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IBM Dropping Laptop Linux Support
Bjarne Bula writes "In a message to the linux-thinkpad mailing list, Keith Frechette, former (as of Monday, June 24th) lead developer of Linux support on ThinkPads,
reported that IBM has decided to no longer fund that project." I've been using
Linux on a ThinkPad for some time now. If it stops being compatible, my next
laptop won't be a ThinkPad. Too bad, because the machines are solid. Update: In an interesting counter-point, Information Week tells us that IBM will be opening a manhattan based "Linux Center of Competence" to show off Linux. Go figure.
"Linux is our flagship technology going forward! Quick, let's cancel it on our sexiest products!"
What a great way to torpedo enthusiasm in the techie community... :-p
Time for someone to set up a petition page...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
ThinkPads (T-series in particular) are the best notebooks on the market, period. This is disturbing that they have discontinued LINUX support, especially in light on their adoption of LINUX on workstations/servers. Doesn't make a lot of sense, really.
Sapere Aude - Homer
Does anyone have a clue why they did it? After all (and as the poster hints at), linux support does in fact *help* selling ThinkPads.
my
It seems to me that IBM is looking at Linux as an operating system that belongs on server grade hardware and beyond, not on desktops or laptops. There probably are not enough people using Linux on their laptops to justify the time spent supporting it.
They used to have Thinkpads that ran AIX. Some of the SysAdmins I know at IBM used to prefer them for on-site troubleshooting at the server farms since it was UNIX end-to-end (to the extent that AIX is UNIX anyways). But someone decided that it was not worth having the product line and they were scrapped.
Too bad, but this sounds like more of the same...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
...they don't stop giving out hardware documentation, I can't see any real problem here - most other company's don't found Linux development either and people still buy their hardware...
I love my Thinkpad, as it has the best keyboard of any laptop that I tried. I use the built in keyboard enough that I've worn the texturing off half the letters.
There are many support pages and "rings" around the web for thinkpads,and I hope that at least the IBM design teams think about non-MS Operating systems when producing future thinkpads, unlike the TP600 modem debacle.
It'll be a tough one to replace when the time comes.
"If it stops being compatible, my next laptop won't be a ThinkPad. Too bad, because the machines are solid. "
I dunno if that's the attitude I'd have. The reason you buy a Laptop from IBM is their manufacturing compatibility and support. (support meaning they'll replace a defective component...)
If there's an icompatibility with Linux and one of these Laptops, then people should rush to fix it. The reason I'm saying this is that corps who buy these laptops aren't going to be worried about Linux until they really really need it. It'd be a lot easier for everybody if the information on how to make Linux work on an incompatible laptop were easy to find for the non-Linux initiated.
I'd have been a Linux user 6 months ago if I could have gotten it to work on my laptop. Unfortunately, I couldn't find what I needed to fix it, so it got Windows 2000 instead. It'll be a while before I have the free time to pursue that again.
I'm thinking of the Linux community as a whole, here. I can understand somebody saying "This laptop won't do me any good if it doesn't wrong what I need", hell I'd have the same attitude. I'm just thinking that if everybody says that, then this will always be a Microsoft world.
"Derp de derp."
Good business sense, at that.
As displeasing as it might be to the faithfull, it dosent make much sense bottom-line to invest a lot of money in this area. It dosent nessesarily mean that Thinkpads will become horrors of proprietory that will become useless for Linux, it just means spending less money supporting a free OS that honestly manages to support itself well enough anyway. (The Linux work isnt adding value to IBM laptops for the average punter, to the point where they will decide on a Thinkpad over an Inspiron.)
Then there is the fact that IBM may cash-cow their x86 laptop business anyway in preparation to sell it off, rather like their hard disk business.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
The Linux community right now doesn't really need a whole lot of support. If IBM would use hardware that already has decent and proven drivers in their laptops then there isn't too much to complain about, you can install Linux and be happy.
Now of course if they make you buy it in the beginning with Windoze then we have some reason to complain.
The Anti-Blog
Okay so IBM doesn't have enough money to fund creating drivers for Linux for Thinkpads. Fair enough since resources are finite. However isn't one of the best features of Open Source projects is to get people who are interested in contributing to the project?
Why does IBM need to hard dedicate manpower to Thinkpad driver writing? IBM can just provide open hardware specs(assuming they don't violate some NDA from inside or 3rd parties), a little TLC and feedback from a maintained ML, and let people who are modivated to get stuff working do their thing. Heck even IBM can maintain the CVS repositories if they want.
The point is that although it would be handy to have IBM leading driver development for Thinkpads or whatever hardware, it isn't exactly necessary. IBM can just as easily, and for a lot less bucks, forster a community that will help support them and themselves.
Most of the stuff that was "special" about laptops has been standardized, including power management (APM and ACPI) internal peripherals (mini-pci).
The biggest thing now is to keep in mind which video and audio chipsets are going to be compatible, which is easier to do in the design stage than the support stage later on.
I love my T series thinkpad, and as long as future designs take those chipset issues into consideration, then I'll stick with the thinkpad for a long, long time.
People don't buy many small computers just because they will run Linux (the geek population just isn't that large). People do, however, blow large chunks of cash on big machines just to run Linux. Mom-and-Pop can almost always undercut IBM on prices for small machines, and geeks are thrifty.
The point is there's not a lot of money to be made there. One thing we've got to remember is that regardless of how "cool" something is, if it doesn't generate enough money for the company, it won't last long. Just look at what IBM did the the folks in San Jose. Hard drives just don't have the same profit margin as a p-series, or z-series server, or selling lots of software and consulting services. That's where the money is, not in working with the Linux community to make sure every major distro will run on IBM's laptop. There are plenty of people who do that for free. Why should IBM pay someone to do that?Just my 2 cents.
In this day and age of cost-cutting it really isn't a suprise. Only geeks (like those found here) are going to use *nix on a laptop anyway and most of us can handle our own installs and tweaking.
The only place I can see this biting IBM in the @ss is in the case of Europe where we have France giving a major contract out to Mandrake and the stories about Linux PCs selling in Scandinavia. Even though Walmart is going to start selling Linux loaded PCs soon. Despite the Walmart decision, I don't think we'll have the same enthusiasm (as we're seeing in Europe) in the US for a while.
Hope I'm wrong... Either way, unless these kinds of efforts continue to grow, IBM probably made a good BUSINESS decision, even though I (we?) may not like it.
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
I think to some people since IBM was one of the first mega-corporations to embrace Linux, this announcement about cutting support for Linux on the laptops comes as a suprise. However, where is it that IBM has made all of its Linux progress? They've made their progress in the enterprise on big ass IBM servers running Linux. However, the desktop/laptop space is very different from enterprise servers. The margins appear to be much thinner on those machines and so I'm sure that business unit is trying to cut costs. I doubt they have seen enough traction from Linux on the desktop to justify the cost of support and development. I also think that IBM knows that there will be some unofficial ThinkPad Linux support that is provided by its users.
I'd be happy if IBM officially supported linux on laptops, but I've bought laptops before from other vendors that weren't officially supported linux and have had little trouble. It just takes some up front research to figure out what's going to work and what won't.
;)
Now, IBM may be cutting official support, but it's reasonable to believe that IBM will continue to support community efforts. That is, they'll probably be helpful in making the information about their laptops available to the kernel hackers out there so that they can be made compatible. This way, IBM spends very little, and you can still get an IBM laptop running Linux, it just means there won't be some guy at IBM you can call and ask questions.
No big deal, I never used to do that even when I ran Windows
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
For the rich guys and for the poor guys. As a bonus, you don't have to hang your in shame saying you run a "Unix-like" operating system. With these, you get the real thing...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I don't think it's such a big deal that IBM is dropping their laptop Linux support, so long as IBM doesn't do anything that would prevent Linux from running reliably on their laptops, i.e., hiding hardware details that are critical to stable operation. I've been running Slackware with stock kernels on a T20 (with a "Designed for Windows 98/2000" sticker on it) for about 8 months now with no problems whatsoever. Zero crashes. Even if IBM drops this support, i think users would still be able to get Linux to run on their IBM laptops because that is their OS of choice.
Still, it would be nicer to have some kind of "official" support from IBM to give additional incentive to those considering Linux on laptops. More incentive == more users.
I still don't understand why everyone here bitches and moans whenever a hardware vendor drops Linux from their lineup on certain items. Linux is not and will not (atleast anytime soon) be the choice of the road wariors who buy laptops by the truck loads. Its really quite easy to see that certain operating systems are better for some tasks than others, Linux is not ready for desktop market.
Step back and look at it before writing this off as a troll. You're a geek, you're one of the few. Most people who buy laptops buy them because they're on the move, running between business meetings and such. They've not got the time to deal with learning Linux or other OSS OSes.
Stick to what you do best, keep those servers churning while letting the desktop slip; its not your strong market.
scott
The world has figured out a long time ago that Linux is a very capable server OS, but a non-starter on the mainstream desktop. Trust me, if IBM saw enough demand to keep offering Linux on T-pads, they would. They didn't, so they nuked it, the market has spoken. Case closed.
I don't care if some one else chooses a distro for me,
;))
sure I'll reinstall whatever I like.
I want a Linux pre-loaded laptop because:
- I don't want to pay the MS tax(I don't like to be forced to buy
something I don't want)
- I will know for sure that all the hardware is supported
I'm looking for a nice pre-installed laptop, I really love ThinkPads,
but seems that I'll have to buy something else...
Is any big brand still offering preinstalled linux laptops?
\\Uriel
P.S.: For all of you who says that Linux in the desktop make no sense,
all the desktops in my company run Linux, everything works fine, I can
do all my sysadmin work from home with SSH, and I don't need to worry
about people running into viruses and installing loads of trash.
Even my boss is happier because people don't waste so much time with
ICQ and MSM... (of course they could use Jabber, or some clone, but
they haven't figured that out yet
Not to mention the money saved in licenses and that we don't need to
worry about the BSA any more...
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
Much more interesting to me at the moment is Apple's current desktop grab. I decided several months ago that if I were in the market for a laptop, I'd go for a Powerbook running OSX. Actually I find the Powermac to be a pretty tempting desktop platform too. It's going to be an interesting choice when the next upgrade cycle rolls around.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?