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Lenovo Delivers SuSE Linux-Based ThinkPads
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jan 13, 2008 04:26 AM
from the another-nail dept.
from the another-nail dept.
angryfirelord notes a DesktopLinux article on Lenovo's promise to deliver ThinkPads with pre-installed Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 in the week of January 14. Quoting: "Lenovo will release pre-installed SLED 10 on its Intel Centrino processor-powered ThinkPad T61 and R61 14-inch-wide notebooks. In February, Lenovo's pre-integrated Novell Linux offering will expand to include some Penryn-based ThinkPads. The starting price for this system will be $949, $20 less than the same laptop with Vista Home Premium."
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MS tax (Score:3, Interesting)
But since the OS is Suse, you still pay a Microsoft tax, am I right? I wonder when we will finally be able to buy laptops without any OS at all on them.
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No, you won't.
Re:MS tax (Score:5, Insightful)
The value of the royalties Novell will pay to MS from OEM installs is likely to be vanishingly small. The main benefit Microsoft got from the deal was the FUD, and that mostly backfired on them.
I have a HP laptop with SLED10 pre-installed, it even has a little green Suse logo where the XP one normally goes. It's one of the better Linux experiences around, especially for corporates and newcomers to Linux. And let's face it, even if you wipe SLED10 and install your own favorite, all the hardware will be supported and manufacturers will see there's demand for Linux compatibles.
I wouldn't worry about tacitly supporting Microsoft via Novell either. Now that innovators like Asus and Nokia have shown the way, I suspect the day of the big generic desktop Linux is over, and manufacturers will shrink-fit versions of Linux onto their own hardware.
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Re:MS tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? There is absolutely no reason why users need to know how to install any desktop OS.
I have installed Linux for several people who manage updates and configuration fine but who would be likely to to run into problems if they installed from scratch themselves.
Servers are different, of course, and so are many corporate desktops that need a standardised installation. However, this is a laptop that is being sold to people who want a pre-installed OS.
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That's why I personally don't see Linux happening on the desktop. If two comparable laptops have a price differential of max 50 USD I think most people would say, "Oh hey why not Windows after all most stuff is compatible with Windows." Linux doe
Re:MS tax (Score:5, Interesting)
I managed to buy a thinkpad T60 in the Netherlands a few weeks ago with a preemptive windows (XP) refund. The dealer removed the OS and gave me a discount for the OEM price, which was 129.71 euros, about 190 dollars.
I would have been happy for Lenovo to give that money to a random linux distribution, but now I can decide myself which one gets it.
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This is certainly the case right now for Windows XP and Vista, as numerous laptop and desktop retailers have learned to their dismay.
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Re:MS tax (Score:4, Informative)
IBM/Lenovo were actually very easy to convince. I called them because I had heard of the plans discussed in this article. They even offered to talk to unhelpful dealers for me. Bluelink needed a little more convincing, but I just kept politely and clearly invalidating any arguments they came up with against giving me a refund. This article by Serge Wroclawski http://www.linux.com/articles/59381 [linux.com] was very useful. The counters to all the arguments they came up with are there. I remained friendly and polite the whole time, but the people at Bluelink probably still thought I was some kind of crazy zealot making a fuss.
After my initial phone call to Bluelink asking for a written offer, all communication with them went via email. That way I had more time to think about what I said and compose a convincing message (I can be a bit clumsy on the phone), and there was a written record as well. I also took IBM/Lenovo up on the offer to talk to Bluelink for me. I have no idea what the IBM/Lenovo guy said to Bluelink to make it work, though, because I never saw that communication.
There must be other manufacturers and vendors where this could work as well. My previous laptop was an ASUS, which I bought without any OS on it about 5 years ago. Back then manufacturers were a lot less helpful. I remember talking to several manufacturers before buying the ASUS and being completely stonewalled. Because of my good experience with ASUS, I contacted them this time around too, and they seemed quite willing to help. But I didn't manage to get the store where I bought my previous laptop to cave quickly enough, so I didn't pursue it when I could get an acceptable configuration from http://zepto.com/ [zepto.com], where you can buy empty notebooks. I still preferred the specs of the thinkpad. I had almost given up on it when I got an offer with a preemptive windows refund from Bluelink.
Hope this helps!
Syonax
Parent
Dumping (Score:2, Interesting)
Then the real question is why do the OEMs get all that discount? Is that legal?
OK, I could pay the cost of distribution and all that, but in the end that would be something like 20% of the total. Boxed software doesn't even come with printed manuals these days, and selling through internet stores reduces the overall retail expenses.
Re:Dumping (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Dumping (Score:4, Interesting)
1) OEM is responsible for distribution and support. You buy a retail box, and you can call Microsoft for help. You buy a Dell... you call dell. (And if you bought sn OEM at newegg... call newegg for support.) Not that OEM support is worth anything, but its still a phone call MS doesn't have to try to answer.
2) With OEM editions MS tries hard to bind the OS to the physical unit to effectively strip you of your right to resell or transfer the software. They 'require' that you put the sticker on the case, and the language in the EULA is more restrictive, etc. In any case its often more a PITA to exercise your rights with OEM Windows. When you pay retail, they don't get in your way nearly as much over stuff like this. No stickers. No fuss.
3) Its been rumored, and im not sure if ever confirmed, that windows activation is less forgiving of OEM versions than retail. (in that OEM versions will require you to call microsoft for a manual activation in circumstances that the retail go through on automatic. (e.g. after a few transfers or hardware changes.) This being predicated on the logic that an OEM version doesn't get transferred, so it doesn't need as much leniency. If this is true, its not a big deal, but again, makes retail a little neater to deal with.
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I typically buy my Windows at Retail, in the upgrade edition, as its about as cheap as the OEM, without any of the OEM hassles. (And I have enough copies to qualify for upgrades.) And the upgrade edition typically just required the previous media. Not a big deal considering it knocked half the price off.
For vista... what a Pain. The upgrade requires you actually install the previous edition then upgrade. (Makes sense from a certain point of view, given that iso's are trivial to obtain.) But its beyond stupid in practice. If my HD dies, I shouldn't have to install XP, before installing Vista.
What happens in 2020... I buy a new PC and decide to transfer Windows 9 on it...and put Ubuntu Zippy Zebra on the old one, and I've been upgrading windows all along so now I have to install windows 8 on it first for the v9 installer to run... but to do that I have to install windows 7, and to do that I have to install windows Vista, and to that I have to install XP? Good luck installing XP on a new PC in 2020... will there even be XP drivers for the ultra-hddvd-bluray-3.0 drive I'll be installing with on the BIOS-free EFI-2-superZ.22/q based motherboard using an intel octo 4 hyper III-2 cpu?
With Vista, at least there is a workaround, but its clearly an oversight on microsofts part. And I don't think it'll be their next time round.
They ought to go the OSX route, lower the price of full retail... (almost NOBODY buys that anyway on windows), and get rid of the 'upgrade editions'.
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Also, on the subject of cost, have you any idea how much it
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Do you know that it will cost more than training support for Windows?
One thing I do know is that the DRM in Windows makes support a big pain. You can't easily roll out a custom boot disc, for instance, to solve problems. In fact, I sometimes use Linux boot discs to fix Windows myself.
Also, Thinkpads are made by "Lenovo", not "IBM" these days. Though IBM probably still provides many services.
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MS-Blessed Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Strange, that, how when Microsoft officially blesses a Linux distribution by investing in it and making all sorts of ridiculous patent/IP claims, a major PC manufacturer brings out a line of laptops with MS Linux. You can bet that Microsoft is making exactly the same amount of money on each Linux "sale" as each Windows sale, or maybe more.
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Re:MS-Blessed Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I care about Microsoft trying to subvert Linux. I couldn't care less about the money per se, but I worry about the lies and FUD they're putting before the PHBs of this world. And the implied legal threats.
Parent
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Bait-and-switch, softening their anti-Free Software image, making claims regarding "giving permission" for SuSE/Novell customers to use the Microsoft intellectual property allegedly infringed by Linux, the implications for Linux in general, selling more Microsoft software to SuSE Linux shops.
Mark my words, I was right about itanium and I'll be right about this too. The deal is fishy.
Re:MS-Blessed Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Good news (Score:2, Informative)
Overview of Laptops without "Microsoft-Tax" (Score:5, Informative)
I hope they do better than Dell ... (Score:5, Interesting)
That, or I'm getting an Eee.
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Re:I hope they do better than Dell ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's important to signal that there is a market for Linux machines, when you think about device drivers for example. First of all, when you buy a Linux machine, you know that the devices will work with Linux, even if you install another distro. More importantly, this sends a message to the hardware makers that mostly write Windows-only drivers.
Parent
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I recently bought ThinkPad R61, and although most of the hardware worked out of the box, I still after quite a few hours didn't get the wifi to work.
Also, the fingerprint reader is a true nightmare - even after finding free Linux driver I find out that it's a bit different model and thus returns "USB device not found" every time I want to use it.
That and oh, also the graphics driver doesn't seem to work so you have to force it to install a different driver that says i
Re:I hope they do better than Dell ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Support. I know linux, i work with linux, i can install it myself, but however, since i am working as a pysicist it is not my job to do so. I want to buy a computer and problems should be solved by calling the support.
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Branding is extremely important (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Dell did the right thing by slowly growing their Linux desktop market and now everyone is copying them.
Branding matters a lot.
It's the reason Microsoft runs it's Get the facts [microsoft.com] campaign against Linux. Having Linux associated with big brands that people have heard of increases your chance of people picking your product. It doesn't matter that Linux runs on the top 8 super computers [top500.org] of the world because people will make judgements based of how familiar they are with a product.
This is why Ubuntu is more popular then other distributions, because Mark S. has associated Ubuntu with larger brands. More people know about Ubuntu and are more likely to pick it compared to another distributions. A lot of people here on
Another branding example..
Have you noticed recently how "Windows Server" adverts keep popping up on websites such as top500.org, sourceforge, etc? Places that decision makers might see them, but also developers. Sourceforge in particular seems to have tons of Microsoft adverts that it is starting to put me off visiting that website at all.
Parent
Re:Branding is extremely important (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who actually uses Ubuntu and has in the past used (trying some extensively, some still in use) such Linuxen as PCLinuxOS, puppy, DSL, SUSE, CentOS, Mepis, and probably a few others I forget, I think I'm qualified to say that the difference is not just in the branding. I've also developed nothing in Ubuntu nor hold any financial interest in its success. I have used it solely for about 6 months and the last time I booted my XP HDD for any reason was at least 4 months ago. And I really didn't want to like it because of the ugly default shit brown theme, the name and icon seemed like something more appropriate to a Michael Jackson music video than an operating system, and just because it was too popular already. But in the end I succumbed.
Ubuntu succeeds because it is amazingly polished and stable compared to other linux distributions, with a focus on the newbie and a shockingly vast array of software in the repositories that Just Works. No one uses an OS to use an OS, they use an OS for their favorite applications.
If you want help, you are more likely to find success through googling ubuntuforums.org or posting there yourself. This is because the forums are moderated in a specifically newbie friendly fashion where RTFM is banned.
http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php?page=policy [ubuntuforums.org]
And now network effect is reinforcing the utility of Ubuntu. Basically anything FOSS gets a concerted effort to put it in the repos if it is any good, or a howto gets written for it. And any hardware has someone using Ubuntu having a hack at it to get it to go first.
Parent
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The ThinkPad, de facto, is term used by Lenovo to demarcate their business-class machines. "Home" laptops are sold purely under the Lenovo brand.
Hope that helps; cheers.
What people ignore (Score:2)
Yes, offer Linux pre-installed, but at the same time, offer me the ability to say, "no, I don't want an operating system at all, I just want the laptop, and I'll obtain an oper
small ThinkPads please! (Score:2, Offtopic)
14-inch-wide notebooks
Good for aeroplanes I suppose, but still not small enough.
Small is good. For me, I prefer carrying 3.5-5" PDAs and 9-12" subnotebooks. And even 12" is already too big. What I realy want is a robust ThinkPad with modern technology at or below 12".
What can you do on a small screen? Well, lots of things. What you lose in screen size you gain it three times in productivity thanks to flexibility in using your machine anywhere you want. I use my PDA (HTC Universal) and my 8.9" Flybook while walking, f
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Two questions... (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Why SuSE? Did Lenovo somehow broker an unbeatable deal on support contracts, or... ?
While googling for more news on the current development, I found an old Lenovo blog entry [lenovoblogs.com] from September of 2007 asking "What Linux distribution would you most like to see supported on a ThinkPad?". Now I'm sure that every kind of online poll has some amount of ballot-stuffing, but out of the 64572 responses, 37% chose Ubuntu, 17% chose Mandrivia, and (much farther down the list) a mere 5% chose SuSE, SLED, or OpenSuSE. SLED got only 312 votes, giving it less than 0.5% of the votes.
As unscientific as the poll was, the author of the blog admitted in the lead-up to the poll that he figured that he needed to try out Ubuntu and that he was pretty sure what linux distribution was going to be chosen. So with all this user interest in Ubuntu, why did Lenovo go the Novell/SuSE route?
Oh well -- as long as the Thinkpad hardware is fully supported by some modern Linux distro, I figure that Ubuntu should have no problems supporting it.
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I also think Lenovo is smart about keeping Ubuntu off their corporate laptops for now, they look at Ubuntu as being a consumer Linux distribution where SuSE is geared for the corporate env
good fit (Score:2)
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Votes were about 23,000 for Ubuntu and about 800 for SuSe.
So, in an effort to listen to their customers, and make a success of Linux on Lenovo laptops, Lenovo have decided to offer
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1. Linux absolutely flies on a Vista-capable machine. Smokin.
2. You don't have to run Vista on your nice machine.
3 Guaranteed Linux compatible hardware.
So you are free to wipe Suse out and put your favorite Linux distro on it without having to worry about reduced functionality due to unsupported hardware.
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No that's not what it means because SLED 10 is not cost free. In fact it is more expensive than Windows because it carries a yearly subscription price tag of $50. Add it up over the 5 or 6 years that Windows Vista will last and I don't think that you will find that SLED is cheaper. Of course it includes more than the OS, as do all Linux distros, and it guarantees that the machine is well supported by Linux, so well worth the initial cost. SLED is
Can you elaborate on this? (Score:2)