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.

Comments

what does this mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a Thinkpad 600E off eBay earlier this year and put Debian Potato on it. It has been rock solid. I suspend and unsuspend multiple times daily and pretty much never reboot except to play some games in Winderz once every few weeks. And I am one of the fabled "desktop users" whose existence everyone on this site questions, who only runs programs written by other people and couldn't write anything useful in C to save his life.

If IBM's "dropping Linux" means you won't be able to get this kind of performance on future machines, then I will cry. But if it only means you can't buy a Thinkpad pre-loaded with Red Hat, I ask, what Linux user would want someone else to choose a distro for him (or her) and install it instead of being able to configure his/her own OS from the ground up? In short, does IBM's announcement really matter in any sense but the symbolic?

NOT a good thing as far as I can tell.

[FreeUser]

IBM also said it was going to include Generic Unix support rather than Linux only (scroll down).

Do you have a reference to back this up? Both articles on the /. story made no reference whatsoever to this. The first is just a link to the thinkpad mailing lists, while the second is an email sent to the lists by the IBM lead developer who was laid off.

I see absolutely no indication, anywhere, that IBM plans on continuing any sort of non-Windoze support of their T-series thinkpads, which is a shame as my company alone bought 4 of them specifically to run GNU/Linux (we are, after all, a GNU/Linux shop). Aside from individual sales they will loose with this rather short-sighted and foolish policy, they are likely to loose a number of corporate customers who are migrating away from Windows because of BSA-Licensing nonsense and don't want Microsoft licenses or software anywhere on their premesis. And if you were to foolishly think we are unique in that desire, you would be sorely mistaken.

IBM was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the ever-growing number of companies moving away from Microsoft because of their ever-more-draconian licensing terms, fees, and enforcement, as the ability to run the target operating system (likely GNU/Linux) on their laptops is an important part of such a migration.

This is a profoundly unstrategic move for IBM to make, and I suspect has a great deal more to do with bulk OEM licensing of Microsoft's monopoly operating system for installation on their hardware than it does with their desire (or lack thereof) to support GNU/Linux. Especially with the DOJ making it clear that they have no intention of enforcing anti-trust law against Microsoft in any meaningful way, IBM may well have felt they had no choice if they were to avoid paying twice what everyone else is for the privelege of reselling Microsoft's shoddy products.

Oh well, there are plenty of other laptop manufactuerers out there ... I suspect as the migration away from Microsoft picks up steam one or more of IBM's competitors will step up to the plate. In the meantime its back to getting everything working ourselves, something we Free Software users have always been pretty good at.

Money

[captain_craptacular]

To be blunt, why should IBM lay out the serious cash required to support linux on laptops when the only people who give a damn run linux on their laptops anyway and never use the support? It's basic economimcs. IBM probably sells a couple thousand thinkpads with Linux a year. Those sales probably cost them 20x as much to support as they make. If the product loses money, axe it.