Lenovo Delivers SuSE Linux-Based ThinkPads

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."

Re:MS tax

[the_womble]

If you're using Linux, you need to know how to install Linux.

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.

Re:MS tax

[ozmanjusri]

But since the OS is Suse, you still pay a Microsoft tax, am I right?

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.

Branding is extremely important

[LingNoi]

and what would have happened if Dell went all out putting Linux on the front page, only selling Linux machines no MS Windows and it was a failure? There's another ten years of "Linux Sucks" right there.

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 /. grumble about "Why Noobuntu, why not try X". Well now you know, if distribution X had better branding it would probably be more popular then Ubuntu.

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.

Re:I hope they do better than Dell ...

[TeknoHog]

What exactly stops you from buying whatever laptop you want and installing Linux yourself? Given that you want a powerful laptop, wouldn't that be more consistent with your wishes than buying an Eee?

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.

Re:It's about $600 pricier than expected

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking anonymous coward. The same machine is capable of running Windows Vista Premium aka Media Center. That should tell you enough about the specs.

Linux hardly needs even 25% of the specs that Vista takes to boot up.

Re:Odd, given IBM's support for Ubuntu

[Superken7]

Well, i think this has nothing to do with IBM, since they sold all their PC business to Lenovo.

Re:Branding is extremely important

[turing_m]

"This is why Ubuntu is more popular then other distributions, because Mark S. has associated Ubuntu with larger brands."

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.

Two questions...

[Qubit]

1. Where's the link to a current press release from Lenovo or from Novell/SuSE? The article doesn't share any links, and when I looked on both companies' sites all I could find were old [novell.com] press releases [lenovo.com].

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.

Re:Branding is extremely important

[Cato]

Branding has little to do with Ubuntu's success - it is generally polished, and easy to set up on most systems. The solid Debian based, attention to usability, huge array of software in the repositories, and the very newbie-friendly forums are key too. Also, the sheer volume of people using Ubuntu now means that the forums have solutions for most common problems already written up, and the response time to questions on forums is generally very good.

Re:MS tax

[Anonymous Coward]

But that would be worse for the Linux community. The # of distros of Linux out there is both a strength and a weakness. The fact that there is no 'Linux x.x' standard install target for application developers like there is for Windows or OSX means that you have to custom-tailor packages for each distro's management system. And *increasing* the number of distros out there isn't going to remedy that.

I've had *a lot* of problems with package management systems. One of the most frustrating things is when people say "Install this using this 3rd party repository" only to discover that the repository only supports x86 and/or x86_64 binaries and possibly doesn't even have the source files for me to build my own. This becomes increasingly relevent as devices running linux will have things like ARM processors in them instead of Intel/AMD x86 procs.

Re:MS tax

[dave87656]

I'd like you both to make short, 15 minute presentation, that would allow people with no technical background to understand Linux installation.

Actually, I work remotely. So, I had a non-technical guy setup two new machines. He had never installed Linux before. He works in the accounting office and didn't even know what the term Operating System meant. I gave him instructions up front as follows: what to name the machine and to use a fixed IP address which I gave him.

He installed Ubuntu without further questions to me and without any problems.

I hate to break it to you, but it really is that easy. It's easier to setup a Ubuntu box than it is to install a printer, for example, under Windows. The vendor's drivers are probably better for Windows, which makes sense, but Ubuntu installs working drivers out of the box.

So, what were they? Nothing more than setting up email (Lotus Notes), connecting network printers, accessing network shares.

As far as setting up Lotus notes, that's an application issue has nothing to do, per se, with Ubuntu. Connecting network printers is easier under Ubuntu. You click on "New Printer", select "Internet Printer (IPP)" and put in the address.

On that topic, our non-technical guy setup our four network printers on these newly installed Ubuntu boxes without my help. He informed me afterwards. Only one printer didn't work correctly because he didn't have the correct address for it. Yep, it is that easy.

But you assume that novices can do all these things under Windows. My mother cannot setup an email program under Windows. She has no idea what a pop server or smtp server is. That has nothing to do with Linux or Windows.

As far as setting up network shares. I fail to see what is so difficult or more difficult under Linux compared to Windows. It is different, true, but certainly not more difficult.