It's the old distinction between "should do legally" and just "should do". Of course I don't believe they should be forced to do anything.

But then I reserve the right to be indignant about this. And I also think it is a bit stupid:

Lenovo had a reputation for having serious business Laptops. They cared about power-user customers who wanted to configure everything, and they had good Linux support.

Either they messed up technically - they did not know the effect this small change would have on Linux support. No problem, can happen, but is still a bit stupid. Or they messed up business-wise, by knowing this change would disable Linux, but not considering that important. I believe this is a much stupider screw-up.

It's like you buy one of these modern crossover trucks, and then find out you can't use it off-road in the desert. Of course, 99% of customers will use them in urban and light rural traffic, and only rarely will they be used off-road. But part of the allure of such a vehicle is that you could.

I don't believe that moustache-twirling executives are staging a conspiracy to kill Linux. But I do think Lenovo has lost their attention to detail that made them so special, and I can no longer recommend Lenovo products without hesitation, like I used to, which is a bit sad.

You can still install Linux on all of their 'serious business laptops'... including the Thinkpad Yoga. The only reason this is a "screw-up" is because someone posted it here and the tech media got outraged... there are MANY other Ideapad/Y-series laptops that have very poor Linux support.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_Thinkpad_Yoga_26...

Their laptop brands are VERY distinct, and have been for a long while. Thinkpad is the brand that you should recommend for Linux users, not Lenovo in general.

Even Thinkpads are getting crappy. I couldn't replace my Wifi card because the signature didn't match or some such crap.

It's kind of sad that the less tweaked options for laptops seem to be asus and acer... neither of which are my top choice, but seem to be much better than what's coming out of HP or Lenovo in the low-mid range.

The low end of ASUS includes things like the X205TA.

Here's Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/X205TA

Here's Ubuntu (this is a very long thread): https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2254322

There's a video on youtube of a school tech support guy who has a bunch (149) of ASUS X200 to image the drives from a USB drive, and that involves updating the "bios" and then editing the bios settings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yectQ5MeS_Y

tl;dr: it's not fun on any of these netbooks.

oh I agree with you I absolutely think they should support Linux, personally it's my OS of choice for technical work and their lack of support here makes me less likely to buy their stuff in the future (my next laptop will likely be a Dell XPS 13 Developer edition, precisely because of their linux support)

This is their consumer-focused Yoga. Their Thinkpad Yoga does not have any issues running Linux.

The only issue I've ever had with Thinkpad laptops was the Prime Nvidia/Intel video card switching... which is very similar to this in that it just wasn't supported by the drivers.

I see that Dell just had a big expansion of their Developer Editions... good for them! But it still appears that a fresh install of Ubuntu takes manual configuration of video drivers and power managment, meaning that they haven't figured out how to really make embracing Ubuntu smooth.

I do wonder if Dell's trackpoints are going to suddenly improve now that IBM's old patents are expiring. If so maybe I'll get one too.

I don't think anyone is saying they HAVE to support linux. Think of it like freedom of speech. Lenovo is free to put themselves out of business however they want and their consumers are free to call it a big ass mistake and call them idiots and not buy their blackbox crap.

Abosutely people are totally free not to buy their stuff.

But that does not make it a conspiracy by MS or Lenovo.

it is a commercial decision. companies get to make those

consumers then get to choose whether to buy their stuff

but it's not a conspiracy.

It may not be a conspiracy but it is certainly newsworthy. I've got a son who is getting to be about the age where a young man is ready for his spirit journey and will be sent to his room with an old laptop, his father's slackware disks, and a static IP and he will not be let out until www.youreamannow.com reads, "please bring me snacks."

I would hate to send him unprepared into the wild with a Lenovo.

Slackware, you're being kind there, surely http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ is the only way to experience your first linux install (although it's still a bit easy seeing as how people can use flash drives rather than Floppy disks for the install)

I admit I spoil the boy... Perhaps he is ready...

Seems to me like they are well within their rights to do this (in at least some markets), but that when asked about it they should be able to stand by that decision and say why.

What conceivable commercial purpose of Lenovo is served by making it difficult for people to install operating systems other than Windows 10 on their laptops?

that's easy, they don't spend money on developing drivers for Linux.

Every OS they support costs money in developer time. It's a commercial trade-off what Operating Systems to support.

Put it this way, do you see lenovo or Dell or HP developing drivers for OpenBSD? there's no commercial ROI on that, so they don't

In this case it would appear that Lenovo don't think there's a commercial reason to help out with Linux drivers.

timed comments seem to increase with thread depth. Apologies if you think things are circular, I've just been responding where people replied to me with points that I felt warranted a response, which seemed like a reasonable thing to do in a discussion thread.

I would surmise the signature edition contract with Microsoft probably requires Lenovo to have their laptops at optimal performance. Suboptimal performance must not occur, hence the blocking of other non-RAID options.

It would be interesting to see how this is achieved in other pc's in the signature edition range : https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/categor...

> Why should a commercial company be forced to provide support for a platform?

Because it's support for installing an OS, which is not the same as supporting an OS. The OS installation itself is unsupported.

Users running an unsupported OS is cheaper than users running a prescribed, supported OS, problems with which generate support calls.

Supporting Linux is part of what I'm doing here at my job, in a company that makes SoC's. The customers want a base platform (Linux-based) with board support, packages, a toolchain and so on. That's "Linux support".

"This is not locked down, so you may install Linux on it" is not Linux support.

> Why should a commercial company be forced to provide support for a platform?

I must have missed the post where somebody advocated having troops parachute into Lenovo's head office and round executives up at gunpoint. Could you let me know who was advocating the use of force?