you tell it to (manually or by
Just a thought. If IBM wants to send me a brand new Thinkpad, I will be most happy to try it out
Bill
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
It just so sad that this happened. Why would they choose to use a5 for their suspend partion type suddenly? I makes sense that BSD won't boot, since the BIOS now thinks that type a5 shouldn't be bootable. If you look up a couple of entries on the mentioned page, you see that "a0" has historically been use by ThinkPads for this purpose.
I wonder if it is a type-o that is hard to fix. Just think: now they have thousands of laptops out there suspending to an a5 parition. They'd have to distribute a BIOS patch and a utility to change the partition type marker on existing suspend partitions.
When in the history of Linux did it matter if a company supported Linux running on their OS. The point of Linux was an OS that because of its open nature could be easily adapted by USERS to the hardware they had, and through their contribution of their personal drivers, could empower other users in the same equipment. That has always been the case. If some hacker dude had your hardware you were lucky. The fact that some very standard hardware items weren't supported early on, while some really freaky stuff was, directly was related to this issue. The fact that NOW big companies lend help in these things, that the marketting power of redhat and such has made it important to release specification on some hardware, that companies who refuse to release such specifications have to produce their own drivers, all is a clear indication that open source and hardware manufacturer support are negligibly relevant to each other. IBM has been very supportive of Linux with their software, and has generally supported standards in hardware that were approachable by hackers, and to a large extent the benefit of linux is the commodity hardware that it runs on. Linux geeks have ported their OS to things that shouldn't even have OS's...
If the machine doesn't boot FreeBSD maybe it requires a special tweak. There have always been wierd things involving bios's and harddrives and such. My Alpha has a bios so distant from the crappy bios on the commodity PC that it is indescribable. In any case I don't think this is a major issue. I think it is as always a hacker challenge.
What the hell is this? Why should I get worked up about "IBM refusing to deal with the fact that FreeBSD will not boot on thier laptops?" IBM sells Linux, Solaris, and Windows computers, but nowhere did they ever say that they were going to provide BSD support for anything, let alone for their laptop line.
The support for open source operating systems you'll see from IBM is far and away better than any other large OEM, with the possible exception of SGI. If you want Linux laptop support, buy from The Linux Store, or Linux Laptops. Vote with your feet. Don't whine because IBM won't deliver support they never promised.
Obviously, it's not true, because NetBSD uses 0xA9,
not 0xA5.
Sheesh.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
IBM is compartmentalized. All the different parts are not always in sync. While some divisions may approve of Linux, others could care less. I remember when IBM systems did not support IBM's OS/2 either. I'm not sure whether the Thinkpad does even to this day.
Don't think of IBM as a single corporation. Think of it as a collection of individual corporations issuing a common stock.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I actually did buy a Thinkpad T20 largely because it had a good record of Linux support (although the preloaded OpenLinux was a rip-off extra charge, so I didn't get it). It's a pricey machine, but thin and with a beautiful screen, and it still has a fair number of Linux issues: you have to download a patched X-server, sound setup is a huge pain, and the network card tends to blink out after a suspend. Otherwise, pretty slick though (and the patched server for the S3 works really well). Basically, I don't care if the vendor pre-installs Linux, as long as they make high-quality device drivers freely available and maybe put up a one-page doc describing potential issues. I don't think that's too much to ask for when you're buying a $3,500+ machine. . . --JRZ
Ok.
How many of you have actually tried to put linux (any distro) onto a thinkpad (any type)?
Hmmm?
I have. Three of them to be precise. And with only the mwave modem/soundcard on the 760xd, I've had no problems. Dual boot, single boot, whatever, and all worked fine. This includes the a20m. I can't speak for BSD, haven't tried it, but linux works fine. The poster of the original story should've asked around or did a google search for linux on thinkpads to see what experiences others have had.
But that would've taken away from the "anti-big buisness" slant to get the story posted on slashdot, wouldn't it?
I am going to put this plain and simply. What percent of the market if the buyers of think pads are really going to get their paniteis in a knot because thier laptop will not support Linux or FreeBSD? Chances are the majority are just everyday windows users. So lets say that, if it was a support problem would it really be in their financial interest to spend the money to support it? Chances are no, but I could be wrong. If I am let me know (no sarcasm intended). We often forget that somputer industry is out there to make money, not to advocate open source even if they are a company that generally "understands" the open source movement.
"To know what you know and know it, and to know what you don't know and know that. That is wisdom."
Agreed. Interestingly, I'm pretty sure this means that any PC using this BIOS would violate Microsoft's PC9x standards (which call for suspend partitions to be type 84), and would result in the machine failing WHQL certification (or perhaps having it revoked.)
The importance of this is that like all OEMs, IBM's ability to purchase Windows at anything like a competitive price is contingent on 100% compliance with Microsoft standards. This could cost them big time if MS decides to stick it to them and revoke their certification or adjust their discount rate. (Losing the discount puts you out of business, since the OS proce increase can be greater than the total margin on the PC - this is what happened to AST a few years ago.)
I always use type 84 for suspend partitions even when working with Linux - it just works better.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Very few laptops are "standard" x86 architecture... and IBM laptops have a lot of custom hardware in them, which isn't too surprising. Though it is increasingly more common for laptops to be more generic under the covers, the large majority of them still require a lot of non-standard things. The chipset is vastly different on all of them - it's not a vanilla BX/i820/whatever (those tend to get rather hot). There isn't intentional breakage, just hardware optimizations given the constraints that a laptop has. Laptops have never been upgradable (save for memory/HD, and those are manufacturer specific - either by interface or physical connecter). Just because it wasn't designed to run BSD (or Linux), and they didn't patch the appropriate parts doesn't mean they "broke" it intentionally.
Just my biased $.02
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I think a much better statement to this effect is that people won't be able to know how to do something which they know under Windows. But even there, how many people do you think are going to install FreeBSD and complain because they don't know what's going on?
I work in PSG, which loses more money every year than all other IBM groups combined.
I'll be suprised if IBM continues to sell desktops for much longer. Laptops are somewhat more profitable, though.
Needless to say, I got no joy from Gateway's tech support. They said the problems I was experiencing due to the fact I'd installed Linux on the machine, even after I'd wiped the drive and used the "Recovery CD" to completely restore the system. I eventually found out that the problem was due to a motherboard that had been built by the lowest bidder--replacing the board made Linux rock solid and cut '98 crashes in half.
They certainly can't support every OS
s/every/any/ and you're closer to the truth. Oh yes, there used to be these things called "standards" that specified how the pieces of hardware in an IBM-PC compatible system would work. There are even standards for laptops (PCMCIA, Cardbus, APM 1.2, etc.) though nobody seems to follow them. If you check the Linux Configure.help file, you'll see a couple of options in there that are for working around br0ken IBM Thinkpad APM behavior....
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
Think so, eh?
--
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
hmm.. I disagree here. IMO, a reasonably well-known OS changing its partition type just to support 1 specific case of hardware, where the hardware manufacturer has made an oversight (I don't think IBM meant anything bad with it) is at the least a little strange. IBM should correct their error.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Why bother using a system which nobody wants.
Apple appears to want it. Yahoo also wants it.
It has no Java support.
# java -version
java version "1.2.2"
Classic VM (build jdk1.2.2-FreeBSD:root:2000/11/02-14:28, green threads, nojit)
Note: This is not the Linux version.
I couldn't tell from the page if it just won't boot to BSD because there is some incompatibility, or if IBM actually took steps to block BSD and other unsupported OS's from booting. If the first, then I'm disappointed, but if it's the second, then I'm outraged.
www.code-fix.com
No, it's not at all strange. They're supporting the distro they actually know. How much money do you expect a for profit company to devote to supporting a product they neither sell nor have anything to do with the development of? And it's not just one product, there's easily a half-dozen distros that can be thought of as "major brands," and if IBM supports one they have no excuse for not supporting them all. Sure, they might make a small minority of their customers happy this way, but it can hardly be worth it for them.
And the brethren went away edified.
It works pretty well software-wise, but two basic problems. NT4 doesn understand hard drives larger than 8 GB when you run its installer CD, with the unfortunate result that it ate my windows 98 installation that came preinstalled. Had I to do over again, I would have done a Norton Ghost backup image before trying anything.
NT4 does work with the large hard disk once you install the service pack and you can resize the partition with System Commander, but then the Emergency Repair disk process won't work. Someone in a newsgroup told me how to deal with this but I didn't understand it and would like to know how to do an emergency repair while booting of a CD that has already had the service pack applied, and that will install files with the service pack applied also.
I got the accellerated X server to work at first but lost my XF86Config after the hard drive consumption.
The happy news is that the BeOS recovered most of my windows data files.
The other issue is that the hardware has been unreliable. There is a fragile ribbon cable in the DVD drive that gets creased when you push the tray back in and jams it; sometimes it sticks the drive shut and you have to pry it open with a paper clip.
Also sometimes some random key will refuse to type for a few days and you have to keep banging on it to get it to type.
Finally, the connection between the power adapter and the socket on the laptop became unreliable so it wouldn't reliably charge. At first it would work if you fiddled with it and then left it sitting in one position during use, but this prevented you from using it for long on your lap.
Eventually it failed entirely and I needed to send it in for repair. But I was on an extended visit to Canada and even though Compaq has a Canadian subsidiary with Canadian service, this was a U.S. model purchased in the U.S and they wouldn't service it in Canada. They also wouldn't send the shipping container to Canada, or ship it back to Canada.
The end result was, because this was my main development machine and my business ground to a halt when the laptop failed, I ended up buying a custom built desktop machine from all standard OEM components.
I specifically wanted the ability to replace any failed part in the desktop myself from parts I could readily get at a computer store - you can usually do this with PC's bought at a "screwdriver shop" but not necessarily a name brand desktop PC, not just because you might void the warranty but because they use nonstandard parts that don't allow for OEM replacements that will fit.
I got compaq to send a replacement power adapter to my dad in Washington state and he expressed it to me in Canada - at about the cost of buying a brand new adapter - and with this, if I had my wife adjust it (with her steadier hands) we could get it to charge. This allowed me to recover my work from the laptop so I could install whatever files weren't backed up on my new desktop machine.
Then I waited about two months to fly home to the United states for Thanksgiving, where I arranged for compaq to send a shipping box so I could express the laptop in for warranty repair. I think they said they'd install a new system board, although they could just solder on a new plug.
They promised 7-day turnaround on the repair and free express shipping both ways. I flew to another state for some contract work so when my parents get the laptop back they'll have to forward it to me at our expense.
Thanks Compaq!
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
How many copies of FreeBSD are there out there?
How many copies of OpenLinux (what they support) are out there?
Are you willing to claim MORE copies of OpenLinux are installed and used OVERALL when compaired to BSD? Are you even willing to name the Linux distros that have 15% or greater marketshare of the Open Source OS market?
Looks like your argument falls flat.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
One of my co-workers ended up with an a20m and wanted to put FreeBSD on it. We saw this problem first hand.
...
/Duncan
The issue is that all goes swimmingly until you try to reboot after fully repartitioning. If the first partition is not ext2, fat, fat32, or ntfs you are SOL. The BIOS won't even come up. We had to pull the drive, which allowed in the BIOS. We then put the drive in another computer that didn't have the initial problem. We then repartitioned it and all went well.
My Co-worker ended up with Linux on his system and is fine. But as you can see the affected models of laptops will have trouble with other partition types such as reiserFS, ext3 (maybe),
This will provide others to follow with lots of fun problems.
Duncan Watson
Duncan Watson
Apparently, thinkpads used partition type 160 (a0) until now. FreeBSD used 165 (a5).
Messing around is exactly what IBM did. Instead of sticking with the previously used partition type, they changed to one that conflicts with another known use.
Or return the Thinkpads and don't buy more. Too bad IBM didn't bother to go to google and search for "partition list" and read the first hit.
...or does it seem strange for someone who seems to understand the Open Source idea to post this article and ask that question?
I think you've hit on the right problem: the word "support". They won't support it in the helpdesk sense, even if they support (moral support sense, perhaps, or officially recognize the benefit of open source) open source software in general.
Rather, you mean that PC laptops "have never been upgradable (save for memory/HD." PowerBooks (not all models, naturally) have been quite upgradable- with some you can upgrade processors and video chipset. One model of 68k powerbook you could upgrade to a zippy (at the time) PPC proc. Also, I believe with newer PowerBooks you can get a PCI breakout box.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
No way! XENIX rules. Young man, fill this automobile up with petroleum distillates, poste haste!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It could be a support problem.
There being so many distros and they have to deal with KDE/Gnome/Whatever problems, and they have to deal with people calling in because they just recompiled the kernal and there notebook suddenly "broke"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That may be true, but IBM loves to give MS a shiv whenever they can.
I can not see IBM passing on BSD/Linux options without good reason.
I think its a support issue.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's rather unusual the FreeBSD doesn't boot on Thinkpads just now. I put FreeBSD 3.4 on my cousin's brand new Thinkpad just this summer and, as I understand it, her model (an entry-level celeron) is virtually no different than the newly-renamed boxen. So, logically, there are two options.
1. IBM has altered the hardware of the Thinkpad just slightly, but in such a manner that maliciously causes the normally rock-solid FreeBSD to hang on boot.
2. It's a software change. FreeBSD 4.x may be the culprit. Any time you have major kernel changes (as there were between 3.x and 4.x), particularly with subsystems like PCMCIA, there may be some incompatibilities.
So, should IBM go out of their way to support FreeBSD? Sure. It's a heck of a lot better than the buggy, bloated mess of WinME that they have to go through hardware certification hell for. But, let's be real here, FreeBSD has very low market share outside of the server space, and IBM doesn't have to be fair to FreeBSD just 'cause I say so. Now, as Linux and FreeBSD 3.x still boot (even though they're not officially supported, imagine that!), I say that the easy solution to this problem is good old-fashoned kernel hacking, using the old 3.x tree for reference.
IBM aren't the bad guys for not "officially" supporting free Unices. They aren't the bad guys even if they inadvertently killed FreeBSD booting. BSD has survived clashed with far more malevolent corporations that this (AT&T being the most obvious example).
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
This just appeared as a talkback to the BSD report on the story:
Wow... I was about to flame the programmer for being such a fool as to not test for this. But it turns out he is just a jerk (if the above post was true). Engineers are supposed to be responsible, helping, people. This one seems to be a maverick, doing whatever gets him paid. Ugly. Of course, the post could have been an imposter. We'll see...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
#define SUSPEND_PARTITION_TYPE 0xA5
or
or something similar. Find an unreserved partition type that won't cause problems and change A5 to that number.
Perhaps it's not the easiest to fix current laptops (they'd need to flash the BIOS and write a utility to transition any paritions on the hard drive from A5 to the new type), but trivial to prevent on the next shipment of Thinkpads.
they are only opensource when it suits their needs
I never said that IBM *had* to "Support" linux, but they could at least make sure that their hardware would boot with all popular PC operating systems (DOS, NT/2000, 9x/ME, OS/2, Linux, BSD, BeOS, etc). Dell doesn't "support" linux either, but they at least make sure their hardware will work with it, so users can install their OS of choice rather than be locked in to a select set of "certified" operating systems.
the unbeliever
aim:dasubergeek99
yahoo!:blackrose91
ICQ:1741281
Maybe BSD could define an alternative partition type for its standard file system, something that can be used on Thinkpads.
Even when Windows 2000 was released just 6 months after I bought my top-of-the-line notebook from Gateway, they tell me "well, we didn't ship it with Windows 2000, so we wont support it". I have issues with power management, the built-in modem, DVD, ... I'm not buying Gateway again.
IBM is so big it almost makes no sense to say "IBM this" or "IBM that".
I was at a developer conference where I was told IBM wants to make Linux "The development platform". For ALL development.
Obvioulsy each section (persion) in IBM has their own agenda.
-... ---
This sucks. My next major purchase is going to be a notebook, and I love the quality of the Thinkpad.
I'm a service technician and have worked on virtually every major brand and most of their models of notebook, so I am offering an opinion based on professional experience. I know they are called "stinkpads", but compare the construction quality of a Thinkpad to most others and you may agree with me.
No Linux support, however, is an automatic no-no for me. ANYTHING I use has to run both Linux and `Doze. I don't see any reason why Linux wouldn't run on the Thinkpads, other than the obvious video/sound driver issues. Looks like I'll have to settle for my 2nd favorite, the Compaq Armada series. I don't know if Compaq officially supports Linux, but I've read many FAQ's on the web about success with Linux on them.
The biggest kicker about Notebooks without official Linux support is that you HAVE to pay the Windows Tax...
To be honest, I don't think there is any major branded notebook you can buy "naked" (M$ term). Of course, I have to have `Doze on my notebook, because I want to play games, so it won't bother me that much, but someone buying a notebook to ONLY run Linux shouldn't have to buy a piece of software they don't want or need.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
The Human Genome Project shows that human life is open-source.
No, the Human Genome Project is the equivalent of reverse engineering binary code. In fact, we haven't even done that... we've only dumped out a binary. We haven't even hardly begun to actually reverse engineer it.
If we had the "source code", then we would have a notation describing the biological syntax similar to source code, which would be compiled into a genetic sequence. Obviously, we're a long way from having something like that.
If anything, life is extremely closed source.
--
--
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
I'm a student at RPI, and one of the things they do here is require all incoming freshmen to buy a version of the IBM thinkpad T20. Being a tech school, many people have interest in getting a *nix flavor running. Thus, our chapter of the ACM has a project to get a working version of many alternate OSes. They imply that they have a working version of FreeBSD, as well as others. This works atleast for the mid-price-range 2000 model of the T20.
Their site is located at: http://www.acm.rpi.edu/laptop.php
Maybe I'm mistaken, if so, sorry all.
My Celerons won't overclock to 1Ghz! My car won't burn diesel! It's all a conspiracy!
"Is it my imagination or does this seem strange"
"for a company that seems to"
"understand the Open Source idea? "
Right on, AilleCat. Any time something doesn't work it's a conspiracy.
What part of "the Open Source idea" mandates that IBM commit resources to provide free technical support to ensure their laptop works with every open-source operating system?
Isn't the whole supposed advantage of open-source that when companies decide not to provide a feature or offer support for something that individual users are empowered (by possession of the source) to make it work if they really want to?
If IBM had deliberately designed the system to be incompatible, or if they refused to release technical details necessary to port to their machine, that would be one thing. But why should it be incumbent upon them to ensure that their designs are compatible with all of the open-source operating systems their users might want to use regardless of whether the pool of potential customers seeking such compatibility is big enough to purchase enough machines to offset the costs of compatibility testing and providing support?
So again: just what part of "the Open Source" idea *is* it that makes you think IBM owes you a free lunch?
This is SO easy to understand.
First off, IBM supports linux. They support RedHat and Caldera OpenLinux, officially.
This is because they have business deals with them.
Secondly, software for Linux by IBM passes a Linux compatibility testing session. All IBM Linux software works on RH, Suse, Turbolinux, and Caldera.
Third, no one ever said it would worth with FreeBSD. Fine if it does, but IBM never made any guarantees to support it. (yes, it runs on my Thinkpad 385xd without a problem. Is IBM responsible if it didn't? No.)
Why is this newsworthy, and why is it hard to understand? IBM supports opensource outside of when it serves their best ineterests only.
Anyone who says otherwise hasn't looked at what IBM has done and is doing for linux in any depth.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
I want IBM to maximize customer satisfaction, which will, in turn, attract more customers, which will drive up my profits even more.
Telling a customer "No, you can't run that operating system, and we won't help you restore your disk. Go away." is the surest way to drive new business away as bad word of mouth spreads.
IBM should adopt Dell's take on alternative OS's. "Install 'em. If you do it properly it should work. If it doesn't, we'll help you get your laptop back to factory specs." (i.e. System restore)
There are ways to maximize profits that don't involve fscking the customer.
the unbeliever
aim:dasubergeek99
yahoo!:blackrose91
ICQ:1741281
Political or technical issues.
Support costs are only marginally useful in the sense that they keep customers in the fold, but are not themselves actual revenue sources(excepting the big support contracts for Big Iron).
If IBM supported Linux at all, on Thinkpads, its probably more because all the techies and support people use Thinkpads with Linux, without any negative bearing on Linux, or on IBM.
For example, if this were profitable, a third party company could exist that solely offered support and service for Linux under IBM Thinkpads. Somehow, I doubt they would find the field any more profitable than IBM does, and thus, no service for Linux.
Open Source is a development and coding philosophy that allows for standing on the shoulders of giants (like Science, technically), but isn't by itself anything profitable.
Just like schematics available for a car vs technical support for a car converted to running methanol or something! I think the analogy holds ^^
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Actually there a quite a few internal Linux users (and engineers who use Linux at work) at IBM - Linux is slowly filtering into their support paradigm for notebooks and PC's.
Unfortunately very few people inside IBM (that I know of, unless they avoid the internal mailing lists) use BSD. So it's natural for them not to want to support an OS the thing was never shiped with. You can, however, go to the website for several of their laptops and PC's and see Linux support filtering in in the form of patches and RPM's for their hardware.
No offense iron-horse BSD users - it's just that nobody uses it internally, and that's how the support is filtering to the outside world.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
IBM does support Linux on the thinkpads, if you read carefully you will see it says:
r od uctDisplay?prrfnbr=1907962&cntrfnbr=1&prmenbr=1&cn try=840&lang=en_US&shoptype=D
Announcement letter PSG00-365 for the T20 and PSG00-646 for the T21, state Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 (U.S. English only) supports the T20 and T21 respectively.
And that's just the preload. They have persued support for drivers on the T series and most of the A series, and you can actually get the drivers from the vendors now.
Also check out
http://commerce.www.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce/P
There is the computer with the Linux preload.
I know that IBM is planning to do more stuff for the thinkpads and linux, but even in a big company like that, resources are limited... especially for PSG...
Even if they don't have an official support team behind an operating system, there is no reason that the laptop, which is of a standard x86 architecture, won't boot. It wasn't made clear whether installations were intentionally blocked, though I imagine they weren't, or whether it's just broken hardware that won't let you boot FreeBSD. I have to wonder what sort of design went into a laptop to make it break in such a way that makes it incompatible from a standard x86 architecture in such a way. Really, this sort of thing isn't that difficult to support.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
After all, why should they support an operating system just because it is open source, even if they "get" open source and support the philosophy of open source?
Actually, I have a better idea. How about instead of talking about how good Linux is you actually learn something about programming? How about you try to write a device driver? Oh. Here is another good one, consider just for a moment that you might be wrong about linux's superiority. Consider the word "priority." Consider that it makes more sense to the BSD camp to develop a *good* system rather than a system that is crammed full of the latest hacks for the newest hardware. Consider the possibility that your time could be better spent actually contributing to Linux, BSD, or your favorite Open Source software package instead of wasting the hard drive space on slashdot's cluster and the bandwidth it took for me and the other 80,000 people that had to load your comment. I am running FreeBSD right now on my IBM Thinkpad i1452.
Now I'm ready to be moderated down for presenting a negative point against linux.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
I read the FreeBSD-mobile mailing list and they seemed to have the opinion that the modern IBM laptops use 165 as the partition type for the save/restore area on the disk. 165 is the registered number reserved for FreeBSD disk partitions. And when the laptop boots it sees a really large restore partition it knows nothing about and refuses to continue.
It work's like this. IBM is amazingly big, hard to believe how big, they make, build, design, construct, develop, support an absolutley huge number of products. I believe they have offices in all but 2 or 3 countries around the world, they actually do development in something like over 100 countries. It's insane. It all works because they trust their managment and they distribute stuff.
Managment is given "ownership" over various things, the higher up the manager the more he owns. Gerstner runs the whole show, under him are a bunch of senior VPs, maybe 20 or so and the company is divided up in to divisions with a senior VP at the head of each one. Like microelectric, print, and stoarge make up the "technology division." Then those divisions are further divided up into companies and subdivisions with a junior VP running/owning each one. Those junior VPs have developement staffs with managment staffs that own various parts of the devlopment group, sometimes marketing with a staff, always sales with staff, support staffs, etc. They are all independant, and given ownership of their operations. If they run their part well then they are rewarded, if not then a new manager get's to run it and the old manager does something else of has his wings clipped or leaves.
Then there is the concept of personal business commitments, or "PBCs" to use the IBMeese. Your senior VP will set goals, like he is going to bring in $6billion and create a new revenue stream worth $1billion more than last year and develop a new line of widgets and a new brand of jujus. The junior VPs, depending on which branch they are in take on parts of those PBCs and further refine then, so Jr VP X is going to enhance last year's widget to create a new line and sell xyz more of them at q% more profit to make $250million in new revenue while maintaining what he did last year. Sometimes the more senior manager will rewrite or "adjust" the junior manager's PBCs, so if $250million isn't enough he might bump it to $400million, there is supposed to be discussion on this but we've all been in relationships with people above us and know how that goes there are some tricks though. That trickles through 4 more layers down to a developer who then commits to learn java, fix all field reported bugs in less than a week, and jack around less or something like that; and his manager has to agree to those and will change them if need be, again there is supposed to be discussion but it's usually in 1 direction; "you're going to learn java and c#." (If you play the game right, that's what happens, if you're foolish you'll get strapped with something impossible.) So there is this nice hierarchy of commitment and it's a lot like the game of telephone, your VP is focused on bucks and by the time it get's to the worker bees it's about "leveraging java" or something, each manager in between makes adjustments so that he can do what he feels is the most likely to help him meet his objectives, and there is resistence you don't want to be 4 layers down and commit to bringing in $1billion because it's not going to happen and you'll be penalized for it. To do Linux or anything new you need to have two or three consecutive layers agree that it will help them out.
So for example, my first line manager owned 5 or 6 applications and the staff who developed them, his performance was based on how well we meet our PBCs which was directly tied to the product. the performance measurement then trickles back up the chain to some senior VP who sees a number on the bottom of a ledger which is hopefully black and something as big or bigger than the one he made up 12 months earlier. If that happens then all is good and everybody get's a nice bonus in February and a big raise in March, if not then he get's pissed off and whips are cracked to find out who didn't meet their objectives and caused "the team to fail." As you can see, there is lot's of translation going on and it really does get back to the worker bees. Because they didn't leverage java or fix bugs fast enough or something the team performed poorly, so pressure is applied, they try to focus on what it is that they do well and not risk and change is slowed down by this process.
So where am I taking this train? There is a simple way to short circuit the problem, the bottom line is you're not going to sell $1billion more widgets this year becuase widgets are stupid and the market is flat and Yoyodyne in Sunnyvale is make a mojo that costs 1/10th what a widget does and does 5x more, plus it has a cool colorful case. So as the PBC trickle down affect happens, the more junior people start setting lower and lower goals for themselves, that way when the Senior VP get's pissed and starts cracking whips there is backlash. For some reason that I don't understand this works, if you say you will do 25x your manager can change it to 30x but if you say you're going to do "applepie" your manager can't really say "2applepie" and if the goals are made so that they are more easily measured then the work bee picks one that may be high but it's in his backyard and easy to achieve. The worker bees set goals like "I'm going to learn java and get to work by 10:00am every day" and he achieves those goals, with ease. His boss tries to apply pressure and he says "I learned java and I haven't been late once, in fact I've been here by 7:00 everyday. I've exceeded my goals and done my piece." and defuses the situation or softens the blow. The more popular tactic is to set goals that can't be understood (various quality assurance metrics and managment philosophy type goals are popular) or goals can't be quantified. I've had managers show me their PBCs and I couldn't understand half of them and I have a two advanced degrees...
There is also one more wildcard factor I call "the hand of God." If a senior VP get's a bug up his ass about something technical or specific, then it is done regardless of objectives, even if all his people have objectives that totally contradict it and that is usually the case. If Lou Gerstner decides that Linux is the hip thing and he wants to see it on a ThinkPad, then there is going to be a Thinkpad with "BlueHat Linux" on it and it is going to exist fast even if the Thinkpad people are all about windows. "Hand of God" is powerful in that it makes the company look fast it also has a negative affect of creating animosity. When you miss your PBC because you've been building Bluehat Linux, you're going to be pissed off and you're not going to do anything Linux for a while.
So how Linux steps in to this is kind of orthagonal. First, products are owned and if a product is to be ported, supported, etc.. then the team that owns it is going to do it. Why? because giving it to another group could potentially cause that group to fail to meet their goals or if they do then it is success that doesn't trickle up to your boss through you, the culture is to keep ahold of things until they are miserably out of date. Second, that team tries to set low goals for itself so it can achieve them and numerous times it has been shown that going cross platform is both hard to do, time consumnig, and almost never shows the kind of profit that trickles up in to the figures corporate is looking for. Then lastly becuse of the higher level ownership there are almost no parallels between products. For example, OS/2 was made by one division and PCs by another; from a consumer's point of view they go together but OS/2's success (think PBCs) has nothing to do with the PC's success because they are being measured by different metrics and realistically OS/2 would have initially hurt or been a risk for the sales of PCs the PC group wanted nothing to do with it.
Same is true with Linux. Db2 is made by one group and PCs another; Linux runs a lot of web servers and DB2 is a great database for web stuff so getting DB2 onto linux makes a lot of sense for them becuase it opens a market. On the otherhand 95+% of PCs sold run windows so to do well in that business and be part of the 95% you don't want to screw around with Linux. Never mind the fact that the PC is being sold as a server. The PC guys take bigger risk by trying to push linux when they can set modest goals (sell 5% more WindowsME PCs this year, which is actually pretty good and pretty tough to do) and achieve those with relative ease. Linux has really ended up on IBM PC hardware because of the "Hand of God" and it was done against resistence.
PowerPC is in the same boat, PowerPCs are made by microelectric which isn't anywhere near the division that PCs are in. They tried to put PowerPCs in to PCs for something like 45seconds before they dropped it because it wasn't going to be profitable. There was some HoG involvement and now the PowerPC has lost any reputation it could have possibly had with the PC people because they pissed away millions of dollars trying to make it work, it's not just a risk but they hate it because they were burned by it in the past. Don't expect to ever see IBM sell PowerPC based machines to the consumer.
It's the software / hardware rift that makes it the most complex, the success of software has nothing to do with the hardware and vice-versa. We all know they go together and even IBM knows that to some degree but when it comes time to do better than you did the year before you want more options and you don't want to take big risks. Ad because software and hardware are different divisions there isn't a lot of overlap
Don't get me completely wrong, there are cowboys in the mix and there are always going to be hackers and geeks in the fray. The most powerful tool the hacker at IBM has is skunkworks, he ports DB2 to Linux at home and then presents his managment with a new product "for free" and they will usually not turn that down. All the big press Linux items started that way, DB2, domino, S/390, etc. Good things can happen, and senior managment are always wild cards, the guy who is slated to follow Gerstner happens to be a Linux freak and so Linux has been getting a lot of pub and press but still is having trouble finding its way into core markets because it's still seen as a risk and he dictates things. The overall culture is to try to avoid risk though and that means don't change until it's too late. The PC group in particular is in an intensely competitive market and has an extremely difficult time meeting their objectives (they fail most of the time) and so getting Linux on to Thinkpads and that type of stuff isn't done unless someone from the top orders it and then it's never going to be carried on.
Oh, boo hoo hoo: Big Bad Blue has stolen BSDs partition number. That's really ignorant of them, and they deserve to be punished by losing sales. But for anyone who want to develop a fix, here are some ideas:
1) Patch the fsck'ing BIOS. [Dangerous on a laptop]
2) Modify the bootloader so that it re-writes the partition table on every boot using some other type. Writeback at shutdown.
3) recompile your BSD kernel to use a different filesystem type. Or really use a different type for the filesystems [but then you look one of the biggest reasons for running BSD--softupdates].
This can be gotten around. IBM has just done something stupid. They probably ought to have stolen the XENIX fs number instead!
There is a solution, though. I just put FreeBSD 4.2 on a new Dell Inspiron 5000e, and it went on nearly flawlessly. The only trouble was that X had to be compiled from CVS because the RAGE Mobility LF isn't really supported in XFree4.0.1. Of course that caveate applies to linux as well. Cardbus doesnt' work in 4.2, but does in -current. Standard PCMCIA is fine. Otherwise every single piece of hardware worked in all respects after a kernel recompile. This machine also has the famous 1600x1200 screen, and is several hundred $$$ cheaper than the equivelent IBM machine (which has a much crappier screen).
Moral of the story: If you have any desire to run FreeBSD or just want better hardware at a cheaper price, the Inspiron 5000 series is THE way to go.