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Lenovo Preloading SUSE Linux on ThinkPad
An anonymous reader writes "For years, the holy grail of the Linux desktop has been to get a major computer vendor to commit to preloading a Linux desktop. It's finally happened! Lenovo has made a deal with Novell to preload SUSE Linux 10 on its ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation. Ironically, in June, Lenovo was in hot-water with Linux fans because an executive had said that the company would no longer support Linux on its ThinkPad line. But the company did a quick about-turn. Who knows, maybe Mr. Dell will finally get the message, too?"
Now its just your jobs to start buying some, to show its a worthy business model.
Yeah, like he did about AMD. (Hint: try to actually buy a AMD-based server.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Lenovo never said that it wouldn't be supporting Linux on its Thinkpad line... it is just as much of a misquote now as it was then. The guy interviewed was a someone who didn't have anything to do with their Thinkpad brand, and was in fact talking about another Lenovo product (although I don't remember what product that was).
Joshua Purcell
I've always loved the IBM Thinkpads but have had doubts about the ability of Lenovo to matain the same quality. I've been looking at getting another Thinkpad, and Lenovo offering a Linux distro may be a good enough reason to try them out. Its not my favorite distro, but its deinetly a great foot in the door for Linux, which is something I can definetly support.
Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer
Would have been nice if they had one that when I bought my T42. Oh well, better late than never.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Who knows, maybe Mr. Dell will finally get the message, too?
Dell understands that the hardware business is a commodity business. There's two ways to make money in a commodity business; a. volume, and b. premium marketing
They've mostly maxed out the profit-through-volume business model, so perhaps it would be a good time for them to start positioning certain products in the 'premium' space. Linux enthusiasts are willing to pay more for a product that caters to their tastes. Case in point: the WRT54G-L router from Linksys.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I don't see this as any real big thing. The linux market is still dedicated to the smaller, tenacious demographic (before the flames engulf me I use Ubuntu on my Dell X300). Unless Novell is committed to supporting the operating system in a way more comprehensive manner than M$oft purports to support windows, it's just never going to grow significantly in the short-term. And lets face it, the target truely is the IT admin who's kitting out the workers. A person who's going to order 10's - 100's of units at a time. Now if they're smart, they'll put minimal resources into this until the user base increases enough for a significant cash injection. Be first at the line and capture the tidal wave of change. I really hope they don't just leave the decision to the quarterly bean counters.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
If you lived in the UK, you can buy a Lenova/IBM thinkpad with linux preloaded already, from here
Chinese company will preinstall Linux when American competitors will not. Instead they're sticking with Microsoft, even when the new MS OS won't be good for customers for years. This country is really starting to look stupid from every angle.
--
make install -not war
IBM owns Novell, Novell owns SUSE. There you have it folks. Good to see GNU/Linux making it's way into the mainstream. Now we've got to get someone pre-loading Slackware.
2647-L1U. It was done a long time ago.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/quickPa th.do?quickPathEntry=2647-l1u
Even if it's not your favoite distro, the drivers will be similar, so installation will still be easier.
Dell was selling Latitude's with Red Hat pre-installed in the late nineties, lasted until at least 2002, then they canceled it due to lack of customer interest. I hope Lenovo sees better results (they should given how much Linux has improved since then).
I don't know whether it has to do with the 'NO WARRANTY' ... Lenovo presumably like offering warranties ... or the requirement to make source code available, or something else about the 'aggressively free' GPL.
I think that comment was really stupid whoever made it. Fact is, when the comment about no linux was made, they were already in talks with Novell about preloading linux. That's why it seems weird. I think that was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. The left hand was ignorant of Linux and gave the normal "we don't support linux" answer that most hardware vendors like to belt out. All the while the right hand was working out the deal with Novell.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
He was talking about the other line (non thinkpad) of Lenovo laptops.
Will the laptop come with the ATI 3d video drivers instll or will have to install them yourself?
Mr. Dell should not be distributing Linux at all. Even before IBM shipped Linux pre-installed, they at least recognized that when they distribute a GPL covered work they need to also provide a copy of the license.
Dell still publically demostrates they can violate Clause 1 of the GPL by distributing the Linux kernel, busybox and other GPL works without providing a copy of the GPL. They admitted that adding the GPL to the tar ball would be cheap, easy and something they are required by the license to do and yet three years later they still have choosen not to do it.
Btw, this is just one of many examples of Dell violating the GPL over and over again.
They're worth buying even just to vote for Linux with your dollars.
I was planning on sticking with my current Thinkpad for awhile longer, but this is almost reason enough to get a new one.
So, where can we buy one?
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
It will be sweet if customers actually BUY the things.
A nice discount over the Windows machines would help, since even if buyers use the discount just to get cheaper machines (and load Windows later) the sales would be good for publicity.
The problem with pre-loading Linux is that most Linux users are picky about which distro and what setup they want. They could just as well buy a computer with no OS, considering how little effort it takes to get Linux installed on supported hardware these days. With distros like Kanotix you can even surf the web during the installation.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
...that quality has gone WAY DOWN on the Lenovo-designed ThinkPads.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I wonder if the price of that laptop will come down since there won't be a cost of licensing any Windows products. Or will they keep it up and pocket the extra profit.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Whether this will make a difference or not, depends on the effort Lenovo is going to put into the advertisement. Will they offer it on a dusty corner of their website, just for the folks who use Linux anyway? Or will they have it more prominent on their websites and ads, like "New! Linux now made easy for everyone. Be the first non-geek enjoying Linux!"
Trust me, I work for the government.
But the advantage with preloading Linux is that you know that since the preloaded distro worked, your distro of choice will presumably be gotten to work as well. You even have a working model to examine.
I know I'd rather start from a SuSE laptop, even if I didn't want to run SuSE than from a random Windows one.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
This said, I am now sure that they (Novell) have been planning on supporting the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad(s) for a quite some time...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
Novell employees are required to use SLED as their primary desktop. The majority of Novell employees have ThinkPad laptops (T42 and T43s). I imagine the T60p will now be the new Novell employee laptop.
I'm also hoping this extends to over ThinkPads in some form. I have the T60 (similar but an ATI graphics adapter) and would like some of these features when I run SLED 10. I'm particularly interested in getting power management similar to what we get in Windows, with full suspend mode support, better special key support, etc.
-- Of course I'm paranoid. I'm a sysadmin.
Are you comparing MS OS to a Ferrari ?
It's at most a badly designed and built Honda civic.I don't, however, like the fact that people will just put pirate copies of XP on it. Piracy hurts the tux!
The Civic is a great car, a marvel of economical engineering. I'd even say it is a more impressive feat than any Ferrari and has a huge community following.
Windows is more like a Tiburon. Lots of style, lots of hype, it works... but it sucks, depreciatees fast, is easily 0wn3d and has a mysteriously lousy engine.
Finally, I had high hopes for Lenovo, especially after IBM's implementation of Linux. Now the only thing to wait for is for more distros to be available.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
And frankly, the WRT54G-L is still a good deal, even with their "premium" pricing. So more power to them. You want linux friendly companies to make money, right?
Dell once did offer Linux pre-installed on desktop systems - at least through its business sales division. I actually have one (a Dimension 4100 - it's a few years old), and it came with RedHat pre-installed.
Maybe Dell will also realize that a lot of us are pissed off that they
have stopped "supporting" FreeBSD on their servers.
"The Civic is a great car, a marvel of economical engineering. I'd even say it is a more impressive feat than any Ferrari and has a huge community following"
Speaking as a former owner of a Honda Civic I find that particular statemement terrifying. I sold mine for $100 and still owe $2500 in repairs.
For example the timing belt chain is made of rubber and the engine is setup in such a way that the cylinders will smash into each other and wreck the engine when it breaks. Its an interference engine.
So every 60,000 miles your engine could be damaged if you forget to replace your rubber chain.
Brilliant engineering!
Also I had the struts go out every 10k miles instead of 40k which was quite strange.
No I never had that issue but I had nothing but problems iwth mine and I do admit it had over 100k miles but it performed more like a chevy or kia than a japanesse car after 115k miles and everything went out on it. My parents Nissan lasted for nearly 300k miles.
I now own a hyundia and glad I bought it.
http://saveie6.com/
You'll see dual boot when a direct seller or big box retailer on tight margins thinks it's worthwhile to maintain a dual inventory and support structure in the mass consumer market. Meaning, never,
It's not on all models. The biggest problem they have is that they've got magic tags in the BIOS that XP sees and uses to allow an OEM install intended for Dell machines to go on without plugging in the CD key on the labels they're sticking on the machines. They've got to make a "special" version of the machines they're offering no XP preinstall on that doesn't HAVE this magic key to "prevent piracy", especially since they've apparently caught at least three major businesses cheating on licenses this way in the past. The same goes for at least HPaq (I didn't need to key in the license when I re-imaged my laptop for a small XP partition for my wife's benefit and put Linux (Then Mandriva, now FC5 x86-64 on it...) on.
Blame their wishing for an "easier" way of things for the customer- I blame them for doing something silly that ties them even tighter
than ever to Microsoft that honestly wasn't something that was relevant save for the fact that the damn thing needs regular re-installs
to be of any use to anyone.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Typo ... I meant the pistons slam into the cylinders if the timing belt chain breaks.
http://saveie6.com/
It is great to get support for and exposure to Linux from a major vendor.
With respect to quality however, it is my long-standing experience with Dell laptops that they are cheap in price, and cheap in quality. IBM-now-Lenovo laptops are superior in general build quality, and I shall never buy another.
Perchance it will make it easier to get that damned refund for the unused pre-install of Windows too?
Try pistons slamming into the valves ...
Timing belt on my Peugeot 205Gti snapped and bent a bunch of valves. Ouch.
Timing belt on my Miata, tow to the dealer, ready next day, though tensioner and seals pushed the total up to $800. Ouch.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
If the engine is an interference engine then a metal timing chain should be used. Not a rubber belt unless of course its a non interference engine. Then if it snaps no engine damage will be done. Still your supposed to replace them every 60,000 miles.
http://saveie6.com/
Maybe you can tell me WTF this "Apple ][" symbology is. It was the second Apple model, right? Isn't it a Roman 2, i.e. II? So is this just a silly word game to show who are the true Illuminati, like "unixen", etc?
Linux support from laptop manufacturers seems still poor. But there are some independent retail shops which offer Linux pre-configured on laptops and notebooks. They offer different laptop brands, some of them e.g. Xtops.DE are specialized in pre-configured Debian or SuSE Linux on Lenovo/IBM ThinkPads.
As far as I can see there is no official announcement from Lenovo about Linux on their laptops available yet. The articles at DesktopLinux/eWeek only propose an official announcement in two weeks. And nothing about some important details: would the pre-installed Linux support all the hardware of a ThinkPad, let's say the internal modem? and how well will the hardware be supported, e.g. will 3D acceleration work together with all the suspend-modes and an external projector? will there be Free and Open Source drivers available? will it be possible to use all these nice features (if provided really) with other Linux distributions, too? will the hardware be cheaper because of the missing MicroSoft tax? There have been rumours from other manufacturers about pre-installed Linux laptops recently, see A History of Blurb, Rumours, Vaporware, False Alarms and a Little Truth Concerning Linux Laptops. But as far as I can see you can't buy one yet, at least not in the U.S. or in Europe.
"I know I know. I'm probably trolling"
..
.. Allchin calls the practice of replacing the default OS with Windows flipping
.. you just pull the trigger .. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger" Sept 18, 1993
.. do not archive your e-mail." May 2004
.. That exposes you to legal action, software viruses and endless technical troubles"
You probably are
"people will just put pirate copies of XP on it"
Straight from fud.central. I see both you and Allchin hold this view.
"Once they get the hardware home, however, that Linux OS is quickly erased and replaced with a pirated copy of Windows -- often within 24 hours
But can we believe someone who once said this?
"If you're going to kill someone
"Do not be foolish
What is a Naked PC?
"A Naked PC is one sold without an operating system
piracy_nakedpc has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.
davecb5620@gmail.com
If they put XGL/Compiz on those machines, they will beat out Apple. Better buy some stock...
Suspend to RAM does not work on most of the IBM T series, especially the new T60. From what I am aware my HP8240 is similar to the T60, and while accelerated X works fine with ATI's drivers, I have never had any success with S3 suspend mode.... and I'm starting to think this is as much to do with ACPI support in the kernel (last tried 2.6.17) as it is to do with X drivers. Wifi (ipw2200) and suspend to disk work fine; haven't tried the modem, but the SD card slot isn't recognised despite compiling the recent kernel driver. Getting linux to work on a full featured laptop shouldn't be that far off -- so long as manufacturers stop making false claims of (implied) full linux compatibility when it's only partial and flakey.
Yeah, I can install SUSE, Ubuntu or FreeBSD on any fuckin laptop.
Do they actually support all the hardware and, more importantly, do they deliver specs accordingly?
Until then it's nothing but a nice try of the spin doctor's dpt. (TM).
I mean, come on.
See Wikipedia's entry. That symbology was on not only the case, but when you booted up the model number (also with ][) would show at the top of the screen. Likewise with my old Apple //c and the IIgs.
There is no cabal.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I bought my Civic for $500 and got $4k from the insurance company when an SUV rear-ended me.
I replaced it with a Hyundai Accent. A replacemnet Civic would be too expensive, they're holding their value too well, and the new ones aren't as good quality as the old ones. 1992-1996 were the best years for reliabilty, the previous generation has better handling though.
Repairs are very cheap on the Civic. I replaced my engine, clutch and an axel for $1600. The engine needed to be rebuilt at 350,000 km, but it was cheaper to replace the engine than to repair it.
BTW, Hyundai uses timing belts on an interference based engine too. At least in the Accent. I had to replace mine at 100,000 km.
For storage space, comfort, handling, fuel efficiency, rust protection, insurance and cost of repairs, the Civic was better. The Accent has a little more pep, but it guzzles gas for such a small car.
This might be a relatively small step, but give them time.
Check out OS/2's history for some insight as to why Linux isn't as prevalent on pre-built machines as one might like.
Back in '94, OS/2 Warp 3.0 came out, fully 32-bit, with memory protection, *real* pre-emptive multitasking, support for long file names, full internet kit and basic office suite bundled, and a full implementation of Win3.1 embedded that ran nearly all win16 and win32s programs - in effect, everything Win95 promised, plus some extras - IBM had nearly persuaded 4 major OEM's (Compaq, Gateway2000, PacBell, and HP I believe, but could be mistaken) to preload OS/2 in a dual-boot setup, giving customers a voucher for a free upgrade to Win95 when, if ever, it finally came out. M$ threw a fit and threatened the aforementioned OEM's with making Win95 not install on their brands of machine if they did so. As it was, M$ charged IBM $45 a copy for Windows, compared with $9 for Compaq, telling IBM "of course we can't give you the same price for Windows as Compaq - they don't make a competing product"
The fact that they're even publicly supporting another OS is a bigger step than I think most realize. Give them time - chances are they're testing the waters to see if a)it's feasible to support Linux on a large scale, and b) they can get get away with it in the face of M$.