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The Real Lenovo Laptops - Blank Disk, No Linux
wehe writes "A post from two weeks ago mentioned Lenovo Preloading SUSE Linux on ThinkPad notebooks. But in an interview with LinuxPlanet, Rajat Aggarwal, Lenovo's worldwide product manager for ThinkPad T Series, said that Lenovo will sell the new T60p laptop both on its Web site and through its direct and indirect sales channels. 'But we are not pre-loading it with Linux,' he told LinuxPlanet. Still, Lenovo will be breaking new ground with the level of support given to Linux by a major laptop manufacturer, according to the worldwide product manager."
i wonder if this is a liability/ support issue
if they give out a linux disc they would be responsable for elinux tech support, which is not something i would want to do over the phone that's for sure.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
FTFA:
"Moreover, all Linux drivers needed for the T60p will be downloadable directly from Lenovo's Web site. "
Awesome. My school is giving these laptops to students this coming year. Assuming Ubuntu doesn't have my drivers ready for me at that point, I'm glad the OEM has my back.
But I am curious: will Lenovo only support SuSE? Or will the support extend to basic question about any distro? I mean, it's kinda strange to support one OS that your laptops DON'T ship with, but not another one....
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
They're obviously promoting piracy by not preinstalling Windows XP(TM) on their laptops! Time to pay them a visit...
According to this link, "I recently wrote that Lenovo was the first of the major hardware vendors to seriously pre-install Linux -- SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, to be exact. And, they have.
At LinuxWorld, however, some of them were doing their darnest to spin that "no, no, they're not really pre-installing it. They're only sort of supporting it." You could almost see the terror in some of their eyes that Microsoft was going to come along and then stagger them with outrageous new rates for XP and, someday, Vista.
Get over it guys. You do pre-install, you do support it, and it's time to stop pretending that you only sort of support it. Yes, to get it pre-installed you do need to buy more than a "onesie or twosie" as one Lenovo staffer put it to me. Other Lenovo employees, however, confided that Lenovo can certainly install SLED rather than sending a system with a blank hard drive, a copy of SLED on a DVD, and a promise that all the devices will work correctly. And, that Lenovo would be willing to do so even for its smallest customers."
Actually, I wish that everybody shipped laptops like this. I have a Windows laptop from Compaq. First thing I did when I got it was to wipe the disk, and reinstall Windows. I would be even less comfortable with a Linux system that someone else set up for me.
I wonder if there are some licensing issues (agreements with Microsoft) that have made them do this, or whether it's customers like me.
Is the laptop give-out paid for with tuition or taxes?
After using Ubuntu on my various Thinkpad models for a few months now, I am realizing that there is a compatibility layer there that I've yet to see with any other distro on a Thinkpad. I've had VERY good luck with autodetection and autoconfiguration of a lot of hardware with Ubuntu. I've been endlessly impressed.
In a perfect world, I would look forward to seeing a CD Wallet of Linux distros that came witrh your new Thinkpad. A person could have thier choice. They could mutli-boot, with everything from Ubuntu down to, of course, Windows.
I have one unanswered question about the biometrics, though, and it's support under Linux. Does any one have any experience with this finger print reader found on the T43?
Homer (To Bill Gates): I reluctantly accept your offer.
Bill Gates: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys.
Bill Gates' companions begin to trash the "office".
Homer: Hey, what the hell is going on?
Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Linux on the desktop is unfamiliar to a lot of IT people. There are expectations of higher levels of support.
Lenovo is going a long way to ensure that this product can actually continue to exist in the market rather than disappear in the night.
Why?
1) Lenovo didn't need to retool the factory at risk.
2) Lenovo has invested effort stabilizing and validating for SLED Linux.
3) Lenovo has given unlimited support for these SKUs. (Each support contact costs the OEM about $50-100, a lot more if it is a flaw that needs resolution, revalidation, etc..).
4) Lenovo has built in a large buffer for support until the real support costs are known.
5) Lenovo is allowing any T60p user to download and use the drivers - but without support.
If Linux is supportable by the OEM to the same level as Windows, then I would expect that the price will drop rapidly around Christmas.
(By my calc, Lenovo is expecting about 12 calls per unit, I expect that Windows expectations are 2 calls per unit - averaged across all systems and all customers).
I recently checked to see if anything new was happening around Microsofts FlexGo( MS-OLPC ) and found out that Lenovo is onboard FlexGo. And after reading how in 2000/2001 HP had to drop 2 Linux based products because they'd lose Microsoft marketing dollars on other products because of this... it's not surprising Lenovo is not pre-installing Linux. Atleast they say they'll provide support.
Thanks Ashcroft/Bush/DOJ for leveling the playing field.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Give it a rest.
If the drivers are precompiled binaries, it could be a problem. If they're source, or a partial-open-source with a stub (like NVidia's) it should work on most distros without issue. I've seen a couple drivers that were initially released just for RedHat/SuSe/etc and not Debian, but I was able to make them work for Debian without too much problem.
Well, that certainly puts XP in its place.
... the more cynical of us would probably just say that Lenovo is doing this to be able to point to the failed experiment and say "see noone wants Linux on a thinkpad", now piss off you Linux running Thinkpad customers, you don't exist!.
I mean this quite clearly shows that putting XP on a formerly nice laptop subtracts 1180 USD from the value of said laptop.
I wonder if this is really the message that MS want's people to get.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I have yet to read anywhere online about a similar incident, so I thought I'd post it here.
Last week I got my new T60P Thinkpad in, and started my normal gentoo install procedure. Unfortunately the latest minimal CD didn't have a working ethernet driver, so I resorted to the LiveCD. I popped it in, and it successfully booted into Gnome without error. Everything, that I checked at least, seemed to be working as normal as far as net access and peripherals. I hop over to console 1 and start in on the harddrive. Delete Windows, keep the Thinkpad Rescue partition, set up an XFS partition, download the stage3, unpack, everything is looking good. Chroot, download the latest kernel from kernel.org, and go ahead and do my emerge --sync. This is where things go blamo....
As this is at work, I had other things to do, and I didn't bother to switch to console 2 during the emerge --sync. I've left consoles up on the screen before that were running sync, so I thought nothing of it. I would soon find out that this was a big mistake.
I get back to the laptop, and the screen is visually hung on pulsating text that would normally be scrolling on the left side as the portage tree is written. I attempt to switch to console 2, which it does, but that screen is completely black with no console. Try other consoles, same thing. Try console 1, no change. Still all black. Caps lock and num-lock work, but the video isn't having any of it. I hard power down.
Upon powering back up, things get really interesting. There is not post screen or image that comes up. There is however, vertical color lines which begin to appear, first on the right side of the screen then, on the left. The fade of the screen goes from black, some color, then eventually to all white. It appears the screen diffuses from black to white, then back to black, then to white. and so on... Kinda disturbing to see new hardware do this.
After powering down and scratching my head, my coworker and I, decide to hook it up to an external monitor. Well, what appears on the monitor is something that looks like Donkey Kong gone wrong on an old Atari. Imagine a stepped pattern of horizontally decreasing levels, left to right, but evenly spaced vertically. Like Donkey Kong, except no Ape (?) barrels or damsel in distress.
So my coworker and I start discussing what might have gone wrong. Since console1 was scrolling pretty fast, we can only guess that there was a problem with the console framebuffer and the hardware, which resulted in something getting fried. Yes, some magic smoke was let out somewhere. We thought it might be the LCD display, but the output of the external monitor ruled that out, and really pointed to video hardware.
The replacement should be in sometime soon, but its rather shocking to see something that new crap out the way it did, especially with the spec's on that machine.
Anyone have any ideas on what caused the hardware failure? Driver bug causing overheating? Console buffer memory maxout (256Mb onboard Video)??
Theories welcome!
People usually install their own distro anyways. So long as there is a number of distros that are officially supported, all is well.
In the article it specifically states: The two companies emphasized that the laptops are not targeted at consumers or even Linux diehards, who can buy the T60p but would still have to install SUSE or another Linux variant by themselves.
Later it states: Intel served as the primary beta tester for the SUSE-equipped notebooks and is expected to eventually buy "thousands" of the laptops, according to Bill lori(sic), worldwide manager for ThinkPads at Lenovo.
Later, the article states: But with Lenovo, enterprise customers give their configuration preferences and other software requirements to Novell, which will build a custom version of SLED 10 for them adn send it to Lenovo, which then installs it onto the laptops. Lenovo will also install other applications, including EDA or CAD application, and ensure that they don't break any drivers or crash the operating system, lori(sic) said.
The high price for these laptops is to pay for all of this customisation. Not so expensive when you consider what you're getting. Also, a nice move on Intel's part to distance themselves from Microsoft.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Is there any discount involved in getting the blank HD version? If not, don't bother -- you're paying the MS tax anyway, you may as well get an MS license. You might even try EULA tricks to see if you can get a refund.
If there is such a discount, I applaud Lenovo for this choice -- I would rather see them preload it, but personally, I buy all my desktops with a blank HD anyway, and there's no way I'm letting anyone else install my Linux. And it's a way to not pay the MS tax on a laptop, which is pretty rare.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
oh man, that is a disappointment (and a personal pet peeve of mine). I saw that article recently about trying to do away with the caps lock key because it's a waste of real estate and thought that they're fighting the wrong battle. The windows key is beyong a waste of keyboard real estate (already at a premium in a laptop) -- the caps lock key does come in handy once or twice a year after all. TI've never pressed the windows key except by accident -- it only serves to lose focus and interrupt work. :(
FYI, Mr. Cyberlord, sir. Your preferences need a tweak -- your site, like most dot coms, needs a .com at the end. Something like what is in your .sig. Wait, that web site is under construction. Never mind.
Well, I for one still welcome our new Cyberlord...
At least that I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong) as a regular end-user, who's only looking to purchase a single unit, you can't even get the bare hard drive model. It seems like on their website, that it only comes with Windows XP.
It's only people looking to buy in quantity (although they say small accounts are acceptable, I think they mean "no individuals") who can get the ones designed to use Linux, with a bare HD and assumedly some small discount for not taking the MSFT license.
All in all, pretty crappy.
I think if you really want to get a bare laptop without an OS, your best bet is to get one from Retrobox or similar, as a used model. They're all sold bare, because most of them come from corporations that had site licenses and can't sell an individual OS license when they liquidate the physical asset of the machine. I guess you could argue that there is always some "Microsoft tax" built into the price of any used machine that previously came with Windows, regardless of its current configuration, but at least you don't actually have to feel like you're buying it. If that's important to you.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
No! Keep the Windows keys! I use them at least 20 times a day, and probably more like 100.
My Windows key opens up an xterm. :)
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