Lenovo To Certify Their Full ThinkPad/ThinkStation Line For Linux

[stormcrow]

Users demand on the workstation lines are more likely to be developers for servers and the like, I'd guess.

Lenovo is a Chinese company with headquarters in Beijing, though. While they haven't been directly targeted by the US government like ZTE, Huawei, and China Telecom, the Chinese govt is mandating that all Chinese companies wean themselves off US technology dependence over time as a matter of national security. Lenovo likely sees the writing on the wall and is trying to do some diversification here with offering more than just Microsoft Windows. Microsoft could at any time be ordered to stop supporting Chinese corporations, much like Huawei can't legally release new phone designs with GAPS outside of China.

Much as Trump would like to, he can't stop companies like Huawei and Lenovo from using GPL or BSD licensed projects from public repositories and using them with impunity. Fedora is just RHEL testing grounds, it doesn't contain anything proprietary nor is it directly supported by RedHat or IBM.

[StarterX4]

Why not IdeaPad line too?

[RussianNeuroMancer]

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd031426

And what is going to change exactly? Isn't they already been doing this for years?

[mroche]

For the time being, this seems to be specific to the P series and ThinkStation models. The word workstation is very intentional, and the X and T series are their ultraportable and business grade lineups, not workstation (doesn’t matter how you use the device, it’s how they deem it). The P series is explicitly marked as a workstation lineup.

I’m excited, hope, and expect this to expand to the other lineups, though they are already reasonably well known to work very well with Linux distributions. But certifications and OOTB Linux can’t hurt either

Cheers,
Mike

[sarmad]

We will certify our laptops for Linux, but when you buy one of those laptops to run Linux on it you still have to pay us for the Windows license. Also, we won't tell you on our website which of those is certified, you'll have to dig the world wide web for that info.

No thanks, I'll stick to original Linux vendors like System76, Purism, StarLabs, Slimbook, Tuxedo, etc.

[andyprough]

Please what is MX?

MX Linux is a distro that's based on Debian which is optimized for typical desktop use. It's the successor to an older popular distro that was called Mepis. Lot of the old Mepis people are involved in it.

[illwieckz]

if I was only gaming ATI would be carefully evaluated in my analysis.

Are you living in the 1985-2005 era?

[Teggs]

...the Chinese govt is mandating that all Chinese companies wean themselves off US technology dependence over time as a matter of national security.

That is what came into my mind as well. What the Communist Party truly wants is hardware and software under their thumb, as the US has with Windows and Intel's ME and AMD's PSP. They don't have that, and they won't for a good while, so they are for now accepting half-measures such as hardware and software that are under no one's thumb. Lenovo is reasonably positioning themselves to be acceptable to the State by offering Linux (software), and will possibly offer Centaur or other (hardware) when that becomes performant at acceptable levels, at least in the domestic market. That is my reading of it, as opposed to 'Lenovo thinks Linux is gaining importance on a professional level!' It could be both...

The effort has been going on for a while: https://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/tec...s-8/index.html

And has recently gained urgency: https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/09/ch...state-offices/

Domestic Chinese CPU efforts are usable, but not competitive, as reviewed by GamersNexus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIgBsz1MduI

[zexelon]

Are you living in the 1985-2005 era?

Alas no I am not... that was about the last good ATI stint. Since then Nvidia has dominated just about every emerging technology.

[ONLYDOWNDOGS]

Does this mean potential hardware support for older models? Really isn't necessary, but it would be nice if the thumbprint reader on my T470 worked.