Lenovo certifies all desktop and mobile workstations for Linux – and will even upstream driver updates
- Reference: 1591154192
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/03/lenovo_certifies_all_workstations_for_linux/
- Source link:
“Our entire portfolio of ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series workstations will now be certified via both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS – a long-term, enterprise-stability variant of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution,” said a Tuesday [1]statement from GM and executive director of the company’s workstation and client AI group Rob Herman.
Lenovo is serious about this: the company says its workstations will “offer full end-to-end support – from security patches and updates to better secure and verify hardware drivers, firmware and bios optimizations.” Lenovo will also upstream device drivers into the Linux kernel.
The company’s rationale for the move is that Linux workstations are favourites of a sizable population of power users, especially developers and data scientists. Lenovo wants to relieve their employers of the chore of installing and maintaining Linux on the mildly-exotic hardware such users require. But it’s also tipped a hat to Linux enthusiasts with “a pilot program with a preloaded Fedora image on our ThinkPad P53 and P1 Gen 2 systems; providing the latest pure open source platform for this community-based distribution.” Note, however, that the new arrangements are only for Lenovo workstations. ThinkPads, Yogas and other models will still almost certainly run Linux, but don't get extra love from Lenovo.
Lenovo’s offering isn’t unique: Dell [2]offers supported RHEL and Ubuntu on its XPS13 and Precision mobile workstations, plus the Precision tower workstations. HP Inc also supports Linux on its Z-series mobile and desktop workstations and claims it was first to do so. Lenovo seems to think it might have them outflanked by supporting all possible configurations of its P-series laptops ( The Register counts nine machines in that range) and the seven P-series workstations.
Whether Lenovo's Linux love is more ardent that its rivals is surely a less-important question than whether its fulsome embrace of the OS means 2020 can now be considered to have become The Year Of Linux On The Desktop. Community lore asserts that this mythical and magical year will always be next year. But with the big three PC-makers all now declaring penguin passion, and "The Year of Zoom" a rather bleak reminder of other complications in 2020, this could be as good a year as any to declare the Penguin has landed. ®
[1] https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-brings-linux-certification-to-thinkpad-and-thinkstation-workstation-portfolio-easing-deployment-for-developers-data-scientists/
[2] https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystems
I've had a penguin on my desktop for years!
*Gives a stuffed Tux a head pat & smiles*
I just wish he'd stop surfing fish porn while I'm asleep, it makes my keyboard all yucky.
*Changes the gloves for a fresh set*
=-)p
Hats off to Lenovo
Refurbished Thinkpads and Thinkcentres are one of the most wonderful and reliable pieces of hardware I ever had the honor to lay my hands on. They are compact, totally silent, effective, fast as a shark with an SSD, and very well documented. Dell are my second choice - too much customisation. When friends and clients ask me to purchase a PC or laptop for them, Lenovos are my go-to solutions. In addition, if you get up to 4th-gen Intel CPUs, you have the advantage of avoiding installing Windows 10 and offering a rock-stable hard/soft Win7 solution. I install once and never hear any complaint from my clients for years. This is how computing should be in the 21st century.
From the article:
Dell offers supported RHEL and Ubuntu on its XPS13 and Precision mobile workstations, plus the Precision tower workstations.
They don't make a song and dance of it, but if you dig around deeper into their documentation you can see that Inspirons are also rated to support Linux. See [1]Specs for an Inspiron 7591 . Says "Ubuntu".
And I can report that Ubuntu did indeed install smoothly, even through secure boot. The only trick was having to disable Intel RST first, and run the SSD in AHCI mode. Other than that - seems flawless.
[1] https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/uk/en/ukbsdt1/inspiron-15-7591-laptop/inspiron-7591-setup-and-specifications/operating-system?guid=guid-2959a596-4e1f-4c1b-9e6c-857583b2f398&lang=en-us
My first Linux laptop was a Dell - which came preloaded with Ubuntu 7.10. Dell has offered Linux laptops for a very long time.
So will they ever?
provide bios updates for their low end equipment without requiring an install of Micros~1? The ideapads are not half bad basic machines when loaded with a light weight distro but crumble under the weight of 10 and become useless. Other bios update methods are available for the higher end machines but not for the ones that need it most.
Vendor support is one thing...
...But developer support is another. The Open Source Zealots and the We Make Money Now content distribution platforms and the We Refuse to Help chip-set manufactures will not be onboard. With out them it's like owning a Rolls Royce and having no roads to drive on.
Do not misunderstand me. I gave up Windows 10 Pro a while back. The exact date escapes me but it was when I found that even using the combined power of RegEdit, gpedit.msc, and secpol.msc I was unable to disable Cortana. My two Ryzen 7 3700X machines both run Ubuntu. One is my desktop and the other is my server.
Here are some example of what needs to change for something like this to work on a large scale:
1.) Content providers like Amazon, Google Play, Apple, AAA game developers and publishers, and subscription based cloud services from Microsoft (looking at you MS Office), and the MPAA need to realize that they are missing legitimate profits (not just income) from the Linux Desktop. In the best cases they do offer partial support or content at a reduced quality but in most cases the offer nothing at all to Linux users. That means you as the user must breaks the T&C's of their platforms to get high quality content. Have you ever tried to play a Blu-Ray DVD in Linux or *BSD? What about streaming 4K Video from Amazon? How about playing "The Division" or "Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord" or "Destiny 2"? All of these will required breaking the T&C's to work, if they work at all.
If I have break break the T&C's how can I claim to be a legitimate source of income let alone profit?
2.) Chip-set manufactures for all manner of hardware will need to provide full support to developers. As it stands very few actually do this (AMD? Qualcom's Atheros?). Others provide little more than a set buggy reference drivers (RealTek?) and still others force otherwise legitimate users and developers to break their T&C's to reverse engineer drivers (Broadcom?). Still others refuse to publish any form of officially supported open source drivers at all and therefor force users to pick their poison of a partially functional open source driver or using a high performing closed sourced driver with a tainted kernel (Nvidia?).
3.) The Linux and GNU developerss themselves need to put functionality first for a change. Their zealotry has been the number one factor in keeping the first two changes from happening. People will almost always buy the best hardware that they can afford but very rarely will they buy lower grade hardware just because it's fully supported by the Linux distro they want to use. Why should they when they can just dual boot or better yet, only use Linux on a subset of their older hardware?
None of this even takes into account the rapid shrinking of the desktop market in the home user sector. In short I think any headline proclaiming a possible "YOLOTDT" is just click bait. I, for one, stopped clicking years ago.
Who is the third big PC-maker
supporting Linux ?