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IBM Dropping Laptop Linux Support

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-that-just-sucks dept.

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.

1 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. what does this mean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?