Lenovo To Begin Shipping ThinkPad Laptops With Fedora Pre-Installed

[ChristianSchaller]

IBM has started making its ownership felt around Redhat's property. IBM used its business relationship with Lenovo to include Fedora as a preinstalled os.

To be honest, no sane person who values his privacy is going to leave a preinstalled os intact. The first thing you do, is remove everything entirely and install from your own safe image. Lets not forget how terribly insecure as those vendor apps they preinstall and act as a great spyware... In other words, its really inconsequential/irrelevant what comes preinstalled.

Still, its a good business decision by IBM.

This is just nonsense. IBM was not involved here at all. Also the OS version installed is a standard Fedora install, there is zero extra software being added here by Lenovo or anyone else. In fact Lenovo worked with us to get all bugfixes and improvements needed for these laptops upstream into the upstream kernel, GNOME and so on.

[deusexmachina]

If only they wouldn't kill features Thinkpad fans love - like the hotswappable battery!

[kpedersen]

To be honest, no sane person who values his privacy is going to leave a preinstalled os intact. The first thing you do, is remove everything entirely and install from your own safe image. Lets not forget how terribly insecure as those vendor apps they preinstall and act as a great spyware... In other words, its really inconsequential/irrelevant what comes preinstalled.

True but now when you put Linux back on; you are absolutely guaranteed that it is going to work.

This is a fairly big thing and I am surprised Lenovo hasn't offered this with Thinkpads years earlier.

[Britoid]

This is just nonsense. IBM was not involved here at all. Also the OS version installed is a standard Fedora install, there is zero extra software being added here by Lenovo or anyone else. In fact Lenovo worked with us to get all bugfixes and improvements needed for these laptops upstream into the upstream kernel, GNOME and so on.

This is good news. It's a bad thing if a laptop needs a custom repo or kernel on it out the box.

Fedora really ought to ship with tuned and have some level of intergration with GNOME if its going to do this

[nils_]

To be honest, no sane person who values his privacy is going to leave a preinstalled os intact. The first thing you do, is remove everything entirely and install from your own safe image. Lets not forget how terribly insecure as those vendor apps they preinstall and act as a great spyware... In other words, its really inconsequential/irrelevant what comes preinstalled.

Not to mention setting up encryption. It still saves you the Windows tax though.

[ChristianSchaller]

ChristianSchaller Upstreams like GNOME recently extended their period of stable release with 3-4 extra months. Is this part of Fedora meeting expectations from Lenovo etc?

No, no relation at all. What we ended up talking a lot with Lenovo about was the Fedora support cycle and how we can make that work for them, because at the end of the day they (like us) ship a whole OS and thus they need to know the support cycle of that as opposed to individual parts like GNOME or the kernel etc.

[Brane215]

If that lower the price for a fair amount, great.

Another thing Lenovo might think about is selling barebones version.

They are raping their customers with their options.

There is only so much one is prepared to go for nice keyboard.

[Vistaus]

Be aware that this is quite different from the Red Hat certification they and other HW makers have been doing. That has been for major corporate accounts only, while this is something a consumer can order themselves from Lenovos website and which Lenovo has established an engineering team to support themselves.

Eh, a couple of years ago, Media Markt in Amsterdam had a few Lenovo Z series laptops with Red Hat preinstalled for sale. So they were also available in consumer stores for a while (albeit Z series rather than ThinkPads, but still).

[torsionbar28]

To be honest, no sane person who values his privacy is going to leave a preinstalled os intact. The first thing you do, is remove everything entirely and install from your own safe image. Lets not forget how terribly insecure as those vendor apps they preinstall and act as a great spyware... In other words, its really inconsequential/irrelevant what comes preinstalled.

All true, but that's not the point. Having Linux as a preinstalled option demonstrates to a potential buyer that the hardware will all work under Linux. This is especially important in the laptop world, where Linux support is a little more hit-or-miss particularly on brand new hardware.

Not to mention avoiding the Microsoft tax. I don't like being forced to pay for something I have no intention of ever using. Do you?

Lastly, having Linux as a preinstalled option typically also means that BIOS and firmware updates will be installable under Linux. I've run into more than a few different computers over the years, where the vendor ONLY provides a Windows .exe file for updating the firmware. With the rise of SSD's, this is even more important, as most SSD products see numerous FW updates over their life. For example, Kingston provides only a Windows app for SSD firmware, while intel has their full SSD toolbox on Linux. These are the kinds of things a Linux user must take into consideration when buying a new machine.

[Vistaus]

All true, but that's not the point. Having Linux as a preinstalled option demonstrates to a potential buyer that the hardware will all work under Linux. This is especially important in the laptop world, where Linux support is a little more hit-or-miss particularly on brand new hardware.

Not to mention avoiding the Microsoft tax. I don't like being forced to pay for something I have no intention of ever using. Do you?

Lastly, having Linux as a preinstalled option typically also means that BIOS and firmware updates will be installable under Linux. I've run into more than a few different computers over the years, where the vendor ONLY provides a Windows .exe file for updating the firmware. With the rise of SSD's, this is even more important, as most SSD products see numerous FW updates over their life. For example, Kingston provides only a Windows app for SSD firmware, while intel has their full SSD toolbox on Linux. These are the kinds of things a Linux user must take into consideration when buying a new machine.

Yeah, Linux works great on my 2018 ThinkPad and while Lenovo gives me BIOS updates in ISO format, they only offer exe files for updating the SSD. I wish they'd let me update my SSD too on Linux.