Lenovo To Begin Shipping ThinkPad Laptops With Fedora Pre-Installed

[Britoid]

Switching between releases on Silverblue isn't as easy as advertised. I consistently had base package replacement errors for which all of the responses would be "just wait for another update". Even in just regular updates. Great idea, but difficult to manage for a desktop. This was on both 31 and rawhide for me, maybe the situation is better now.

Usually rpm-ostree reset to clear any overrides will do the trick.

This isn't ideal ofc, but it's still relatively easy.

[RahulSundaram]

I'd rather you not accuse me of "twisting words" when RedHat has been literally and legally a "business unit" of IBM since July 9th of last year.

bash2bash claimed this. "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.." This assumption turned out be incorrect. What Lenovo is doing now is happening independent of the IBM acquisition. It is as simple as that.

[fuzz]

I would actually think Silverblue would be better to ship with given it can jump releases easier than normal Workstation.

You can jump from Fedora 27 => 32 relatively pain-free and instantly on Silverblue, not on Workstation.

Switching between releases on Silverblue isn't as easy as advertised. I consistently had base package replacement errors for which all of the responses would be "just wait for another update". Even in just regular updates. Great idea, but difficult to manage for a desktop. This was on both 31 and rawhide for me, maybe the situation is better now.

[andyprough]

Now your twisting things. Of course we at Red Hat where involved, but nobody from IBM was. And yes, Red Hat is fully owned by IBM, meaning they hold all our shares, but we are not part of IBM the organization. We have our own CEO, our own HR department, our own IT department, our own offices, our own email domain and so on. And we work with IBM in a similar manner to how we work with other partners.

Also the sale of their laptop business to Lenovo was ages ago (15 years according to Google), I don't even know if anyone involved with that transaction still work at either company. And none of the actual people I worked with on this from Lenovo where as far as I know even ever an IBM employee they all joined Lenovo afterwards. And I spoken with nobody from IBM about this effort.

I'd rather you not accuse me of "twisting words" when RedHat has been literally and legally a "business unit" of IBM since July 9th of last year. The title of the current head of RedHat, the separate domain name and email addresses and HR and IT department are relevant to RedHat employees I'm sure, but many/most subsidiary companies run in the exact same manner, and they are still legally and factually subsidiaries. A General Motors employee may object and say, "but I work for Chevrolet", but from an outsider's perspective it's all one and the same. I can't buy stock in either Chevrolet or RedHat, but I can buy stock in their operations by purchasing General Motors and IBM. I would question any "but we're not IBM" talk, both from a factual perspective, and from a perspective of wondering why you would even want to say that. I'm assuming that RedHat employees are actually quite satisfied with their company's new ownership. And IBM, due to the SCO vs IBM mega-lawsuit, is actually the long-time savior of the Linux kernel. We'd all be using BSD (or worse, Windows) if IBM hadn't stood its ground and fought that case for years.

Regardless, I do wish you luck with the laptop venture. I looked at the Lenovo pages for those models, and they do look like they are built very well and would be a tempting purchase for me. I look forward to seeing the announcement and the final specs when they go on sale. I would like to see more top of the line GNU/Linux laptops made in this manner - more choice would benefit us all.

[edwaleni]

The idea that not a single person at IBM/RedHat had a single word to say with anyone at IBM-spinoff Lenovo regarding the placement of an IBM/RedHat sponsored distro onto a Lenovo consumer laptop stretches credulity.

IBM and Lenovo are 2 different companies. Different management, different owners. IBM spun off their shares in Lenovo ages ago. IBM doesn't make anything in consumer hardware anymore.

I think your assumption has a credulity issue.

[Britoid]

Will there be any changes made to or proposed to be made to fedora to help supports OEMs?

I know in the past there was a question of support lifetimes.

The implementation will be interesting in how they maintain a recovery image for when you bork your install.

I would actually think Silverblue would be better to ship with given it can jump releases easier than normal Workstation.

You can jump from Fedora 27 => 32 relatively pain-free and instantly on Silverblue, not on Workstation.

[edwaleni]

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.

I agree with your response, and since you work for Red Hat I will assume your are way more in the loop.

In the past Lenovo would certify 1, sometimes 2 workstation level TP's with Red Hat and create a SKU for it and publish it in their product white papers.

You wouldn't find these SKU's on the general Lenovo website for sale, but you could order them through the channels that support corporate accounts or direct sales.

So having Fedora as a selectable SKU in their web ordering system (IMHO) is fantastic. I was just sharing that Think Pads and Red Hat have a longer history together.

FWIW: I asked Lenovo product management if they were going to certify a Linux stack for the X1 Fold. I got some blank looks and some referrals back to engineering. No one was sure.

If Fedora 32 ran on that and could duplicate the screen functionality with its 11 hour runtime, that would be pretty doggone amazing.

[You-]

Will there be any changes made to or proposed to be made to fedora to help supports OEMs?

I know in the past there was a question of support lifetimes.

The implementation will be interesting in how they maintain a recovery image for when you bork your install.

[torsionbar28]

IBM and Red Hat still function very independently from eachother.

True, plus the fact that "Red Hat sponsored" does not equal "Red Hat product". From a corporate standpoint, Fedora basically doesn't exist, because Red Hat does not sell it, does not provide any technical support for it, and does not provide any consulting services around it.

[ChristianSchaller]

The idea that not a single person at IBM/RedHat had a single word to say with anyone at IBM-spinoff Lenovo regarding the placement of an IBM/RedHat sponsored distro onto a Lenovo consumer laptop stretches credulity.

Now your twisting things. Of course we at Red Hat where involved, but nobody from IBM was. And yes, Red Hat is fully owned by IBM, meaning they hold all our shares, but we are not part of IBM the organization. We have our own CEO, our own HR department, our own IT department, our own offices, our own email domain and so on. And we work with IBM in a similar manner to how we work with other partners.

Also the sale of their laptop business to Lenovo was ages ago (15 years according to Google), I don't even know if anyone involved with that transaction still work at either company. And none of the actual people I worked with on this from Lenovo where as far as I know even ever an IBM employee they all joined Lenovo afterwards. And I spoken with nobody from IBM about this effort.