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Lenovo Removes Linux Option For Home Buyers
billybob2 writes "Lenovo has stopped selling laptops pre-installed with Linux on its web site, only 8 months after starting the trial program. This means that home customers won't be able to buy a Thinkpad without paying the Microsoft tax. Word has it that the decision to pull the plug on Linux came down from the highest levels of the Chinese company's corporate headquarters. For those looking to buy full-sized laptops and desktops with Linux pre-loaded Dell, System76, ZaReason and Everex all still offer such products."
And people just weren't buying them?
i bought my laptop for dual-booting, WinXP MCE and Linux. After 4 months of getting tired of it telling me "Use *our* antivirus of choice!" in windows I just gave up and installed linux. Truth be told, I kept my MCE key around, because that gives me the legal right to use it in a VM should the need arise. (But it hasn't, thanks, in part, to everything moving to the web)
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
I bought a T61 several months ago from them with Suse pre-installed (I then installed the latest version of OpenSuse instead as the pre-installed one was an older, stable and supported version.)
I like it a lot and was planning on doing the same for any future laptop purchases. It's a shame because these are great machines and perfect for Linux (and the kind of person that normally runs Linux.)
However, I ran through the various options before purchasing and it was hard to tell if I was really saving money this way. For the Linux systems the choice of hardware options was more limited than with Windows (which does make sense) and I don't think I was able to set up equal systems which to compare prices with. In the end I think I paid the same or possibly even more for this system than if I had got one with Windows with the intention of not using it.
I think, then, their trial of selling Linux machines failed because they failed to make it a compelling option to the buyer, either financially or otherwise (limited options.)
I still feel good about myself for not giving any money to Microsoft.
On Dell's website, all the Ubuntu models have a note: Ubuntu 8.04 with DVD Playback. What does that mean? That they installed the unlicensed work-around for you or is there some licensed linux DVD decoder?
Linux is communist in a sense because the community 'owns' it, anyone can contribute to it regardless of social class, and the community governs itself without need of outside interferance.
These are all fundamental ideals of communism - that all property is communally owned, that all people are equal regardless of class, and that the workers (common people) should be in charge of governing themselves.
The way the Chinese run their country is very far from the ideals of communism, in fact no country that I know has ever had a successful communist government. There has been plenty of dictatorships masquerading as communist though.
> I think, then, their trial of selling Linux machines failed because they failed to make
> it a compelling option to the buyer, either financially or otherwise (limited options.)
We also bought a SUSE loaded Thinkpad recently. Normally we do RedHat based distros but since this one did come with a supported load left it alone. Yes SUSE is different but the user adapted pretty quick.
The point of preload is not just to avoid giving Microsoft money, I'm smart enough to realize Lenovo almost certainly gave Microsoft their per unit tax (no amount of court orders will ever end that practice) but we got three other important things:
1. PRELOAD. Take it out, plug it in and go. Don't underestimate the value of that.
2. NO SUPRISES. If they are preloading Linux on it they won't suddenly switch vendors on wireless chipsets, etc. and hose you. Even if you decide you don't like the flavor of the month a vendor ships the odds are good you can load any other recent distro.
3. SUPPORT. If a vendor preloads Linux you can call them up and get warranty support without having to worry about reloading Windows before shipping it off or ensuring the drive is yanked out.
In the past we bought Thinkpads because they were the best hardware and nobody offered Linux as a supported option so their lack of that didn't hurt them. That isn't true anymore so future purchases won't go to them.
Democrat delenda est
Having just purchased a T61 (as it was being discontinued), I suspect they have good reasons for not offering Linux right now.
The new T400/T500 use Intel's newest wireless chipset (Wifi 5100), which wasn't supported under Linux at the time of launch (early August). Intel announced support on August 14th, and as far as I know, it's not supported in any stable release of any major distribution. This will change in the coming months, of course, but it makes sense that there's no Linux option now.
The video card is in a similar situation. The laptops with discrete graphics also have integrated graphics which are switchable via driver (for power savings). As far as I know, this switching isn't implemented at all in X and I don't know if you can disable one or the other card. If you order a version with only integrated graphics, I believe it's supported only by the latest version of the intel driver (which isn't yet packaged for many distributions).
Even though I use my T61 for Linux, I still bought a Vista Home version for three reasons: 1.) Every so often I like to have Windows for something, 2.) The hardware options for the Linux version were crippled - slower processor line, etc. and 3.) OpenSuse isn't my distro of choice anyway. You'd have to buy the dock separately (no big deal), because the support for it under Linux isn't official (and it took some time to get things to work reasonably well for me).
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
So do you subtract the amount they're paid to bundle adverts? Do you subtract the support costs that would be required to support more options for purchase? You have to assume that Dell/IBM/HP/etc are all evaluating their full cost structure including those things. If so, is it possible the "Microsoft Tax" is actually a negative value meaning it's cheaper for IBM to sell a Windows machine and be paid by advertisers than it is to sell a machine with nothing on it? Again, not trying to troll... just seems like its become one of those buzzwords with no actual meaning any more.