OK Lenovo, we need to talk

Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by jwildeboer on Sunday October 24, 2021 @10:40AM (#28978330)

Disclaimer: I am a Red Hatter. We get Thinkpads/Lenovos since years, we install RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or Fedora on them. I started back a long time ago with a X31, after that a X40, an X220, a X230, X1 2nd gen and am now on a X1 carbon 7th gen. They have been rock solid for me, except the x220 which loved to bork the hard drive for unknown reasons every 4-6 months.

Lenovo has listened and acted on our requests in a very good way, the Linux support has become better and better over the years, IMHO and experience.

So no, this rant does notbresonate with me and my 16 years experience at all.

No offence. Just a different experience.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by jwildeboer on Sunday October 24, 2021 @10:53AM (#28978461)

Oh, FTR, none of my laptops had nVidia graphics. Intel graphics has always been Good Enough(tm) for my use case (travelling evangelist who presents at conferences and wants enough oomph for some demos on the laptop itself with virtualisation and/or containers).

Nvidia graphics causing problems on laptops is a known issue that only Nvidia can fix by opening up more.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by kiryin on Sunday October 24, 2021 @10:53AM (#28978462)

This has largely been my experience as well, also using Fedora but I doubt that matters much. I rarely have issues, in comparison to the endless stream of ACPI and other hurdles other people seem to be going through with their laptops. Also LVFS is a godsend, I wish every vendor ever participated. I get updates even for my thunderbolt dock.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by nextos on Sunday October 24, 2021 @03:07PM (#28980930)

Lenovo is very nice hardware to run Linux. As you say, they even care about updating firmware.

However, there are a few things that IMHO are holding them back:

* In EU, sales and support are outsourced (to Digital River Ireland Ltd). Support is a disgrace. Sales are also bad, as pricing is ridiculous compared to the US (often 1.5-2x more expensive than Apple) and most models are released late. Besides, they often sell open-box machines as brand new. If the want to compare to Apple, Lenovo should try to have unified global sales and guarantee.

* They sell way too many Thinkpad variants, so they often release some that are unpolished. Lenovo should consolidate their lineup into fewer models.

* They are lagging back with processor updates, compared to other PC manufacturers or non-Thinkpad Lenovos. Thinkpads are often sold with previous generation Intel CPUs. Models with AMD variants are seldomly available.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by def_true_false on Monday October 25, 2021 @10:02AM (#28987905)

> In EU, sales and support are outsourced (to Digital River Ireland Ltd).

AMD happens to use this company for orders on their own site as well. If anyone wants to see how bad an e-commerce experience can be, I suggest they try to order something from AMD.com

It used to be even worse, but it seems they at least figured out that billing and shipping addresses can differ, and instead of ignoring most of the EU countries, they now ignore only about half of them.

The AMD subreddit also had a few threads about this.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by nextos on Monday October 25, 2021 @07:39PM (#28994622)

Yes, I don't understand why any brand would like to taint their reputation by using these middlemen.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by p_l on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:20AM (#28978703)

Lenovo bought the x86 line, including all facilities and staff, from IBM, and produced last few generations of IBM branded devices.

The Thinkpad design team is still operating from the same ex-IBM facilities in Japan, iirc, even keeping some place-related naming in the internal codenames (X220/X230 and related T420/T430 were "Nozomi", iirc based on my spelunking in firmware)

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by Loic on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:03AM (#28978559)

My first Thinkpad was a T41P, in between a series from the Xs, then back to T now that the Ts are so easy to carry. I never used Windows on them, first a mix of different distros, then when Ubuntu was released, Ubuntu.

I never had any issues, only on the X220, the SD flash reader was borking my cards and I had to get an external flash reader.

I cannot imagine using something different. So my experience is a bit like yours, this for 20+ years.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by southerntofu on Sunday October 24, 2021 @10:51AM (#28978446)

Thanks for sharing your experience. As a distro maintainer, do you have access to the complete datasheets of the entire laptop in order to provide decent drivers? Maybe even the source code of the reference Windows drivers?

If so, maybe you could "pressure" your contacts over at Lenovo to get them published once and for all so systems/distros can provide decent support?

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by jwildeboer on Sunday October 24, 2021 @10:55AM (#28978478)

Most drivers are upstreamed anyways, nowadays. We get some early access and work with that, but the resulting code is always upstreamed and open source, so feel free to use that code at any time.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by jessikat on Sunday October 24, 2021 @06:40PM (#28982603)

There's a difference between drivers being upstreamed to the Linux kernel, and a datasheet being available. The source code is not the datasheet, and if there are bugs in the driver, where is the datasheet to compare the implementation to?

When it comes to hardware, source code availability is not sufficient.

Other OS platforms can have different driver architectures, different kernel ABIs and other platform quirks in comparison to Linux, and having to reverse engineer a driver for another platform from a Linux kernel driver is not very open. And then there are licensing considerations to be taken into account as well.

Linux is not the only opensource operating system in existence :-/ And for a project like Haiku, we don't have the people-power to reverse engineer Linux drivers, and again, the question of the GPL also applies when our kernel & drivers are MIT licensed.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by jwildeboer on Sunday October 24, 2021 @08:20PM (#28983242)

As a software maintainer/distributor, I don’t think we at Red Hat are the ones responsible to publish data sheets. That’s the job of the hardware manufacturer/vendor. When they decide to only offer it in non-public ways but allow us to help with getting the drivers upstream AND open source, it is a deal you might not like, but I, as a pragmatist can accept. We’re not the only Linux distributor working this way. Ubuntu/Canonical and SUSE don’t work that different from us on this. Again. You may not like it, and I understand that, but it has lead to making Linux a first class OS on Lenovo with an upstream first goal. I like it that way, even if it can become even better and more open.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by southerntofu on Monday October 25, 2021 @10:20AM (#28988084)

> As a software maintainer/distributor, I don’t think we at Red Hat are the ones responsible to publish data sheets.

I don't think the parent commenter suggested you are responsible for publishing the material. However, it would be great to have vocal support from distro maintainers to encourage hardware manufacturers to publish them in order to provide better support across all systems. If only, to have more transparency about what parts of "supported hardware" are actually supported by the distro drivers, and what specific datasheet references could be requested through other venues (such as directly asking the manufacturer).

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by jessikat on Sunday October 24, 2021 @08:51PM (#28983412)

Of course not. It just gets more to the point of the original article. Whilst publishing and upstreaming driver source code for Linux is awesome, it's still only a half-measure in the overall picture of things being truly open, and we should try to demand more from hardware manufacturers. But we don't really have much sway in those regards, and it's disappointing as an OS-enthusiast, and a Haiku developer.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by southerntofu on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:03AM (#28978560)

> the resulting code is always upstreamed and open source

Are you saying there is 0 binary blobs involved in running a modern Thinkpad? I find that hard to believe (although i would love it). I'm guessing there's a few blobs in the kernel tree itself, and even more firmware blobs the kernel doesn't even know about.

On the topic of how Linux deals very little with actual hardware on modern machines, i really enjoyed this talk called "It's time for operating systems to rediscover hardware" [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by jwildeboer on Sunday October 24, 2021 @12:12PM (#28979242)

No. I specifically said drivers, not firmware blobs. As long as these blobs are freely redistributable, I personally have no problems with them. I understand some people do and that is understandable, but I don’t subscribe to that. This started at a time where non-volatile memory for firmware became a cost factor and companies decided to save a few bucks on the BoM and upload the blob as part of the initialisation/boot process. Which is fine with me.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by kiwijamo on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:20AM (#28978706)

I think it is quite possible there is few if any binary blobs. I have a Lenovo X1 and everything pretty much works out of the box on base Arch Linux (and Debian before that). I think it also helps that my X1 has Intel graphics, Intel Wi-Fi, etc which has very good support which I know is not a given for others (e.g. Broadcom Wi-Fi, Nvidia graphics, et al). It is easily the best Linux experience I've ever had.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by southerntofu on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:29AM (#28978812)

> I have a Lenovo X1 and everything pretty much works out of the box on base Arch Linux

I'd be curious to know if it actually works well with linux-libre (Linux without the binary blobs). It's apparently not maintained as a distro package but is available on the AUR.

Moreover, I'm still curious if all hardware functions without its own binary blobs. For example, is the networking firmware really free and replaceable, or is the proprietary firmware interoperable with a FLOSS driver? Likewise, is the entire system libreboot-able?

Sorry for nitpicking, i'm just looking for precise answer to a topic that's not widely questioned/debated to my knowledge.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by rincebrain on Sunday October 24, 2021 @02:28PM (#28980631)

I believe none of the major wireless NIC vendors these days ship cards that will do anything useful without a nonfree firmware blob, for example.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by maccolgan on Sunday October 24, 2021 @09:02PM (#28983470)

If you wanted to use Linux-libre, wouldn't you just use Parabola?

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by formerly_proven on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:28AM (#28978796)

GP is talking about drivers, you seem to be talking about firmware.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by southerntofu on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:31AM (#28978829)

Correct, i'm slightly abusing semantics. I'm mixing them both under the category of "software that should be under user control", and interested about the FLOSS support for both.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by jwildeboer on Sunday October 24, 2021 @12:20PM (#28979337)

When firmware was stored in ROM/EEPROM, most FOSS folks had no problem with it. It was considered part of the hardware, so not that relevant. But when these were moved out of non-volatile memory (mostly for cost reasons), that changed the picture for some. While the result, after booting, is effectively the same. So no, I am not on the side that sees firmware blobs as something that MUST be made open. It would be good if it were, definitely. But it’s not a deal breaker for me, as long as the blobs are freely redistributable, for example via fwupd. Again, that’s my personal opinion.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by southerntofu on Monday October 25, 2021 @09:15AM (#28987393)

> While the result, after booting, is effectively the same.

I'm not sure it's exactly the same. First, because having embedded firmware formed an incentive for hardware manufacturers to test stuff and fix bugs before hitting the market. Second, because who gets to push updates to our machine has serious political/security implications. We have reached a situation where the OS we choose to run has less and less control over our computing, and i find that worrying.

> it’s not a deal breaker for me, as long as the blobs are freely redistributable

Thanks for your explanation. I can completely respect this position, although i personally disagree. If you ever get the chance to bring up the issue (libre firmware/drivers and librebooting), please spare a minute to raise our disenchantment and mention the possibility to work with other distros (such as Debian, who also has ties to Lenovo) hand-in-hand with hardware manufacturers to improve the situation for everyone.

I don't exactly have any hope for it, but having Lenovo publish its entire hardware specs and playing nice with maintainers to provide libre firmware would definitely inspire confidence in their hardware. For the moment, it seems only Librem and Pine64 (and a few others) are manufacturers that can be approached on that topic. But like the original author (mmu_man) suggested, software freedom should be for everyone, not just people investing in specific hardware... and i'm pretty sure he would be thrilled to work on Haiku support for his Lenovo hardware given proper documentation ;)

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by peoplefromibiza on Sunday October 24, 2021 @07:21PM (#28982843)

my experience as well, as a Debian guy.

Lenovo laptops gave me the best Linux experience out of the box, my only problems have been with the NVidia graphic card, but as others have said that's a known issue and is not Lenovo's fault, even though it got better with time and right now I'm running Plasma+Wayland on Debian testing and apart some hit and miss with copy/paste, it worked great so far.

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Re:OK Lenovo, we need to talk by throwawayswede on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:22AM (#28978726)

Same. I haven't tried that many different vendors, but Linux on Lenovo's is by far the most supported of all the Asus, HP, Sony, and random others I've tried. At least with onsite support the technical person understand and knows what they're working with.

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