As a nice win for open source, hardware vendor Lenovo are going to begin offering Fedora Linux on their ThinkPad line. This was announced today over on the Fedora Magazine by Red Hat's Matthew Miller.
You will be able to select Fedora Workstation as your operating system when customizing a Lenovo ThinkPad, as part of a pilot in Lenovo’s Linux Community Series. They're going to be starting with the ThinkPad P1 Gen2, ThinkPad P53, and ThinkPad X1 Gen8 laptops and if it's a success likely more. Sounds like it's been a good partnership too, as Miller said Lenovo has been "following our existing trademark guidelines and respects our open source principles" with it shipping exactly as the Fedora team want.
In the post they included this teaser video:
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As Mark Pearson, Sr. Linux Developer, from Lenovo said, "Lenovo is excited to become a part of the Fedora community. We want to ensure an optimal Linux experience on our products. We are committed to working with and learning from the open source community."
This is great, and it's really needed that we have more well-known hardware vendors put Linux as an option (and actually advertise it) for Linux adoption rates to increase. It's one of the biggest barriers.
More details about this will be coming soon closer to launch.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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robertosf92 Apr 24, 2020
Great news! I was looking into replacing my 5 year old low end laptop sometime in the near future, this might be a good chance to get a good GNU/Linux laptop instead of a windows one and having to remove it to install a distro!!
6 Likes, Who?
I've had a rather bad experience trying to get Fedora running on my Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet, at least from the Lenovo side of things. All the response we've been getting on the Lenovo forum for issues related to this machine with Fedora is "This device is not supported".
Hopefully they'll start to actually support their devices with Fedora on them.
Hopefully they'll start to actually support their devices with Fedora on them.
0 Likes
Kimyrielle Apr 24, 2020
That's really good news. Linux will never become mainstream on desktops/laptops if people cannot buy devices with pre-installed Linux that's cheaper than the same hardware with pre-installed Windows. Let's face it, for the generic public, there is no reason to replace a working Windows (they already paid for) with another OS.
12 Likes, Who?
I've had a rather bad experience trying to get Fedora running on my Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet, at least from the Lenovo side of things. All the response we've been getting on the Lenovo forum for issues related to this machine with Fedora is "This device is not supported".Well, yeah. We're talking actual supported and tested devices here. Totally different.
Hopefully they'll start to actually support their devices with Fedora on them.
4 Likes, Who?
tuxintuxedo Apr 24, 2020
Just to face reality, let me remember something not too long ago.
I know for a fact that in case of Dell, even after a few years of stating "officially supporting Ubuntu" on their models they had some serious issues. There was a case where the pre-installed system had a buggy extra package added to support wireless (which actually worked without it) and this made the whole package managing system fail and become unfixable after the first update. Another case was audio simply not working because the kernel didn't have it at that time (nor was it even planned) and Dell didn't notice or care later. An independent guy made a lot of contributions to hasten the development.
As I heard nowadays Dell laptops are much more Ubuntu friendly (even I have one), but I wanted to highlight that publicly stating to support an OS can be very far from actually testing it and supporting the people who are using it on an end product.
Last edited by tuxintuxedo on 24 April 2020 at 5:02 pm UTC
I know for a fact that in case of Dell, even after a few years of stating "officially supporting Ubuntu" on their models they had some serious issues. There was a case where the pre-installed system had a buggy extra package added to support wireless (which actually worked without it) and this made the whole package managing system fail and become unfixable after the first update. Another case was audio simply not working because the kernel didn't have it at that time (nor was it even planned) and Dell didn't notice or care later. An independent guy made a lot of contributions to hasten the development.
As I heard nowadays Dell laptops are much more Ubuntu friendly (even I have one), but I wanted to highlight that publicly stating to support an OS can be very far from actually testing it and supporting the people who are using it on an end product.
Last edited by tuxintuxedo on 24 April 2020 at 5:02 pm UTC
0 Likes
clatterfordslim Apr 24, 2020
I upgraded my Lenovo Yoga 500 to a 500GB SSD and 8GB of ram and it's running Peppermint OS 10 Re-Spin flawlessly. I love Lenovo they are a great company, would be nice to see them with other Linux Distros too in the future. :D
1 Likes, Who?
I worked for five years with a T430 + workstation dock. Best laptop/workstation ever!
0 Likes
walther von stolzing Apr 24, 2020
Sounds like it's been a good partnership too, as Miller said Lenovo has been "following our existing trademark guidelines and respects our open source principles" with it shipping exactly as the Fedora team want.
I wonder what that implies about codecs that come only on the rpmfusion repos. Perhaps those will be enabled by default (you kind of have to, for an all-purpose desktop installation).
1 Likes, Who?
Finally! Until now they even refused to refund the Windows tax. That's a refreshing change. Looking forward for them doing it for all Thinkpads. I'm only buying them with Ryzens these days.
Last edited by Shmerl on 24 April 2020 at 8:01 pm UTC
Last edited by Shmerl on 24 April 2020 at 8:01 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
This is good news, even if you do not use Fedora. Having one distribution available preinstalled means that if you install another that everything should work (which was announced as available)
If you buy one to put another distribution on I suggest you make an image of the existing installation, in case you have to return it to service.
There could be some features only available under windows, but they should not be listed when buying it with Linux.
Check if any extra kernel parameters are used in grub with
cat /proc/cmdline
and if any special repositories are used, before nuking the preinstalled one.
I bought a Dell G5 15 5587 1.5 years ago with Ubuntu 16.04 installed. I put a modern Linux on it and it just works except for the fingerprint reader from Goodix, which was not listed in the specifications when buying it as a Linux laptop, so I knew and that was ok then.
If you buy one to put another distribution on I suggest you make an image of the existing installation, in case you have to return it to service.
There could be some features only available under windows, but they should not be listed when buying it with Linux.
Check if any extra kernel parameters are used in grub with
cat /proc/cmdline
and if any special repositories are used, before nuking the preinstalled one.
I bought a Dell G5 15 5587 1.5 years ago with Ubuntu 16.04 installed. I put a modern Linux on it and it just works except for the fingerprint reader from Goodix, which was not listed in the specifications when buying it as a Linux laptop, so I knew and that was ok then.
4 Likes, Who?
HendrinMckay Apr 24, 2020
Nice! Looking forward to seeing these units. May need one to do some software development on the go once things open back up. Always good to have more options!
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I wonder what that implies about codecs that come only on the rpmfusion repos. Perhaps those will be enabled by default (you kind of have to, for an all-purpose desktop installation).No, it's supposed to be stock Fedora.
1 Likes, Who?
This is great news! I'm currently on a Thinkpad with Fedora. Its been a great machine. I think Fedora and Thinkpad are a great combination and i will consider Lenovo for my next upgrade.
1 Likes, Who?
Why Fedora, though?
I mean, nothing against Fedora, but wouldn't Ubuntu generally result in a better experience for users due to more widespread support of pretty much anything?
There's a ton of stuff readily available for Ubuntu (or rather, as .deb) which is not impossible to get on Fedora but you have to jump through some hoops.
I mean, nothing against Fedora, but wouldn't Ubuntu generally result in a better experience for users due to more widespread support of pretty much anything?
There's a ton of stuff readily available for Ubuntu (or rather, as .deb) which is not impossible to get on Fedora but you have to jump through some hoops.
1 Likes, Who?
Why Fedora, though?
I mean, nothing against Fedora, but wouldn't Ubuntu generally result in a better experience for users due to more widespread support of pretty much anything?
Because Fedora project worked with Lenovo on it? No one stops others working with them if they want to. You can always install any distro yourself. The main point is that they are doing heavy lifting of testing the hardware and Lenovo also offers you an option without the Windows tax. That's a huge win.
Also, Ubuntu is not the most popular distro these days anymore. So I can ask the same question, why Ubuntu?
Last edited by Shmerl on 24 April 2020 at 8:57 pm UTC
9 Likes, Who?
Why Fedora, though?
I mean, nothing against Fedora, but wouldn't Ubuntu generally result in a better experience for users due to more widespread support of pretty much anything?
There's a ton of stuff readily available for Ubuntu (or rather, as .deb) which is not impossible to get on Fedora but you have to jump through some hoops.
But to get anything on Ubuntu you need to add a bunch of PPA's, which is less convenient than using RPM Fusion on Fedora.
2 Likes, Who?
Great news! I knew it was smart to wait.
Wait what?
Our installer aims to make the complicated process of installing Fedora to replace another operating system as easy as possible, but it’s still a barrier even for tech-literate people
Wait what?
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Also, Ubuntu is not the most popular distro these days anymore. So I can ask the same question, why Ubuntu?Eh...
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=linux
Ubuntu makes up 30% (+7% if you count Linux Mint as it is Ubuntu-based). The next-big one is Arch (11% Manjaro + "pure" 10% Arch).
Don't look at numbers that come from "number of downloads" - these numbers say little to nothing about actual usage. Stuff like distrowatch shows different numbers of which distro is "most popular" every few weeks, it is useless for this purpose.
Only look at sources that check based on actual usage. Unfortunately, Steam hardware survey is one of the only relevant source I know - most others just show Linux vs Windows or focus on server technology (in which Ubuntu also usually ranks highest).
But Steam is highly relevant to our case here, so...
Wait, don't we have such a statistic on gamingonlinux itself? Can't find it right now...
Either way, my question "why Fedora" was answered: Because the Fedora project worked with Lenovo to do this.
Makes sense.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 25 April 2020 at 6:31 am UTC
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