Lenovo and their Linux 'bet'

[JayM]

Also per the article

The popular OEM is going beyond its pilot program with Fedora 32 and offering full certification and support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS across its entire lineup of workstation PCs.

so users of Ubuntu, Arch, Mandriva-based distros etc. may find themselves out of luck still, or at least on their own as they currently are. Also note this is for "workstation PCs", not their notebook line of products. Still, it's interesting and probably good that Lenovo's willing to risk breaking away from Microsoft's OS almost-monopoly on their desktop business computers.

[AK-47]

Ultimately though, Linux is Linux so maybe they won't be so badly out of luck. The biggest differences between the distros are the package managers and occasional differences in library versions, other than that, they're all sharing the same stuff under the hood. I use Fedora quite often myself, it's a remarkable OS. The hard bits is the hardware support.

[tascoast]

I wonder if it will end up a bit like Android, with various brand versions emerging with some sort of approved application store. It could be an iteration of the chromebook approach, or something resembling that, in a general sense.

[j2mcgreg]

Also per the article

The popular OEM is going beyond its pilot program with Fedora 32 and offering full certification and support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS across its entire lineup of workstation PCs.

so users of Ubuntu, Arch, Mandriva-based distros etc. may find themselves out of luck still, or at least on their own as they currently are. Also note this is for "workstation PCs", not their notebook line of products. Still, it's interesting and probably good that Lenovo's willing to risk breaking away from Microsoft's OS almost-monopoly on their desktop business computers.

I'm not sure that the risk factor is all that high. IBM, now the parent to RedHat, still owns 18.9% of Lenovo and might just be creating market share. I also expect that after a year or so, Ubuntu LTS will be dropped due "lack of demand" or "hardware compatibility problems" etc. The press release (above) is just window dressing aimed at the community. What will be interesting is how the market responds and if one of the other OEMs decides to leverage another distro.

https://www.ibm.com/investor/article/le ... %20percent.

[antiX-Dave]

I wonder if it will end up a bit like Android, with various brand versions emerging with some sort of approved application store. It could be an iteration of the chromebook approach, or something resembling that, in a general sense.

I believe acer tried this before the chrome books were out with the aspire one netbooks... a version of linpus linux lite iirc. There are probably others as well

[sp331yi]

@JayM -- I agree, generally. MX is tops on distrowatch, yet it was not chosen. Why?
RedHat has been a pay-for enterprise distro since inception, no? Money talks.

Overall, I don't see how it can utterly fail, given the way world economies are going.

Blessings upon them -- at least GNU/Linux will get more exposure

[SwampRabbit]

But then again, the fact that Lenovo agreed as part of its Superfish settlement that it has to deal with 20 years of auditing by the FTC and must disclose all software pre-installed or included in their future systems....

And if you believe they're going to play by the rules without a fight or some sneaky behaviour, prepare yourself for a shock.

I can agree that is a potential concern, just have to wait and see what their intentions are.

But I would hope Lenovo would know better, because the fall out from any shady stuff would be massive I think.

We can hope, trust, but verify as time goes on. But I think overall this is going to open the gates a bit more, hopefully the flood we want starts.

[JayM]

@JayM -- I agree, generally. MX is tops on distrowatch, yet it was not chosen. Why?
RedHat has been a pay-for enterprise distro since inception, no? Money talks.

Because they're marketing these workstations to the enterprise sector (i.e. big business and government) so they're offering two distros that have support contracts available. MX is great for ordinary users but doesn't offer 24x7 telephone or on-site support or have suitcased training classes available. Also we don't offer any hardened or headless versions. RedHat Enterprise and Canonical do offer these sort of products and services.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

MX is tops on distrowatch, yet it was not chosen. Why?

Don't be fooled by the DW listings, they are not an true indicator of desktop distribtution prevalence.

IBM now owns Red Hat and also a large share of Lenovo so the choice of Fedora makes perfect sense.

[kc1di]

I have used thinkpads for awhile now on linux and they have always performed very well almost everything works out of the box. only exception is finger print reader which is hit and miss and that is due to software available not the reader itself. I think if Lenovo preinstalls fedora that it will most likely work well with almost all distros. It's good to see them doing this. But they tried once before and abandoned the effort so I a little Leary of it. I think the important thing is not the distros they choose, but the fact that their hardware will be linux certified, that means all drivers etc will be available to make the hardware work with linux. or vise a versa.