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Lenovo Delivers SuSE Linux-Based ThinkPads
angryfirelord notes a DesktopLinux article on Lenovo's promise to deliver ThinkPads with pre-installed Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 in the week of January 14. Quoting: "Lenovo will release pre-installed SLED 10 on its Intel Centrino processor-powered ThinkPad T61 and R61 14-inch-wide notebooks. In February, Lenovo's pre-integrated Novell Linux offering will expand to include some Penryn-based ThinkPads. The starting price for this system will be $949, $20 less than the same laptop with Vista Home Premium."
Why? There is absolutely no reason why users need to know how to install any desktop OS.
I have installed Linux for several people who manage updates and configuration fine but who would be likely to to run into problems if they installed from scratch themselves.
Servers are different, of course, and so are many corporate desktops that need a standardised installation. However, this is a laptop that is being sold to people who want a pre-installed OS.
Besides Lenovo there are some other manufacturers offering Linux without "Micorosoft-Tax" or even Linux pre-installed. Here is a (not yet complete) list of currently available laptops and notebooks without "Microsoft-Tax" at TuxMobil. If you need the features of a laptop which comes with Microsoft OS still, here are some tips and tricks to get a refund for the operating system from Redmond. And just in case you want to buy a laptop with a custom Linux installation, here is a survey of resellers.
The OEM price of windows is much more than 50 dollars.
I managed to buy a thinkpad T60 in the Netherlands a few weeks ago with a preemptive windows (XP) refund. The dealer removed the OS and gave me a discount for the OEM price, which was 129.71 euros, about 190 dollars.
I would have been happy for Lenovo to give that money to a random linux distribution, but now I can decide myself which one gets it.
... and actually put Linux on some of their really good business-class machines, as opposed to their cheaper "entry-level" "home" flaky laptops. Write this down, Lenovo and Dell: I don't want Linux because it's cheap; I want it because it's better and free. Now give me that great laptop that a Windows user can already buy, put Linux on that instead, and you have my 1500 euros.
That, or I'm getting an Eee.
The value of the royalties Novell will pay to MS from OEM installs is likely to be vanishingly small. The main benefit Microsoft got from the deal was the FUD, and that mostly backfired on them.
I have a HP laptop with SLED10 pre-installed, it even has a little green Suse logo where the XP one normally goes. It's one of the better Linux experiences around, especially for corporates and newcomers to Linux. And let's face it, even if you wipe SLED10 and install your own favorite, all the hardware will be supported and manufacturers will see there's demand for Linux compatibles.
I wouldn't worry about tacitly supporting Microsoft via Novell either. Now that innovators like Asus and Nokia have shown the way, I suspect the day of the big generic desktop Linux is over, and manufacturers will shrink-fit versions of Linux onto their own hardware.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
and what would have happened if Dell went all out putting Linux on the front page, only selling Linux machines no MS Windows and it was a failure? There's another ten years of "Linux Sucks" right there.
/. grumble about "Why Noobuntu, why not try X". Well now you know, if distribution X had better branding it would probably be more popular then Ubuntu.
No. Dell did the right thing by slowly growing their Linux desktop market and now everyone is copying them.
Branding matters a lot.
It's the reason Microsoft runs it's Get the facts campaign against Linux. Having Linux associated with big brands that people have heard of increases your chance of people picking your product. It doesn't matter that Linux runs on the top 8 super computers of the world because people will make judgements based of how familiar they are with a product.
This is why Ubuntu is more popular then other distributions, because Mark S. has associated Ubuntu with larger brands. More people know about Ubuntu and are more likely to pick it compared to another distributions. A lot of people here on
Another branding example..
Have you noticed recently how "Windows Server" adverts keep popping up on websites such as top500.org, sourceforge, etc? Places that decision makers might see them, but also developers. Sourceforge in particular seems to have tons of Microsoft adverts that it is starting to put me off visiting that website at all.
I think your tin foil cap was on a little too tight today. There are a lot of practical reasons Lenovo would have chosen Suse for the thinkpads. Even before the MS deal, SLED was one of the distros IBM used to put through a compatibility certification program for thinkpads. SLED also comes with a lot of software explicitly for thinkpad-specific hardware. I know the fingerprint reader drivers and GUI were there the last time I tried OpenSuse, and I may be mistaken but I believe the HDAPS drivers were also pre-installed. I've tried installing these manually in Ubuntu and its a bitch. Suse distros in general have had superior thinkpad-specific hardware support.
I had contact with both the dealer, http://bluelink.nl/, and IBM/Lenovo themselves. I wanted to make sure I would get the refund before I bought anything. The way it was arranged in the end was probably the simplest solution. The windows flavour involved was XP.
IBM/Lenovo were actually very easy to convince. I called them because I had heard of the plans discussed in this article. They even offered to talk to unhelpful dealers for me. Bluelink needed a little more convincing, but I just kept politely and clearly invalidating any arguments they came up with against giving me a refund. This article by Serge Wroclawski http://www.linux.com/articles/59381 was very useful. The counters to all the arguments they came up with are there. I remained friendly and polite the whole time, but the people at Bluelink probably still thought I was some kind of crazy zealot making a fuss.
After my initial phone call to Bluelink asking for a written offer, all communication with them went via email. That way I had more time to think about what I said and compose a convincing message (I can be a bit clumsy on the phone), and there was a written record as well. I also took IBM/Lenovo up on the offer to talk to Bluelink for me. I have no idea what the IBM/Lenovo guy said to Bluelink to make it work, though, because I never saw that communication.
There must be other manufacturers and vendors where this could work as well. My previous laptop was an ASUS, which I bought without any OS on it about 5 years ago. Back then manufacturers were a lot less helpful. I remember talking to several manufacturers before buying the ASUS and being completely stonewalled. Because of my good experience with ASUS, I contacted them this time around too, and they seemed quite willing to help. But I didn't manage to get the store where I bought my previous laptop to cave quickly enough, so I didn't pursue it when I could get an acceptable configuration from http://zepto.com/, where you can buy empty notebooks. I still preferred the specs of the thinkpad. I had almost given up on it when I got an offer with a preemptive windows refund from Bluelink.
Hope this helps!
Syonax